The Blind Side of the Heart (44 page)

Alice, when is it due? Wilhelm was in a good mood. Well pleased with himself, he looked round for Helene, who was putting the last steaming potatoes in a dish and setting it down on the table.

In six weeks’ time. Helene wiped her hands on her apron and took the spoon to help the men to potatoes.

Six weeks, as soon as that? It wasn’t clear whether Wilhelm was really surprised or putting on an act. How time flies!

And you’re applying for posts in Berlin? His older colleague sounded startled. Helene knew nothing about Wilhelm’s making any such application.

These days people are needed everywhere, Königsberg, Berlin, Frankfurt. Wilhelm drank to his colleagues. We’ll soon be through with Pölitz, then we’ll have to see what’s to be done next.

Right, said his younger colleague and drank some beer.

Helene served Wilhelm’s potatoes last. They were still steaming; perhaps it was too cold in the kitchen. She’d have to add coal to the stove. Since she had been expecting her baby Helene didn’t feel the cold as she used to, and was slow to notice when the apartment was getting chilly.

Never mind that, Alice, we can look after ourselves. You can leave us now. Wilhelm rubbed his hands above his steaming plate.

It was true, the men had their food and Wilhelm knew where the beer was. He could get up himself to find fresh supplies. As Helene was leaving the kitchen she heard him say to his friends: Do you two know the one about Renate-Rosalinde with the barbed-wire fence?

His colleagues were roaring with laughter before Wilhelm could go on.

She asks the holidaymaker: What do you think of my new dress? Fabulous, says the lance-corporal, reminds me of a barbed-wire fence.

The men roared again. Helene put up the ironing board in the bedroom next door.

Barbed-wire fence, says our beauty, how do you mean? Why, says the lance-corporal, grinning and rolling his eyes, it protects the front without keeping it out of sight.

More laughter. Helene heard bottles clinking, and knocking on the table. Very neat reply, said one of his colleagues, probably the older one.

Wilhelm’s laughter outdid the mirth of the others.

Helene took the shirt that Wilhelm would be wearing next day out of the basket and ironed it. A few weeks earlier Wilhelm had given her an electric iron for her birthday. The electric iron was amazingly light in weight. Helene could glide it over the fabric so quickly that she had to tell herself to iron more slowly. There was still loud laughter next door and Helene kept hearing the clink of bottles. The child inside her was kicking, it struck a rib on the right, her liver hurt, and Helene put a hand to her belly to feel how hard the bump inside it was. It was probably the coccyx there, turning with difficulty from left to right, with the bump pressing against her abdominal wall. The little head inside her sometimes rested on her bladder so painfully that she kept having to go out to the lavatory on the landing. Wilhelm didn’t like her to keep using the chamber pot in the night, so she had to go out to relieve herself. He must find the slow trickle into which her flow of urine had turned in the last few weeks intolerable; perhaps she disgusted him now. Since their altercation in the spring, Wilhelm hadn’t touched her again, not once. At first Helene thought he was just angry and his desire would revive. She knew him, she knew only too well how often that desire, that unassuageable lust overcame him. But as days and weeks passed by, she realized it was not directed at her any more. Helene seldom asked herself whether it was because she was pregnant and he didn’t want to sleep with a pregnant woman, not wishing to disturb the child in her and feeling increasing distaste for her body, or whether it was simply that the outcome of his lust, the awareness that a child had been conceived, filled him with alarm and dismay. Once, towards morning, she had woken to hear his shallow breathing on the other side of the bed in the dark. His blanket was moving rhythmically, until a point came when the hint of a high squeal could be heard as he let out his breath. Helene had pretended to be asleep, and it was not the only time she had heard him doing that during the night. She didn’t feel sorry for him, nor was she disappointed. A pleasant indifference towards her husband had taken hold of Helene. On other nights he stayed out very late, and she smelled sweet perfume so strongly when he staggered into the bedroom early in the morning, drunk, and collapsed on the bed, that she knew he had been with another woman. She pretended to be asleep on those nights too. It was as well for them to leave each other in peace. In the daytime, when Helene came back from shopping, had cleaned the apartment and put the washing to soak and then to boil, she liked to read for half an hour. Everyone needs a break now and then, she told herself. She was reading a book by a young man who had been to a training school for servants in Berlin. It was called
Institute Benjamenta
. Think well, mean well. The total eradication of your own will was the idea of the training, what a wonderful idea. Helene often had to laugh out loud to herself. She had hardly ever found a book so entertaining. When she laughed her belly went firm and hard, her uterus contracted, its huge muscle protected the baby from any violent movement. She had borrowed the book from the Rosengarten library, where she wasn’t supposed to go, because there were no books from this particular publisher now in the People’s Library. Helene thought of Leontine’s dark and magical smile, the sweet tenderness of Carl’s lips, his eyes, his body. It wasn’t so easy to reach past her big belly with her arm, nor could she, as she had once liked to do, put a pillow between her thighs, lie on her stomach, and try to make those movements; her belly was too big for her to lie on it, so now Helene just stroked herself and thought of nothing.

I
n the middle of the night Helene was woken by a contraction. Wilhelm was spending November in Königsberg, where he had business: plans and discussions about major building projects. The contraction came again, and her belly hardened. Often a hot bath would either halt or accelerate a baby’s birth. Helene boiled water and poured it into the big zinc tub; usually only Wilhelm took an occasional bath there. Helene climbed into the tub and waited. The pains were coming more often now. She tried to feel herself, but her arm couldn’t reach far enough round her belly and her hand couldn’t go deep enough into her vagina, all she could feel was the soft, open flesh. Helene counted the intervals: every eight minutes, every seven minutes, then every eight minutes again. She poured in more hot water. Seven minutes, seven and a half, six minutes. The intervals were getting shorter now. Helene got out of the tub and dried herself. She knew where the hospital was. She had often gone there to try to apply for a job, with a forged letter giving Wilhelm’s permission in her pocket; she had worked on imitating his handwriting. Although Wilhelm had told her she had better think about providing for her child, he didn’t want her taking a permanent post while she was pregnant. Sooner or later he would have found out, he might have hauled her out of the hospital by her ears. He had once pulled her ear really hard when he was in a fury because she had overlooked a crease in his shirt, had taken her earlobe between his fingers and dragged her out of the kitchen and into the bedroom. Another contraction; they were so painful now that Helene bent over her tense belly. She took Carl’s vest out of the cupboard. She had managed to keep it there so long, unnoticed by Wilhelm, only because he left it to her to put out his clothes for him. She put on Carl’s vest. It stretched over her belly and rode up. You had to breathe too, in spite of the labour pains, breathe deeply. She put on long johns, a pain, suspender belt that had to go under the bulge, a pain, stockings, a pain, her dress on top. She mustn’t forget her certificate of Aryan descent and family records; she took both documents from Wilhelm’s desk. She took some money too. It was a freezing night, the pavements were icy, and Helene had to take care not to lose her balance and slip. She had to stop every few metres as she walked along the empty street. Breathe, breathe in deeply. What did this pain matter? Helene laughed, the pain would end, her child was going to be born today, her little one, her little girl. Helene went on, stopped again. It seemed to her that the baby’s head was already coming down between her thighs; she could hardly move if she kept her legs closed. Breathe deeply and go on. Legs wide apart, Helene trudged over the ice.

A midwife came to her aid in the hospital. She carefully felt Helene, her belly first, and it immediately became firm and hard as a stone. The contraction went on a long time. Then the midwife felt inside the vagina with her hand.

There’s the head.

The head, did you say the head? Helene couldn’t help laughing. She laughed nervously and impatiently.

The midwife nodded. Yes, I can feel the baby’s hair already.

Hair? Helene breathed deeply, deeply, even more deeply, all the way down to her belly. She knew how she had to breathe, but the midwife told her all the same.

Would you like to lie down, Frau Sehmisch?

Maybe. Breathe, breathe, breathe; breathe freely, breathe deeply, hold the breath and breathe out.

Don’t you want to telephone your husband so that he can at least come to collect you later?

I told you, he’s in Königsberg. Breathe deeply. Helene wondered what it must be like for a foetus when everything all around it went so hard and stony. Perhaps the baby didn’t feel anything yet. How did existence begin? Were you yourself if you couldn’t feel anything? Breathe deeply. I don’t have a number for him there. He’s coming back at the end of the month.

The nurse was filling out her card for the card index.

Excuse me, I feel sick.

It’s a good idea if you go to the lavatory again. The midwife showed Helene where it was. Helene knew that the sickness was a sure sign; it couldn’t be much longer now. A certain nerve was stimulated, the
nervus vagus.
Seven centimetres open was still three centimetres too few. The stimulation of the
parasympathicus
, what else?

On her return Helene was to lie on the bed and make herself comfortable, but nothing about her felt comfortable. The doctor wanted her to lie on her back. The pains weren’t coming so fast, only every four minutes, every five, but then they speeded up again. Helene sweated, breathed, pushed down. She wanted to turn on her side, she wanted to stand up, she wanted to squat. The midwife held her down.

Lie there, that’s a good girl.

Her sense of time was lost, it was day now, the night midwife had been replaced by another midwife. A good pain, said Helene to herself, a good pain. She gritted her teeth, whatever she did she wasn’t going to scream, certainly not as loudly as the woman in the next bed who had already had her little girl. Helene pushed down; it burned. There were tears in her eyes.

You must breathe, breathe, keep breathing. The midwife’s voice sounded curiously distorted. She
was
breathing.

You can do it, come on, come on, you can do it. Now the midwife took on the commanding tone of an officer. Helene wished she hadn’t gone to the hospital. She didn’t like this nurse and her military tone. Come on, come on, again, and again, stop, stop. Can’t you hear me? You must stop. Stop pushing. Now the officer was angry too. Helene ignored her orders, she could have her baby any way she liked, it was no business of the officer’s. Breathe, breathe deeply, that was good, and push, of course, push, push, push. The midwife felt her vagina with her hands, and it scratched as if she were digging her nails into the soft flesh, the soft, indeterminate, stretchable flesh. What was the officer doing with her hands? There was pressure on her gut, such pressure that Helene felt sure the midwife would catch nothing but excrement. Blood and faecal matter in the officer’s hands. This was no time to feel ashamed, she must breathe.

Now the officer slapped her on the arm, took hold of her. Stop it, you must stop pushing or you’ll tear yourself wide open.

Helene heard this, yet didn’t hear it; what if she did tear herself wide open, what did she care? Let what had to tear her do it, let what wanted to tear her have its way, there’d be something left, she must get her baby out. Helene breathed deeply, a good pain, only why did it hurt so much? No, she’d meant to ask that question, she felt her tongue ready against her gums, but she wouldn’t ask it, she didn’t want anyone marvelling at her, ever.

Keep breathing! The military officer was obviously losing her nerve. Scream if you must, go on, now push, yes.

The
yes
was spoken quickly, the officer’s hands moved fast, the doctor pulled something out between Helene’s thighs, there was a squelching sound. The doctor nodded. Here came the head.

The head? Is the head out? Helene couldn’t grasp it. She felt something thick between her legs, something that wasn’t part of her any more, she felt it for the first time, not inside her now, her baby’s body, hers. The doctor took no notice of her. Helene put her hand down to feel. She wanted to touch the little head. Was that hair, the baby’s hair?

Hands off! Helene’s arm was yanked away, someone was holding her wrist in a tight grip. You just keep on breathing, do you hear? The officer was intervening. And push when the next pain comes. Take a deep breath, breathe in, now. Helene would have had to take a deep breath even without the officer’s commands.

It slipped out all in one movement. The midwife caught it skilfully in her hands.

Her baby was here. What did it look like? Was it grey, was it alive? It was taken away at once. Was it breathing, had it cried? It was crying. Helene heard her baby crying and wanted to hold it tight. Helene turned, trying to catch a glimpse. The nurses’ brown and white aprons were in the way, all she saw was their backs. The baby was being washed, weighed and dressed.

My baby, whispered Helene. Tears were running from her eyes; she saw the nurses’ overalls and the midwife’s. My baby. Helene was happy. The midwife came back and told her to press down again.