The Sinner (39 page)

The corners of her mouth twisted in a kind of smile. She began
to laugh or sob, he couldn't tell which. "Shut up! You don't know
what you're talking about."

"Then tell me, Frau Bender. Tell me."

She shook her head to and fro, to and fro, so slowly and
deliberately that her nose and chin were almost aligned with each
shoulder in turn. That was her sole response.

I can't talk to anyone about Magdalena. If I were to be entirely
open and honest about her, everyone would think I hated her -
hated her enough to kill her. Father thought so, Margret thought
so, and Grit didn't know what to think.

I didn't kill Magdalena, I can't have. She was my sister, after all,
and I loved her. Not always, I admit - not at the start, but that was
only natural. Any child would have felt the same in my place.

Magdalena stole my childhood from me. She robbed me of my
mother, and my father of the wife he so badly needed, the cheerful,
lively person she used to be, according to Margret. A woman who
could laugh and dance and enjoy the occasional drink. Who
regularly had sex with her husband because it was what she herself
wanted. Who wanted a child. Who became a mother and was
overjoyed by the birth of her elder daughter.

I never saw my mother laugh, only pray; never saw her happy,
only demented. It was Magdalena who drove her mad. But for
Magdalena, I would never have had to hear that I'd sapped all her strength. I would never have had to pray till my lips were
numb and my knees sore. I wouldn't have had to share a bedroom
with my father or see him masturbating. I wouldn't have felt such
disgust or wet my bed for years on end. I wouldn't have had such
trouble with my periods. I'd have had a mother to explain things
and help me cope with my problems - in fact, I mightn't have had
any problems at all.

But Magdalena missed having a mother as much as I did. I
remember her talking about it once when she'd just turned fifteen
and spent another two days at Eppendorf, being checked over
again from top to toe. EGG, blood tests - all kinds of tests, the
doctors gave her, and all they'd ever come up with in the end was a
number - a very low number. This time it had been a five. Another
five months, that was all they'd given her.

Her heart had become overdeveloped and completely worn
out. The doctors were quite frank with her. They'd tried to be
frank with Mother at one time, but it wasn't much use. As for
Father ... Well, he'd stopped taking an interest in what went on
at home.

We were lying in bed the night after she returned from the
hospital for the last time. It was still light in the bedroom. "I don't
care how long they give me," Magdalena said, staring up at the
ceiling. "They've always been wrong so far, and it'll be the same
again, you mark my words. My ticker and I will grow old together,
and you'll probably be the only one to see it. I strongly suspect that
our beloved mother and our drunk of a father will have kicked the
bucket long before that."

She folded her arms behind her head, only to remove them
again in a hurry. "Damn it!" she said. "It's hell, not being able to
lie the way you want. All the same, it'll be a while before I breathe
my last. You must promise me something, Cora. Don't let me rot
- don't stick me in the ground with the worms. Make sure I have a
nice, clean cremation. If there's no other way, haul me off into the
woods and tip a can of petrol over me. I'd sooner go to hell than
have to sing duets with Mother in heaven. I dread the thought of
finding her waiting for me at the gate."

She chuckled. "Can you imagine what'll happen when Mother
moves in? St Peter will be able to retire, I guarantee you. She'll
become the head receptionist - she'll sort out who's allowed in and
who isn't. By the time she's through, no one will qualify. Still, if she
gets bored she can always chat about the old days with Peter. I bet
you Mother knows more about them than he does. All she doesn't
know is what's needed down here."

She fell silent for a minute or two, gazing up at the ceiling as if
she could see through it into Mother's fantasies. "I'm really glad
she doesn't know," she went on slowly. "I'm thankful she doesn't
come near me when she's been too busy praying to wash for three
days, but there were times when I wished she would take me in her
arms. Especially when I was so ill in the hospital. You've no idea
how nauseous I felt. I retched so violently, I thought my aneurysm
would burst at any moment. And who held the bowl under my
chin? Who wiped my sweaty forehead? A young student nurse!
Mother, who'd come to give me strength, courage and God knows
what else, was down on her knees and getting in the nurse's way.
I sometimes wished the girl would kick her backside. I needed her
so badly, Cora, and she wasn't there. She was always nearby but
never there. But who am I telling? She's never been there for you
either."

She turned her head and looked at me. "Did you ever wish she
would put her arms around you?"

"Not really," I said.

She sighed. "Well, you had Father. And now you've got a
boyfriend outside. Tell me a bit about him."

So I told her about a wonderful, non-existent boy who was two
years older than me. He had finished school and rode a motor
scooter, and we used to meet down at the lake in the evenings. His
parents were rich and very modern-minded. They owned afantastic
house, one of the ones in the woods beside the road to Dibbersen
- you could only see their roofs as you drove past. Theirs was the
height of chic - no expense spared - and his parents naturally had
no objection to his bringing me home. On the contrary, they liked
me a lot and always made me welcome. But they never kept us talking for long because they knew we wanted to be alone together.
We went upstairs to his room and lay on the bed, listening to music
and necking.

I told Magdalena about this boy every night. Every night I helped
her up the stairs, got her undressed, held her while she brushed her
teeth, washed her, creamed her and put her to bed. "I can't wait to
see him," I would tell her.

I'd christened him Thomas. There was a boy at school named
Thomas who I thought was very nice. He wasn't as rough and
vulgar as the others. I didn't know much about him. He was in a
higher class, so I only saw him in break. He usually spent it sitting
in a corner on the ground, reading a book. He took as little interest
in girls as they did in him. He wore glasses.

My Thomas didn't wear glasses, of course - Magdalena would
have considered that a flaw. For her, boys had to be tall, strong and
handsome, high-spirited but gentle. Thomas was my second such
invention.

When Magdalena was in bed I would go downstairs and tell
Mother: "I feel the need to commune with God in the open air."
I couldn't remain in the house or Magdalena would soon have
smelled a rat.

Then I would walk into town. There was always something
happening in the centre of Buchholz. A lot of new buildings were
going up, and I'd look at the construction sites and imagine that they
would some day wall us in, surrounding our house and isolating us
like the plague victims Father used to tell me about. Sometimes I
also imagined meeting Thomas - the real, bespectacled one - and
pictured us sitting down somewhere and reading a book together.

I owned some books myself - books I'd ordered specially and
bought, not stolen. They were quite expensive, but I had plenty of
cash. I spent barely a third of the housekeeping money I extorted
from Father every week, yet we lived better than before. I'd given
up selling hair slides in the playground. Lipsticks and other items
of make-up, yes, but mainly perfume and other stuff that fetched
good prices and was easily concealed - even, on one occasion, a
Walkman.

I'd got hold of a Walkman for Magdalena as well. She always
had it in bed with her. There was no danger that Mother would
catch her with it. Mother never entered our room any more. She
divided her time between her home-made altar and her bed,
having devolved all her earthly responsibilities onto me.

I made breakfast for us all and attended to Magdalena before
going to school. I cooked lunch when I came home, did the
shopping and the laundry and kept the house clean. And I spent
every spare minute with Magdalena until she was tucked up in bed
and I could go out on the town.

A girl in my class used to tape the latest hits for me in return for a
small fee. Magdalena wouldn't have benefited from her Walkman
otherwise. She loved music, and used to listen to one cassette after
another during the three hours I was away at school.

Before going into the house I would pay a short visit to the barn.
The potato sacks no longer concealed a hoard of candy bars, but lots
of other things, including cigarettes and a little lighter. I would light a
cigarette and take a few puffs, then stub it out and replace it carefully
in the packet. That way, one cigarette lasted me a couple of days.

I thoroughly disliked smoking - it made me cough and feel
dizzy - but Magdalena thought it was cool and could tell from my
breath if I'd had a cigarette. A few months later, after the Thomas
episode, I gave it up. I told her my new boyfriend hated cigarettes
and couldn't stand girls who smoked. He said you might as well kiss
an ashtray, and I didn't want to risk losing him because he looked
fantastic and I got wet between the legs if he so much as touched
my knee. Magdalena appreciated this.

I made this new boyfriend three years older. I can't remember
what I called him; there were so many names in the course of time.
He was the first boy I went to bed with, and Magdalena asked me
to show her what it was like.

I genuinely did all I could for her. Sometimes she said: "I'm
going to have another operation when I'm old enough to decide
for myself. I'll find a surgeon who'll do it."

We planned to fly to the States together, to one of the great cardiac
hospitals. We kept working out how much money we'd have by her eighteenth birthday if we put aside a hundred marks a week. I'd
told her I could spare that much from the housekeeping. I didn't
tell her it was twice that amount in case she became suspicious and
thought I was helping myself to our hoard.

She said a hundred marks a week wouldn't do the trick. I told her
that I'd found a wallet at the station containing a thousand marks,
and that I always kept my eyes peeled because a lot of people were
pretty careless and didn't notice when they lost things.

Magdalena laughed. "You're a dear," she said, "but you're a
dope. You'd have to rob a bank to get that much money together.
Fancy relying on people losing things!"

I was on the point of telling her that I hadn't found the money,
and that there was far more in the barn than a thousand marks,
but I'd read in a newspaper what operations cost and that you had
to pay for them out of your own pocket. I didn't have anything like
enough, and I didn't know how to get it.

It wouldn't have been such a problem if I'd been able to work
after leaving school, but someone had to look after the house and
Magdalena. Mother couldn't do that any more, even if she'd
wanted to. Father had bought her a modern washing machine, but
she couldn't cope with the thing and wanted nothing to do with it.
I think she was afraid of it. She said it was the work of the Devil
and turned off the water, saying we must fast for forty days in the
wilderness. Although I managed to talk her out of that, we had to
be constantly on our guard in case she did something silly.

Magdalena thought it would be better if I stayed at home.
"Work?" she said. "What work would you do? A trainee's job is
the most you'd get at your age. That means three years of earning
next to nothing. If you're really serious about raising the money
for my operation, we must think of something else. I've had an
idea. There's a job that pays better the younger you are, but I don't
know how you'd feel about it."