We're Flying (29 page)

At home she sat at the piano for certainly an hour, shaken with crying jags, until her throat felt sore. She drank a glass of tap water in the kitchen. She dropped the score in the recycling.

TEN DAYS LATER
Victor came for his lesson. Sara said the audition hadn’t worked out. He seemed to sense that she didn’t want to talk about it, and started speaking of his holidays. When the lesson was over, they sat in her kitchen, and Victor showed her his holiday snaps of Madeira. They had to put their heads together to make out
anything on the little display of his digital camera. Victor had laid his arm around Sara’s shoulder. And did you have your holiday fling? she asked. He moved away, looked at her in surprise, and asked, How can you think of something like that? So you did. Look, he said, I have my life and you have yours. We may be friends, but that doesn’t mean I have to tell you everything. Sara could feel the tears running down her cheeks. You’re so obtuse, she said, you’re so bloody obtuse. Victor stroked her shoulders and talked soothingly to her, but she stood up and coldly told him to go. Find some other woman you can exploit. He tried to placate her, but it only made matters worse.

After he had gone, Sara remained sitting at the piano for a while. She struck a couple of notes at random, but they sounded wrong, and no tune was forthcoming. Finally, she pushed the piano stool back against the wall, climbed up on it, and carefully started to unpick the raffia knots that held up the philodendron. It took a long time before she had undone every one, and the plant was a crumpled heap next to the piano. When she cut it into little pieces with her pruning shears, she felt like a murderess, but after she had stuffed it into garbage bags and stood them on the edge of the sidewalk, she felt oddly relieved.

The Suitcase

N
O SOONER DOES
Hermann put the list down on the unmade bed than he picks it up again. He has already forgotten everything on it. Toiletries. He goes to the bathroom and gathers up Rosmarie’s things: the olive oil soap she bought last year in the south of France, her hairbrush, toothbrush and toothpaste, her deodorant. He’s not sure which of the many shampoos is current, and packs one, hoping it’s the right one. What else? Nail scissors. He puts back the nail polish, after briefly hesitating. He goes into the bedroom, pulls the small suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe, and puts the sponge bag in it. Then he checks the list again. Several changes of underwear. He stands in front of the open wardrobe,
roots around in Rosmarie’s underthings, fluffy tangles of white that remind him of peony blossoms in the garden. He has the feeling he is doing something inappropriate. How many do they want? He doesn’t know how long Rosmarie will be kept in for, he’ll be glad if she’s allowed back at all. Pajamas or nightie. He prowls through the apartment looking for her slippers. Then he remembers seeing them when Rosmarie was on the stretcher, being carried out by the paramedics. They were on her feet like two hooks. He had even wondered for a moment about maybe putting her shoes on. She wouldn’t even have gone out to the mailbox in her slippers. Stout trainers, in case physiotherapy is indicated. He doesn’t know what the doctors have in mind for Rosmarie. The very notion of her in trainers makes him smile in spite of himself. For the moment, there’s little prospect of such therapy. The doctors have put her in an artificial coma and cooled her temperature down to a constant ninety-two degrees. They’re refrigerating her, he keeps thinking.

He looks at his watch. She is under the knife right now. A swollen blood vessel in her brain, one of the doctors said after hours of tests, and explained what they were trying to do. Then the doctor gave him some hospital literature and packed him off home. Have a rest. The literature includes a message from the chief surgeon, a map of the layout, a
train schedule, and various other information. At the very end, Hermann found the checklist. Please bring the following items with you on the day you are booked in.

No one was able to tell him what would happen next, no one seems to have any idea. Hermann looks at the list. Personal supports, such as glasses or hearing aid (incl. batteries). Rosmarie doesn’t need any support. If anyone needs help, it’s him. It’s decades since he last packed a suitcase. Even his army kitbag, in the time he was doing national service, was always packed by Rosmarie, and that was thirty years ago. Each time he arrived in the barracks and unpacked his bag, he always found a bar of chocolate she had smuggled in among his things. He goes into the kitchen but he can’t find any chocolate. Ever since he became diabetic, Rosmarie’s kept all the candy out of sight. Reading matter, letter paper, writing things. On the night table are three library books. He reads the titles and the names of the authors—none of them means anything to him. He’s not a reader. Rosmarie’s reading glasses are on top of them. He packs everything. Because he can’t find the spectacle case, he wraps the glasses in a handkerchief and stuffs it in her sponge bag. The suitcase is about half full. Hermann throws in a cardigan and a couple of magazines he finds in the living room, and he carefully closes the suitcase.

In the cafe opposite the entrance are patients and their visitors. Some are wearing dressing gowns, walking sticks are leaning against the tables, one trundles an IV along with him on a stand. Hermann hasn’t seen inside a hospital for years, but the smell takes him back immediately. There is a little kiosk behind the cafe, where he buys a bar of chocolate, even though he knows Rosmarie isn’t a great one for chocolate. It’s the only thing he can do to prove his love, flowers are too ostentatious. You give flowers when there’s a baby on the way, and everyone knows. He remembers seeing bouquets on hospital corridors, looking like trophies in their vases. Rosmarie will be able to keep the chocolate in her bedside table. She will think of him as of something clandestine, here, where everything is out in the open, in the bright light of the fluorescent tubes. Hermann opens the catch of the suitcase, to slip the chocolate in between Rosmarie’s things, but the lid flies open and everything spills out on the polished stone floor. He kneels down, grabs the things, and stuffs them back in as quickly as he can. He looks around—it’s as though he were doing something forbidden. The man on the drip looks his way, without expression. The clothes Hermann went to so much trouble to fold together are all crumpled.

The porter tells him how to get to the intensive care ward. The wards are all color-coded, to ease orientation.
Intensive care is blue, yellow is the children’s ward, urology and gynecology are green, surgery is purple. Hermann tries to find some rationale for the pairings, but he can’t do it. Only the red of the cardiology ward makes sense to him.

He is standing by Rosmarie’s bedside. Her head is bandaged and her body is connected up to machines, she is breathing artificially, she has a stomach probe and a catheter. Drugs are being fed into her bloodstream via tubes. Her arms and legs are being kept cool, so as to keep her body temperature down. She is naked except for a sort of white loincloth open at the sides, which can barely cover her. There is a strangely flaccid quality to her features. Hermann stands at her bedside, staring at her, he doesn’t even want to put his hand on her forehead, that’s how strange she looks to him. Only her hands with the painted nails look familiar. From time to time he hears the beep of an alarm from the corridor. It sounds like the hour being struck on a grandfather clock.

A doctor says they will need to perform another operation, create a bypass. His expression is serious, but he also says Rosmarie has been lucky. If she had been brought in just half an hour later … He doesn’t finish his sentence. Hermann imagines what he might have gone on to say. We’re hoping for the best, says the doctor. Do you have
any questions? No. Hermann shakes his head. He has the feeling that all of this has nothing to do with him or Rosmarie. The doctor nods to him and leaves with a look that is probably intended to be encouraging. The sister says Frau Lehmann didn’t need anything, she would rather he took the suitcase back with him, then at least nothing would go astray. He should bring her things once his wife was able to leave intensive care. She gives him a form about the patient’s habits and personal preferences. Your answers will help us to look after her, she says; she gives him a pencil and conducts him to a waiting room. He reads through the questions. Does the patient belong to any religion? What form does worship take? Does the patient like music? If so, what? Which smells does the patient like? He thinks of the olive oil soap. Which does she not like? What is her favorite color? Does she have a set ritual at bedtime? Where does she like to be touched?

He walks down several corridors, past reception and the cafe and out into the cold winter afternoon. The stop is between the hospital and the lake. Hermann sees a streetcar leave. The next one won’t be for another half an hour. He could walk home, it wouldn’t be more than an hour or so, but he’s already bought the return ticket and he’s tired, he barely slept last night. He presses the button for
STOP ON DEMAND
and sits down on the narrow bench.
The suitcase is on the ground beside him. He looks at the lake. About a hundred yards from shore, the color of the water abruptly changes from pale blue to deep green. A couple of walkers pass down the shore promenade. They stop at a marker and look back. By the time the streetcar comes, Hermann is frozen through.

HE HASN’T BEEN
to the library very often. On rare occasions he has accompanied Rosmarie, or he’s taken books back for her when he’s had to be in town. Even so, the librarian greets him by name. She takes the books from him and asks whether Rosmarie enjoyed them. Hermann is bemused by her referring to his wife by her first name. Yes, he says, I believe she did. I’ve set aside the new Donna Leon thriller for her, says the librarian, and she picks it up from a little rolling shelf next to her desk. I promised her first dibs at it. She stamps the date on the borrowing slip at the back of the book. Only then does she seem to become aware of Hermann’s suitcase, and she asks him if he’s on his way somewhere. Yes, he says. He’s not in the mood to answer questions. The librarian says she could hang on to the book if he didn’t want to take it with him right now. I’m not going away for long, he says, and he grabs the book with a quick movement of his
hand.
Through a Glass Darkly
. The librarian makes some remark about an active retirement and laughs. Hermann thanks her and leaves.

Darkness is falling outside. He turns once more when he notices the librarian watching him through the glass doors, then he heads off in the direction of the station. On the way he runs into a neighbor. The family only moved there two years ago, the man works for an insurance company, the woman stays at home, looking after the two children. Hermann sees her in the garden sometimes. She once complimented him on his peonies and asked him for tips. She said they had lived in a condo before, and she had little experience with plants. The most important thing is to find the right place for each plant, he said. It needs to feel at home there, and then it’ll thrive by itself.

Off on holiday, then? asks the man. Hermann mutters something and the man goes on to wish him a good holiday. Same to you, says Hermann, not thinking. The neighbors seem not to have heard the ambulance yesterday.

HE TAKES THE NEXT TRAIN
. When the conductor comes along, Hermann asks him where the train is going and
buys a ticket to the final destination. Most of the time he just stares out of the window into the dark. Gradually the train fills up, then, after Zurich, empties again, the names of the stops get less familiar. An elderly woman—roughly in Rosmarie’s years—sits across from him in the compartment and stares at him so brazenly, he ends up moving. At the end of three hours the loudspeaker announcer says the train has now reached its final station stop,
gare terminus
. The announcement is in two languages, as the city where Hermann finds himself is bilingual. He can’t remember having been here before, but perhaps he has. He is on a narrow street that follows a canal. He comes to a park and then a lake. A long pier leads far out into the lake. Hermann walks along the curving, wood-planked jetty, which is lit by little lamps, till he gets to a small triangular concreted area, way out in the lake. He stands there for a long time, the suitcase beside him, like a traveler at a bus stop. It feels as though the old suitcase contains everything that’s left of Rosmarie. The objects have more to do with her than the cold body he saw lying on a metal bed in the hospital a few hours back, reduced to its vital functions. He stoops and picks up the suitcase and walks back down the jetty. Only now does he see, on the side away from the port, a sandbank, with a little fir tree on it, presumably a Christmas tree dumped
in the canal after Christmas and now washed up here. He walks through the park, along the canal, and back into the inner city.

The night porter gives Hermann a funny look when he asks for a double room and pays cash, but he asks no questions, only whether he needed a parking spot or a wake-up call. Breakfast was on the sixth floor, from seven o’clock to half past nine. Over the rooftops of the city, he volunteers.

Hermann sits on the bed in his room. He hasn’t even taken his shoes off, he feels a little nauseated by the worn carpet and the coverlet that God knows who has sat on before him. The room is small, and the only light is from a dim economy bulb that isn’t enough to dispel the darkness. There’s a draft, the aluminum windows don’t seal properly. Hermann could have gone to a better hotel, but that didn’t seem appropriate. Church bells ring nearby. He counts the chimes. Ten. Then eleven. He must have dropped off. Only now does it occur to him that no one knows where he is. He has forgotten his medication, and has had nothing to eat since lunchtime. At least he’s filled in the registration form for the porter. If something happened to him, they would be able to trace him. He wonders about calling the hospital and asking about Rosmarie’s condition, but he doesn’t do it. Presumably
they don’t release information over the phone anyway. He takes off his shoes but not his socks. He hangs his clothes over the back of a chair. Then he lies down in the bed. The suitcase is on the pillow next to him, in Rosmarie’s place. He leaves the light on.