Dear Child

by Romy Hausmann

  I push myself along the wall, away from him, the newspaper articles rustling behind me.

  “If it’s any consolation, you gave me a right proper whack with that snow globe. I had concussion and was even written off sick.” I tremble, he laughs. “But let’s see the positive side. At least I had a bit of time to prepare everything else.”

  “You killed the driver,” I pant into the darkness.

  “What about you? You would have killed me. Which means you’re no better than I am, are you? But, to be honest, I’m surprised you haven’t understood all of this until now. I thought you were smarter, I really did.”

  “Hannah…” I whisper. My legs are weak, pull yourself together, keep going, along the wall, it can only be a few more steps. “You sent Hannah after me.”

  “No, actually she went with you of her own accord. And you also had a big head start. Especially as the blow to my head meant I wasn’t in the best state to catch you up. Fortunately, however, you ran straight in front of that car.” There is a brief silence in the darkness, then I hear him chuckle. “But I can see you’re keen for the denouement. Like in films. At this point, what happened after the accident would be shown as a flashback from the baddie’s viewpoint. It would show him slashing the face of his stand-in, packing the essentials, instructing his son to wait and clean all the surfaces while the baddie himself drives the car involved in the accident across the Czech border and hides it. Grinning, because he knows full well that by the time the police find it he’ll be long gone.” He laughs again, from my right, too close. I swing my hand, but into thin air. “But you can dream up a scenario like that yourself. We don’t have much time, my darling.”

  “Because now the baddie has come to bring the story to an end and kill the main character.”

  “The main character?” Right in front of me. I freeze. His breath on my face. “Full of confidence, I like that. Believe it or not, I always liked it when you put up some resistance. But no, don’t worry. I could have killed you long ago if I’d wanted to. Even at the site of the accident. Why do you think I called an ambulance? You survived because I wanted you to.”

  My hand makes a grab to my left, finds the cord for the roller blind and gives it a forceful tug. A gap, the width of a hand, perhaps, and, in the light of the streetlamp, his smile.

  “Or, more precisely, because your daughter wanted you to.”

  HANNAH

  Papa said I should draw something. So I don’t get bored while he wakes Mama up. He’s brought me a drawing pad and crayons in a metal box, all new. They’re really long, longer than my index finger, and there are even three different shades of red: carmine, vermilion and claret. He also gave me a cereal bar in the car, and for the first time ever I was actually pleased to have one. I was so pleased, it made the cereal bar taste a bit better than usual. But I was hungry. At my grandparents’ house all I ever had was bread and butter to eat. Papa praised me for remembering everything so well. Better, in fact, than he’d hoped. He says he finds it astonishing. I like being praised. I can be proud of myself now, I think. Although I wonder whether Papa may have doubted me too, because “astonishing” doesn’t just mean “impressive,” it also means “unexpected.” And that wouldn’t be right, seeing as the whole thing was my idea. I mean, he couldn’t have had any ideas in his head when he lay on the floor as if dead, soaking the carpet in blood, after the really silly thing Mama did. Mama had opened the cabin door and said in her lion voice, “Come on, children! Let’s go!” But Jonathan and I were still thinking about it. “Come now! We’ve got to go!” Jonathan sank to his knees beside Papa, on the carpet soaked in blood. Mama ran outside.

  I told Jonathan we ought to split up. The carpet was dirty and had to be cleaned. Cleanliness is important. But Mama had said we should go with her, and you always have to do what grown-ups tell you.

  “But look what she did, Hannah!” Jonathan whined as I was deep in thought. I didn’t know if he was talking about Papa, who was still lying motionless on the floor, or his broken snow globe, a bit of which he held in his hand.

  “Give it to me!” I took the glass shard and put it in the pocket of my dress to stop him hurting himself. Sharp objects can be very dangerous, and there were enough stains on the carpet already. Then I told him I’d made my mind up. He should clean the carpet and I would follow Mama.

  Although I was quick, I didn’t catch her up until after I heard the big crash. She lay there in the middle of the road, her eyes closed, and a stranger was kneeling over her. I heard him talking to her.

  Suddenly there was a crack behind me. It was Papa, who had a red patch on the side of his head. And he was holding our poker. He put a finger up to his pursed lips and went, “Shh!” Then he held my shoulder and whispered into my ear through the secrets funnel, “Sit here and close your eyes, Hannah.”

  So now I was sitting there in the undergrowth with my eyes closed, just like Papa had told me to. Although I blinked sometimes. I blinked after the Bam! and I blinked when there was a rustling and cracking beside me, and Papa laid the man down in the undergrowth. But then I opened my eyes properly again. I wanted to see what was going to happen to Mama.

  Papa had grabbed her under the armpits; her head was wobbling loosely on her neck and her legs scraped along the tarmac as Papa dragged her toward the undergrowth too. I leaped from my hiding place and said in my lion voice, “The ambulance!”

  Papa gave a start, almost dropping Mama.

  “The man said he was going to call an ambulance. The ambulance won’t find her if you take her away!”

  “Hannah.”

  Papa put Mama back on the road and came over to me. He squatted down and stroked my face. His was completely wet, beads of red sweat rolled from his forehead to below his chin. His collar had turned red too.

  “Darling, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, I do!” my lion voice said. “An ambulance is a vehicle specially equipped for emergency medical care and is used to administer first aid to sick or injured people and to take them to the hospital.”

  “Yes, Hannah, that’s true, but—”

  “And a hospital is a building where diseases or injuries are treated by medical specialists!”

  “It’s not that simple, my darling—”

  “The ambulance has to come!”

  “Hannah, you can see what she did.” He meant the red sweat on his face and the thing with the snow globe.

  “That was just a silly accident. Please, Papa.” You always have to say please and thank you.

  Now Papa went back and forth, rubbing his brow, which smeared the red sweat all over his face. “Okay, then,” he said eventually. “Let’s get her to a hospital.”

  The stranger had a mobile in his coat pocket. A mobile is a cordless and wireless telephone that works almost everywhere. “I’ll call the emergency services now, but then we’ve got to quickly pop back to the cabin to pack our things.”

  But I didn’t want to pack my things. And certainly not go away, as Papa said. I told him that if we went away, it would be pointless if the hospital made Mama better, because we wouldn’t be able to have our better mama back. I almost thought Papa was a bit of an idiot if he hadn’t understood by now that I wanted to keep Mama. And I’d have never thought myself that I’d want to keep this mother. When she came to us, I was worried she’d just be another of those who didn’t work out. But she did look really good as a mama: she had the scar, the beautiful long, blonde hair and a very white face. Papa had made a real effort with her, because you always have to make an effort, especially for your children. Maybe he’d just got a bit irritated, because Jonathan and I kept telling him we wanted a new mama to stop us feeling so alone at home when Papa went to work. Being a bit irritated doesn’t mean you’re really angry and you go shouting your head off and punish people, but you don’t like it when nobody talks to you anymore. Especially as we’d really deserved a new mama by now. We’d been very good children, Jonathan and I. W
e’d always done our homework well and I was being serious when I swore I’d learned something from the business with Sara. But when Papa finally saw our point and the new mama lay on our sofa, she didn’t seem at all happy to have been chosen. Even though children are the greatest gift there is and you have to be grateful for them. I don’t suppose she realized this until the day when the recirculation device stopped working and we almost suffocated. But that didn’t matter. At least she’d finally understood. It takes some people a little longer, which doesn’t make them a bad person, only a bit of an idiot. They learn slowly, just like Jonathan who didn’t learn how to read properly until he was four.

  “Okay,” Papa said when he’d finally understood. “But then I’m going to need your help. Concentrate, Hannah. Will you cope? You will cope, won’t you? You’re a big girl now. So, listen to me very carefully…”

  He took off the stranger’s coat and put it round my shoulders to stop me freezing in the cold night. You can’t concentrate properly if you’re freezing. Then we discussed what I had to do and I really tried my best, which wasn’t always easy. After all, you mustn’t lie. But nor must you be like Jonathan and just say nothing, otherwise people think you’re ill and give you pills, or they think you’ve got something to hide. Then they get suspicious and end up spoiling the entire plan. Even though I knew I was doing everything right, I sometimes worried that Papa might have changed his mind. Then I thought he’d changed the plan without letting me know but had told Grandad, because Grandad kept talking about taking me home. Unfortunately I was wrong and got into all of a muddle. I wasn’t even sure if it really was Papa in my grandparents’ front garden yesterday evening, throwing stones at the window of Mama’s old bedroom. It could have been one of the people who’d been standing outside with their cameras since the day of my arrival—“hanging about,” as Grandma called it. But the very next day—today—the package with my dress and Fräulein Tinky arrived, and I knew the time had come. Finally we were going to be a family again and have a new home. Papa said Mama was already waiting for us. But the waiting seems to have made her tired, I think, and she had to lie down for a while. That’s all right because you always have to have a good rest before doing something special. So Papa brought me to the kitchen in Mama’s apartment, took a candle from the windowsill and lit it so I’d have enough light to draw with while he went to wake Mama. He said he had to turn off the light fuses for a while so she doesn’t have any problem with brightness when she wakes up. Because the retina problem is in the family. It’s very gloomy in the kitchen now, and it’s black in the rest of the apartment. It would have been better if Mama had just used dimmer bulbs for her lights. But at least the candlelight is good enough for me to be able to see the difference between the three reds in my box of crayons. After all, I’m drawing the woman lying on the kitchen floor and I definitely need carmine for her. It’s not true that this color is made of cochineal blood. It’s more an acid produced by these insects to defend them against their predators. To get the color, the cochineals are dried and boiled in water with sulfuric acid. But it’s always the best color to use for drawing fresh blood. Claret’s fine for old blood, and for really old blood the brown crayon is best.

  JASMIN

  It’s a strange, cement-like layer of horror and affection that covers my face and makes it rigid.

  He notices.

  “In spite of all that you’ve done, the children still love you.”

  I nod. I understand. The glass shard that Hannah gave me in the hospital. I now realize it wasn’t intended as a threat, but as comfort. Her assurance that she’d remembered everything in perfect detail. And by that she meant what Papa had instructed her to do.

  “Why didn’t you just take the children away? Why did you expose them to this world which they’re not capable of understanding?”

  I think of Hannah, the zombie girl, whose smile nobody understands. Those terrible faces in the newspaper, the truth and the lies. The scrutiny which the children are also subjected to. Two more tragic curiosities. And tears flood my eyes. Tears of shame, of sympathy, of all the emotions washing to the surface at that moment. I’m crying for all of us.

  He puts his hand out to my face and wipes away a tear with his thumb. I cope with it.

  “I know it wasn’t ideal. But somebody had to look after them in the meantime, didn’t they? I’ve got a life outside of the cabin. What explanation could I have given for suddenly having these two children? I needed time to get everything prepared, too. Give up my job and the apartment. Look for a new home for us. What would it have looked like if I’d vanished from one day to the next? What would people have thought?”

  I try to picture him leading his other life, as part of normal society, as a man who buys colorful toothbrush mugs and nobody bats an eyelid. I can’t, I still can’t.

  “What now? What are we going to do now? Are we going to get the children and just disappear?”

  “I’ve already got Hannah. We just need to go and pick up Jonathan.”

  “And how are we going to do that?”

  “You probably haven’t heard of the heartwarming campaign launched by the Bayerisches Tagblatt. Two large cardboard boxes full of clothes, books and toys donated by readers. One of them went to the psychiatric clinic. Jonathan will have recognized his favorite trousers and the red T-shirt. He’ll know we’re coming.”

  “But you can’t just march into the clinic and take the child away.”

  “I didn’t have to go into the Becks’ house. Hannah came out.”

  “Hannah,” I gasp. “Where is she? I want to see her.”

  He cocks his head—that look of his.

  “Please,” I say when I think I’ve grasped the implicit request. You always have to say please and thank you. “Please take me to my daughter.”

  Another moment in which he just stares at me, scrutinizes me, his head cocked, that look. Then he bursts out laughing, a laugh that is pure cruelty, a laugh I know from him. One second later he grabs the cord for the roller blind beside me, I hear a crash and it’s black in the room again, pitch-black.

  “You’re so pathetic,” he hisses. “Pretending all of a sudden to show an interest in the children.” Footsteps, I hear footsteps crossing the room slowly and then something metallic thrown to the ground. The key to the room.

  “But in truth you don’t give a toss about them.” I slide on my knees, feeling the floor with small, panicky movements. “You let the newspapers write those lies. You let them say Hannah is malformed. You could have given them an interview to put things right. You could have at least complained to the paper.”

  I’ve got it, the key. I keep crawling, the key tight in my hand.

  “Sexual abuse—just that phrase in connection with the children! Just the speculation! I never touched them! You know that full well! I’d have never done that!”

  His voice thundering over me, his footsteps that seem to come from all directions. I reach a wall, but I don’t know which one.

  “What kind of a mother are you who allows something like that to be written? What kind of a mother are you who doesn’t stand up for her children? You haven’t even gone to visit them!”

  The wardrobe, I can feel the wardrobe. Now I know where I am. Where I need to get to.

  “You’re no mother at all!” the voice booms.

  The door, the lock. I fiddle the key in, it slips and falls to the floor.

  “A woman who’s not good enough for any of this!”

  While my mind is snatching scraps of what’s happening here—flipping the fuse switches, the circle that’s now closing, waking up to him and the darkness, as I did that time in the cabin storeroom, the black room as a warning, a demonstration of his absolute power that still lets him play God, still lets him decide over my life, over the day and night, even here, in my own apartment, in the real world, the freedom that is no more than an impression while he, God, is still alive—I pick up the key and make a second attempt. It goes in, I turn i
t, I yank the handle, which squeaks, the door opens, I stagger out into the dark hall, close the door, brace myself against it, and now try to lock it from the outside. Resistance pushing against the door from the other side, the key falls to the floor again. I leave it, so what, I just have to get out, out of this apartment, into the refuge of the stairwell. I’ve almost made it to the front door, just a few more steps, when the voice says behind me, “Are you really sure you want to go without your friend?”

  MATTHIAS

  The old banger clatters on to the pavement outside Jasmin Grass’s building. One hand is already on the door handle, while the other is switching off the engine. I jump out of the car and run to the entrance. An elderly lady has just gone inside and gives a terrified shriek when I squeeze into the hallway behind her, almost tripping over the suitcase she’s put down right behind the door.

  “Call the police!” I bark at the woman, grabbing her shoulders. She’s shaking. “Did you hear me? You’ve got to call the police immediately!”

  I leave her and bluster up the stairs. As I know from looking at the bells outside, Jasmin lives on the third or fourth floor.

  What if you’re mistaken?

  What if he didn’t bring her here?

  Then I’ll have let him get away again.

  I banish all doubts and focus instead on the stairs.

  On the third floor there’s no bell with Jasmin Grass’s name, so I have to keep going, up another floor. The sweat runs into my collar, and my stiff old body is groaning under the strain. I reach the fourth floor. The first two bells I check rapidly aren’t the right ones. Then I do find the right apartment and for a second go completely stiff. It’s open a crack. Hannah, I think at once.

  “Please don’t shut the door anymore,” I asked her only this morning, when she’d locked herself into Lena’s old room. “Leave it just a tiny bit open so I know you’re all right.” Hannah, that gorgeous, good girl who always does what you tell her to. I take a deep breath, then cautiously open the door and slip inside the apartment.