The Woman on the Stairs

by Bernhard Schlink

  Part Three

  1

  The next morning the pilot knocked gently at the door and poked his head inside. Did I want to come along? Schwind would be coming too. They could take me all the way to Sydney, or drop me off in Rock Harbour. No? He waved and gently closed the door. I heard the three of them on the stairs, and then on the stairs down to the beach; they did not speak and they trod lightly. They’re stealing away, I thought, but then I told myself that was a dumb idea. Then the engine roared to life, the rotor blades buzzed and rattled, the helicopter took off, grew quieter then louder again, as if circling around the beach and the house – and flew away. It had startled the birds; they flitted about, flapped their wings, warbled and cawed excitedly.

  When at ten, Irene was still not up, I listened at her door, heard nothing, knocked, again heard nothing, and went in. It didn’t just smell of sickness. It stank of excrement and urine despite the open window – a strong, pungent smell. Irene was lying in bed with her eyes open and looked at me, ashamed.

  “Go. I’ll get up in a minute. I just feel a little weak.”

  “Should I run a bath? Or do you want a shower?”

  She started crying. “It’s never happened before. I wanted to get up and go to the bathroom, but I couldn’t, and I was stuck lying down and I couldn’t hold it.”

  “I’ll get you in just a minute.” I went into the bathroom, ran the tap, poured bath oil into the water, carefully adjusting the temperature and the amount of foam. I waited for the bath to fill up. As a child, I liked having a bath; the tub was fed from a boiler on a stove, and I would flick water against the hot boiler and listen to it hiss. For decades, I’ve only taken showers. Having a bath is a waste of time. But Irene had time, and it would do her good to lie in the bath after her shower until I had her bed ready. We had time – we now had all the time in the world.

  I picked her up; she laid an arm around my shoulder and let herself be half-carried, half-led to the bathroom. I undressed her in front of the shower and I washed her under the shower as she held fast to the handle. I had not changed my children and I had no idea how stubbornly dried-on excrement sticks to the skin. Once I’d cleaned Irene up, I lifted her into the tub. She kept her eyes closed throughout, and didn’t say a word. I did not say anything either. I concentrated on getting her clean and keeping myself dry. I got wet anyway.

  But I didn’t want to get changed until I had sorted everything out. First I soaked the bed linen, then stuffed it, together with the pyjamas, into the propane washing machine. I carried Irene’s mattress onto the balcony, washed it, and laid it in the sun, took a mattress from another room to her room and made her bed. I made tea and porridge and left them on the nightstand. Then I dried her off and carried her to bed; she again said nothing.

  “I’ll be back in a moment, I just want to get changed.”

  “The others have left?”

  “Yes.”

  I stood in the door and stared at her until she smiled and said: “Don’t look so serious!”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “In a minute. Go get changed.”

  But when I came back to her room she had fallen asleep, and when she woke up she didn’t want to talk about her health. She drank the lukewarm tea and ate the lukewarm porridge and wanted to be driven to the two farms, because she wanted Meredene to pick up some things in town, and because Meredene would have to start giving the man from the second farm his injections.

  I wrapped Irene in a coat, buckled her tightly to the seat with a belt, and drove her to the farmsteads in the Jeep. When the trail vanished, she pointed out the way to me, and I tried to memorize the riverbeds, pools, clumps of trees and boulders that the trail led past. Next time, I might have to drive alone.

  At both farms, Irene stayed in the Jeep. She had me fetch Meredene, and she explained to her that she would have to give the injections from now on, even if she preferred not to, and gave her the shopping list. “What about…” I began, and Irene knew what I wanted to say, and said: “Yes, I need diapers as well.” At the other farm, the old woman grumpily took the news that Irene couldn’t do it any more, and that in future Meredene would come in her stead, without a question or a word of thanks.

  Irene watched her go. “I owe the house on the sea to her husband and I wanted to pay him back by looking after him until he passed away. Now he’s going to survive me.” She sensed my questioning look. “Pancreatic cancer. I’ve got a couple of weeks, maybe just one. I can’t say for sure.”

  2

  Irene wanted to lie on the balcony, rather than in her room. I went from room to room until I found a bed frame that was light to carry onto the balcony. The mattress I had washed was dry, and smelled of the sun.

  “You should have left with the others,” said Irene from the bed. “Now you have to stay until the end.”

  “Who diagnosed you?”

  “The doctors at Sydney Cancer Centre.”

  “Did they say nothing more could be done?”

  She laughed. “Believe me, if they could have done something, they’d have done it. That’s how they make their living.”

  “Did you get a second opinion?”

  “I got a second opinion, I looked into different treatments, I even researched miracle cures. And I’d rather you didn’t interrogate me.”

  I was stung, because I had meant well, and annoyed with myself because I’d put it so clumsily. Irene noticed and said: “I know. If I could…I’d rather not die.”

  For the first time, it really hit me. Irene was going to die. Last year, on holiday, a colleague from the firm lost his strength, and appetite, and upon his return went to the doctor, who sent him for a check-up at the hospital; three weeks later he was dead. My dentist lasted two months after his diagnosis. Now, whenever someone starts telling me about a sudden death, I ask “Pancreatic?” I’m always spot on. The meanest, quickest, deadliest form of cancer. I’ve also learned that, with luck, you don’t suffer pain or thromboses, or struggle to breathe, but just get weaker and weaker. The body simply shuts down, refuses, says goodbye. If you’re lucky, you fall asleep and never wake up.

  “Would you like something? Can I bring you something?”

  “Another pillow.”

  I brought her the pillow. As I was about to go, she said: “Will you fetch a chair and sit with me?”

  “I need to hang up the laundry.”

  “Will you come back when you’ve finished?”

  What did she want from me? My wife had also wanted me to sit by her bed and hold her hand once, when she had pneumonia. But she hadn’t asked me anything, and answered my questions in monosyllables, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do at her bedside. From then on, I brought files along, and worked. Irene had a shelf of books in her room. Maybe I could find one that was interesting?

  But when I sat down, she asked: “Will you tell me how it would have been?”

  I did not understand.

  “How it would have been if I had come to you.”

  3

  Sometimes I told my children stories. Usually I got home so late they were already asleep. But when I came home earlier and they were still awake, my wife insisted that I sat down and talked to them. But what were we supposed to discuss, a lawyer entering middle age and a girl and two boys between nine and twelve? Luckily, they enjoyed my stories, the adventures of a boy in the Thirty Years’ War, and I enjoyed making them up. By that point my firm had a car and a chauffeur, so on the way home I sat in the back, picking up the threads of my story, working out where I would take it next. But what Irene now wanted – how was I supposed to do that? Talk about her, about me, about us: fiction, but fiction in which we appeared as we really were?

  “I don’t know…”

  She said nothing, simply looked at me attentively and expectantly.

  “I need a moment.”

  She nodded, keeping her eyes on me.

  I closed my eyes and conjured the old pictures: Irene on the wall, h
er laugh, her leap, Irene in my arms, Irene at the wheel, Irene telling me I had to get out, kissing me goodbye, dropping me off, driving away. I didn’t like the old pictures. I don’t know why I did as she asked.

  “I went back to my car in the village and drove home. Had you noticed on Saturday that I’d tried to arrange my apartment in a way that would please you? On Sunday I went through the apartment again, taking things away, putting them back, making a bit of a mess here and there so that you wouldn’t see straight away how neat and fussy I am; so you would think I was cool and creative. I was afraid that you wouldn’t come. I kept looking out the window. I made a pot of tea, forgot to remove the leaves, forgot to take them out of the next pot as well.

  “But you came. You came on foot, I saw you coming from a long way off, your upright posture, your light, determined stride – had I ever seen you stroll? You crossed the road, I ran downstairs, opened the door. I wanted to take you in my arms again, but I realized now was not the time, that for you it was not the time.

  “As we drank tea you asked if you could stay at my place for a couple of days, as if we were sister and brother. You had your own apartment, but Karl and Peter knew about it, and you didn’t want to be there if they came looking for you. Peter would have people looking for you all over town, and you didn’t want to be found. You could have gone away, but wanted to go to work again the next day. I asked if they wouldn’t find you at work. You said no, not if you told the director that you didn’t want to be found. You knew you wouldn’t be able to hide for long, but you didn’t want to see the pair of them for a couple of days.

  “We sat drinking tea on the balcony. There, that morning, I had dreamed of a life together, of this one, and one that was bigger and more beautiful, of a life in a garden with huge trees, of marriage. I would have liked to read some sort of promise into the fact that you wanted to lie low with me, but there was none there. I thought of films in which the hero just takes the woman in his arms, and at first she doesn’t want it, and beats his broad chest with her little fists before tenderly snuggling up to him. Had you known that I wouldn’t try that? That I wasn’t capable of it? That you were safe with me? Did you look down on me for that?

  “But then I was overcome by joy that you were staying. At least we’d have a couple days together. Cooking together, eating, talking, reading the newspaper or a book, watching TV, shopping, going for walks. I laughed at you, and you laughed back, relieved that I hadn’t been pushy or begged, that there had been no drama. You told me about Karl’s rage when he realized the painting was gone, about the row between Karl and Peter, that they didn’t pay attention to you and only called after you once you were in the garden. You told it as a funny anecdote, but at the same time you sounded sad – about the both of them, about yourself, maybe about me too, because you’d simply had enough of men. That’s how our life in Frankfurt began.”

  “Where did I sleep?”

  “In my bed.”

  “And you?”

  “On the couch.”

  She nodded. “You went to your firm in the morning, and I went to the museum? And in the evening we cooked together? And on Sunday—”

  4

  “Not so fast. On Tuesday, your apartment was broken into. The apartment manager called you at the museum, and because nothing was missing, everyone assumed that the burglars had been surprised and scared off. You knew they’d been looking for the painting and hadn’t found it, and hadn’t been after anything else. At dinner you wondered whether they would break into my place, once they found out you were living with me, and you asked if I wanted you to give the painting back.”

  “No, that’s not what I asked.”

  “It wasn’t a serious question. You arched your eyebrow, just as you’re doing now. We thought about whether we could prevent a break-in. But if they didn’t come the next day, they’d come the day after or the week after. The best thing to do was not to lock the modern safety lock, so they could break in easily, with just a skeleton key.

  “That’s what we did, not just on Wednesday, but on Thursday and Friday, and because the door didn’t need to be broken down, we never found out whether they had searched the apartment. Nothing was missing. You went to the museum early, and stayed late, so that Peter or Karl couldn’t intercept you, and I went to my firm, and in the evening we cooked together. On Sunday we had breakfast on the balcony. It was a golden autumn day. We had got through the week unscathed and we started to think that everything might be okay. You wanted to leave soon. But by now I had learned that you loved opera, and I had invited you to La Bohème, and you had accepted.”

  “I didn’t nag? I was the sweet little wife in your harmonious little world?”

  “I can stop if you want.”

  She laughed. “No, but we can’t just spend our lives on the balcony like an old couple!”

  I could have, but not her. “On Monday Karchinger and Kunze sent for me. They were sorry, but we would have to part. The rumour that I’d betrayed a client was just a rumour, and they were confident that, were it to lead to prosecution and a trial, I’d be proven innocent. But that might drag on, and meanwhile, I’d be a liability to the firm, I would need to understand that. An important client already wondered whether we would represent him if I was a partner there. I asked if it was Gundlach, but they told me they couldn’t say, and that I should understand that too.”

  “Betrayal of a client?”

  “Working for both parties in a case is legal betrayal. Gundlach had pulled some strings. But not just for me. Your internship at the museum was finished too. The director said he lacked space, and funds, and that he would only keep on the interns he’d eventually hire. And contrary to what he had first believed, and told you, you weren’t one of them, to his great regret.”

  “So on Monday evening we sat on the balcony and…”

  “No, we didn’t sit on the balcony, we went to Sole d’Oro or whatever the best restaurant at the time was called. We celebrated, because nothing was keeping us in Frankfurt any more – and we could give our furniture to a used furniture store, pack our bags, and head into the world. We were free.”

  5

  “I like that.”

  “And that’s exactly what we did. We gave our furniture to a used furniture store and packed our bags. The painting—”

  “Was at my mother’s.”

  “The painting was at your mother’s, and while I wondered whether we should go to New York or Buenos Aires, whether we should fly or go by sea, you booked flights to New York.”

  Irene had lain there quietly the entire time, her hands beneath the blanket, her head on the pillows, and her eyes on me. Now she sat up, placed her feet on the ground, and tried to stand up.

  “Wait, I’ll help you.”

  “How long have we been sitting here? I have to…” She did not say anything else, but looked at me quizzically.

  “You don’t have to do anything. Did I talk too long? I’ll stop and make supper. We forgot to have lunch.”

  “I have to…If only I weren’t so tired.” She gave me the same questioning look, and once again I didn’t understand the question, or know if I should help her up or encourage her to stay in bed. But then her eyes fell shut and she started to fall over, and I caught her and laid her back in bed.

  It was late, still light, but the sun had disappeared below the mountains and night would soon fall. I found a tap and a watering can under the balcony and watered Irene’s wilted garden; perhaps it would recover by tomorrow and give us a salad. Today there were still plenty of leftovers. In any case, Irene wasn’t hungry. Sleepily, without saying a word, she ate a couple bites and let me take her to the toilet then carry her up to bed.

  “We have to go see Meredene tomorrow.”

  “Because of the shopping? I can drive.”

  “The diapers…”

  During the day she remained in control of her bodily functions, but she feared what would happen at night. I knew by now where the bed linens an
d towels were, and I remembered how my wife had changed our babies, picking out a terry-cloth towel that had worn thin over time, tearing off a strip to make the towel a square, folding the square into a triangle, laying it out underneath her and wrapping it around her.

  “It’s like riding a bike.” She tried to make light of it.

  I shrugged. She did not need to know that I hadn’t been particularly devoted to looking after my children, not the way modern fathers do. But then I said it anyway. “I was an old-fashioned father. My wife changed all the diapers.”

  She nodded. “In any case, you watched her do it sometimes. Did you say good night to your children?” She looked at me, ashamed again, almost like she had in the morning. But at the same time she looked secure, as if she felt good in the freshly made bed.

  “Good night, Irene.” I bent over her and pulled up the blanket. She put her arms around my neck, as she had a couple days before, and once again I was touched by this gesture of trust. I stood up and hurried out, otherwise, I do not know why, the tears would have flowed.

  6

  And so went the days. Irene slept late, then I put her to bed on the balcony. Some days she managed the stairs herself, some days I would carry her. Some days she could even manage the stairs from the balcony to the beach and went to the boulders at the end of the cove, feeling joy at the sand under her bare feet and the water washing around her naked calves.

  At first she did not want to, but in the end she let me drive to Meredene alone. Meredene and I drove along a washed-out, overgrown road to the point where it had joined the motorway, drove around the barrier, and after half an hour, reached a town with a supermarket. Our extravagant shopping trip, paid for with my credit card, was perhaps not wholly compatible with the ethos of living in nature; Meredene swore me to secrecy with her people and advised me to not tell Irene. She filled her shopping cart with great enthusiasm and a guilty conscience.