The Center of the World

by Andreas Steinhöfel

  The early evening was taken up with an unsuccessful attempt at extracting the unfortunate water snail from Dianne’s ear. Using the entire contents of three kitchen drawers, Glass set to work burrowing away inside Dianne’s auditory canal, with the not altogether surprising but painful result that at some stage the foreign body was pushed up against the eardrum. Finally she muttered something about the Eustachian tube. I didn’t know what impressed me more—the fact that my mother could utter such a complicated word or that without batting an eyelid, she closed her lips around Dianne’s nose and blew into it so hard that I fully expected the snail to shoot out of the ear across the kitchen with the speed of machine-gun fire. When even that didn’t help, cursing, Glass bundled us into the car and drove to the local hospital, where a patient young emergency-room doctor rinsed out her ear several times and with the aid of fine tweezers removed the offending article.

  “My name’s Clemens,” he said to Dianne. “And yours?”

  Dianne didn’t reply.

  The doctor laughed. I looked on as his strangely pink hands fiddled with the tweezers. His nails were cut very short.

  The snail was of course dead, but its dirty pink shell had miraculously survived the intervention completely intact. As we were sitting in the car, Dianne let the shell roll across her open palm. “May I keep it?” she asked.

  “You know what you can do with it… . Oh, sod it, for all I care, keep it,” Glass replied.

  There was a grinding noise and the car lurched as Glass shifted into the wrong gear. I knew she was furious, unspeakably furious, because on account of a snail no bigger than a pea, she had been compelled to seek help from some unknown person, even if it had been a very nice unknown person. Many years later I found Clemens on the list. Beside his name was the number twenty-four.

  By the time we had eaten that evening and gone to bed it was already dark. Glass came into our room and stood by my bed; the light was out, and Dianne was already asleep. She had placed the snail under her pillow, and next morning we would find that it had shattered into a hundred fragments.

  As Glass bent over me, it felt as if I was all alone with her voice.

  “About your ears …”

  It was all Dianne’s fault! If only she’d left that stupid snail alone, Glass wouldn’t be going on and on about my ears.

  “You do realize,” said the voice, “that they’ll do the same to you as they did to Dumbo.”

  “Who will?”

  “Those out there.”

  I saw the silhouette of a hand pass across the dark blue square of night framed by the open window. The movement encompassed everything and everyone—the town, its inhabitants across the river, the rest of the world, the universe—and its all-inclusiveness frightened me.

  “What did they do to Dumbo?”

  Tense expectation had caused me to whisper, and now I got the feeling that the voice was hesitating before answering. Silence wrapped itself round my pounding heart like a rough and shrunken coat.

  “They put him in a circus on top of a sixty-foot tower,” the voice answered at last. The darkness turned even darker. “They made him jump into a pool of semolina. And everyone laughed!”

  At first I was scared stiff of Marthe, the senior nurse. Whenever I saw her charging along the hospital corridor, her head bowed, ready for battle, I pictured her spearheading a march into battle many years ago, ending with the victorious capture of Station 303. It was only later that I realized that under the armor plating of her crisply starched blouse there beat a heart as soft as butter.

  “ENT,” she snorted in answer to the first question I put her, as I noticed a crucifix attached to her fine silver chain, “means Earnoseandthroat. ”

  Regardless of their age, she addressed her patients as “kiddy,” and those, like me, who were there to have their ears treated belonged to the inner circle of the “jug ears.” She resolutely refused to pronounce my name properly and called me Pill.

  Pill, my little jug ears.

  For all the respect she commanded, I instinctively felt that in the cold hospital world with its strange smells, she provided a haven of security. To anchor in this haven all I needed to do, like all the other little jug ears, was to use my enormous ears like sails, especially when senior nurse Marthe knew she wasn’t being watched by the other staff. Then she would give free rein to her maternal instincts and speak softly and gently, and if you were in luck, you would be pressed to her ample bosom and stroked behind your either still projecting or already manhandled ears.

  The name of the doctor who was to see to it that no one would laugh at me on account of these ears was Dr. Eisbert. Dr. Eisbert had a deep voice that inspired confidence. He had deep furrows running down from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth that I considered with some distrust. Furrows like these, I later decided, were the result of lying. Dr. Eisbert explained to me what would happen during the operation. A tiny slit would be made behind each of my ears in order to remove a mass of cartilage.

  “You’re not going to cut my ears off, are you?”

  “No, just a tiny incision,” he assured me in his growling voice. “After that we’ll sew everything up, and you will have a neat little turban. You’ll look like an Asian prince.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  Dr. Eisbert shook his head. Satisfied, I sank back into my pillows. An Asian prince enjoyed royal immunity. None of those out there would ever think of making him jump into a pool of semolina from a great height.

  But deep down, I was still uneasy. Earnoseandthroat was a ward not in our little local hospital but in a specialist clinic. Visible was more than two hours’ drive away, and so visits from Glass and Dianne or Tereza were accordingly rare. Above all, Glass, who regarded hospitals as breeding grounds for exotic bacteria and generally gruesome deathly places best given a wide berth, clearly couldn’t be counted on. She bore the main responsibility for my pathetic state, and for all I cared she could go jump in a lake. And I wasn’t too bothered whether or not Dianne came, because I was still convinced that her stupid experiment with the water snail was the cause of my misfortune. It would have served her right if the snail had stayed forever and ever in her stupid head and rolled around with a loud clattering sound every time she moved. Tereza was the only one I wanted to come and comfort me, but she had her hands full with her new lawyer’s chambers. I felt abandoned and all alone. Intimidated by the harsh neon-lit hospital corridors, which I feared would swallow me up if I went out in them, I hardly dared leave my room. I spent most of the time patiently filling in endless drawing books with colored pencils.

  The evening before the operation I heard terrifying screams and the menacing voice of senior nurse Marthe coming from the room next door. It wasn’t hard to guess that she was struggling with one of the jug ears.

  “Leave off!” yelled a child’s voice. “Leave off!”

  “Will you—”

  “No!”

  This was followed by a metallic crash and the sound of breaking china. I jumped out of bed and opened the door. A little white-clad person rushed past me down the corridor. Loosened bandages were streaming down from her forehead, with two angry green eyes flashing below. Senior nurse Marthe stormed in pursuit, brandishing a syringe menacingly in her right hand.

  “Stop running—Pill, shut the door and into bed, into bed!—stop running, you…”

  The wild chase shot past me again, this time in the opposite direction. The distance between the little jug ears shrieking in panic and her pursuer was visibly shrinking. Both disappeared from view, and then a last piercing scream from the fugitive announced that the syringe had won the uneven battle.

  Not a happy prospect.

  Hours later, when the ward had long since settled down for the night, the cautious pattering of bare feet woke me from my uneasy slumber. Jug ears with the green eyes, encased in a knee-length nightgown, head wrapped in bandages that glowed in the dark in a ghostly way, scurried through the open door. It came to a halt by m
y bed and picked its nose.

  “My daddy owns a school,” it said.

  I couldn’t really match that. I didn’t know my father, didn’t even know his name.

  All I knew was that he lived in America. America was the magic word I used to say out loud to myself like a prayer, over and over.

  The girl, who seemed determined to talk to me, wouldn’t let herself be put off by my lack of an answer. “Are you having your ears operated as well?”

  This was less shaky ground. I nodded. “My mother said I would look like Dumbo, the elephant. He had to jump down into a pool of semolina. Everyone laughed at him.”

  “But later on he could fly with his huge ears, and he was famous and a star.”

  “Who?”

  “Dumbo. Can I get into your bed?”

  I folded back the blanket and shifted to one side. The girl who knew Dumbo and whose father owned a school crawled across and snuggled up to me. Her bandage pressed against my face; it smelled of ointment and disinfectant. It had slipped up slightly above the left ear. The place was dark with encrusted blood.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked in sympathy.

  “Like buggery.”

  Glass, who was not averse to using strong language herself, had punished me for using this particular word by not allowing me peanut butter sandwiches for two whole weeks. Suddenly I was filled with rage. My own mother had lied to me. Well, OK, that might not be exactly the right word, but she had omitted to tell me a part of the truth. As far as I was concerned, lying and leaving bits out came to the same thing. I would never be able to fly like Dumbo. I would never be famous like Dumbo. That Dr. Eisbert with his deep voice had lied was clear as daylight. I hated him. The Asian prince would wear a bloodstained turban. The operation would hurt.

  “Like buggery,” I repeated, shuddering. I touched the girl’s shoulder. “What’s your name?”

  “Katja. And yours?”

  “Phil.”

  “I can have ice cream here every day if I ask for it. Cherry’s my favorite.”

  “Mine’s vanilla. May I try on your nightgown?”

  We got out of bed and undressed. I felt uncomfortable naked, unlike Katja. When I handed her my pajamas, she shook her head.

  “Don’t need them.”

  “But my mom says the place is full of bacteria.”

  “Rubbish.”

  I was shorter than she was, and her nightgown came down to my shins. It was soft and light; as I let it slide over my head and shoulders, it felt like cool water on my body.

  Back in bed, Katja nestled up against me, naked apart from that terrible bandage round her head, and consequently defenseless against all the bacteria in the world. I put an arm around her to protect her. She fell asleep immediately, while I let my fingertips slowly glide over the unfamiliar smooth fabric of the flowered nightgown. “America,” I whispered with my eyes shut.

  The world had become a dangerous place. At its center there were doctors cold-bloodedly sharpening their scalpels on small children. Nurses armed with syringes chased defenseless jug ears down the neon-green labyrinthine bowels of gigantic hospitals. Mothers could not be relied on to help. They betrayed confidence and their own children. In the future I would have to be very careful.

  The future is never further away than the next moment. As I heard a deep, worried grunting and opened my eyes, senior nurse Marthe stood by my bed like an avenging angel. “Always on the run! You little big ears are all the same.” I saw the stiffly starched blouse being smoothed down. “The Lord God doesn’t like seeing boys and girls sharing the same bed.”

  The Lord God, I thought, probably didn’t have to be afraid of an operation to remove cartilage from behind His ears, and when all was said and done, He was the one responsible for my landing in the Earnoseandthroat with two misshapen jug ears in the first place.

  And it didn’t surprise me in the least that he didn’t approve of the nightgown. Senior nurse Marthe had already pulled back the blanket and gently lifted Katja out of my bed when her gaze fell upon me and she stopped short.

  “What are you wearing that for, Pill?”

  “I’m frightened.”

  “You needn’t be afraid. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  “Yes, they are. Katja said so.”

  “Take off that nightgown. The Lord God—”

  “No!”

  The Lord God could go and take a running jump. Stubbornly I pulled the blanket up under my chin, bracing myself for the inevitable thunderstorm.

  It didn’t come. Maybe it was the night and the silence, or it may have been the warm skin of the little jug ears lying in her arms, that softened senior nurse Marthe. Shaking her head, with a last disapproving backward glance at the flowered nightgown, she left the room.

  Katja’s naked body almost disappeared in the strong arms, but in spite of her delicate back, the head lolling to one side, and the pitiful bloodstained bandage, she didn’t look fragile. I began wondering if I would stop being afraid of the hospital if I got hold of enough cherry ice cream. Staring into the darkness, I stroked the nightgown.

  “America, America, America …”

  In the dull heat of the afternoon the marketplace, with its war memorial barely visible under the coating of pigeon droppings and little wedding cake houses, is deserted. There is not a breath of air; nothing stirs. Anyone in his right mind is either in the swimming pool or at home indoors.

  Kat and I sit down at a table in the far corner of the garishly painted ice cream parlor and order gigantic servings of vanilla and cherry. For a while we watch the little kids come in from time to time, slapping their carefully counted coins down on the counter and then disappearing with their ice creams, which begin to melt the minute they clutch them in their tiny sweaty hands.

  “By the way, Daddy told me the other day that we’re getting a new one,” says Kat, interrupting the agreeable silence. The summer holidays end on Monday, and we’re starting to talk about school again.

  “New … does he come from here?”

  Kat nods.

  “Stayed down?”

  “Ran away from boarding school.”

  She scoops a sticky maraschino cherry out of her sundae before adding furtively, “A boys-only school.”

  “And?”

  “And? Why d’you suppose that lot expels anyone? Maybe the guy felt up one of the other boys.” The maraschino cherry bursts open between pearly white teeth. “Doesn’t the idea make your lonely heart beat faster?”

  “And yours?”

  “Well, in case you’re referring to Thomas …”

  Thomas is in the year above us. Last winter he and Kat had been an item for a few weeks—just long enough, as she informed me, to lose her virginity and as a result discover with certainty what she didn’t want out of life. Including, among other things, Thomas. Kat parades like a hard-won trophy the fact that he is still moping over her. Although she repeatedly assured Thomas at the time that I was simply her best friend, we both know that he is hugely jealous of me.

  “And if I do happen to be referring to him?”

  “Oh, forget it.” Kat grins. “Or show me a guy who’s not just good-looking but also has an IQ above 130 and occasionally thinks of something besides football, cars, and melon-sized tits.”

  “He’s sitting right beside you.”

  “You don’t count, darling.” She’s imitating Glass. She even adopts the same typical gesture, tossing her long blond hair back over her shoulders. “And if you did count, that would mean trouble at home.”

  That’s the sort of trouble Kat would welcome with open arms. Ten years ago, in Earnoseandthroat, we found out that we came from the same little town. Following this discovery we swore an oath of eternal friendship, and ever since then our relationship was a perpetual bugbear for Kat’s parents. I was the son of that woman—Glass and her notorious way of life were already then the talk of the town—and so Kat was forbidden to be friends with me. Her father is the principal of the high school
in the town; he managed to see to it that from the very start in first grade we were put in separate classes. As we moved up in school he intervened in person to prevent his one and only daughter from associating with me. I have often wondered if he really was so stupid not to realize that the more he tried to keep us apart, the more inseparable Kat and I became.

  Even back then, for heaven alone knows what reason, Kat took it into her head to want me for a friend, and she’s never let go. As she’s grown older, over the years she’s fought her parents tooth and nail. Obstinately she’s disregarded all their bans and prohibitions with that sublime composure and readiness to fight them that so endear her to me. She is totally without prejudice. As if at birth a fairy whispered in her ear that the world was a place without secrets, she is open to everything—you can astonish Kat, but you can never really surprise her. In essence she is still the barefoot little jug ears that gives her nightgown to a frightened little boy. That even then her motives were not entirely altruistic is another story, but a blameless one. After all, who wants to live without friends?

  I’m more reticent than Kat, less prepared to be wide open. There are things that I keep to myself, not so much out of distrust—there is no one I trust more than Kat—but about things that I haven’t fully worked out for myself. Like my attitude toward Number Three.

  “Another ice cream?” she says, interrupting my train of thought. “Phil?”

  “What? Oh, I don’t know. …”

  “Vanilla ice cream is good for the soul.”

  “Says who?”

  “I do.”

  “I feel ill.”

  “Force yourself. I’m paying.”

  She grins and signals to be served. In the course of the afternoon we manage to put away four sundaes. Kat relates details from her disastrous holiday. We laugh a lot.

  We speculate about the coming school year and future loves that may be around the corner.