The Center of the World

by Andreas Steinhöfel

  chapter 11

  dianne

  on the

  roof

  “Passions, ladies and gentlemen, passions! Never allow them to take you over! They skew your common sense, so you are no longer in control. And don’t talk to me about hormones and the subconscious. Restraint! Control!”

  Handel was strutting up and down in front of his desk. With every three or four steps he would come to a halt, bobbing up on tiptoe, and do an about-face like a marionette, casting a glance at his more or less attentive audience as he did so and firing off a fresh salvo of wisdom at us.

  “There was once a golden age of reason. The Greek school of Stoics was a small upright band of courageous souls that saw God’s existence in the manifold manifestations in nature and not attached to some cross. The Stoics recognized the passions as the greatest enemy of reason—some of them must already have discovered this within themselves: passion fires a smoke bomb that obscures a clear view of what lies behind things. Burgeoning Christianity recognized the Stoics as supreme rivals and sought to rid themselves of them. They dreamed up the philosophy of driving out pleasure—repression through assimilation—and attempted to rid mankind of passions. Where necessary Christianity achieved this by fire and the sword, but always with passionate zeal—do you see the absurdity of it?”

  “In the end both value systems remained side by side for a lengthy period. Thus the Stoics succeeded in holding on right up to the late Middle Ages, finally emerging in the Enlightenment. Their principles ultimately collided headlong with the Romantics in one of the greatest and most momentous full frontal confrontations in the history of ideas, didn’t they, and so here we are.”

  Looking around at the dozen or so dropped jaws, I could hardly imagine that there was anyone who still knew exactly where we were or how we had got there, but now Handel was going from the general to the particular.

  “An example of the manifold nature of the passions. You are all familiar with our little town hospital, a redbrick structure whose ugliness leaps out at you like some crazed mongrel dog, and whose façade should long since have been refurbished, frightful as it is… .”

  Handel was absolutely right—the hospital was indeed a monstrosity. It had nothing in common with the splendid clinic where the alignment of my jug ears had been streamlined by Dr. Eisbert some ten years ago or more.

  “Very few of you, however,” Handel went on, “will know that this hospital was erected on the foundations of a brewery that formerly stood on the site and fell victim to a great nocturnal fire in the late twenties. Such things do happen and in the usual scheme of things can be subjected to sober scrutiny. But, ladies and gentlemen, was the fire considered to have been due to natural causes at the time? No, it had to have been arson! And arson for the sake of a contemptible insurance claim? Of course not, that would have been too unromantic, and here we have the passionate mix, if you will! Leave aside the characters in the story for the moment—a brewery owner on the verge of bankruptcy and his family, including a pretty, highly sought-after daughter, underpaid workforce, insistent creditors, whatever else—and suddenly the wildest rumors began to go the rounds. There was talk of allegedly unrequited love, jealousy, even of a blood feud! And as if that wasn’t enough—”

  “The cross,” came a voice from somewhere.

  Handel gave a small, ironic bow. “Correct, the cross! Whereas the brewery and the adjoining apartment building went up in flames in no time, the brewery owner and his family managed to escape the inferno. And the legend persists that the following day, in the course of clearing up, in among the glowing embers, steaming ashes, and pungent soot a golden crucifix was found that should by rights have melted, indeed vaporized, in the tremendous heat! A cross, moreover, such as the godless home of the brewery owner had never possessed. So: a miracle!”

  “What happened to the cross?” someone asked.

  “Disappeared! If it ever existed. Naturally it remained in people’s minds—call it faith or superstition, as far as I’m concerned it comes to the same. Cross or no cross, the brewery owner and his family leave town, cannot stand the gossip. They disappear without trace in the turmoil of the war— another inglorious, senseless lunacy, that war. Be that as it may: the decision is taken to build a hospital on the charred foundations of the brewery! With the result that today on that spot we have our ugly hospital, where scientists pledged to reason battle with cirrhosis of the liver, dilations of the esophagus, jaundice, softening of the brain—in a word, with the consequences of the pleasures of excessive drinking or, depending on one’s outlook, of alcoholism as the true outcome of unfulfilled passions.”

  Presumably I wasn’t the only one wondering whether Handel’s exposition was solely intended to warn us of the dangers of alcoholism. But he hadn’t finished yet.

  “I admit,” Handel added, stroking his ample stomach in feigned distress, “that it is hard to deny oneself the pleasure principle. After all, everyone wants their little share of fun, don’t they? … But do not overdo it, ladies and gentlemen, and hone your faculty of reason. Be wary! Otherwise at some stage in your lives you’ll find you no longer know where you are.”

  The idea that anything might happen to Dianne has never disturbed me. At the age when we were still climbing trees, she would never suffer a scratch or a mark. When she used to run along forest trails or on asphalt streets and fall over, she would never cut her knees open or tear her skin or hands. I was actually convinced she could run barefoot over broken glass without getting hurt. Mortality, as opposed to injuries, is unimaginable for children; neither had any meaning for Dianne. The appalling wound she sustained at the Battle of the Big Eye was something that couldn’t be measured against a normal yardstick. The resulting peace of mind both she and I had acquired had cost her dear. The blood she had lost in the river had been a sacrifice to both the gods and the Little People in equal measure.

  She didn’t tell Glass on the phone what had brought her to the hospital at this time of night. The man on night duty at the empty reception area doesn’t know much more. Perched in his little glass booth in the corner, lit from below by some light as invisible to me as his hands, he looks as if he is sitting in a trench. His head has retained a few thin strands of hair and looks like a skull with deep dark eye sockets. Glass sweeps toward him like a sailing vessel at full throttle, with Michael and me in her wake.

  “Boy attacked by dog,” the man informs her tersely. His voice is incredibly high-pitched and strained, as if he’s been inhaling helium. I can’t help thinking of brightly colored balloons unleashed into the sky with children shrieking after them.

  “What boy?” asks Glass.

  “Night sister can tell you more.”

  Almost imperceptibly the man extends his neck upward, and the eyes in their enormous skull-like sockets climb upward to look at Glass; then he retracts his head once more. At some stage he must have decided to allow his high-pitched voice to be heard as little as possible. I can’t think of any other explanation for why he constructs his sentences in such a staccato form, like newspaper headlines, suppressing half the words. I see his arm move. He presses a button, invisible to us, and a soft buzzing can be heard in the corridor. Then his curious gaze moves to me and Michael. I turn away.

  Everything looks run-down. There’s a battered drinks dispenser, a few hard orange-colored stacking chairs, a low table with a few tattered magazines that have passed through hundreds of hands. The entrance lobby and the corridors leading off it have long since seen better days; plaster is peeling off the pale green painted walls in a number of places, making them look as if they’re suffering from cancer or leprosy. The linoleum is polished to a shine but covered in dents and scratches. Ivory-colored lacquer hangs in strips from an unfortunate wheelchair parked half folded in a corner, and the smell of disinfectant and pale, watery tea pervades the atmosphere. The feeble night lighting achieves one more thing—its bluish light alone would be enough to make everything and everyone throughout the
vicinity look ill. Glass was here after her miscarriage.

  “I hate hospitals, darling,” she whispers in my ear. Michael has gone over to the drinks machine and is waiting for it to spew out coffee.

  “I know.”

  “There are more bacteria floating around here than anywhere else in the whole world!”

  Glass has been saying this ever since I can remember. Her nervous, almost intimidated gaze darts here and there. Perhaps I should explain to her that bacteria are not visible to the naked eye.

  “Whatever you do, don’t let me die in a dump like this, d’you hear me?”

  I understand her unease; to some extent I even share it. When I leave Visible, I get the feeling, often for no more than an instant, that I and my immediate surroundings form the opposing poles of the magnetic field. The world repels me. Mostly this feeling is eclipsed by other, stronger impressions. But it is always present, like a static hum that has diminished over the years but is immediately perceptible once you focus on it.

  The whisper of crepe soles on linoleum rouses me from my thoughts, and then the night nurse is standing in front of us—not just standing there but rising like a bulwark against the intruders that have come to disturb the sacred, unhealthy calm of the hospital. Below an absurdly small cap is a round, pinkish red face, almost indecently healthy-looking, that the sickly blue light can do nothing to diminish. Her eyes light up briefly enough to reveal that she has recognized Glass. There doesn’t seem to be Anyone Out There whom Glass doesn’t know. Who doesn’t know us.

  “You’re too late,” says the night nurse. “The girls have already left.”

  I almost expect her voice to be helium-enriched, but it sounds quite normal and pleasantly soft. It strikes me that the woman isn’t wearing a badge with her name on it.

  “The girls?” asks Glass.

  “Your daughter and the other one, who brought the boy here. Kora?”

  “Is that Dianne’s friend?”

  I shrug my shoulders helplessly. I think back to the blond girl I’ve seen on two occasions, once at school and then at the bus stop, a blond girl called Kora, who could be Zephyr, the person to whom the letters lying hidden in Dianne’s desk were addressed and never posted, or then again maybe not. I know nothing about Dianne. Glass knows even less. Suddenly I feel ashamed on behalf of both of us.

  “Where did they go?” Glass points a hand toward the entrance. “Have they gone back home? We came especially by car. …”

  “They’re both at the police station.”

  “Why the police?” Michael joins in. He’s juggling the steaming hot plastic cups of coffee from hand to hand.

  “They were reported. By the boy’s parents.” The night nurse delivers her information in such a matter-of-fact tone, she could be reading the weather report. “The dog attacked him.” She shifts her weight forward and then back again and loudly clears her throat in my direction, possibly because I’ve been staring at her bosom, still searching in vain for the ID badge that ought to be pinned to her starched blouse informing visitors and patients whom they’re dealing with. I don’t say a word to this reddish pink woman, have no intention of doing so—let Glass and Michael do the talking;—and yet I’m bothered by not knowing her name. I’m so tired, I could fall asleep on the spot.

  “Reported?” Glass repeats. “I thought the two of them had brought the boy here. Is coming to someone’s assistance the latest form of criminal activity?”

  The night nurse shrugs. “I can only tell you what the boy said. He was taking a walk somewhere by the river and saw the girls. They were swimming. At night.”

  The last words carry a somewhat disapproving implication, pregnant with meaning, an implication that does not escape Glass. “It is now a quarter past twelve,” she snaps, “so that this must have happened almost an hour ago! At what time do you consider night begins?”

  “When it gets dark,” replies the night nurse. “Or at the latest when law-abiding citizens are in bed.”

  “Oh, yes?” Glass flashes at her. “If every law-abiding citizen is like you, they must all lie there bored to death.”

  “Well, one way or another, it comes to the same. Not everyone leads such an exciting life as you do.”

  “Would you kindly explain what you mean by that?”

  “No. Perhaps you would be so good as to allow me to do my job. I fully understand your standing up for your daughter, but that’s no reason for you to insult me.”

  Michael has been observing the rapid-fire verbal exchange between the two women, looking from one to the other as if watching a ping-pong match. Now he turns to the night sister. “We’re sorry, but we are rather shocked, that’s all. I hope you can—”

  “Never say ‘we,’ Michael.” Glass cuts him short in such a cold and icy tone that I full expect to see the steaming coffee in the plastic cups Michael’s holding turn to ice. “I’m not sorry about anything.”

  Michael simply ignores her and her objection, doesn’t even turn to her. If I know my mother, this conduct will be sentenced with the maximum penalty—creeping emotional death by withdrawal of affection—and yet she says nothing more. She looks down at the floor by her feet, as if she’s just detected an interesting pattern in the shabby linoleum. Maybe Michael’s just been lucky. Glass has been targeting the night sister and is simply too tired for a two-pronged attack.

  “What’s the boy’s name?” Michael asks the night sister.

  The woman gives a name I’ve never heard before. “His parents are still here, in case you want to speak to them.”

  “Not before I’ve been to the police and spoken to the girls.” Michael reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Be so kind as to give the parents my card.”

  He is so controlled, so masterful. Glass uses her voice as an instrument in order to bewitch people with her siren songs. Michael reduces people themselves to instruments; he plays them like a keyboard. The smile he grants the night sister is barely perceptible, requesting lenience for Glass, hinting at her confusion, promising a speedy end to the unpleasant, stressful situation. He transforms the night nurse into his accomplice.

  “How is the boy?”

  The nameless woman smiles back, happy to have found an unexpected ally.

  “As well as might be expected in the circumstances.” She accepts the business card. “He’ll be left with a few scars.”

  “The face?”

  “Not there.”

  “Good. And the dog belongs to this girl … Kora?” Without so much as a glance at it, she sticks the business card in her breast pocket, the breast pocket from which the wretched ID badge is missing. I’ve no idea why, ever since my return to Visible followed by the drive to the hospital, I’ve been standing outside myself in this way, and why of all things this missing name badge is driving me crazy. “No,” she says. “The dog belongs to the boy.”

  Even now Michael still remains calm. His voice doesn’t waver, there is no hint of a muscle moving round his mouth, his eyes don’t narrow by so much as one iota. “He was attacked by his own dog? In that case, I really can’t see any grounds for telling the police.”

  “Well, you’ll have to settle that with the parents. At any rate, the boy claims that one of the girls set the dog on him. He says she talked to the dog.” The night nurse has pursed her lips. She now stares straight at Glass. “More than that I don’t know.”

  But I do.

  And Glass does too.

  She looks at me and whispers, “Damn!”

  A perceptible rustling noise comes from down in the glass trench. The Skull has heard every word. He’ll construct a brief little story from what he knows, and in his thin high-pitched voice he’ll go around telling it, so that everyone hearing it will understand, even if half the words are missing. It never ends, and never will, even if our family has lost the exotic status that stuck to us in the early years, even if by now we are tolerated by the Little People, even accepted by some of them. In such a small town it’s impossible to
hide. Secrets are all that spread faster here than news. Thanks to Death’s Head, by tomorrow everyone will know that one of the witch’s children has been at work again.

  ______________

  In the summer of the year before the Battle of the Big Eye Dianne familiarized herself with Visibles garden in her own particular way. Some days I would see her lying there motionless on her stomach in the sun, her face in the tall grass as it moved in the wind, her arms stretched out to either side. She lay there as if dead, or as if she was trying to embrace the world. Sometimes shimmering beetles would cling like pearls woven into her black hair, which at that time was long enough to tumble far down her back. Then again, butterflies would land on her sunburnt hands, where they would gently beat their wings open and shut, as if to fan the sleeping girl with cool air.

  Dianne’s connection with everything that crawled and fluttered around her seemed quite uncanny to me. I happened to be watching once as a bird with ruffled feathers landed on her outstretched hand, and saw his dark eyes return my sister’s nonchalant gaze. When Dianne picked flowers, it was as if their blooms seemed to stretch out to her and the garden would start whispering; in town stray scrawny cats that gave everyone else a wide berth would rub up to her legs purring, and dogs would beg and whine for her attention. Dianne herself didn’t seem surprised by this phenomenon and didn’t pay it much attention. She treated animals with indifference, sometimes quite cruelly, sending cats and dogs packing with a hefty kick and a shouted warning that she would tie a tin can to their tails if they didn’t leave her alone.