The Center of the World

by Andreas Steinhöfel

  As for Dianne, I keep on indicating I’m prepared to talk to her if she feels like it. She doesn’t make a move. I console myself with the thought that she doesn’t show any interest in my concerns either. On one occasion I catch sight of her when the door of her room happens to be open. She’s sitting bolt upright on her bed and waving her hands around, just as she was doing that night at the police station, when there was a full moon. Then it made me think of flames dancing around each other. Now it looks as if the hands and fingers are spinning an invisible cocoon around Dianne’s body, terribly slowly, like an animal that has already lowered its metabolic rate in preparation for hibernation.

  Dianne still sets out in all weather on her endless walks to God knows where, and also goes on meeting Kora. At school I see her outside during break laughing with other girls; maybe that’s down to Kora’s influence. Maybe Dianne still takes the bus somewhere from time to time, and maybe she carries on writing letters to Zephyr, a name that fades in my mind, like on the letters addressed to him, and maybe that’s all she needs to be happy.

  There is still no communication between her and Glass. When the two of them happen to meet, they restrict themselves to exchanging polite trivial noncommittal remarks. Neither of them seems prepared to give way by a fraction of an inch. It’s a situation I’ve been aware of for years. Now I’m beginning to get used to it.

  And then there’s Nicholas, Nicholas over and over … When we’re alone together in Tereza’s father’s house or at Visible—never again in his museum—I tell him about Stella and Glass and Dianne, about Tereza and Pascal, prompting him to observe at some stage that my life was defined by women to such an extent, things could end badly; a masculine counterweight was missing. What am I supposed to answer? That essentially he’s right and I’ve always missed having a father, that I still do, because I feel that Michael may have appeared in time for Glass but too late for Dianne and me? That on the other hand I can understand what Tereza once maintained, namely, that men are useless because they never grow out of being children, that out of fear of being hurt and a deep-seated fear of life they prematurely enchain their hearts, and that as a result of this self-imposed imprisonment they pass on their insecurity from generation to generation? Insecurity that makes them so restless that at decisive moments in the lives of their wives or children they are anyway never at home but somewhere out there, convinced they are obliged to conquer worlds.

  A vague feeling I may hurt Nicholas makes me keep all this to myself. Instead I unload further, talk about Kat and Gable, mendacious doctors, and knife-wielding children with no eyelashes, about divinely inspired nurses and transparent women librarians. I tell him about UFOs making their ghostly appearance on silver bromide nights, women mincing along in red patent leather shoes being swallowed up by holes in the road, and boys who revere their dead mothers’ curls as icons.

  “I used to believe that fate had it in for me because it regularly took away all the people I came across who meant something to me. Annie, Wolf, Mr. Troht …”

  “Surely there were plenty of others?”

  “Yes, but they might as well have been dead.”

  “No, I mean Glass and Dianne, Tereza, Kat …”

  “They don’t count. They’re part of the family. More or less.”

  “Your family can also abandon you.”

  “No. No, family is forever.”

  The more I reveal myself to him, the more I put myself at his mercy. The less he divulges about himself, the more closely he binds me to him. For the first time I believe I understand the simple yet complex dynamic behind Kat’s explorations of her famous blank spots chart. For the first time I understand that it’s fear that sends people on voyages of discovery. If I don’t wish to lose Nicholas, I have to discover him. The only secret he’s entrusted me with is his museum of lost things. I ponder over what he was trying to show me, I rack my brains over the wretched clockmaker and eternity, but I don’t get it. Nicholas has handed me a key that I don’t know how to use. And to ask him for more stories would only add to my confusion.

  When we meet we sleep together.

  His kisses are still rare, gifts offered hesitantly.

  I never ask him if he loves me.

  “There’s post for you,” Dianne greets me when I get home. She’s sitting at the kitchen table peeling an apple, intently absorbed on removing the peel in one piece. “A small packet.” It’s late afternoon. Heavy dark gray presses against the windows from outside. I’d accompanied Nicholas to the library, stayed for a while browsing among a few shelves under Mrs. Hebeler’s gaze—ever watchful but now turned soft as butter—and then left. When Nicholas is working he does so oblivious to his surroundings and with the same total concentration that I’ve observed when he runs.

  “A small packet? Where is it?”

  “On the stairs in the hall.”

  “Is it from Gable?”

  “There’s no sender. But the stamps are just ordinary.” Gable signed on in the summer with a freighter carrying spices through the Indian Ocean. In his last letter he wrote that he would try to spend the end of the year with us. Christmas is only a few weeks off; he’ll have to hurry if he’s actually going to come.

  “You’ve got a boyfriend, haven’t you?” says Dianne without looking up from the increasingly long apple skin.

  I’ve just been taking some milk from the fridge and shut the door more heftily than necessary. “Who says?”

  “Kora heard. There were some guys talking about it during recess.”

  I don’t know why this piece of news immediately makes me think of Wolf—maybe because I’m convinced that he sees more than other people do. But whom would Wolf talk to? At any rate, Nicholas will be less than pleased if he hears about it.

  I gulp some milk straight from the carton. “Did they mention any names apart from mine?”

  “No. Would that be so terrible?”

  “It’s nobody’s business.”

  “Not even mine?”

  Dianne sounds quite composed. All the same, I get nervous. I wish she’d at least look up once and pay less attention to that stupid piece of fruit and more to me. Perhaps I ought to tell her that it’s idiotic to peel the apple. Most of the vitamins are in the skin or directly under it.

  “You know, you’ve been avoiding me for weeks and months, Dianne. To be honest, I didn’t get the feeling my life particularly interested you.”

  No reply.

  “And why should I have told you at all? After all, you didn’t tell me anything about Kora, even though you’ve been meeting at night down by the river all through the summer.”

  She doesn’t even ask me how I know. She just shakes her head. The apple peel falls onto the table. Now she begins to divide the apple into eight equal segments on the plate. It looks almost as if it falls apart by itself without Dianne having to exert pressure on the knife.

  “I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, Phil.”

  “Oh?” I take another sip of milk then put the carton back in the fridge. “About you and Glass too?”

  “Naturally.”

  “And?”

  “And I’ve come to the conclusion that you simply have to accept things that can’t be changed.”

  “You’ve chosen a pretty easy option.”

  “You think so? It strikes me as bloody hard.” She holds out a piece of apple toward me. “Want some?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Thank you yes or thank you no?”

  I sit down on the edge of the table, accept the piece of apple, and take a bite. Dianne hasn’t bothered to remove the core. “Can’t we talk together properly sometime?”

  “That’s what we’re doing.”

  “Longer. And without ending up by arguing or you quitting halfway through.”

  “OK. But not yet.”

  “Then when?”

  “Soon. When I’ve finished thinking.”

  Dianne arranges the seven remaining apple sections into a star shape o
n the plate. “Are you happy with your boyfriend?”

  “Well …” I chew on what’s left of the piece of apple. “I ought to be. But it isn’t that simple. He shuts me out. I’m not certain what he wants from me.” More as a way of diverting her from Nicholas than out of curiosity, I try a shot in the dark. “And you, are you happy with Kora?”

  “I’m not in love with her, if that’s what you’re asking,” Dianne replies quietly. “I’m not like Tereza. Kora is just a friend, that’s all. But yes, I’m pleased we’re friends. What’s your boyfriend’s name?”

  “Nicholas. And I’d be grateful if you keep that to yourself, even as far as Kora’s concerned.”

  “Don’t worry.” Dianne gets up, takes the plate with the apple pieces, and moves to the door. “Maybe the packet is from him.” And with that she disappears into the hall—glides away, with her own special, strangely floating, completely silent walk.

  I remove the apple skin from the table, throw it away, and go into the entrance hall to fetch my packet. At most Dianne has had a ten-second start, but she’s already out of sight.

  She was right, the packet does come from Nicholas. I recognize the handwriting instantly. I have to grin. He didn’t say a word about it, didn’t give the slightest indication there was a surprise waiting for me at Visible. I shake the packet; something rattles. I take it to the library, sit down on the story throne, and hold it in my hands for a while before opening it. On top, a sheet of paper typewritten on both sides. Underneath, a smaller sealed envelope firm to the touch, probably a card. Finally the heaviest and biggest part in the packet is something packed in wrapping paper, about the size of a lunch box. When I give it a slight shake it rattles. It makes me think of a nest of Russian dolls. I stick to the order in which the contents were packed, and first of all I read the typewritten text.

  SHOWCASE 1

  BOTTOM COMPARTMENT

  THE THREE SISTERS

  There were three sisters, all very different, who lived together in a very old house. The house was surrounded by a dark garden, and the garden was surrounded by a very high fence. Beyond the fence there was a war going on, and no one knew when it had begun or whether it would ever come to an end.

  Although the sisters were so different, they all agreed with each other, and none of the three could leave the others on their own. If one of them sighed, then the middle and oldest did the same; if the oldest closed her eyes, then the middle and youngest would also fall asleep.

  Now there came a time when the middle sister wanted to see the world. Every day she would go up to the attic and look longingly out of one of the windows in the roof, on to the world beyond the fence and on to the life on the far side.

  “That’s where I want to go,” she said to her sisters.

  “Then go,” said the youngest.

  “No, stay,” said the oldest.

  There was a loom in the attic. The middle sister sat down at it, clamped her mouth shut, and, because she couldn’t make up her mind whether to go or to stay, started work on a carpet. Thread by thread and color by color she wove and worked; tirelessly the shuttle shot through her hands, and the carpet grew bigger and bigger and more and more impressive, for all the wishes and desires of the middle sister worked their way into the carpet, without a word crossing her lips.

  The younger sister whispered and tempted her: “Go out, take what you’re longing for! What are you weaving this carpet for when everything you long for is waiting for you outside the door and behind the fence?”

  But the oldest sister said the opposite and commanded her. “Stay here, for here you are safe and sure, but out there death awaits you. Can’t you see the quagmire overrunning the garden, the deadly spears and lances waiting for you beyond the garden?”

  Thus they sat in the attic, disagreeing about what to do, and the air was filled with encouraging whispers and threatening mumbles and the silence of the weaving sister.

  Time passed. Days turned to nights and nights to days, and summer came to the land and gave way to autumn. And still the older and younger sisters talked at the weaving sister, and as they did so they lost vitality, became weaker and weaker, and were not aware of it.

  But as every kind of weaving and working eventually comes to an end, so the carpet was finally finished and glowed so brightly and beautifully, brighter than the sun, more glowing than the moon and more sparkling than the stars. Then the middle sister looked at her raw hands and what she had achieved with them, and finally she opened her mouth and said: “Now it’s good.”

  One single tear escaped her eye and fell to the ground. And where it landed it covered the border of the carpet, and as it did so the three sisters saw the carpet go up in flames, set alight by this one single tear.

  Soon there was a blazing fire. It spread rapidly, for it was a magical fire: It swallowed up the house from top to bottom, and its flames were not hot but cold. It seized the three dying sisters and transformed them into blazing silent torches. Nothing remained of them but three little heaps of icy ashes. A wind came up, tearing and sweeping into the ashes until they merged into one and were swept away. But the flames of the fire continued to flicker—they burned and blazed, they darted and searched and devoured. For three whole days they were visible from near and far; orange and red, they burst through the roof and out of the windows.

  And outside it snowed, for winter had taken hold of the land.

  I look at the box covered in gift wrap without touching it. Then I reach out for the envelope. It contains a plain white postcard.

  Phil

  This belongs to you. I did see you that day in winter.

  Nicholas

  Perhaps I’ll never really understand him. I tear the wrapping paper and find I’m holding the little box of nut-brown wood in my hands. I open the ivory-inlaid lid and tip it upside down.

  It’s gleaming white, flaming red, it snows, it burns.

  It’s my snow globe.

  chapter 14

  his

  little

  friend

  Handel is adept at shamelessly exploiting his popularity. He’s the only teacher who categorically refuses to wipe his chalk scribbles off the board at the end of the lesson. He prefers to make one of his eternally grateful students responsible for this task—today it’s my turn.

  The damp sponge swishes across the board, erasing formulae and symbols that look more like Egyptian hieroglyphs to me than mathematical statements. I’m alone in the classroom. I don’t turn round at the sound of footsteps behind me. I just stop cleaning the board and smile, thinking that Kat or Nicholas, waiting for me in the schoolyard, has got impatient and come back.

  The profile entering my field of vision from the side wipes the smile off my face, as it belongs to neither of them. It belongs to Thomas. He stares at me for some time without saying a word. The devil knows what actor in some second-rate B movie he’s impersonating. I wait a while, then take a deep breath.

  “What d’you want?”

  His index finger moves across the board and leaves a straight line on the dark green surface, which hasn’t yet dried. The shining trace is like an enlarged version of the razor-sharp line of his compressed lips.

  “Keep your hands off Katja.”

  I could pretend to be surprised, but I’m no good at acting. I’d be bound to give a pathetic performance, which Thomas would just take as confirmation of his jealousy. The little I know about him comes from Kat. He’s not stupid, but he’s no genius either. He’s one of those people who, once they’ve got their teeth into an idea, don’t like to drop it, even if they’ve long since realized they’re actually on the wrong track.

  “I’ve never touched Kat,” I say over my shoulder, and start cleaning the board again. “But you could try hacking off all my fingers and you still wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Too right.”

  “We’re friends. Ever heard that word? We’ve known each other since we were five. That’s it. Now leave me alone, OK?”

>   “Forget that.”

  “You bet I will.” I put the sponge down. “That’s why I’m off now.”

  “You’ll stay here and hear me out.”

  “The hell I will.” I take a step toward him. He doesn’t retreat an inch. “You’ve got the wrong address, can’t you understand? If you want something from Kat, then do me a favor and go to her.”

  “She treats me like dirt.”

  “Maybe, but that’s not my problem and has nothing to do with me either.”

  “It’s got everything to do with you.”

  I look into his glassy eyes. I know that look, and I imagine I know the pain that lies behind it. There were men who’d lost their souls at Visible and for weeks on end never missed an opportunity to try to get them back. They wrote letters pages long. They telephoned day and night. They begged and threatened. They lay in wait for Glass when she left the house in the morning and when she came back from work in the evening. Some of them screamed and raged, others wept; most of them just looked like wounded animals. They pursued my mother like hunters without realizing that it was they who were the prey, long since bagged and forgotten; maybe they couldn’t understand because their mortally wounded hearts were still beating and felt like raw flesh. I saw a few of these men. They all had this look.

  “I don’t know what she sees in a wimp like you,” says Thomas roughly. “But I don’t want to see the two of you together again.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  He doesn’t move. He’s rehearsed this speech a dozen, a hundred times, and he won’t stop until he’s got through the last sentence and the last word.

  “If you ever dare to go near her again …”

  The pathetic threat remains unspoken. He’s not going to kill me, but he will light me. I can take it, in terms of both height and strength, but that isn’t important now. Two things become clear. Regardless of who would win if we do light, Thomas will never believe me. And the Battle of the Big Eye is finally consigned to history. There’s no heroic aura left to protect me, because it’s never again going to be children who will threaten me. Those children have meanwhile grown up and now belong to the Little People. Bow and arrow are no longer an adequate weapon to face them with.