The Center of the World

by Andreas Steinhöfel

  “You should have told me all this long ago.”

  I get no answer.

  “At least you ought to speak to Glass about it. Dianne, she’s waiting for you to do so! Why won’t you just get it over with?”

  “Because to do so I’d have to take her seriously, and I can’t. D’you remember what she was always going on about when we were little—‘I love you the way you are’? Shit, Phil! If she’d really meant that, the whole thing wouldn’t have happened.”

  “But she only wanted the best for you.”

  “Oh, did she? Well, I suppose that’s what’s known as the curse of a good intention.”

  Dianne stares out the window, very pale, very calm. Something churns through my insides. It won’t stop and shakes me like tiny random electric shocks. My eyes wander and come to rest on the green paint spatters on my hands.

  “Dianne … ? Did you set the dog on that boy the other night?”

  She gives a soft laugh. “So do you take me for some kind of monster now as well, like Glass does? No doubt the boy repeated some kind of crap he heard sometime. We’re the witch’s children, remember Phil? It takes a long time for these old stories to get forgotten.”

  “So it wasn’t you?”

  Then Dianne turns round to me. “Don’t be such an asshole! Did it ever cross your mind that I would have called the dog off—provided I’d had any influence on it, confused as it was, because the smell of blood must have made it completely mad?”

  “But there was a time—”

  “That’s all over and done with. It’s in the past, Phil! Unlike Glass, I realized that ages ago.”

  I don’t know when she finally left. I stay on in the library. For a long time I sit on the throne, my story throne that’s nothing more than an old armchair covered in threadbare red material, and stare at the shelves and walls and the spines of books in a room that has nothing more to tell me.

  I don’t even call Nicholas, but set out an hour later to find him. He’s been working in the municipal library, and I don’t want to disturb him there or give Mrs. Hebeler the satisfaction of seeing me in such a state. He must be at home by now.

  The streets are too icy to go by bicycle, so I go on foot. As I cross the bridge where Glass told me she was pregnant, tears come into my eyes. It takes me a good half hour to reach Fox Pass, running fast and then still faster, my face heading into the biting cold wind. I rush up the black basalt steps, go round the house, across the garden in the dusk, and past the window. Today there’s no one moving behind it, and why should there be when they can talk to their reflection anywhere in this house? Past the barred windows that prevent misfortune from entering or escaping through them, past the terrace and the marble birdbath, up to the museum of lost things and invented stories. I step up to one of the windows, join my hands around my eyes, press them against the glass, and peer inside.

  Even when you look into the room from outside, there is still the impression that it creates its own light and transmits it to the outside. A warm yellow glow. I was wrong on my first visit when I thought that it was the objects on the shelves and in the showcases that create this glow. It must have emanated from Nicholas, as it does now in pulsating beams that break like waves against my eyes. The light rises from his naked body, lying stretched out on the floor and still bearing the last bronze-colored traces of a summer suntan.

  It streams like water over his slightly splayed legs, over his wiry arms, his beautiful hands. It even plays over his lips, a golden torrent, as Nicholas opens his mouth as if to give a silent scream. I pull back from the window, not because I’m afraid of being seen, but because I’m afraid the sounds rising in my throat like black spiderwebs surging out of a burst cocoon might be heard in there. If I could, I’d run with my eyes shut now.

  But I’ve long been back in Visible now, and even after I fetched the ax from the garden shed, yelling as I smashed it into the showcase made for Nicholas, till all the strength drained from my arms and the floor was strewn with thousands of splinters, I can still see the tensing, arching back and the back of the girl’s head as she sat astride Nicholas very gently—as if she didn’t want to hurt him—rocking up and down with careful, circular movements of her hips, and I see the head with its black hair thrown back, Kat’s black hair, which only yesterday was still blond.

  “When and where do things begin, ladies and gentlemen? It is thought that life follows a particular plan, a somehow crafted pattern, an open or a secret sense. Why?”

  As usual, Handel simply casts the question into the room, and as usual it is purely rhetorical. I’d prefer it if he would suddenly digress for no particular reason and lecture, and in so doing—unlike when he’s teaching math—not care whether anyone answers his questions.

  “We believe in sense, because we cannot bear the thought that everything is simply a matter of chance. We believe in signs, but believe me, there are no signs. Beethoven created some of his greatest compositions after he became deaf—important things occur in silence. Catastrophes occur without the heavens darkening beforehand. The birth of children who go on to become historic personalities who leave their mark on the world is not heralded by thunder and lightning. Groundbreaking discoveries are made but are not accompanied by a flower of outstanding beauty blooming somewhere on earth. There are no signs, ladies and gentlemen. At best there are coincidences. All else is superstition.”

  There were times, like now, when Handel fell silent after an extended performance, bobbed up and down, collected his thoughts, and then continued.

  “At some time after man had learned to walk upright and mastered fire, he must have realized, ladies and gentlemen, that despite his fellow creatures who painted the outlines of mammoths and saber-toothed tigers on the walls of caves with wet earth pigments in the light of flickering flames, he was alone and had only himself to rely on. This realization drove him to despair! And it was on this despair that religions were founded, in a desert of meaninglessness and pain, and it is this consolation that is the only thing that they are really good at. For religions dispense consolation but no understanding.”

  Someone put up a hand in protest, but he simply ignored him. “Faith,” he quoted some philosopher in conclusion, “is an insult to common sense.”

  It was a remark that nearly cost him his job. The school board considered transferring him—reluctantly, as I discovered from Kat; Handel had everyone’s sympathy, and in the end her father decided simply to sit the whole affair out, but without sticking his neck out too far and publicly defending his best math teacher. Some parents didn’t calm down even after weeks had gone by. The Little People were brave and upright Christian souls.

  If God was dead, as Handel had maintained in his by now infamous lecture, this piece of news had at any rate not reached them yet.

  “Maybe a few of the men,” granted Glass as we were sitting together in the kitchen, discussing the scandal. “Otherwise some of them wouldn’t incur the awaited divine wrath by beating their wives with predictable regularity to the point of needing hospital treatment.” She thought for a moment. “It was probably also the men who bumped him off. After all, they were the ones who invented him as well, weren’t they?” “Why don’t you go and talk to Handel about it sometime?” “Oh, he’s a bit too plump for my taste.”

  “Mom!”

  Glass laughed. “You know, he’s quite right, your Handel. There’s no sense to life. It’s completely random. All it wants is to carry on. And as far as that’s concerned, I’ve done my duty and fulfilled my obligations.”

  I listened to her and saw a shadow rising behind her on the wall, Handel’s shadow, nodding in agreement. But even Glass, and maybe Handel too, would have admitted that everyone reaches a crossroad in their life, with paths going off in different directions, and they have to decide which one they will follow. Someone who finds no meaning in his life can at least still try to set himself a goal. With luck, at some point the two can merge.

  So when and where did t
hings begin? Maybe they began when nearly two hundred years ago a butterfly flapped its wings in Asia and the air moved, as a result of which the weather in Europe changed and a wind blew in the face of one of my ancestors, who savored change. Or when Glass decided to leave America after my unknown father had left her high and dry. Maybe things began when Tereza realized that I would never in my life learn to whistle with two fingers or play football. When I met a bandaged little girl with a passion for cherry ice cream in Earnoseandthroat, when I saw Nicholas on the snow-covered steps of the church, below which he found my snowstorm ball, or when Dianne took refuge up on Visible s rooftop, swarming with bats.

  Maybe things already began millions of years ago as some blind, bored God snapped His fingers and set off the big bang.

  Yes, definitely. That must be it.

  part three

  chasing

  the

  winter

  blues

  away

  chapter 16

  phantoms

  Monday passes in a timeless, blank vacuum. I’ve told Glass and Dianne that I’ve gone down with flu. Retreating to my room into the protective hollow of my bed, I erect towers of thoughts yards high from identical bricks, knocking them down again piece by piece, or watch as they come crashing down of their own accord. Staring numbly at the wall for hours on end, I see Kat and Nicholas before me, Nicholas and Kat, all the while rolling the snow globe like a fetish between my hand, not knowing whether it brings me good or bad luck. The room is overheated. I don’t leave my bed except to go and get more firewood from the shed.

  I dream about my pool. Its waters close over me, pitch black and cold. I sink deeper and deeper; even in my dream my feet are searching for the bottom. It’s a feeling of movement in utter calm and utter darkness—free fall, floating downward, unending.

  On Tuesday Kat telephones.

  “What’s up with you?” comes down the line. “Why aren’t you at school?”

  “Flu.”

  “Oh … well, you haven’t missed anything. So near the holidays—there’s nothing much going on. Handel brought in biscuits and read us A Christmas Carol by Dickens. Candles on the tables and stuff—it was really cozy. You’d have liked it.”

  “Can you tell them why I’m away?”

  “No problem. I’ll pass it straight to my dad.”

  There’s a short pause, interrupted by a soft crackling on the line. I shut my eyes.

  “Yuh … well,” says Kat hesitantly, “I don’t know if I’ll get to drop by again. Christmas shopping and all that. Packing too. We’re off tomorrow. In the afternoon.”

  “It’s OK. See you after New Year’s.”

  “Yup. Well, then …” Each of us listens to the other’s words trailing off. “Till next year, then. Have a good one and all that. And look after yourself.”

  “Kat,” I add in a rush.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you do it?”

  I think I hear a sharp intake of breath, but maybe I’m just imagining it.

  “Do what?”

  “Dye your hair?”

  “What? Oh, yes, sure! It’s black now. I don’t expect you’ll like it, or will you? But I feel like a completely new person.”

  I sob into my pillow after she’s hung up.

  The next hours pass in surreal clarity. I look out on to the bare trees in front of the window. I can clearly make out, like an X-ray image, frozen vascular bundles in the twigs and branches, hidden below the bark. Life is suspended there in the form of minute icy crystals. I count fantastically linked molecules and inaudible, softly pulsating atoms.

  Later, at some point between waking and sleeping, Dianne is standing in my room—at least I think I see her standing there. Outside dusk reigns and everything is indivisibly gray, the room, the light, Dianne herself. Only her eyes shine,out, as remorselessly white as the porcelain eyes of Paleiko before he was broken into a thousand pieces.

  Don’t expect me to help you now, Phil.

  No . . . It’s because I left you on your own, is it?

  For years you didn’t give a shit about me. Did you want me to change into a shadow?

  No.

  The water in the river was so cold. And the moon shone so brightly that its light burnt my eyes.

  I’m sorry.

  That’s what people say who don’t know anything, or don’t want to know anything.

  Stay with me.

  I can’t, Phil.

  Nicholas looks more real than Dianne. And more alive. Hard to know exactly why, but he appears more alive to me than ever before. He turns up on Wednesday, the day Kat goes off on holiday. He stands in my room as if surrounded by an aura of fizzing blue oxygen. His black hair gleams, the dark eyes glitter, his face is the color of a healthy apple. He’s wearing expensive gloves of very fine light brown leather that he doesn’t remove.

  “You look terrible. Kat says you’ve got flu.”

  “It’s on the way out.” I could ask him why he hasn’t been in touch for days, but he’d only lie.

  “I brought you something.” Nicholas a produces a little parcel. Christmas tree baubles and candles and children’s toys are printed on the wrapping paper. “But not to be opened till Christmas, promise?”

  “Will we see each other again before you’re off with your parents?”

  “That’s going to be tricky.” He goes over to the bookshelf and places the package on it. “We’re off on Friday, and before that I’ve got to—”

  “Do Christmas shopping. And pack, of course.”

  “Exactly.” My sarcasm escapes him. He pushes back the sleeve of his overcoat and looks at his watch. “Actually, I’m already a bit pushed for time.”

  I can’t attack him, because I’m busy defending myself. Nicholas sits down on the edge of the bed and strokes my cheek with his gloved hand. I stop myself from thinking of the hands inside the soft light brown leather or of the warmth of his skin. Then he kisses me on the forehead. His lips are cold. I protect myself from his smile by making myself think of mutilated corpses, the mangled blood-red debris in some war zone.

  “I’d like to see you again before you go.”

  “Can’t it wait till after Christmas?”

  “No.”

  He grins. “It’s not terminal flu, is it?”

  “Would you stay if it were?”

  Instead of an answer, he gets up and smoothes down the front of his coat with his gloves. “I’ve really got to go now. My mother’s waiting for me to drive her to go shopping.”

  Suddenly I’m so furious that I have to clench my fists under the bedspread to stop myself from jumping up and hitting him. “What about tomorrow?”

  Nicholas shakes his head.

  “Then the day after, Friday?”

  “OK. I’ll come and fetch you—in the morning.” He doesn’t say it reluctantly, but he’s in a rush and is practically out of the room. “Provided you’re better by then.”

  I remain lying on my back after he’s gone and try to make out the pattern on the white ceiling in order to arrange the red and blue glowing sparks of my anger around it.

  Later Glass pops her head round the door. “What is it you’re supposed to drink when you’ve got flu—hot milk and honey or eggnog with wine?”

  “It’s hot lemon juice.” I turn on my side and stare at the wall. “Leave me alone. I’m tired.”

  “What’s the matter, darling? Trouble with Nick? He barely stayed five minutes.”

  In the past she’d never have done that, asked how I or Dianne was feeling. In the past we were fledglings who had to learn to fly by ourselves. I don’t answer.

  “Don’t you want to talk about it?”

  “No, I do not want to talk about it!” Bitterness wells up in me like bile. “You know all about that, don’t you?” I don’t turn round to face her. She ignores my question anyway.

  “I’ll run you a hot bath. By the way, Tereza wishes you better. And I’ve got this for you from Pascal.”

 
; An envelope lands on my bed. On the card inside are just two short lines. I scrunch it up angrily, hurl it across the room, and silently curse Pascal and her goddamn intuition.

  Half an hour later I lower myself up to my neck into steaming scented foam. Glass comes back with a fresh large towel. She sits down on the edge of the tub, hands on her knees, staring past me at the old brass boiler. I know that she can wait forever—she does exactly the same with her clients, giving the women time, time to breathe, to find the right words to express their emotions. For a time I give myself up to the soothing scent of the foam bath and savor the feeling as the tension in my muscles gradually melts away. Sleepily I watch condensation spreading down the black tiles in small overlapping rivulets, and think of Michael’s chess game.

  “Mom?”

  “Hm?”

  “Dianne told me. You know, the business about …”

  I cannot bring myself to utter the word miscarriage. Glass continues looking at the boiler. Her only visible reaction is a tiny head movement, the suggestion of a nod. “Is that why you’re feeling so bad?”

  “No.” The sound of soft popping of thousands of shining tiny foam bubbles bursting before my eyes. “Well, yes, that too.” “You’re asking me why I didn’t tell you?”

  I nod.

  “If I had, wouldn’t you have thought I was trying to set you against Dianne?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “No, quite definitely.” Glass wipes her hand across her forehead, which is covered in tiny beads of perspiration. The boiler is giving out intense heat. “After she told me, I hated her. And when at last I felt ready to give in, then she hated me. To be honest, I simply have no idea how to break out of this vicious circle if she isn’t prepared to play along.”

  She puts her head to one side, takes a deep breath, and then breathes out again. Maybe she’s crying. I can’t help her, and I don’t think she expects me to either. I’ve tried often enough to mediate between her and Dianne.