by Dan Vyleta
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know. They just don’t.’
She pondered this, then nodded her approval of his feeding strategy. Josef gave up on the carrot, and some minutes later, the hedgehog began to unfurl itself, its little black eyes looking up at them in beady submission.
‘Have you given him a name?’ Anneliese asked.
Josef nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Eckhardt.’
‘That’s a stupid name. You should call him something nicer.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Something that sounds nice. Prince Yussuf, for instance.’
‘Prince Yussuf. But nobody’s called Yussuf.’
‘Somebody is. It’s a real name. I know it for sure.’
‘And can he really be a prince?’
‘Why not? Can I pick him up?’
‘Yes. But he belongs to me.’
Gently, cupping both hands as though she were scooping water from a pond, the girl collected the hedgehog and raised him up before her face. The animal was very light and sat in her hands calmly twitching its nose.
‘Prince Yussuf,’ she whispered gently, then pointed her chin at the teddy that was dangling from her wrist. ‘Meet Kaiser San. He isn’t real, but it doesn’t matter. I like him all the same.’
Slowly, as carefully as she had picked him up, she placed Yussuf back on to the straw that lined his box and stood up to tower over the sitting boy.
‘What do you want for him?’ she asked, putting her hands on to her hips like she’d seen the women do at the Naschmarkt when they were complaining about the price of food.
Hearing her businesslike tone, Sepp, too, stood up, his large feet straddling the box.
‘He isn’t for sale.’
‘Go on. Your uncle will get you another.’
‘You don’t have anything I want.’
‘And if I had a knife?’
‘A knife? What kind?’
The boy’s eyes showed his curiosity. A decent-sized knife was much prized amongst the boys, the bigger the better. Lieschen turned around and, shielding her action with her body, dug through the stitching on Kaiser San’s neck. She sunk two fingers into the stuffing and soon managed to pull out the pocket knife, its horn handle covered in lint. Quickly, wishing to show off the knife as advantageously as possible, she wiped it clean on the cotton of her dress, then unfolded the blade and turned around to the boy.
‘You see,’ she said, handing it over. ‘It’s very sharp.’
Josef held it well out in front of him, as though afraid that he would cut himself at any moment, admiring its size and weight.
‘It’s really big. Where did you get it?’
‘It belongs to my dad.’
‘Won’t he be angry?’ the boy asked, not wanting to get into trouble.
Lieschen shook her head, bit her lip, a dark cloud of blood rising to her cheeks.
‘He’s got a new one now.’ She paused, as though waiting for the blush to subside. ‘So what do you say?’
Sepp thought it over, his eyes fastened on the knife, then handed it back with some reluctance.
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow. I have to ask my older brothers first. My uncle gave him to all of us. Eckhardt. He said we had to share.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Lieschen asked, distraught. ‘Why not this afternoon? You can talk to your brothers and then meet me somewhere. Or I’ll come home with you after school.’
The boy shook his head. ‘I have to go there,’ he said, meaning the Deutsches Jungvolk, which he seemed to dislike.
‘But isn’t it fun?’
‘Sometimes,’ he said, pulling a face. ‘You’ll see for yourself soon.’ Josef knew her birthday was coming up. ‘And if I don’t like it?’
‘It’s cont-pulserry. That means you have to go. Especially now that we’ve been fighting with the Polack.’
He shrugged, heard the school bell, picked up the box. ‘It’s not all bad. They teach us new songs.’
Together they walked back to the school building, then stopped again before entering its double doors. In front of them the corridor yawned: a gaggle of children running to their classrooms, the sticky smell of floor polish rising from the linoleum.
‘Tomorrow, then?’ Lieschen asked, stuffing the knife back into her teddy and holding out her little hand.
‘Yes.’
They spat on their palms and shook on it, and promised one another that they would reconvene at the start of the next school day, to complete the transaction upon which they had commenced.
2
Zuzka found Lieschen in the hospital gardens. It was four in the afternoon, the sun sitting low amongst a smear of clouds; moisture in the air and the lawns very muddy, the result of autumn showers that had been coming down at intervals throughout the day. Zuzka had been out window-shopping, delighting in the bustle of the city and the lack of supervision she enjoyed since coming to live with her uncle. She did not feel ill today, had stopped off at the university and wandered its busy hallways, young men talking, laughing, calling out to one another under the gaze of Meynert, Boltzmann and Krafft-Ebing, cut in marble along the courtyard cloisters. Coming back on the tram, she had jumped out two stops early, made a detour through the hospital grounds. It was pure chance that she happened upon Lieschen. The girl was standing at one of the benches along the gravel path that led deeper into the gardens and was talking to a man of about forty. He had taken off his hat to signal that he considered himself in the presence of a lady, and his thick blond hair was weirdly bisected by a long scar that ran from the base of his skull all the way to his left eye, which sat dead and glassy in his face. Lieschen was talking with great animation, throwing her hands about as she did so, the teddy jangling at her every motion. Her dress was muddy, her shoulders and hair wet from the last rain shower, her satchel weighing down her crooked back. This last detail surprised Zuzka. Most days, the girl ran home first, got rid of the bag: she had told her once that it hurt to carry it around. Zuzka drew closer, unnoticed by the girl, who was crumpling up one little fist in illustration.
‘That’s how small he is when he rolls himself up. But when he stretches he gets to be four times that big. And anyway, tomorrow he’s mine. I have to feed him spiders. Only I’ve got to pull the legs out first.’ She made a face, then noticed Zuzka. A smile took shape underneath the yellow-purple bruise.
‘Pani,’ she called out. ‘Look who I’ve met!’
‘Good day,’ Zuzka nodded to the strange-looking man, who returned her greeting with an odd sort of mutter, his dead eye fastened on her chest. It appeared that he could move only half his mouth. The live eye looked weepy and too old for his face.
‘I’m afraid we have to go.’
She pulled Lieschen away without awaiting a reaction, and quickly walked her out of earshot.
‘Imagine,’ the girl told her breathlessly. ‘He’s got a steel plate in his skull. Right here.’ (She gestured.) ‘A grenade hit him in the last war, cracked a hole in his head, and they fixed him up with a steel plate. Isn’t that wonderful?’
‘But did nobody tell you you oughtn’t to talk to strangers?’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s dangerous, that’s why.’
‘But he was just sitting there. I told him about Prince Yussuf. He says he had one, too, when he was young. Karsten. That’s almost as stupid as Eckhardt, don’t you think, Pani?’
‘Here, let me take your satchel. Good God, that’s heavy. And you’ve been carrying it around all day. Why on earth didn’t you drop it off at home?’
This silenced the girl’s chatter, and for the rest of the way she walked quietly, as though in deep thought.
When they arrived in their own yard, Lieschen asked Zuzka if she would like ‘to play a little’. Zuzka agreed, but sent her up to change her dress first.
‘You’re all wet,’ she admonished the girl. ‘Just look how your collar is all soaked.’
Lieschen nodded, looked at the win
dow of their flat, then shook her head, her lips rolled inwards across the rows of little teeth.
‘It’s almost dry,’ she murmured. ‘We could go play in the Pollaks’ yard. I know a way in.’
‘You will catch cold. Go change. It’ll only take a moment.’
‘But I don’t want to! If you don’t want to play, I will go by myself.’
Zuzka watched this display of temper with consternation and glanced up at the girl’s flat, trying to judge whether the lights had been turned on. There was little one could see from the yard.
‘Is your father home?’ she asked the girl, who had begun to pull at the satchel in Zuzka’s hand, repeating that she would play by herself.
Lieschen let go of the heavy bag, hung her head with something like shame.
‘He’s sick,’ she said.
‘He’s not been going to work?’
‘No.’
‘Is he – drinking?’
The girl shrugged, looked up into her face, eyes moist with her plea. ‘Let’s go and play, Pani.’
‘I tell you what,’ said Zuzka, anxious that Lieschen not catch cold. ‘Why don’t we go visit Fräulein Eva? She is the woman with the bad back.’
‘The angel?’
‘Yes. She’s living with Dr Beer now. We can towel you dry there. Of course, it’s all a big secret.’
‘A secret!’ smiled the girl, and reached to take Zuzka’s hand.
Together they climbed the stairs to the doctor’s surgery.
3
Beer’s waiting room was close to full when they entered through the propped-open door. They quickly walked past the stares of curious patients and sat down in the living room, across from the surgery, waiting for Beer to emerge. He came out, noticed them at once, frowned. A young doctor who had worked out of a practice just a few buildings down the road had been conscripted, and suddenly, from one day to the next, Beer’s patient stream had close to doubled. He was overworked, and concerned what sort of impression the arrival of a young woman and child were making. Nor was he sure that Anneliese should have access to Eva: she was, after all, barely ten years old. About Zuzka, there was nothing that could be done. Otto himself had confirmed that he wanted her to look in on his sister, a strange glimmer passing through his eyes that struck the doctor as unpleasant. In any case, since they were already in the flat, he found he had little choice but to wave them through to his bedroom, looking over one shoulder to make sure none of the patients was watching them. He supposed he should have hired both a secretary and a nurse. In the past, he had been put off as much by the operating costs as by his innate need for privacy; now, with Eva in the house, it was out of the question. Resigned, he walked to the waiting room and called the next patient into his surgery, a toothless little man who began to complain about his gallstones before Beer had even had a chance to close the door.
In the course of the next two hours, Beer took every opportunity to step for a moment into his bedroom and see how his visitors were getting on with Eva. Each time, he found them in nearly unaltered poses, Lieschen sitting on the bed, her feet tucked under her, an odd sort of glow lighting up her little features. She was chattering away to Eva, and once in a while reached out to put both palms upon the woman’s face, very gently, as though she were laying on hands. Beer wondered briefly whether it bothered Eva, but did not have the heart to tell the girl to stop. If I was lying paralysed, he thought, I should like a little girl to touch me just like that. Anneliese winked at Eva, and Eva winked back: caught the glance, soaked it up, then bounced it back when you least expected, from the left eye and just so, for the girl to catch with sudden laughter. It was like a game of tennis played with love. No doubt each of them was keeping score.
As for Zuzka, she had no part in their game. She sat further away, upon the chair, her arms crossed in front her, and somehow as though angry with herself. Whenever he came in, he would see her straighten in her chair: lean forward, towards Eva, stretch out an arm maybe, to smooth the blanket covering one leg, or place her chin into her hands, and remind the girl to be gentle.
It took Beer two or three visits to figure out what was going on. She is bored, he thought. She would like to be the good nurse, but the truth is this bores her, this Eva, unmoving like a stone. To his surprise he found he liked her better at that moment than he’d ever done before. It seemed to him a very human struggle that Zuzka was waging with herself and he flashed her a smile as he left the room, then was taken aback at how eagerly she answered him, her whole face flushing with excitement. Beer quickly closed the door behind himself.
At the end of his next little visit – no smiles this time, he made sure to look preoccupied – she rose from her chair with great vehemence and announced that she must go and would it be all right to leave behind the girl. Beer had only two patients left and enquired whether she’d mind waiting another twenty minutes. But her patience had evidently run out, and she even seemed upset, her eyes wet not with tears but with some kind of inner tension that puzzled the doctor. Vexed, but also feeling a little guilty (he could not account for it himself just then), he ran to the desk in his office to fetch his spare key, then drew her into his kitchen when, already dressed in hat and coat, she came marching down the corridor with great speed.
‘Here, take this,’ he said. ‘It’s only for emergencies, of course. I expect you to ring the bell. The fact is, the police were here, and you never know. So, just in case. If it looks like I’ve been – detained. She needs to be turned every four hours: there is a sketch on the night table outlining the positions. Don’t worry, though, it won’t come to it. All the same, it’s better someone has a key …’
Zuzka did not reply to his instructions: stared at the key, then pocketed it, her face in shadow under the brim of her hat. They stood for another moment; then she ran off, down the corridor and through the propped-open door. Beer looked after her and called for the next patient. The clatter of her heels down the stairs reminded him of his wife: it was what she’d sounded like, leaving, whenever they’d had a fight. Of course, truth be told, they’d never had very many fights at all.
When Beer had seen off his last patient (a tax inspector’s plump wife, who thought she might have caught scarlet fever from her young daughter and appealed to the doctor to drop by and check on the girl), he locked the front door behind her, poured himself a glass of wine, and joined Anneliese and Eva in his bedroom. The girl had stretched out on the bed next to Eva and was telling her something about a friend of hers called Yussuf, who would come home with her ‘tomorrow without fail’. The shortness of her neck was very noticeable just then, coming up on her from behind, the twisted line of her shoulders and back. When she saw the doctor, she quickly sat up and showed him her feet.
‘I took my shoes off,’ she called, as though expecting him to tell her off. ‘It’s nice here in bed. Do you sleep on this side or the other one?’
The doctor smiled at that and lit a cigarette. ‘I sleep in the living room. But isn’t it time you got yourself home? Your father will be worried.’
She did not answer, but after some hesitation swung her legs over the edge of the bed and began putting on her shoes. Once she had managed to fasten both buckles, she stood close to the doctor and gestured for him to bend his ear to her mouth.
‘Is Fräulein Eva very ill?’ she whispered.
Beer nodded.
‘Will she die soon and go to heaven?’
He almost responded with the truth, then caught himself short. ‘I am not allowed to discuss my patients with others. It’s a very important rule.’
Her brow darkened and she sucked her lips over her teeth. ‘You mean that she will die.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean what I said.’
‘The doctors thought that I would die,’ she confided. ‘When I was small.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Father talks about it often.’
‘What does your mother say?’ he asked, before he realised his mistake.<
br />
The girl took it in her stride.
‘She ran away. Same as your wife.’ She seemed unaware of the barb in her remark.
Beer stood up, embarrassed, felt a stiffness come into his manners.
‘You should go now,’ he repeated. ‘It’s very important you don’t tell anyone about Eva. Not even your father. Nobody at all.’
The girl ignored his command, remained where she was, at the foot of the big bed, looking up at Beer. He noticed that her satchel stood leaning against the wall, her teddy propped on top of it, its head lolling like a drunk. Resolutely, he stepped over to the bag, picked it up, and headed for the door.
‘But why shouldn’t I tell?’
For an agonising moment he thought Lieschen had realised he was in her power and decided to blackmail him in some childish manner. But when he turned, her face betrayed only confusion and an earnest desire to understand. He sighed and set the satchel down again.
‘It’s complicated,’ he said.
‘Tell me, please.’
So he explained it to her, using much the same words he’d used when explaining it to Zuzka a few days earlier, only this time he found it difficult to follow his own thread, the girl’s eyes boring into him, uncomprehending.
‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘Every doctor who treats a patient like her is obliged to report it. To protect public health, you see. Frei says she’s already in the system – she’s been recommended to a public-health facility, and scheduled for sterilisation. Only it wouldn’t come to that – there are cases, quite a few cases, of systematic neglect. And now that the war has started, there is a rumour going around … a lung infection, that’s what they are going to say. And there’s also Otto to think about. He’d be put under scrutiny. He’s been to prison, you see, and his father was a syphilitic – it’s a type of sickness, a terrible sickness – and by the rules of heredity –’
He broke off suddenly, faced the girl’s stare, eager, patient, the smudge of a bruise rounding one eye.
‘They’ll take her away and she will die,’ he said curtly.
It took an effort to suppress that part of him that wanted to add: Maybe. I don’t know anything, and who can tell these days? He didn’t and nobody could. And yet he believed it. ‘They’ll take her away and she will die.’
