Once I had finished my tea, I got up from John’s kitchen stool. He handed me the envelope with the usual fee for cleaning, but I pushed his hand aside. When I got home, however, I found the envelope in my purse.
It was, by the way, always quite clean at John’s still. His daughter was happy with the way it looked. I asked him who was cleaning the place and he smiled a proud gentleman’s smile.
“I am,” he said.
The prettiest patient in the intensive care unit
The next few years went by quickly even though nothing really happened.
I kept looking for Aminat. What else did I have to do? But my searching had become half hearted. Now if I thought I saw her in line ahead of me at the bank, I didn’t go running up and grab some stranger’s sleeve anymore. I carried her photos around in my handbag still, but I no longer showed them to people.
John went to his brother’s in England and stayed there. His house stood closed up and empty among the other houses like a dead tooth in a smile. I had a key. John had asked me to go by regularly, make sure everything was in working order, and dust, and for doing that he left me a nice sum of money. I did something I had never done before: I broke my promise and shirked my duties. It was just too much of a hassle to make my way to his house.
I didn’t talk to anyone at all except Sulfia. Things happened that I wasn’t sure had really happened. Perhaps I just thought they happened because it would have been good if they had. For instance, I wasn’t sure whether Aminat had really called me during the first year after her disappearance and spoken three sentences over the phone: “I’m doing well. Leave me alone. You’ve done enough by killing my mother.” Or whether she had wished me a happy birthday in the third year after her disappearance. Sulfia said I shouldn’t make anything out of it. She assured me that Aminat still loved me, but in her own way, from afar.
Yes, that was Sulfia. She saw only the best in everyone. I took to doing something that had once been completely foreign to me—staying in bed. I locked my bedroom door and one night I even put a dresser in front of the door to guarantee I wouldn’t be disturbed.
Dieter knocked on my door. I told him—from my bed—to go to hell. Sulfia convinced me that I should get out of bed and go have something to drink. I begged her to leave me in peace. I had earned it. She sat down on the edge of my bed and cried. It got on my nerves and I turned my back to her and faced the wall.
I prayed to God to bring Aminat back to my side because my final hour was approaching. I whispered it at the white wall as if God’s ear was right there. Then I suddenly heard John’s voice—outside the door. He called my name—loud, deep, hostile. He was asking why I hadn’t gone over to his house as agreed. He was upset I had neglected my responsibilities. After all, I had been paid.
“Go away!” I called.
It was supposed to sound loud, but I didn’t have any strength left. What came out of my mouth was just a weak hiss.
I had completely forgotten what a deep voice John had, a real teacher’s voice. His voice filled my room even through the door. Dieter’s croaking, on the other hand, barely registered.
I didn’t move when the door broke down with a terrible crash and John fell into the room over the dresser—my attempt to keep the outside world at bay. Fleeting thoughts about what a bad impression this was going to leave John with ran through my head. Fortunately my silk nightgown was still fresh and its trim still nicely pressed—because I’d barely moved in bed. But I certainly hadn’t figured on a visit from a man. I hadn’t put on any makeup before I laid myself down (I hadn’t considered Dieter a man for a long time). Which is why I stayed in my original position, with my face turned to the wall, so John couldn’t see my naked face. All he could see was my long hair, freshly braided before I had gotten into bed.
He shook me hard by the shoulder and asked if I was sick. Given how long it had been since we had seen each other, he was acting very familiar. Although I tried to stop him, he managed to roll me onto my back. He was shocked at what he saw.
“She’s deathly pale!” he called to Dieter. John had never seen me without my skillfully applied rouge. Dieter volunteered that I’d been in my room for two weeks without eating or drinking anything. Unless, of course, I had slipped out to the kitchen during his occasional absences. (Such impudence!)
John shook me as if he were fluffing a pillow. I groaned. I became painfully aware of my situation. I’d be unable to remedy the impression I had just made on him for the rest of my life (though, I forgot for a second, my life was about to end). Why did he have to show up now, of all times? Couldn’t he have remembered me as the beaming Rosalinda I once was?
John disappeared into the hall, for which I was thankful. I didn’t know yet that he’d called an ambulance that would transport me—lights flashing and siren blaring—to the intensive care unit at the municipal hospital.
I was the prettiest patient in the intensive care unit—and the loudest. It bored me to lie in bed with tubes sticking in me. The treatment seemed exaggerated. I had to go to the toilet and rang for one of the nurses in purple smocks. She brought me a bedpan. I screamed at her—I wasn’t potty training! She looked at me totally shocked. Nobody ever screamed in the intensive care unit. At most maybe the occasional death rattle. I knew, I had worked at a hospital. The nurses spoke very slowly to me, in short sentences, everything repeated—as if I were brain damaged.
Two days later I was transferred to the normal ward. I walked there myself while a poorly shaved nurse’s assistant pushed my things along behind me in a wheelchair. I lay down in bed. Here, fortunately, there were TVs. I wanted to see the news. Maybe Aminat would turn up. But I was also completely out of touch with what was going on. I also wanted to delay the talk with the doctor and call Dieter to have him pick me up.
A doctor came in. She was Asian, with flat black hair. She was very young, maybe even younger than Aminat was by now. Her white smock fit perfectly. She wore her stethoscope around her neck, as elegantly as a feather boa. On her chest pocket were a few syllables that sounded like bird calls. She was Chinese.
I sighed because this Chinese woman was not my granddaughter. She looked so hardworking that it was easy to see she would soon have her own practice. The Chinese always got what they wanted.
Now she was telling me I had to stay here because my kidneys were on the brink of failure. I laughed out loud and made a gesture that made clear how crazy I took this suggestion to be. She’d have to stay after school, this Chinese doctor. My Aminat would never have made such an error.
I told her I wanted to leave that night. The following morning at the latest. The woman in the white smock rolled her squinty eyes. Her eyes reminded me a little of Aminat’s almond-shaped eyes. My mood was deteriorating.
The neophyte left, taking the results of my blood tests with her. I turned on the TV. There was an old lady in the other bed emitting a rattling noise. I turned up the volume so she could hear, too—and to drown out the rattling sound. I kept looking over at her. Someone should sit her up, I thought, so she can breathe more easily. I was about to ring for a nurse when I heard a voice on TV that made me forget the old lady.
On the screen was Aminat. At first I was surprised, then shocked, and finally ashamed. Aminat was on TV—it was more than I could ever have dreamed for. But my God, the way she looked! Why hadn’t anyone told her what to wear? Why had they let her on TV with her hair like that? Why hadn’t they made her up? Why would they let her go in front of German viewers and disgrace herself that way?
Aminat’s black hair was pulled into a scrawny ponytail. You could see it because the camera kept circling around her. You could also see what bad posture she had. I was thoroughly ashamed of her. She wore a blue t-shirt on which my eagle eyes were able to spot tiny stains. Her jeans sat very low on her hips. At least she was slim. Very thin, in fact. She looked very young, as if the time since I had last seen her had never passed. She also looked as if she hadn’t eaten since I last saw her. She
was still a child, despite the fact that almost ten years had gone by.
And she sang. She sang on TV. And everyone could hear that she hadn’t practiced enough. I should have sent her to music school. Maybe then she’d have sung a little better now and not have embarrassed herself. She sang a song in English, one I’d often heard on the radio. I think it was about love. In any event, it had a very melancholy melody to it.
Aminat sang a little softly. It was difficult to hear her. Now I noticed that in the room where she was being filmed, three people were seated at a long table. A woman and two men. They were listening to my little girl sing. And although the way she sang didn’t appeal to me, it was clear how infinitely sad her song was. Even the old lady in the next bed stopped rattling.
Aminat was finished. Her bottom lip was swollen. Maybe she lived with a man who beat her. She must have lived off something for all these years. And since she couldn’t do anything, she had probably found a man to take care of her—probably an old sad sack hot for some thin, young flesh. Just a shame he couldn’t have bought her some nicer clothes. The camera focused on Aminat’s eyes—black, nervously blinking in the close-up. Everyone could tell she had tried to apply eyeliner but had then wiped it off. Very sloppy.
The name they showed was hers: “Aminat K., 19 years old.” It would have been nicer if they had written out her family name so everyone could read it.
We hadn’t seen each other in nine years. She must have been nearly thirty, but it could stay her secret. Mine, too, I thought. She had every right—she looked very young. And anyway, who would put a thirty-year-old on TV?
“How old are you, Anita?” asked the bald-headed man at the table.
Aminat managed on the third attempt to say the number nineteen. She was so nervous because she was lying, it was clear. Pull yourself together, I whispered. And stand up straight! And as if she could hear me, she squared her shoulders and repeated: “I’m nineteen years old.”
“And are you still in school?” asked the bald man.
She shook her head.
“And you want to become a famous singer?”
The camera caught Aminat’s mouth. Anyone could see—she was missing an incisor. The mouth opened, the tongue licked dry lips, and Aminat said hoarsely: “Yes, I’m going to be a famous singer.”
I clasped my hands as the three people at the table put their heads together. They didn’t let Aminat out of their sight. She stood still, alone in the middle of the room.
“You’re in,” said the pretty woman with flat blonde hair and a glittering dress. She looked very fashionable, perfect for TV.
You’re in, I whispered, as the camera started to rock and the bald man sprang up from the table. Then the entire TV-viewing country saw Aminat faint and fall to the floor.
I felt in perfect health after seeing Aminat on TV. I told the Chinese woman and her two co-workers—two older doctors she’d brought in as reinforcements. They had all zeroed in on my kidneys. Maybe they needed donor organs. I let it drop that I’d just seen my missing granddaughter on TV, and that she was soon going to be a famous singer. The white-smocked doctors exchanged glances. Finally I signed a piece of paper that said I was leaving the hospital against medical advice.
I called Dieter and told him he needed to pick me up. He sounded weak on the phone—as if he had just gotten out of intensive care instead of me.
I went to the little sink in the corner of the room and looked at myself in the mirror. I went and got my bag and began to put my face in order. My colorless days were over. In the hospital I had worn just a little mascara and lipstick. I pulled out all the stops—it was as if someone had warned me that when the door opened John would be standing there instead of Dieter.
He was really there. This tall man with straight posture and gray hair, a real-life British gentleman. I was as bashful as a young girl.
“Where’s Dieter?” I asked.
John shrugged his shoulders. He picked up my three travel bags and carried them along the hall of the hospital. I hurried along behind on high heels, and the nurses craned their necks. I saw for the first time what kind of car John drove. It was an old sand-color Mercedes. It suited him perfectly. He opened the door for me.
“Where are we going?” I asked, as he turned at the third intersection in a row and I no longer recognized the route.
“Home,” he said.
“Aha,” I said, and only when he carried my bags into the house did I realize he meant his home.
Mine is the prettiest
I never asked myself whether John had honorable intentions. I didn’t care. I hadn’t worked in a long time, I had no money, and John had a TV in the room where I now lived. I turned it on and searched all the channels for the show with Aminat. Once in a while John came in and took my blood pressure or brought me tea.
Sulfia sat on the edge of the bed and smiled. Aminat sang on TV and the woman with the long, gleaming hair told her she should dress differently. Aminat listened to her with a furrowed brow. I clapped my hands together—that was exactly what I had always told her. But Aminat shook her head. Stupid girl, she never listened to anyone.
John came in just then with a cup of green tea on a silver tray. I looked at him over the rim of my glasses. I wore glasses ever more frequently.
“What nonsense are you watching?” asked John.
“That,” I said proudly, “is my granddaughter.”
John sat down—not on the edge of the bed but in a chair in the corner. I was beginning to sense that I might be living in his dead wife’s bedroom. I lay in a canopy bed with cream-colored sheets, all the furniture had curved legs, and all the upholstery was done in a pastel floral pattern.
“That’s Aminat,” I said. “She’s very talented.”
She was on TV all the time now. John looked silently at the screen. He didn’t know anything—how I raised Aminat, how much effort I’d made, how time and time again she had spurned my good will, and how finally she had run away from me. He didn’t know anything about me, and I didn’t have any desire to tell him.
“Pretty girl,” said John. “Though much too thin. Her voice is unbelievable.”
“You think so?”
He didn’t have any grandkids and was lonely. I thought it was gallant of him to watch the show—with Aminat struggling to hit the notes—without saying anything more. Not then and not the next day or the one after that.
Suddenly I had everything I needed, without having to fight for it. It was an unfamiliar feeling. I didn’t need an alarm in the morning. I could sleep in. I didn’t need to make breakfast. John took care of that. He did the shopping. It turned out he could cook. Simple Italian dishes, but they tasted good. He served the food in the living room and cleaned up himself afterwards. I didn’t even go into the kitchen. I was mostly in my bedroom, occasionally in the living room (either eating at the table or sitting in the chair), and also sometimes in the garden. John’s house had a magnificent garden—giant, with rosebushes lining the house, and softly sloping down to fruit trees that were already setting fruit.
“Why don’t you plant vegetables?” I asked.
“I don’t know how,” said John.
I took off the rhinestone-bejeweled slippers with high heels and walked barefoot on the lawn. The lawn was his, too. He was a real English gentleman.
The grass caressed the soles of my feet. Behind the fruit trees I discovered a greenhouse. The glass was frosted with pollen. I ran my finger over it. I’d never been here. John’s wife had probably raised tomatoes here.
“I do well with tomatoes,” I told John over tea that afternoon. We were sitting on the terrace with our cups of tea in front of us and a tin of gingersnaps. “I have a green thumb.”
John answered: “Go ahead and grow them for next summer then.”
We went shopping in shops I’d never been in before. The saleswomen brought me clothing and lace underwear, John drank espresso on an upholstered bench in the corner, and he just raised his eyebrow
occasionally when I came out of the changing room and walked around to see whether the clothes fit well.
John’s face was inscrutable and I didn’t ask his opinion. I knew that I looked good and that I had a nice figure. I also had great taste—I left the dressing room only in things that accentuated the delicateness and gentle curviness of my body. I could see in the merciless light of the dressing room itself that here and there some muscle and skin had lost its tautness. But I knew I’d soon have that back in hand. It stood me in good stead to be so slim just then. I had always had a healthy appetite, but it had left me of late. I was living primarily on tea with milk and ginger snaps.
I didn’t say thank you when John paid with his credit card and carried the shopping bags to the car. I knew I had earned it all. At home I changed and we watched Aminat again. She looked better, too. She’d gotten over her constant trembling and the panic had faded from her eyes. Her hair was freshly washed and fell so naturally over her shoulders that I could tell immediately how much work had gone into it. She was now one of twenty girls being shouted at by three choreographers. Now and then they inserted scenes in which the girls sang individually and I thought to myself: Mine is still the prettiest.
John occasionally said: “What a horrible show.”
And less frequently: “My God, what a voice.”
I didn’t think Aminat sang very nicely. I’d often heard her and I had never particularly liked the way she sang. Her voice wasn’t powerful or melodic. But it did tug at your heartstrings. That much was true, I had to admit. And it was probably the reason they’d chosen Aminat. People liked it when someone tugged at their heart strings. I couldn’t understand why.
I put on a silk pantsuit and new golden shoes and put my hair up. I bought a rotisserie chicken, peppers, marinated sheep’s milk cheese, and a honeydew melon. I didn’t ask John whether I could use his Mercedes, I simply said: “You needn’t accompany me today.”
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine Page 23
