by Eric Dupont
“It’s more hygienic,” she said.
She had a point. Anyway, it wasn’t as if I knew anyone. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might run into one of the ladies from my building. Like all good Germans, they love to slowly bake themselves in wooden boxes. And I hadn’t realized that some nights the saunas are mixed. Like last night. Gasp! Fortunately, there were only three people inside: an old man who grunted occasionally as he stared at the floor and sweated buckets, a huge man about Suzuki’s age, and an old woman sitting on the upper bench. I didn’t look up, wanting to preserve her modesty.
The big man nodded at me and went on sweating in silence. Then he said something to the old guy that I didn’t understand. Two minutes later, they left. I think the old man might have been the fat guy’s father. Finding myself alone with the old woman, I risked a glance in her direction. My heart skipped a beat. It was Magda! Stark naked! She appeared to have dozed off; her eyes were closed. I don’t know how she could sleep in such heat. I read somewhere that old people are less sensitive to heat. The air was scorching my lungs. Since I was all alone with her, I couldn’t help watching her, especially since she had her eyes closed. She really was sleeping. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable. My only thought was to get out of there without making a noise so we wouldn’t both die of shame and embarrassment. How could I ever look her in the eye again?
She stirred suddenly. Her knee moved. I could see between her legs in the half-light. How could I not look? Well, wait till you hear this: she has a birthmark exactly like yours between her legs, a little bass clef. Only with an old scar running through it. God knows how she managed to hurt herself there. Horseback riding? A car accident? A circus routine gone wrong? Who knows! The scar ran right through the bass clef. The doctor had done a good job stitching it back up. I wanted to wake her up and say, “Magda, it’s just that, uhh, you have a birthmark just like my brother’s, right there, just under your vagina,” but a little voice inside my head told me not to move. You can’t very well tell a seventy-year-old woman you’ve been peering between her legs. What would she have thought? And anyway I didn’t know how to say “birthmark” in German. Shaken and on the verge of collapsing from the heat, I had to get out of there. It was probably a mirage. I got dressed again after a freezing-cold shower. On my way out of the locker room, I saw her slowly emerge from the sauna and smile at the attendant. I waited a long time to be sure she’d left the sports center. There was no way I was saying a word to her.
I can’t believe they can just walk around stark naked like that. In front of perfect strangers, too. Can you imagine that happening in Montreal? Anyway, I couldn’t get the scarred birthmark out of my head, not even after I fell asleep. It’s on the inside of your left leg, isn’t it? Sorry to bring it up, but it really was exactly the same as yours. I almost wanted to take a photo!
My God! Can you imagine the commotion it would have caused, the flash going off in the sauna like that?
Your traumatized brother,
Gabriel
P.S. Did you get the bass clef from Mom? Do you know?
* * *
Oranienburg–Wannsee
May 22, 1999
Dear Michel,
I have to pull myself together.
Sich zusammenreißen.
Mich zusammenreißen, that’s how you say it. But before I recover my self-control, there’s going to be a long, noisy fall.
The firing squad used real bullets.
I died instantly.
And yet this morning, I woke up with all the happiness in the world in my heart. If I’d been you, I’d probably have sung something. Forgive me all the jibes. You know I don’t mean half of it. Perhaps, like you, I’m just trying to create a stir. I’m about to lose my footing. Look out the window and you’ll see me flying high above Castel Sant’Angelo and into the Tiber.
She was to be back from Egypt today. I had the date and the city she was flying out of (Cairo) but no flight number. My enthusiasm, or a sixth sense, sent me to Tegel Airport before noon. That’s where flights from Egypt fly into, I think. Although that would mean flying from Egypt.
I’d circled the date on the calendar in my little Lichtenberg kitchen. The weather was beautiful, there were flowers everywhere. Berlin is pretty in the springtime. See? It is like Montreal: winter is so ugly that the first lilacs seem fabulously beautiful. Winter here is not the same, you’ll say. And I’ll reply that Berlin’s winter is worse, precisely because they don’t have our snow to brighten the gloom.
It was so painful. I went to the airport and sat down at Arrivals to wait for her. There were two flights from Cairo today: the first landed at 1:15 p.m., the second at 5 p.m. I parked myself outside the doors at Arrivals at a quarter past one. After waiting for an hour, I went back to sit in the café, telling myself it must be the five o’clock flight, that she’d be so pleased to see me she’d come back with me to Lichtenberg and spend the night, without even going home first. Worst case, we’d drive her sister back home and then go to my place. It’s hard to be left in peace at Claudia’s. She shares an apartment with her sister and two other girls in Kreuzberg. I was a bit fed up with “I’d like to get to know you better” and “Things went so fast in Toronto. Now we can start over in Berlin.” That’s all I’ve heard from her since I got here in January. She’s always refused to see me, claiming that’s how all serious relationships should start. In Toronto, we’d see each other every other Sunday. To go to her Lutheran church, you’ll rightly point out, but at least she’d come for a walk in the park with me afterward.
At five o’clock, I took my courage in both hands and told myself this was it: she’d be on this plane. Then the passengers arrived one by one: men traveling alone, families, even a group of German grandmothers, their suitcases no doubt full of little terracotta sphinxes. But no Claudia. It was impossible, I thought to myself. She must have given me the wrong date. I stayed there a while longer, in front of the automatic doors.
I took the subway over to her apartment in Kreuzberg, thinking that maybe she’d flown home via London or Amsterdam instead and I’d been waiting at the wrong arrivals gate. I bought her flowers on the way out of the subway, which was strange because that’s not something I ever do. I’ve always thought that flowers belong to another era but, all things considered, the relationship Claudia was proposing was also something from an earlier era. Outside the Anal Café, just opposite her place on Muskauer Straße, I sensed that this was a decisive moment, that I was going to carry her back to my apartment on my shoulders. I bounded up the stairs four at a time. I had that old song in my head, the one Suzuki would sing sometimes. Will you love me all the time? I’ve never heard anyone else sing it. She’d sing it to me when it was just the two of us. In fact, in the beginning—forgive me, dear brother—I thought that Suzuki must be in love with me. You should take a good listen to the lyrics. I know it’s not opera, but it stays in your head. Once you’ve heard it, you won’t forget it.
I bumped into Gudrun, Claudia’s sister, in the stairwell. When she spotted me, she froze in her tracks, like a pillar of salt. Actually, I didn’t recognize her right away. It wasn’t until I’d bumped into her that I realized she had to be Claudia’s sister: the same nose, same eyes. I spoke to her. She seemed puzzled. I told her who I was. She smiled when she heard my name, a smile I didn’t like at all.
“Gabriel! So you’re Gabriel!” she said. She started to rummage around in her bag as if to find something she wanted to show me. She thought better of it and, looking away, rushed down the stairs as if the devil himself were after her. I followed her out onto the sidewalk.
“When did you get back? I waited for you all day at Tegel. Weren’t you supposed to come back today?” I asked, grabbing her arm. She tried to get away.
“Come back from where? What are you talking about? Let go of me!”
“You were in Egypt with Claudia. Is she back now too? Don’t tell me she stayed!”
Gudrun gave me a terrified look.
“You learned German. Claudia mentioned a guy who didn’t speak German very well. You’re the Canadian, aren’t you? Gabriel Lamontagne.”
“Yes. What did she say about me? Where is she?”
“Not much. Just that . . . Listen, Gabriel. Did Claudia tell you we were in Egypt?”
“Is she up there?”
“Can I tell you something about my sister?”
“Tell me!”
“You can either go up and talk to her or not. It’s up to you. Either way, the rest of your life will stay exactly the same. Your visit won’t change a thing. Claudia has already given you everything she had to give. If I were you, I’d leave right now. But you can always go up if you need to be clear in your own mind. One last thing: I was in Egypt, not her. I was the one who sent you the postcard. I felt bad about it, but I did it for her. You don’t know her. She would have made my life miserable if I hadn’t. And, by the way: if you tell her you met me, I’ll deny the whole thing. Leb wohl, Gabriel. Please, you can still save yourself. But she’s my sister and I’m stuck with her until my dying day.”
Gudrun was rather weird, I thought. A little unhinged, if you know what I mean. But I should have realized she was trying to tell me something important. She practically ran off, yanking her arm free from my grip. I went back inside and slowly walked up to the second floor. I rang the bell. You’ll never guess who opened it. Wlad! Wlad from the German class in Toronto! He looked me up and down like he’d just seen a ghost. He spun around and shouted: “Claudia, komm schnell! Der Gabriel ist da!” When I saw Claudia, with not the slightest trace of a suntan, I began to piece it all together. Then the Pole started speaking to Claudia like I didn’t understand German. Stuff like “What the hell is this gorilla doing here?”
Claudia had just emerged from the bedroom, still looking rumpled. Then she flew into a rage. “What are you doing here?” Questions, reproaches, and that idiot Wlad with his stupid smirk. I would have been able to hold back if he hadn’t opened his big mouth. But instead of keeping quiet, or disappearing off into a corner somewhere to let me talk things over with Claudia, he got the brilliant idea of providing me with that bit of provocation I was waiting for to grab him by the throat. The poor idiot, a gangly string bean of a man, looked me straight in the eye, laughing as he said, “Tja, du hast schöne Blümchen Gabriel! Sind die für deinen Bruder?” In other words, “What lovely flowers. Are they for your brother?” But in a tone that implied so much more. I don’t know what Claudia must have told him about you. Back in Toronto, she’d often ask me about incest and twin brothers. The way she tells it, all twins are in love with each other.
I didn’t hesitate a second. I shut the door behind me so that no one would see us from the landing. It all happened so quickly. I put the little moron in a hold, like what I’d do to you when we were messing about in the yard, only this time I wasn’t laughing. I grabbed him by the neck the way you’d grab a nervous bull calf, forcing him down as I leaned into his neck with my knee. As soon as his head was caught between my thighs—by the way, I’m up to 350-pound squats now, I could have snapped his spinal cord in two just by contracting my abs—he realized he was done for. I grabbed both his flailing hands, then, as Claudia looked on, I gave him the hiding of his life. He tried to kick his way free, but the more he kicked, the tighter I held his head. He got the message. I must have hit him twenty or twenty-five times before releasing the stranglehold. His ass was red; he couldn’t even stand up. I helped him up, of course, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and pinning him to the wall hard enough for him not to forget in a hurry. “Nein, mein lieber Wlad,” I replied, “sie sind für dich!” The flowers were for him. As I said it, I thought to myself how proud you would have been of my repartee. That took the wind out of his sails, of course. Claudia was standing there in the corner, head in hands, begging me to leave, geh, geh, bitte geh . . . I didn’t stick around. If there are two things I can’t stand it’s sarcasm and last wordism. The only person I tolerate those failings in is you.
Outside, I headed to the subway. All I wanted was to keep going, to run away and not turn back. I got off at Warschauer Straße, then took refuge in the S-Bahn. I began to cry. It was all so very clear. Claudia had never gone to Egypt. She’d never sent me a postcard of the Sphinx. She’d asked her sister to, that’s all. She’d made the whole thing up to get me to leave her alone. I know people often think I’m stupid because I’m big and strong, but that was going too far. I’ll never know if I was crying because of Claudia or because that was the first time I confronted my own stupidity and realized I was no match for it. I cried, not because of what I’d done to Wlad or because I’d no doubt frightened Claudia. No, I cried at my own weakness in the face of so little, at the realization that I couldn’t control myself in a situation as stupid as that one. But the sound of the train consoled me; the people sitting opposite pretended not to see me. The stations scrolled past. I changed trains at Spandau and went back to Erkner. And I took a third train at Erkner. I didn’t want to ever have to get off. I must have taken the same trip four times before midnight. I took out my notebook to write to you on the final trip. I don’t know why I’m thinking of you. I wish it were just the two of us on this train as it travels counterclockwise around Berlin. We could talk. I miss you, dear brother.
A Japanese lady sitting across from me doesn’t dare look.
I think I must be crying.
Sich zusammenreißen.
Gabriel
* * *
Lichtenberg
May 24, 1999
My dear brother,
It’s noon in Lichtenberg. I’m just back from Magda’s, where I spent the night. After the disaster at Claudia’s on Saturday night and my never-ending S-Bahn journey, I took the subway to Prenzlauer Berg and made my way to one of the few remaining grotty taverns in the neighborhood. I drank. Schultheiss. Don’t ask me how many litres. All I remember is waking up at Magda’s at four o’clock in the morning. The cops who had brought me home were still there. I think I must have let myself go a little, lost control. I was lying on the long sofa in the living room, while Magda showed the cops out. “I’ll take care of him,” I heard her say curtly. It felt like my head was in a vice. She brought me a bottle of fizzy water.
“You’ll be needing this, you drunkard.”
“Where am I?”
“At my place. Prenzlauer Berg’s finest brought you back here. Just as well you were still carrying that letter from your Wessi-Tante. Otherwise you’d be spending the night down at the station. They saw your address on the envelope. They rang all the buzzers. The whole block came out, ten floors of neighbors. They all laughed as they watched the police haul you up to Hilde’s. Your muscles are very heavy, Kapriel. Hilde had her lover with her, so she told them to carry you up to your apartment. When I saw them pass by, I told them to leave you on my sofa. You put on quite a show in Prenzlauer Berg, by the sound of things.”
“Magda, please don’t embarrass me.”
“But it’s too funny . . . They say you drank until your head fell onto the counter. When the bartender asked you to pay up, you tried to start a fight. That’s when they called the cops. You owe me thirty marks. Your tab.”
“I’m so sorry . . . I’ll go back upstairs.”
“And that’s not all! When you saw the police, apparently you cried: ‘Scarpia, bigoto satiro!’ Excuse me for laughing.”
“Oh my God.”
Magda helped me out of my clothes to take a shower. I was covered in mud and dust. She passed me a lime-green robe and forced me to down some aspirin. She wanted to know what had happened. I poured my heart out to her, told her all about Wlad, the beating I’d given him, Claudia.
“It doesn’t surprise me one bit. I could have told you that would happen.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you had to see for yourself. You wouldn’t have believed me. Claudia would have stayed in
Toronto if she’d had any feelings for you at all. Plain and simple. You’d have been married long ago. You were very funny at the Biergarten, you and your courtly love. You’re too cute, Kapriel.”
“I . . . I want to go upstairs.”
“No, you’ll stay right here. I need to talk to you. I was waiting for you to see your Claudia again before I spoke to you. The time has come. Stay here. Don’t move. You have a bad case of jealousy! Whoever do you get that from? Did you know that jealousy will destroy you in the end? Jealousy is a poison that kills slowly. It makes no distinction between executioner and victim. You’re becoming a danger to yourself and others. I’ll let you sleep for a few hours. You’ll be able to see straighter after that.”
As it happens, I slept for at least another eight hours. I think Magda went out. She must have come back that afternoon. I was sitting on the sofa in tears.
“Dry your eyes, poor knight!”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“But you’re hilarious. I’m sorry.”
“Can I go home now?”
“Not until I talk to you. Wait, I’ll pour myself some Riesling. Would you like a glass too?”
“No, no . . . definitely not.”
“Pull yourself together, Kapriel!”
“I can’t. I’m finished.”
“Ach! Horsefeathers! Wait till you hear my story! Then you’ll be kaputt! Poor little angel!”
“What’s your story? Another pigeon joke?”
“No. A tale of jealousy. Or rather, the tale of a fit of jealousy that destroyed two lives. I think you could learn from it before something terrible happens to you.”
