I lean my head against the dirty green wall. A little higher up on the wall is a scribbled drawing, a detailed image of two men copulating. My head leans against the caption: “Death to all faggots.” I take a few deep breaths. Then I look at the paper again.
He hasn’t changed. The same mustache, the same dark eyes, the same hulking brow and deep creases running from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth. The ugliest face I’ve ever seen, made even worse by the pitiful expression he’s put on for the photo. The corners of his mouth hang sadly, his eyes plead, his curly hair is sticking up all crazy. Poor Vadim. He barks, but he doesn’t bite—unless someone is so mean as to bait him. Then he’ll snap at you, of course, but it’s your own fault for getting him worked up. As long as you know how to behave around him, he’s a sweetheart.
Everything goes black again. This time I have to take deliberate breaths for much longer before the darkness starts to dissipate.
He probably weaseled his way in with my mother with that pitiful grimace, I think to myself. Playing to her empathetic soul. She petted anyone who looked up at her like that. Dogs, too—and not one of them ever bit her.
But she sure as hell got suckered by Vadim. How could she have been so stupid? Couldn’t she see what a monster he was right away?
“He used to be different,” my mother said to me once. “Not so angry and so weak. You know yourself how bad it’s gotten since he began spending all day in front of the TV, barely understanding a word.”
“I know exactly what he was like before, too. And it wasn’t any better.”
“That’s not fair.”
“And what about him? Is he fair?”
“He’s having a hard time, you can see that yourself.”
Be careful of people who feel weak, I think. Because it’s possible that one day they’ll want to feel strong and you’ll never recover from it. Maybe that’s a thought to add to my file, the one I’m going to call “Marina.” The stuff I wrote last night I deleted immediately afterwards.
I can’t get over the feeling that Susanne Mahler wants to pet Vadim E. a little.
I have to read the piece a dozen times. And even then I don’t really understand it. Individual sentences stick out in my head and mix with others. I still love her. I wish I could tell her. I’m writing her a letter. It’s already 20 pages long, but the most important thing hasn’t been said yet. I’m ashamed to face my children. I’m also terribly sorry about the young man who also had to die.
The only thing that’s yours is a prison cell, I mutter. In a million years, I would never believe you said all of that on your own. Maybe Susanne Mahler took an interpreter with her who did as creative a job of translating as I do for Maria?
I’ve become a completely different person. Even my German is improving.
Susanne Mahler seems touched by it all. She looked at Vadim’s sketches—his attempts to hang onto the image of his wife’s transcendent beauty. His ex-wife, to be more precise. Whom he unfortunately killed—which perhaps he shouldn’t have done.
The drawings are primitive but heartfelt and expressive, according to Susanne Mahler.
My whole body is shaking with rage.
Vadim would be happy to show the letter he wrote to his wife to anybody who is interested. Susanne Mahler had held the handwritten pages in her hand; unfortunately she can’t read Russian.
The script is erratic, inconsistent, agitated.
Vadim has many more years to continue writing. I start to laugh. Vadim is writing about my mother. We’re rivals.
It would be better if instead he’d just kill himself. Or maybe not. I still hope to accomplish something in life.
I fold the paper, roll it up, and head upstairs. I carefully open the door and take off my shoes. For a second I think I see a ghost. But it’s only Maria in her flowing nightgown, made from the same fabric as Alissa’s.
Maria sews, too. Have I mentioned that?
She jumps when our eyes meet.
“Did you fall?” she asks and squints intently at my face. Her own face is swollen and pale like bread dough. Her cheeks quiver when she moves. She has pink and blue curlers in her hair.
A dream woman.
“Good morning,” I say, and walk past her to the bathroom.
I won’t say a word to her about it. She’s never mentioned Vadim in front of me. It’s wise of her. I know they barely saw each other. She visited us once, at most, while we were still in Moscow. I don’t know what she thinks of him and I don’t want to know.
I’ve never asked her what she thinks of my plan. It’s never occurred to me. I want to believe that she might sigh but that she wouldn’t say anything—and that she’d help me clean up the mess before the children got home.
She would understand that more blood wouldn’t be helpful for their development.
I also want to be sure that when it comes to bringing up the children, she’ll stick to my handbook while I’m in prison. Where perhaps Susanne Mahler will visit me and report: Sascha N. seems very much at peace. “I would do it all again,” she told this reporter, “if I hadn’t already succeeded in poisoning Vadim . . . ”
I update and expand my educational handbook regularly. As of now, it consists of the following:
1. Your mother was the best ever, and she lives on in you.
2. The idea that Vadim is your father is a big misunderstanding. Sascha believes that you are not his children but rather the children of the pilot who lived one floor down—a wonderful and handsome man. That’s why you are so good-looking.
3. Read everything you can get your hands on. That’s what your mother did.
4. Learn everything you want to know, and then learn some more. Don’t worry if something doesn’t go well. You are capable of so much.
5. Even if Maria likes to tell you the opposite, it doesn’t matter what other people think of you. Wear whatever you feel like, dye your hair blue if you think it looks nice. Act however you want, too.
6. Sing a lot.
7. Watch out for people who feel weak. They may want to feel strong one day and you might not survive that moment.
8. Don’t put any credence in worst-case scenarios like the one in the previous entry, even if Maria constantly predicts the end of the world is right around the corner. Be courageous and crazy and explore every wonderland you come across—just like Alice in the English fairytale, after whom your mother named Alissa.
9. Think about your older sister Sascha once in a while. But don’t visit her in prison—it’s not good for the psyche.
10. You are not poor little orphans, because your mother is immortal. Maria knows that, too.
And then I realize I don’t know anything about what Maria knows or doesn’t know.
I skip out of school two hours early one day because I just can’t take it anymore. I’ve felt for days as if I were wandering around in a thick, gray fog. I recognize the world around me, but it’s lost all color. I just don’t feel like looking any closer.
I don’t hear things around me—or to put it more accurately, I’m not listening, and the voices around me are blurred into a tangled rush of noise. The only thing I react to are children’s shrieks. I always turn to look to make sure it’s not Anton or Alissa. At home I spend most of my time lying in bed.
I’ve blown two exams—history and math. In both cases, the teachers came up to me after the class and said they wouldn’t count the exams toward my midterm grade. I didn’t understand what they were talking about at first because I hadn’t even opened the test booklet in either case.
I didn’t look at the teachers. I can’t stand those eyes. Another set of eyes examining me with worry and sympathy. Following me when I leave. I don’t want that.
I want to be invisible. But my mother wouldn’t have liked that. She always said you should be able to see, hear, and smell people.
I’m sure everyone would happily smell a little less of people than they have to smell of Vadim, I always answered. Is he allergi
c to water?
Once when I was a little kid I was bored in school and just got up and walked out of class, my mother told me.
I’m not bored now. But I leave two hours early because I’m afraid of just turning to stone in my chair. Unlike Anton, I don’t have an older sister to drag me back into the land of the living.
I am the older sister.
I ride the tram toward home in a fog. My sneakers dangle from my backpack, tied together by the laces. The rolled-up newspaper is stuck in the side pocket.
The heater is going underneath my seat. I can’t bring myself to switch seats.
But I’m roasting, so I manage to do something else: pull out the paper and open it. I always carry the entire paper around rather than just pulling out the local section. Just how I do it. The pages are frayed and falling apart.
I look at Vadim’s picture several times a day. It has an unbearable allure that I just can’t resist. And it’s the only thing that cuts through the fog. It reminds me of everything I have ahead of me, and it reminds me that dreaming about it isn’t enough.
Stupid, brainless, blind duck, I think. Haven’t you ever heard that every newspaper has a masthead? And do you not know what all’s on the masthead?
The address, among other things.
I get out of the tram at the next stop and hop on the other one—the one going in the opposite direction. I go as far as the main train station. I buy a ticket at one of the machines there and settle into a seat on the stinking commuter rail line to Frankfurt.
It’ll have to work without a map.
It works fine. At the main station in Frankfurt there’s a map on the wall. I find the right street. My name’s not Maria and I can read a map, no problem. It’s just three measly stops away on the subway.
I end up in front of a building that is not at all as imposing as I had imagined it would be.
It’s a gray box, taller than it is wide. Above the entrance is the name of the paper in blue lettering. I step through the glass door and come to a sort of counter. Behind it sits a pretty young woman who smiles at me. Next to her is another woman, a bit older; she’s on the phone but she smiles in my direction, too.
Something like shyness stirs inside me.
“Good afternoon,” says the woman not on the phone. “Can I help you?”
I clear my throat and forget for a second why I’m there. The woman smiles patiently. Her gaze keeps wandering to the rolled up copy of the paper I’m holding in my sweaty hand.
So this is what it looks like, I think. This is where it happens. I feel awestruck.
“Do you have a question?” The woman won’t let up. Her smile doesn’t fade one bit.
I force myself to come back and engage, rather than float away as I’ve been doing for the last few days.
“I’d like to speak to someone,” I say, and flinch because it sounds surprisingly loud.
“Someone in particular?”
“Yes. Susanne Mahler.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” I say, and gulp.
“One moment, please.” The woman drops her eyes and reaches for the phone. She presses it to her left ear—which has a little pearl earring in it—and looks at me again. She asks something, but I’m distracted again.
“What?” I ask like Anton. And then correct myself the way I correct him: “I’m sorry?”
“Your name, please.”
“Sascha. Sascha Naimann. Tell her that it’s . . . Vadim E.’s stepdaughter.”
“Vadim E.? Sascha Naimann? OK.”
She dials a number and starts to talk. I watch her lips move and I rock my dangling sneakers back and forth like a pendulum.
The woman on the phone raises her voice and looks at me. “Vadim E., you said? Sascha Naimann?”
“Yes.”
She listens to the person on the other end for a moment and then hangs up.
I look around for security officers, expecting to be escorted out.
It’s probably stupid, but I feel as if I’m standing in a temple I’m planning to desecrate.
The woman speaks to me again, but I miss the first part.
“Ms. Mahler will be down to get you in a moment.”
“To get me?” I’m briefly startled. The receptionist can’t do anything about my associations.
“Yes. She said she was coming right down. Otherwise I would take you to the reception area—but there’s no need.”
“Reception area?” I ask like an idiot. But just then a door opens off to the side and I see them. There are two.
I know which one is Susanne Mahler right away since the other one is a man. I look at his face as he approaches. He’s a tall man—his face is well above mine. He’s not old, but his hair is completely gray. He’s in jeans and a white shirt and a dark blue sports coat.
I hate men, I think absentmindedly. Do I hate men?
He extends his hand. “Ms. Naimann?”
I nod and at some point it occurs to me that I might shake his hand. I wipe my moist right hand on my jeans and briefly grasp his hand. Whatever name he says as we shake hands I miss. Then I shake hands with Susanne Mahler. Her hand is cool and soft, as if she’s just put on hand lotion.
“This is Ms. Mahler,” the man says.
“I figured,” I say hoarsely.
Ms. Mahler is the same size as me. She’s in her late twenties, maybe early thirties. She has short black hair playfully curled, red lips, and slightly squinty eyes. She’s in a tight cream-colored top and dark pants. She has a very pretty face, but it looks less attractive the longer you look at it. Down to her waist she looks flawless; below that she’s a little broader than she should be.
I look her in the eyes and recognize fear. She squints even more and lifts her chin to try to hide it.
I wonder why she’s worried, I think silently. What could possibly happen to her in life? Then it hits me like a locomotive. She thinks I’ve come to register a complaint. I get it. I show up out of the blue, looking all aggressive.
And she is absolutely right.
Ms. Mahler and the man take me into an elevator. I remain silent, even though it’s probably impolite. Ms. Mahler tries to smile at me. I try to concentrate and don’t look at her. Better to look at the man, who is studying the numbers on the elevator buttons.
It seems as if he already knows what kind of mood I’m in, I think. If this silence keeps up, I’m not going to be able to concentrate. I’ve got to say something to him and Ms. Mahler. If I can’t manage this, how will I ever kill Vadim?
They lead me into a square room with a big window. In the middle of the room is a round table. On it are a carafe, three cups, bottles of mineral water, and glasses. And a plate of cookies.
The man grabs the back of a chair and pulls it back from the table.
He doesn’t sit down. Instead, he motions for me to sit down and then walks around the table to sit opposite me.
Ms. Mahler pulls her own chair out. Her face betrays such panic that I already feel sorry for her. I think that I might want to reformulate my speech.
“Please, Ms. Naimann,” the man says once we’re all seated. “What’s on your mind?”
I’ve never been addressed as Ms. Naimann in my entire life. Until today. And now several times. Every time I hear it I’m tempted to turn around to check whether there’s someone else—Ms. Naimann—standing behind me.
They look at me attentively. Ms. Mahler fidgets a little in her chair.
I pull my newspaper out of my backpack and open it. Vadim’s face lies in front of me and I put my fist on it.
“This is why I’m here,” I say. “I read this.”
“You are here about Ms. Mahler’s article,” the man perceptively summarizes.
I nod.
“What do you think of it?” he asks.
“It’s shit,” I say.
Ms. Mahler tries to smile but can’t. I turn to her.
“Please excuse me,” I say. “I don’t mean to attack you
personally, but it’s hard not to when we’re talking about something you wrote. I’m sure you’re a good journalist. It’s just that this article is . . . it’s just not possible. You can’t talk about him like he’s a human being. You can’t just write it that way. He shot my mother and another good human being. Just like that. That was his way of dealing with the fact that these people just wanted to lead a life without him being involved. If you did research—if you read the transcripts of the trial—you would know exactly what happened. He is the meanest, dirtiest, most disgusting scum that you will probably ever encounter. And you write that his letter is emotionally powerful. Or his sketches. Did you ever stop to think what reading that would do to me?”
Ms. Mahler opens her lipstick-painted mouth and says something about a hundred thousand readers. She stops mid-sentence. I’m looking at her and can’t see what caused her to clam up. It’s possible a glance from the man that silenced her. The connection between those two pairs of eyes looks as tense as a piano wire. Or razor wire.
I’m glad I’m not directly between the two of them.
“I’m not sure how I should say this,” I say. “I probably can’t articulate all of this very well. But if Adolf Hitler were still alive, would you go visit him and praise his sketches?”
I know I’ve failed miserably and drop my head.
“I . . . ,” Ms. Mahler begins to say and then stops again.
«Ms. Naimann,» the man says quietly. I look up, surprised, and look him directly in the eyes. They are gray like the fog I’m hopelessly stumbling around in. «Ms. Naimann, I think I will be equally unable to articulate what is moving me at the moment. It’s said that words are nothing but smoke and mirrors. It’s a banal cliché, but unfortunately it’s also true for the most part. I just want you to know that I thoroughly understand your feelings.»
“If there’s one thing I will never believe,” I say just as quietly, “it’s that you have even the slightest hint of an idea about my feelings.”
Ms. Mahler lets out a horrified “Oh.” The rounded mouth suits her. I look quickly at her and away again. The man nods.
Broken Glass Park Page 5
