The Blind Side of the Heart

by Unknown

  Talking hot air? Listen, Grumbach, talk as much hot air as you like, but spare your fellow men yourself and your nonsense! You must seek true grace and forgiveness only from your God, sir. Helene’s mother had been regaining control of herself, and spoke those last few words with stern clarity.

  I really would like to ask you, Grumbach began.

  To the Fair One! And again Helene heard her mother’s laughter, the laughter with depths that a guest like this could never guess at, could never plumb, which was just as well.

  Helene’s mother offered the guest the remains of her cigarette.

  So now, sir, take this outside with you. You’d like to ask me? No beggars here, no hawkers, no itinerant musicians . . . you’ll forgive me.

  From her safe retreat in the darkness above, Helene saw the guest nod. He took the glowing cigarette, which must be burning close to his fingers. As her mother withdrew into her bedroom, coughing, and closed the door, the guest nodded. Carefully, stick and glowing cigarette in his hand, he climbed down the steep stairs. He was still nodding as he reached the front door and went out into Tuchmacherstrasse. The door latched behind him.

  Helene stood up and tried to open her father’s door again. She shook it.

  Let me in, it’s me.

  At first all was still behind the door, but then Helene heard Martha’s light footsteps inside.

  Why didn’t you open the door?

  I didn’t want him to hear her.

  Why not?

  He’s forgotten her. Have you noticed that he hasn’t asked about her these last few weeks? I couldn’t tell him she’s living on the floor just below and simply doesn’t want to see him.

  Martha took Helene’s hand and drew her over to their father’s bed.

  How relaxed he looks, Helene remarked.

  Martha said nothing.

  Don’t you think he looks relaxed?

  Martha still did not answer and Helene thought he must be glad to have a daughter like her, a nurse who not only dressed the inflamed stump of his left leg daily, but injected him with painkillers and was careful, day after day, to talk herself and him out of the fear that he might have typhoid. Their father could not keep down any fluids now, but there were several possible reasons for that, which Martha hastily listed, while Helene read medical manuals, allegedly to prepare herself for training as a nurse, in fact so as not to lose sight entirely of her wish to study medicine.

  Helene sat down on the chair and, when Martha set about washing their father’s yellow foot, she took the top book off the pile lying beside her. She glanced up only now and then, to suggest that her father’s steadily rising temperature might be a symptom of typhoid after all, developing after some delay.

  Martha said nothing to that. It had not escaped her that their father’s condition had deteriorated considerably. But she said: You don’t understand anything about it yet.

  Over the last few weeks, Martha had shown Helene how to do everything she did. They handled their father’s body in turn as he lay there, looking so defenceless, Helene thought. There was nothing he could do but suffer his daughters’ hands on his body. They were not caressing him lovingly but exploring his body as if to find out something and as if, when they did, it would do them some good. Martha told Helene where every organ was, although Helene had known all that for a long time. Martha couldn’t help noticing how his spleen was swelling by the day; she must know what that meant.

  For some time now, Martha had been unable to go to the hospital in the morning. She stayed at home, watching over her father’s life, easing it for him. Helene noticed that Martha was scraping and scrubbing herself more frequently every day. After each visit to her father’s bedside Martha scraped at her hands thoroughly, right up to the elbows; she called in the aid of the hairbrush and openly scrubbed her back with it.

  At first she asked Helene to empty the bedpan with some hesitation, but then they came to take it for granted that Helene would carry the bedpans of fluids out of the room, rinse them with boiling water and clean the thermometer. Helene washed her hands and her arms up to the elbows, she scrubbed her fingers and the palms and backs of her hands with the nailbrush. It was not supposed to itch, it mustn’t itch. Cold water on her wrists, soap, plenty of soap, which had to foam into a lather. It didn’t itch, she just had to wash herself. Helene conscientiously entered the temperature from the thermometer on the curve of the chart recording it. Martha watched her.

  You know what it means when the spleen swells, said Helene. Martha didn’t look at her. Helene wanted to help Martha, she wanted at least to take her father’s pulse, but Martha pushed her away from the bed and the sick man in it.

  One evening the sweetish smell met Helene on her way upstairs. The stench of rotting almost took her breath away. She opened the window; the smell of damp leaves rose to her nostrils. A cool October day was drawing to its close. The wind blew through the elms. Her father wouldn’t open his one eye any more. He was breathing through his mouth, which was wide open.

  Not without her. Martha was standing beside Helene. She reached for her hand, squeezed her little sister’s hand so hard that it hurt them both, and repeated what she had said. Not without her here.

  Martha left the room, determined to break down the door to her mother’s bedroom by force if necessary.

  This was the first time for days that Helene had been alone with her father. She carefully kept her breathing shallow and went over to his bed. His hand was heavy, the skin roughened. When Helene picked up that yellow skin in two fingers it did not drop back into place again. Helene was not surprised when, in the light of the lamp, she saw the red rash on his chest where his nightshirt opened. Her father’s hand was pleasantly warm, his temperature had risen daily by tenths of a degree until it reached forty.

  From below, she heard clattering and furious shouts. No one was supposed to disturb Mother. Helene changed the sheet that they were using instead of a blanket, now that their father was so hot inside. Her glance went instinctively to the festering stump. Its sweet smell had enticed maggots out. She didn’t want to look; it was as if his wound were alive, as if death were licking its way towards it. Helene swallowed as she uncovered his genitals – they looked to her small and dried-up, as if they had withered away and just happened to be lying where they were by chance. The instrument of her conception. Helene laid her hand on her father’s forehead; she bent over him.

  She didn’t even whisper the words: I love you. Her lips formed them, that was all, as she kissed his forehead.

  Hoar frost, only a small one. My little pigeon. We’re not freezing any more, her father stammered. He hadn’t spoken for weeks. She hardly recognized his voice, but it must be his. Helene stayed with him, she touched his forehead with her lips and stayed there. Her head suddenly felt so heavy that she wanted to lay her face on her father’s. She knew that her father had always called her mother his little pigeon.

  The body is only a disguise, her father whispered. That’s all, and invisible. It’s warm inside the house, come in to me, little pigeon, no one can find us, no one can scare us. Father put his hands to his ears and held them there. Stay with me, my words, don’t run out. My pigeon is coming, my little pigeon is coming.

  For a moment Helene was ashamed; she had heard the words spoken to her mother, or at least meant for her mother, and would be keeping them to herself.

  Only when the shivering began did Helene stand up. She caressed her father’s head. Countless numbers of his hairs, grown long now, stuck to her hand. So many hairs sticking to Helene’s hand. Full of surprise, she wondered how he could still have any left on his head. What had begun as shivering became more violent; her father’s body was shaking, spittle flowed from the corner of his mouth. Helene expected him to turn blue as she had seen him do a few days ago. She said: It’s me, Helene.

  But through his shivering, his words sounded unnaturally clear. Such a sweet smile, you have. We two together. Only the shells explode and give us away, they�
��re so loud and we are so soft. Too soft. It’s spurting, take care!

  Helene took a step back to avoid her father’s fist as it lashed out.

  Father, would you like something to drink?

  A legbone, a legbone, a legbone dancing on its own. Her father laughed and with his laughter the shivering died down. Ripples moving away from their point of origin. Helene was not sure whether he was talking about his lost leg.

  Something to drink?

  Suddenly her father’s hand shot out, unexpectedly strong, to seize Helene and hold her firmly by the wrist.

  Helene was alarmed. She turned, but there was no sign of Martha coming back. Indistinct sounds from the floor below showed that she and Mariechen had managed to get into the room, that was all. Helene twisted out of her father’s grasp, and next moment he seemed to fall asleep. She took the carafe of water from the bedside table and poured some of it into the little bottle that Martha had been using for the last few days to get liquid into her father’s mouth.

  As soon as she put the little bottle to his lips he said, still in the position of a sleeping man: Drunken women in my mouth.

  He couldn’t drink, couldn’t take any more water. Helene moistened her father’s lips with her fingers. She resorted to the syringe for aid, taking out the needle and dripping water into his mouth from it.

  Then she replaced the needle and filled the syringe with morphine to the lowest mark, held it up and expelled the air. Her father’s arm was covered with puncture marks, so she looked for somewhere on his neck. An abscess had formed there, but next to it she found a good place for the injection. She pressed down slowly.

  Later, she must have fallen asleep at his bedside from exhaustion. Twilight was falling as she raised her head and heard her mother cursing as she approached. Obviously she was being forcibly brought upstairs. Martha’s voice was heard, loud and determined: You must see him, Mother.

  The door was opened, their mother was resisting, she didn’t want to enter the room.

  I won’t, Mother kept saying again and again, I won’t. She hit out. But Martha and Mariechen were having none of that; they propelled her to the door and then, now that she was clinging firmly to them both, hauled her over to Father’s bed with all their strength.

  There was a moment’s silence. Mother stood up straight. She saw her husband, the man she hadn’t seen for six years. She closed her eyes.

  Just what did he do to you? Martha asked her, breaking the silence and unable to hide her indignation. For the first time in her life, Helene heard Mariechen speaking her own Sorbian language, a soft sing-song. She was familiar with its rhythm from the women in the market place. Mariechen folded her hands, clearly in prayer.

  Ignoring that, Mother groped her way towards the bed like a blind puppy, a creature that doesn’t yet know its way but is instinctively getting the hang of it. She took hold of Father’s sheet and bent over the sick man. When he opened his sound eye, she whispered, with a tenderness that frightened Helene: Just say you’re still alive.

  Her head sank on Father’s chest and Helene was sure that now she would shed tears. But she stayed where she was, motionless and still.

  My little pigeon, said Father, laboriously searching for words. I didn’t give you a room in my house just for you to shut yourself up in it.

  Mother withdrew from him.

  Yes, you did, she said quietly. All the things in my room, all the hills and valleys they make, that’s where I’m at home. Nowhere else. They are me. Who knows what care I put into laying out my paths? Clearings. Your daughters wanted to throw away the Bautzen News, tidying up they call it. They tore away the chiffon as if it wasn’t hiding anything, they took last December’s editions apart, I worked for days stacking them up again. By subject. According to subject, theme, material, putting them together, stacking them, putting them in order that way, not by the date. I’m a nocturnal creature. It’s dark in me, but never dark enough.

  Helene glanced at Martha, looking across the bed and over her parents’ heads. They were so preoccupied with each other that Helene felt as if she were at the theatre. Perhaps Martha was thinking the same. Mother’s heart has gone blind, Martha had once said when Helene asked what was wrong with her. She can only see things, not people any more, that’s why she collects those old pots and pans, scarves with holes in them and common-or-garden fruit stones. You never knew when this or that might come in useful. Only the other day she’d been sewing a peach stone to her woollen cape. Mother could see a horse in a piece of bent tree root and would tie a tail of hair recently cut from one of her daughters’ heads to the back of it. She had drawn a strand of wool through the hole in an enamel dish which said SOAP on it in large letters, and tied assorted buttons and pebbles collected over the years to the strand. This soap dish now hung over her bedroom door to act as a bell, so that she would have warning, even in a drowsy state, if anyone came in. Helene remembered a walk many years ago, perhaps their last outing together before Father left for the war. Mother had gone on this walk with her family only with reluctance and after repeated requests from her husband. She had suddenly bent down, picked up a curved piece of iron from the rim of a cartwheel and cried happily: Eureka! She recognized the earth in the iron and the fire in the shape of it, picked it up, held it in the air and took it home, where she found it a new function as a shoehorn, discerning a soul in the thing. She talked a soul into it, gave it a soul, so to speak. Mother in the role of God. Everything was to have its being through her alone. Eureka: Helene often wondered about the meaning of the word. But her mother could no longer recognize her younger daughter, her heart had gone blind, as Martha said, so that she couldn’t see people any more. She could tolerate only those whom she had met before the death of her four sons.

  Helene looked at her mother, who described herself as a nocturnal creature, pointing out the attention she paid to the existence of her paths and clearings, making all these confessions like a brilliant actress. Malice had become second nature to her: it was the effect that counted. But Helene could be wrong. The appearance of malice was Mother’s only possible armour, malicious words her weapons, in her triumph over what had once bound the couple together as man and wife. Something about this woman appeared to Helene so immeasurably false, concentrating as she did so mercilessly on herself, without the faintest trace of love or even a glance for her father, that she could not help hating her mother.

  Father moved his mouth, struggling with a jaw that wouldn’t obey him. Then he said distinctly: I wanted to see you, my little pigeon. I’m back because of you.

  You never should have gone.

  There was no grief left in Mother’s voice; all the grief had frozen into certainty. Your daughters wanted to get rid of my books, but I saved a quotation for you, one of my favourites, to console me for your absence.

  I’m glad you had consolation. Father’s voice was faint and free of any mockery.

  It’s from Machiavelli, I expect you remember him? The first law for every creature is: Preserve yourself! Live! You sow hemlock and act as if you saw ears of corn ripening!

  I’ve lost my leg, look, I’ll be staying here now. Father tried to force a smile, a kind one. An understanding, gentle smile. The kind with which he could once smooth over any disagreement between them.

  It would never have been lost here, not here with me.

  Father did not reply. Helene felt a strong wish to defend him; she wanted to say something to justify his leaving six years ago, but nothing occurred to her. So she said: Mother, he went to the war for all of us, he lost his leg for all our sakes.

  No, said Mother, shaking her head. Not for me.

  She rose to her feet.

  She walked out of the door, turning back once, without a glance for Helene as she told her: And you keep out of this, child. What do you know about me and him?

  Martha followed their mother to the stairs, undaunted and unimpressed.

  Then her mother, whose heart had gone blind, of whom Helene
knew nothing much but the orders she gave and the thoughts that cut her off from the world, went back to her dying husband, knowing that her daughters were there behind her, yet still she said: This isn’t the first time I’ve been dying.

  Helene took Martha’s hand; she almost laughed. She had so often heard her mother say that! Usually it led to demands for them to do more housework, show greater respect, or run an errand; sometimes it was a mere explanation, although its intention was not easy to decipher and its purpose could keep the girls guessing for hours on end. But here at her husband’s deathbed, obviously nothing meant anything to their mother but her own emotion, the darker side of feelings that were sufficient only for herself.

  Martha removed her hand from Helene’s. She took her mother by the shoulder. Can’t you see he’s the one who’s dying? Father is dying. Not you. Can’t you finally understand that this is not about your death?

  It’s not? Mother looked at Martha in surprise.

  No. Martha shook her head as if she had to convince her mother.

  Mother’s baffled gaze suddenly fell on Helene. A smile came to her lips, as if she were setting eyes on someone she hadn’t seen for a long time. Come here, my daughter, she said to Helene.

  Helene dared not move. She didn’t want to get an inch closer to her mother, not the smallest step. She would have liked to leave the room. She was avoiding not so much the threat of her mother’s imminent rejection as her touch, as if that touch might carry some kind of infection. Helene felt her old fear that some day her heart might go as blind as her mother’s. Mother’s smile, still confident a moment ago, froze. Helene had a recurrent nightmare that had tormented her for years, about two gods who looked like Apollo in the engraving hanging over the shelf for paper in the sales room of the printing works. The two gods who resembled Apollo were arguing, each claiming his sole right at the top of his voice: Me, me! I am the Lord thy God, they both cried at the same time. And everything went dark around Helene. So dark that she couldn’t see anything any more. In this dream she groped her way forward, she felt something slippery as slugs, felt heat, fire and finally she fell into a void. Before she could hit the bottom of the abyss, she always woke up with her heart racing, pressed her nose to Martha’s back as her sister lay breathing regularly, and while her nightdress stuck to her back, cold and clammy, she prayed to God to free her from the nightmare. But God was obviously angry. The nightmare came back again. Perhaps his feelings were hurt, and Helene knew why: he guessed that she was thinking of him in a certain shape, as the figure of a stately Apollo, and not only that, she saw him double, she saw his brother, and while she prayed to one she turned her back on the other – and in the end her prayer itself left no god any choice but anger.