The Game of Cards

by Adolf Schroder

  Then Selma Bruhns opened the door.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you again, Herr Hauser,” she said, and as Markus murmured an apology, he wondered whether her voice had expressed a certain affability, or irritation over his unreliability, but all that he heard was the same uninvolved coldness with which she had greeted Markus from the first day. As he stepped into the hall, he wanted to go to the small room straightaway and get on with his work in an attempt to make up for lost time, but something happened that he had not been expecting. She laid her hand on his arm.

  “Wait.”

  Markus, just about to turn away from her, paused. He did not dare to move, as if afraid of shaking off her hand.

  “Come with me.”

  As ever she expected no answer from him, turned to the corridor leading to the kitchen, after just a few moments she had already withdrawn her hand, and went on ahead of him. Markus followed her, still feeling quite taken aback by the touch of her hand. When they came into the anteroom, through the stench of the animals, he could smell the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee. She stepped into the kitchen ahead of him; because the windows were draped, the electric light was lit.

  “Sit down.”

  She had set a plate on the table for Markus, a cup on a saucer, and a knife next to the plate, the butter was still in its silver wrapping paper. In a basket lay two rolls, a jar with plum jam stood next to the egg-cup. The egg was still warm when Markus felt it.

  He hesitated to sit at the table that Selma Bruhns had laid for him, as if her solicitude for him had startled him, or perhaps simply because he had not expected it, just as he had not expected her to lay a hand on his arm, and although he had the feeling he ought to say something, he found this impossible, until finally he pulled back the chair, said “Thank you,” and sat at the table, but when he looked up, Selma Bruhns had left the kitchen, and he did not know whether she had heard him.

  “What did Selma Bruhns do with the letters after you had put them in order?”

  Berger and Markus go through a gate into the car park in front of the police headquarters, surrounded by a high fence with a barbed wire top. Markus walks two steps behind, as if he wants to make use of this opportunity to slip away behind Berger’s back.

  “She took them into the yard and burnt them,” says Markus.

  Berger stops by a small car.

  “You mean that Frau Bruhns was paying you to put the letters in chronological order so that she could then burn them in her yard?”

  “Yes,” says Markus; he too has now reached the car and, as if this were the obvious thing to do, goes to the passenger door. Berger opens the car door and sits behind the steering wheel, leaning over to the passenger door and opening it.

  “Get in,” he says to Markus, who until now has not asked where Berger wants to take him. Markus closes the passenger door, Berger starts the engine and drives to the exit of the car park.

  “I followed her in secret and saw it,” says Markus, not out of any wish to justify himself, but simply to give Berger a chance to imagine it. In the narrow confines of the car, sitting so close to the man whom he met for the first time this morning and from whom, even if he wanted to, he cannot escape, Markus feels himself starting to sweat. So that Berger can reach the accelerator, the brake and the clutch with his short legs, he leans right over the steering wheel with his face close to the windscreen. He brakes jerkily and drives slowly even when the traffic would allow him to go quickly, but then starts taking risks and overtaking. They have stopped talking, as if Berger needs to concentrate on reaching his goal, they drive past the Market Square, down narrow side streets, and finally come to a halt in front of a townhouse that is hemmed in between the other houses in the street, with a narrow flight of steps leading up to the raised ground floor and the front door. Berger manages at the third attempt to park his car in the parking space outside the house. Markus observes Berger—as he is next to him, he can see Berger’s profile, the short nose, the thin mouth, the veins on his temples—and waits quite patiently to get out.

  Berger stays sitting behind the steering wheel, his hands dropped onto his knees, as if the journey through the city has exhausted him. Markus, observing him, without curiosity but perhaps with a desire to find out what this man intends to do with him, can do so without any worry about being caught in the act, since Berger has leant back his head and is gazing upwards.

  “Get out,” says Berger.

  Markus was not expecting to be addressed, he turns his gaze from Berger and looks through the windscreen onto the street, he sees a man lifting two buckets full of flowers out of his car and setting them on the pavement, watches as the man slams the rear door of his estate car shut and carries one of the buckets of flowers up the steps leading to an open front door.

  As Markus had squatted in the windowless small room, surrounded by the piles of letters that he had put into order and that Selma Bruhns was going to burn in her yard …

  I had gone to the beach, and sat on a bench, and Herbert was sitting next to me, as the waves beat onto the sand and the noise of their beating mingled with the sound of the words that Herbert was saying to me and that I did not understand, because I wasn’t listening or because they flew by me without touching me

  …as he pulled his briefcase that was leaning against one of the chests next to him and opened it, he saw that, as on the previous days, Christine had put a sandwich into his briefcase. He took it out, closed the briefcase and stood up, opened the door of the small room and went through the hall to the front door. After Selma Bruhns had taken him into the kitchen and immediately left him there, he had not seen her again. He stepped through the front door out into the front garden. He walked over the flagstones to the gate and sat on the grass, leaning his back against the pillar.

  As he ate his sandwich—he had not dared to ask for a glass of water or to get one himself from the kitchen—he crumpled the aluminium foil into a firm round ball. He observed the villa as if waiting to see the front door or one of the windows opening and Selma Bruhns emerging in front of the house or at the open window. Behind him cars drove down the street. When he had eaten his sandwich, he stood up and went through the gate.

  As he made his way to the phone box, he pulled the wallet where he kept his phone card out of his jacket pocket. He stepped into the phone box. The apparatus was undamaged and displayed the four marks credit on the card. When he had dialled the number of the tax advisor for whom Christine worked, given his name to the receptionist and waited to be put through, he was overcome by the fear that Christine had left the office without saying when she would come back.

  I looked at the horizon separated from the sky by a white streak of haze, and I had to fight against the impulse to stand up, leave Herbert and turn my back on the horizon.

  “Markus. Where are you?”

  He heard her voice, and the relief he felt at this made it impossible for him to reply, so that Christine had to repeat his name.

  After the conversation in which, it seemed to him, he had said only trivial things, he had come back. As he was about to step into Selma Bruhns’s front garden, a delivery van stopped in front of the gate. Markus had not noticed it drive up. A man climbed out of the driver’s cabin. He walked around the vehicle on whose side wall the name of a dog-food and cat-food manufacturer was written, and opened the sliding door of the old van. Markus had stopped, and observed the man as he pulled a wheelbarrow from inside, set it on the pavement and started to pile crates onto it.

  “I found the sandwich you put in my briefcase,” Markus had said, meanwhile pushing open the door and sticking his foot in the crack, since the heat in the phone box was oppressive.

  “Did you eat it?”

  Christine’s voice had sounded thin and metallic, and Markus had wondered whether his own voice often sounded equally strange and distorted to Christine.

  “I went into the front garden, sat down on the grass, leant my back against a pillar and ate the sandwich,” he had
said. Although Christine’s voice were so distorted, at her next question, “Was she there too?” he had noticed a change in her tone.

  “No, I was alone,” Markus had said, “but today she gave me breakfast in her kitchen.”

  Christine had not answered straight away, and for a moment the line between them gave off nothing but a slight hiss so that Markus had to press the earpiece closer to his ear. Then he heard her voice again.

  “What does she want from you?”

  “Perhaps she was just being friendly,” Markus had said and again opened the phone box door. He had moved as far out of the booth as the phone cord would allow.

  “Is she friendly?”

  Markus had tried to imagine the room in which Christine was sitting and asking questions to which he could not find the answer.

  “What can you see when you look out of the window of your office?”

  “I look out over the street,” Christine had said without hesitation. “There’s a Turkish greengrocer’s opposite. People stand around and pick up tomatoes. Next is a hairdressing salon. Through the window I can see women sitting under the hairdryers. I’m going to hang up now, Markus.”

  Markus stands on the pavement and observes Berger as he climbs out of the car, locks the driver’s door, walks around the car and, without looking at Markus or giving him any indication he should follow him, reaches the steps leading to the front door. He climbs up the steps, grasping the rail and pulling the weight of his body up, and only once he has reached the railed area in front of the front door does he turn to Markus and gaze at him without saying anything, without making a gesture to suggest that Markus should follow him. Markus has to repress the wish to turn round and walk off down the street, which as he knows leads to the Market Square with a café in it where he has often sat with Rufus. Before he goes to the steps and walks up to Berger, he has to overcome his reluctance to follow this little man.

  “Did you count the money in the case?” asks Berger, as he places his forefinger on the bell button and Markus hears it ringing inside the house. Before Markus can answer Berger’s question, the front door is opened by a woman who looks at them without curiosity and without interest. She is wearing a grey outfit and her hair, also grey, is pulled over her scalp into a bunch at the nape of her neck.

  “Herr Glowna is expecting you,” the woman tells Berger, whom she seems to know. She steps aside, and Berger, without a word of greeting, walks past into the main hall, though this time, as though it were now required for him to do so, turns to Markus and says: “Follow me”.

  Berger walks past the silent woman over to a door and opens it. Although Markus can barely make out the woman’s shape in the light and cannot even see which way she is looking, he feels that she is observing him. He quickly follows Berger into the room.

  “Shut the door,” says Berger, sitting in one of the two armchairs in front of the desk. His shoes barely touch the floor, that is covered by a carpet curling up at the edges. Through the two narrow windows Markus can look out onto the street. The man who has carried the buckets of flowers into the house a little further down the street is standing next to his car, spraying his windscreen from a plastic bottle and wiping it dry with paper towels.

  “Did you count the money in the case?” says Berger as if he could never forget a question before getting an answer to it. As Markus observes the man in the street, who has now started to spray the frame and the running boards, he hears the door of the room being opened behind him. When he turns round, he sees the woman standing in the doorway. Without coming into the room or raising her voice, she says: “Herr Glowna asks you to please wait a little longer.”

  Berger replies with an unexpected sharpness in his voice that surprises Markus, saying: “Leave us alone.” Without replying, the woman takes a step back and shuts the door.

  “No, I didn’t count the money,” says Markus, turning away from the window and looking at Berger directly for the first time since he has stepped into this room. Berger returns his gaze.

  “She told me how much money there was. She said there were one hundred and twenty thousand marks.”

  Markus quickly walks away from the window past the armchair in which Berger is sitting so that he now finds himself behind his back, in front of the rear wall of the room that is completely covered by a set of bookshelves. The feeling of powerlessness that he has been fighting against ever since he stepped into Berger’s office becomes so strong right now that only the fear of meeting the woman in the corridor prevents him from leaving the room.

  “There are exactly one hundred and twenty-five thousand marks,” says Berger, “I had them counted after we found the case in your flat.”

  He is speaking so quietly that Markus finds it difficult to understand his words.

  “She gave it to me,” says Markus. Berger does not reply.

  The man had pushed the crates on the wheelbarrow to the front door, piled them up there and gone back to the delivery van, pushing the empty barrows with one hand in front of him. He went up and down the path three times, then he began to carry the crates up the steps into the house. Markus, who had been observing him, had followed him to the steps and waited until the man came back to fetch the next crates. He had asked him whether he could help. The man had looked him as if he had not noticed his presence before, and then nodded.

  “The crates have to go into the cellar,” he had said and gone back up the steps. Markus had bent down, picked up two of the crates and walked up the steps, but before he could go into the house, Selma Bruhns had come to meet him through the open front door. She did not step aside to let Markus go by, and he had to stay standing in front of her.

  “Stop that,” she had said, quietly, uttering each word in the same even tone, “I’m not paying you to do this work.”

  He put the crates down on the steps, and pushed his way between the door frame and Selma Bruhns, going into the house, to the small room. He squatted down between the piles of letters lying on the floor, but when he resumed his work, deciphering the date at the top of the first letter—3 8 43—, looking for the pile in which he was putting the letters from 1943, laying the pages of the letter on it and reaching out for the next one, he paused, as if he’d only just realised that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. Although he sensed that this work might have some meaning, not for him, but perhaps for her, since she was paying him for it, he let his hand drop and sat there motionless for a moment. Then he stood up again and walked out of the room. In the hall he saw that, in the meantime, the front door had been closed. The man who brought the cat food had completed his work.

  “Frau Bruhns,” he said, as quietly as if he mistrusted his own voice. As two of the animals came hurtling down the stairs and dashed right past his shoes, he had to repress the wish to walk after them. He went through the narrow corridor leading to the lobby from where the kitchen and the front rooms could be reached, but she was not there either. Nor was she in the kitchen, which Markus could see into, though he did not enter. He felt that he absolutely must find her. But he did not know what he would say to her. When he realised this, he gave up his quest, but did not go back into the small room, instead walking through the door at the front into the room with the grand piano. Without hesitating, he went up to it, opened the lid, pulled out the piano stool and began to play the only piece of piano music that he knew by heart. He did not stop until he had finished it. Then he took his hands off the keys and let them dangle at his side.

  Eventually he stood up, turned to the glass door that led up to the terrace, opened it and stepped out into the gradually fading afternoon light.

  I stepped out onto the balcony, Almut, and looked out over the roofs of the city. In the sky stretching over them was a reflection of the distant sea, and, in the space between them, I live with the birds that circle over my head in dense flocks, with their gentle cries, as if they had a message for me.

  Markus leapt down the steps, and walked across the field where the
stalks of grass reached up to his knees, to the rear part of the garden from where Selma Bruhns’s house could no longer be seen. When he found her, he stood stock still and did not dare to move. She was lying under the maple tree next to the wall that marked the boundary of her property. In its shade the grass grew only patchily, and the earth right next to the trunk was bare. She had lain down on her back, her arms stretched out beside her. Her head was propped gently against the tree trunk, and her eyes were closed. Markus stared at her body as if bewitched, unable to move from the spot, but when he saw that her chest was gently rising and falling he felt relieved.

  “Can I help you?” said Markus, amazed that his voice had not deserted him.

  She opened her eyes but did not turn to look at Markus, instead gazing unblinkingly up into the dark roof of leaves above her.

  “Are you spying on me?” Markus heard her say in a soft voice as ever, but with a concealed mockery in her words that gave Markus the courage to sit on the ground, far enough away from her to give him time to get up again, near enough to be able to hear her words.

  “No, I’m not spying on you,” he said, “I was looking for you because I wanted to tell you that I’m not coming back tomorrow.”

  “You are coming back,” she said. Without changing the position of her body and without turning her gaze towards Markus, she continued to look up at the leaves.

  “Why?” said Markus, even though he knew that she was right.

  “Because you came back today,” said Selma Bruhns.