The Game of Cards

by Adolf Schroder

  “What did she want from you?” he says, without going into the room. Markus has remained on the stairs, and breathes in the smell of the animals that is still hanging around. He does not reply. As Berger enters the room whose door he has opened, so that Markus can now only hear his footsteps, he thinks for a moment that they are her footsteps and that he needs to prepare himself to meet her, that perhaps she will say: “It’s an easy job that you have to do for me.” Perhaps she will say, as she walks down the stairs: “Follow me.” Simultaneously, Markus thinks he can hear the yammering of the cats echoing through the house, shrill and piercing.

  “She demanded that I help her to die,” he says quietly.

  He quickly follows Berger into the room and, when he sees Berger standing at the window, he repeats his words.

  “She demanded that I help her to die.”

  Berger does not turn round to him. With his right hand he reaches for the material that has faded in the sun and tears it down. Immediately, light floods into the room and Markus, dazzled, holds his hand in front of his eyes.

  “Can you imagine people living in this room,” he hears Berger saying, “people who were happy or unhappy and who did not expect their happiness or unhappiness would ever leave them?”

  Berger has spoken quietly as if he were not addressing his words to Markus.

  “Nobody will live here again.”

  Walking past Markus, Berger leaves the room. Markus, following him, watches as Berger goes from door to door, opens the doors, steps into the rooms and tears down the curtains from each window. Only in the last room, bigger than the others and with a door on its side wall through which Markus can see into a separate bathroom, does Berger stop by the window. Next to the window there is a balcony door, made of glass from top to bottom, from which Berger has also torn down the curtains.

  “Come over here,” says Berger.

  He opens the balcony door and they both step outside. Berger leans over the iron railing and looks down into the garden.

  “The marital bed must have stood here.”

  Berger has gone back in to the room and started to pace out the places where, as he seems to believe, the vanished furniture had stood. He moves with rapid deliberation, as if he wanted to furnish the room anew.

  “Here against the rear wall stood the wardrobe, and here next to the windows was the dressing table.”

  Markus is still standing in the open balcony doorway. He can hear the buzz of a lawnmower coming from the neighbour’s garden. As he looks over at Berger, who is now walking over to the door of the bathroom, he thinks he can hear the drumming of the cats’ paws on the stairs.

  “This was the parents’ bathroom, the children weren’t allowed in,” says Berger, standing in the open doorway. He looks at Markus, not challengingly or reproachfully but thoughtfully, as if he needs to work out who Markus is. The bathroom is decorated with blue tiles, has a separate shower, a bath tub, two wash basins, a toilet and a bidet. Berger stands in the middle of the room. He has switched on the ceiling light. Markus observes him. Markus turns to the bath tub, bends down and turns on the tap. The water, brown and murky to begin with, then becoming clearer, spurts into the bath tub. Without turning off the tap, Berger goes to the wash basins and there too turns on the taps. The gushing of the water fills the room. Berger sits on the toilet lid.

  “The bidet, you see,” he says, “that’s why the children were never allowed into this bathroom.”

  At first Markus thinks he can detect hostility concealed in his words again, but then, in the middle of the sentence, Berger’s voice changes. It becomes softer and gentler until it fades away amid the gushing of the water. As Berger remains there sitting motionless, Markus, unable to stand it any longer, goes over to the wash basins, switches off the taps, and then to the bath tub where he also switches off the tap. The silence makes Markus feel calmer, but the longer it lasts, the more threatening it becomes.

  “Show me where you worked,” says Berger.

  Markus squatted in the small room for three hours. By this stage he often had to lean far across the edge of the last of the three chests to pick up the letters. All around him were the piles of those he had already sorted, and he moved with care between the piles. But she did not come to collect the letters as she usually did—in recent days she had done so ever more frequently. The house was quiet, and when Markus listened, not even the animals could be heard.

  When I entered the house that had once been a house I knew that it was no longer a house. It received me in a cold and unfriendly manner. Standing in the hall, I did not move. I listened. The silence too was cold and unfriendly and it was not a real silence, it held concealed in it the whispering of many voices that took possession of the house during our absence. I was a stranger. Already when I had left the ship and was driven from the harbour to the railway station, when I saw the people standing outside the shops, when I looked through the windows of the car at their laughter, I was a stranger. When I sat on the train and the man who had sat down opposite me opened his paper, when I, without wanting to, read the headings of the articles and did not understand them, I was a stranger. When I came out of the station in the city that had been our city and stepped out onto the station square, where I recognized only the pigeons, as the smell from a hot-dog stand hit me and I had to fight down the nausea rising inside me, I was a stranger. When, sitting in the back seat, I approached the streets through which we had gone roller-skating, and when I felt that only the trees dotted along the streets were friendly, I was a stranger. When I got out and hardly dared to open the garden gate, when in the creaking of the hinges I thought I could recognize something that I was unable to remember, I was a stranger. And now, in this house, I feel within myself only the hatred of the stranger who is not welcome. And with the hatred that will soon change and take complete possession of me, I am losing my voice. Although I am now so close to you, you are withdrawing from me. My return to this country is a return to silence. You have left the house, Almut, for ever.

  When Markus thought he heard someone saying his name, from far away, so that he did not know whether he had been mistaken, he stood up and went into the hall.

  “Herr Hauser.”

  She must be in the kitchen or in the connecting room. He hesitated to follow her call, and tried to behave as if he hadn’t heard. He was already on his way back into the small room. Just a few hours more and he would have completed his task. But when she called him for the third time, he went into the anteroom. She was standing in front of the open kitchen door.

  “I’ve prepared you a meal,” she said, and stepped aside so that Markus could walk past her into the kitchen and, when he hesitated, she added: “You must be hungry.”

  Although he was alarmed at the idea of having to eat anything in the kitchen as she watched, he came in as if no rejoinder were possible, saw that the table had been laid with a plate, knife and fork, a bottle of beer and a glass, and there was a hunk of meat sizzling in a pan on the stove. No sooner had he gone over to the table and breathed in the smell wafting towards him from the stove than he felt a gagging sensation in his throat. He thought he would be unable to swallow even a single bite. But he sat down. She had followed him, gone to the stove, picked up the pan and come over to the table. She slipped the hunk of meat onto his plate and poured the fatty gravy over it. Without saying a word, she turned back to the stove, took the saucepan, brought it to the table and filled Markus’ plate with spoonfuls of potatoes.

  “Have a drink,” she said, taking the bottle of beer and pouring the beer with such an unpractised hand into the glass that it was practically all foam. Markus reached for the knife and fork and tried to cut off a piece of meat. It was tough, and only after several attempts did he succeed. Overcoming his reluctance, he began to eat. She had pulled up a chair and was sitting facing him across the table. From the side pocket of her dress she took out a packet of cigarettes, pulled out a cigarette, turned it at first in her fingers and then placed
it between her lips and lit it.

  “What will you do once you’ve finished working for me?” she said.

  “I’ll look for another job,” he replied.

  “Casual work?”

  “Yes,” said Markus.

  He forced himself to carry on eating, taking a long time to chew over every bite until, with a great effort, he managed to swallow it down.

  “When will you start earning money as a writer?” she said.

  While Markus tried to think of a non-committal reply, he wondered why she had cooked this meal for him. Whether she had done so only in order to ask him this question.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally.

  “Why didn’t you become a doctor like your father?” she said.

  In the first seconds Markus panicked. How did she know that his father had been a doctor? Had he told her in the previous days, although he could not remember doing so?

  “I’m not as gifted as my father,” he said, and as with the previous answer, he was not sure that he was lying.

  “He died when you were nine?” she said.

  Now Markus looked at her, observing the way she raised the cigarette to her hand and inhaled the smoke deeply so that, when she breathed out again, only faint wisps of smoke could be seen.

  “Yes,” he said simply, without spending any longer puzzling over how she knew this.

  “Did you become nothing in particular because he left you by yourself?”

  For the first time her voice altered. Markus, who did not want to answer her, was glad to have got through the meal without hurting her feelings by declining it.

  “Thanks for the meal,” he said and stood up, “I’ll be finishing the job this evening.”

  “I know you didn’t enjoy your meal,” she replied, “I haven’t cooked a meal for many years.”

  She remained sitting on a chair as Markus went to the door and left the kitchen without even turning round towards her.

  Through the doors that Berger has opened, the light of day is flooding into the corridor. It throws a pattern of bright rectangles across the floor.

  “How long did she live by herself in this house?” says Markus. They go downstairs. As Berger is walking in front and Markus is one step above him, Berger’s shape seems even smaller.

  “She came back twenty years ago,” says Berger.

  Just before they reach the bottom of the stairs, Berger slips. He loses his balance, is on the verge of toppling headlong down the last steps, and throws himself backwards; Markus instinctively reaches for Berger’s flailing arm, and holds it firmly. Berger falls backwards onto the stairs, and his head bangs against Markus’ legs. For a moment he does not move. Markus drops Berger’s arm, bends down and holds out his hand towards Berger.

  “Have you hurt yourself?” he says.

  Berger does not reply, but reaches out for Markus’ hand, and, grasping it tightly, pulls himself up. Once he is standing up again, he pulls his face in a pained grimace, bends forward and, shifting his weight to his other leg, rubs his knee. Once again he tries to stand up on both legs, but again gives up and sits down on the step. Markus, who does not know what to do, remains standing behind him.

  “Soon be better,” says Berger.

  As if he does not want to look on helplessly, Markus walks down the last steps. The way to the kitchen, only yesterday she had cooked a meal for him there, through the dark corridor and the anteroom. Before he enters the kitchen, he hesitates, as if he were afraid that, if he opens the door, she will be sitting at the table smoking a cigarette. As he hesitates, he again feels the anger arising within him, though he does not know against whom it is directed. He quickly crosses the kitchen, opens the cupboard, takes out a glass, walks over to the tap above the sink, turns it on and fills the glass. On the kitchen table there is a cup with coffee stains in it, and next to it an ashtray with a stubbed out cigarette. Yesterday evening she was here. Markus leaves the kitchen. When he comes to the hall, he walks over to the stairs where Berger is sitting and hands him the glass. Berger takes it and drinks it in one gulp.

  “She cooked a meal for me yesterday,” says Markus who does not want to remain standing in front of Berger and moves back into the hall where he leans against the wall. Berger puts the glass down next to him on the step and stands up. He cautiously takes a step, stamps impatiently with his hurt leg on the floor, then comes down the last steps and stands in front of Markus.

  “Did you enjoy the meal?” he says.

  Now his tone of voice is again malicious, and for a moment Markus thinks that the anger that he felt before going into the kitchen is the same anger that makes Berger’s voice sound hostile.

  “No,” he says. Berger opens the door on the left and steps into the big room with the fireplace. Once again Markus can only hear his footsteps on the parquet floor.

  “She also sold the grand piano so that she could pay you,” he hears Berger saying. When Markus enters the room, Berger has already left it and walked through the sliding door into the room that looks out onto the garden. Markus stands in the doorway and looks across at Berger who has sat down on the piano stool, the only piece of furniture to remain.

  “What is she supposed to have paid me for?” says Markus, but Berger does not reply. He twists round on the piano stool towards the window, turning his back on Markus, as he had in his office.

  “Did she play the piano when you were here?” he says.

  “She tried to,” replies Markus.

  With a movement that Markus could not have anticipated, so vehement that the piano stool falls over, Berger leaps up, his injured leg involuntarily buckling beneath him and, without turning to Markus, screams:

  “What did you do to her?”

  Markus does not move. He leans against the door frame. Quietly he says: “I didn’t do anything to her.”

  When Berger comes towards him, he turns away as if he did not want to grant Berger the triumph of seeing that he has reduced him to tears. He leaves the room with the fireplace. In the hall he waits for Berger to catch up with him.

  “Where is the kitchen?” says Berger. Without replying, Markus walks ahead, through the dark corridor, almost mechanically allowing his hand to slide against the corridor wall. He opens the kitchen door. Berger steps past and, going into the kitchen, stands at the table. He looks at the used cup and the ashtray. Markus thinks he’s going to start screaming again, but instead of this Berger reaches out for the cup, picks it up and smashes it against the wall.

  “Why did you leave her alone last night?” says Berger again, so quietly that Markus can barely follow him.

  “She sent me away,” says Markus.

  Berger goes to the wall and pushes the broken pieces of the cup together with his shoes.

  “You should have known,” he says. In vain Markus tries to work out whether Berger meant his words as a reproach.

  “What should I have known?”

  Berger ignores him, opens the doors of the kitchen cupboard, then the door of the larder, and from where he is Markus sees for the first time the shelves filled to bursting with tins of cat food and with tins that contain ready meals. While Markus involuntarily imagines her opening one of the tins and eating straight from the tin with a spoon, perhaps not even sitting down at the table but swallowing the contents of the tin while still standing, he supposes that Berger must be imagining the same thing even though he did not know Selma Bruhns during her lifetime. Berger closes the door of the larder.

  “Let’s go into the small room where you worked,” he says. For a moment, as Berger comes up to Markus and they both try to leave the kitchen at the same time, they stand in the door frame facing each other. They look at each other. This time Berger goes first, moving with such self-assurance as if her house had already become familiar to him.

  “I haven’t told you yet”—they are walking down the dark corridor and Berger is speaking quietly in an almost businesslike manner, “but she left instructions at Glowna’s saying the mone
y belongs to you.”

  They step out of the corridor into the twilight of the hall. Markus, who had listened to Berger’s words as if they did not concern him and as if everything that had happened outside this house were not true, as if he even doubted that he had ever been at Glowna’s, or in Berger’s office waiting for Berger, walks down a few steps leading to the small room in which for six days he had worked for Selma Bruhns. He opens the door and switches on the electric light whose glow, casting the shadows of the three chests onto the floor, has become familiar to him. Berger has stopped in the doorway and is staring at the empty chests as if they were the final proof of what Markus has told him but that he has not believed up until now.

  “She burnt the last letters last night in the yard,” says Markus.

  Berger goes into the small room, walks from chest to chest and looks in, then lifts the lids of the chests and shuts them one after the other.

  “She wrote the letters to a dead woman,” he says, “and she did not send a single one of the letters.”

  Berger leaves the small room. Markus switches off the light. When they are again standing in the hall, as Berger places his hand on the handle of the door behind which lies the room in which she lived, as Markus turns away, perhaps to show Berger that he refuses to enter this room, one of the animals comes down the stairs, it must have managed to hide away when the others were captured, it must have found a secret corner upstairs that neither Berger nor Markus have discovered. On the bottom step it halts, eyes up first Berger, then Markus, sits on its hind paws and begins to lick its coat. Markus reaches into his trouser pockets, brings out his bunch of keys—all of this in a single rapid and uncoordinated movement—lifts his hand and hurls the bunch of keys at the animal. He misses it. The animal reacts with lightning speed, leaps up and darts back upstairs. Berger, who is standing closer to the stairs than Markus, lets go of the handle, walks two steps up, bends down and picks up the bunch of keys. He throws it to Markus.