Leaving Berlin

by Britt Holmström

  Cara was a scrawny thing with long brown hair, limp and greasy, freckled arms and strangely pale eyelashes. She studied Emma with unblinking childlike indifference, so unabashed it could only be genuine.

  Emma and Leo had not a thing to say to one another.

  Had they ever?

  No, they had not. They had seen each other at the art school twice a week for less than two months, had giggled and dabbed each other’s noses with paint, gestures she had imbued with profound meaning. They had lived the last three years in different places with different people, thinking vastly different thoughts. The Leo in the hospital bed had no place in Emma’s life, as she had none, wanted none, in whatever mess was his.

  It was an inopportune time to find this out. She was glad she had not brought flowers and chocolate. Or an Easter egg. Thoughts of Pierre and his Easter egg cheered her, gave her strength.

  To have something to do until they could politely get rid of their guest, Leo opened the drawer in the bedside table and retrieved a pipe and a chunk of hashish. It was a noteworthy lump, as big as an average fist.

  “You keep that stuff right here in the hospital?”

  “Hey, we know how to live!”

  They quickly smoked what he stuffed into the pipe and the tension eased. The pipe continued its rounds. Cara kept busy in between turns spraying the room with air freshener, confiding that “The nurses don’t trust us freaks. They think we smoke dope and fuck in here! Can you believe it?”

  “Really?” said Emma, wishing she had that kind of outgoing confidence.

  Handing her the pipe, Leo exhaled a cloud and informed Emma with pride that Cara sometimes didn’t eat for days, because she just didn’t see the point. He continued to hint about the greatness of Cara. Cara read incomprehensible Third World poets. Cara knew the meaning of life and didn’t bother with a coat in winter. Cara talked about her orgasms with complete strangers.

  How could Emma compete with that? She’d never even had one.

  She could not wait to get out of that unadorned room and Cara’s fulsome air freshener.

  Her heart was not sure quite what rhythm to beat, which was a pity because her emotions were light on their feet, ready to twirl their toes in glass-slippered dance. She had got rid of the self-imposed heartache she had been prepared to carry forever, bravely, like a war widow. It was the bittersweet heroism of her situation that had infatuated her. Nothing to do with that wispy little twit sitting in the hospital bed with a stupid grin on his face. She stared at the unbecoming yellow of his teeth.

  “See you around,” smiled Cara when Emma got up to leave. Cara, who kept spraying the room with her lethal aerosol weapon, was a kinder person than Leo, who by then was too stoned to notice that the chick from the art school was leaving.

  Cara’s nightgown was see-through. Emma could see her mosquito bite breasts, the right one raised higher than the left one, following her bony right arm into the air.

  The smell of lilies of the valley was nauseating.

  She called Pierre later that afternoon and asked if he wanted to go to a movie.

  Pierre, a forgiving soul, said, “I surely do, Emma-gemma.”

  The last time Emma spent time with Pierre was later that year, on a hot summer day aboard a fishing boat bobbing on the sun-dappled surface of a docile sea. Hans and Camilla, two students from the art school, had recklessly pooled their savings and bought an old fishing cutter that — for an exorbitant fee — they docked in the fishermen’s harbour out near the museum. It was a quaint little harbour lined with fishermen’s huts, smelling of fish and salt. Hans and Camilla had invited Emma, Pierre, and their friends Johan and Laila to go for a picnic out on the water, eager to show off what accomplished seafarers they had become, having owned a cutter for two weeks.

  They gathered at nine in the morning down on the tiny dock, toting bags full of wine bottles, fruit, bread and cheese, and boarded the swaying old vessel.

  “Does it leak?” Emma looked around. Maybe a stupid question. It was still floating.

  “We’ll find out,” said Hans, lighting a seafaring pipe.

  “Does it have a toilet?” asked Laila.

  “Gentlemen piss over the edge. The ladies may feel free to use a bucket.”

  Pierre didn’t say much that day.

  It was peaceful out on the water. Far away rose the silhouette of the city. A foreign ship had docked in the harbour the day before and downtown was swarming with sailors in dark blue suits. Emma had been propositioned by two sailors waving a wad of money in her face as she walked from the bus stop to meet her friends.

  A seagull sat shrieking atop the mast. On the sunny deck below, the human passengers drank wine while they fished, or pretended to, catching nothing, as nobody had remembered to bring bait. The fish did not go for small chunks of cheese. The sun kept shining. At one point, as they were lying around dozing, not talking, listening to the creaking of the hull and the slopping, slurping sound of the sea, Emma opened her eyes and looked right into Pierre’s, catching him unaware.

  That was when she knew that he loved her. While it made her heart stop, as if out of respect, she was equally convinced that she did not love him back, not the way he deserved to be loved. It made her unbearably sad not to be able to reciprocate such generosity of feeling. Because that was the kind of love his was. Generous.

  Her own heart was not as big.

  To deflect him from reading her thoughts, she smiled at him and took his hand. And he squeezed that undeserving hand, then kissed it, neither of them realizing that it was a farewell kiss.

  How could she be so sure she did not love him? Was it because loving him would have transformed their relationship into something less manageable?

  A moment later Johan, half asleep, rolled over and into the sea and they had to spring to the rescue and drag him out. Easier said than done, as nobody was sober and Johan — he couldn’t swim — had grown very heavy, what with his soaked clothes and boots and all. For a moment it looked as if they might have to let him sink into a wet grave.

  The seagull on the mast fled the human tragedy.

  When they finally managed to heave him back on board they found a little fish squirming in his shirt pocket. Hans was overjoyed with the find. “Let’s hurl him in again and see if he catches another one.”

  Apart from Johan’s near demise, it was a perfect day, a summer moment that Emma will always cherish.

  It was the last time she saw Pierre. Three days later she took the train to Italy. The following week Pierre returned to France to finish doing whatever he was doing with various metals.

  The following December came the brief phone call when she shamefacedly had to confess to him that she was moving to Canada. To marry to a man from a province with a woman’s name. What kind of person does that?

  But that was it. No more Pierre.

  Never ever

  Emma stubbornly moved to Canada. Seven years went by, then one day Emma learned that Pierre had got married. The news came in a well-informed letter tucked into a Christmas card from Helen. Pierre’s wife (Helen did not reveal her name) had recently given birth to a baby boy. Yes indeed, Pierre was a very happy man, wrote Helen, her handwriting gloating.

  Very, very happy. She had repeated it twice, adding emphasis to make sure it sank in. For she had been to see them, had Helen, she was always welcome at their place, didn’t have to call ahead, not her, felt free to drop in whenever she felt like it. Pierre and his wife were living in a beautiful apartment near their old school, in that Jugend building with the turrets, remember? The city had renovated the entire area around there and the apartments were very expensive, almost impossible to come by. Not that Pierre had to worry about things like that, he was doing quite well for himself these days. He’d just had another exhibition.

  They had four bedrooms. Huge bedrooms. High ceilings.

  Big tall windows.

  Well, Helen would write that, wouldn’t she, if only to upset Emma. And at the time Em
ma had got very upset.

  Even though she never loved him.

  If Pierre ever asked about Emma, Helen never said.

  Well, she wouldn’t, would she?

  Did he still have that dresser?

  The glass slipper?

  When Frida, Emma’s seventeen-year-old daughter, one day asks, “How do you know what love is?” Emma has no idea what to answer. She could make an aging fool of herself and reply, “Well, it’s sort of like an Easter egg, wonderful to look at and full of sinful sweets.”

  She knows better than to say that, but allows herself to think it, smiling at the thought.

  What she offers from the bottom of her never-stilled human heart, is: “I haven’t the faintest idea. Go ask an expert.”

  “Who?” Her daughter makes a snarky sound. “Dad? His dimwit wife?”

  Meanwhile Emma remembers Pierre’s reverence that Easter when they first kissed. The tastiness, chocolate and licorice mingling with the flavours of raspberry and violet. Pierre turning into a man before her closed eyes. And Emma, convinced she did not reciprocate, feeling guilty about it, greedily accepting those candy kisses she can still taste.

  Blushing, she says to her daughter, “I don’t know who to ask. Why don’t you just wait and see? You’re still a child.”

  Pretty Frida who is the age Pierre was when they first met.

  Emma sometimes dreams that one day her daughter will come home with distorted lips and messy hair (not too distorted, not too messy) to announce that she has met a man from Emma’s country, and that the man will turn out to be Pierre’s son. They will get married, their two respective children, and a year or two later Emma and Pierre will cradle the same grandchild, scanning its little face for likeness.

  At the wedding Emma will meet Pierre again. She’ll be wearing one of those ridiculous hats mothers always wear at weddings.

  What if he doesn’t remember her?

  Oh, he’ll remember.

  “Pierre,” she’ll say. And she’ll look into his eyes.

  “Emma,” he’ll reply, thinking how beautiful she looks despite that silly hat. How well she has aged.

  He will no longer wear purple velvet pants. His hair, if he still has hair, may or may not be grey, but it will be shorter. He may have grown a beard, but she hopes not, there is something self-indulgent and vain about men with beards, especially those big bushy evangelical ones. It would not go with the person her Pierre always was.

  Her Pierre?

  Who is she to make such claims?

  Well, he’s her Pierre in her memories, isn’t he?

  Somewhere in the background will be his nameless wife. She is bound to be a nice woman if she is married to Pierre. Good-looking too. Tall and slender and confident, graceful in high-heeled shoes, is how Emma imagines her, feeling no ill will.

  Not much anyway.

  He may be divorced. There’s always that possibility.

  Or a recent widower.

  She tries to imagine Pierre middle-aged, but it’s impossible. Unless she does meet him again one day, he will remain the prince from her favourite fairytale, a charmed prince in purple pants and an embroidered vest. Forever young, holding out from the past a hand adorned with a ring where sits enthroned a stone containing a secret no one was meant to decipher.

  His hands were always warm.

  At the wedding reception, when the band starts to play, he’ll walk towards her.

  No, he’ll do nothing so simple; he’ll materialize by her side, is what he’ll do, without a sound. Then he’ll ask her to dance. “Emma-gemma,” he’ll say, holding out the hand still wearing the green amber ring. “Do you want to dance?”

  “Yes, Pierre,” she’ll respond, “I surely do.”

  And Emma and Pierre will dance an old-fashioned waltz, these two people of the rock-and-roll generation. They will not be clad in glass footwear. Their eyes, no longer new, no longer expecting or wanting surprises, will reveal hints of a love that never quite was but could have been.

  Or that clamoured for attention but went ignored.

  Or that, despite everything, simply was.

  Should they drink too much wine they might become convinced that it’s still not too late and do something foolish. Start kissing with lips less plump. Hoping the clock will never strike midnight.

  That must never happen.

  “Whatever love is,” says Emma to her unimpressed daughter, “don’t let me drink too much wine at your wedding.” She ignores the look in Frida’s eyes, pretends not to see that bottomless embarrassment teenagers drown in when their parents say something stupid.

  Parents, for some reason, always say something stupid.

  The truth is, Emma does not want to meet Pierre again. Not in the here and now. Why would she? It would ruin everything. Her Pierre is forever young. So is his Emma.

  It is a memory that must remain the treasure that it is, a souvenir d’enchantement. It must never be tampered with. Should she run into Pierre, her treasure would lose its sparkle, for this is not really about love lost. Nor is it about what could have been.

  It might not even be about Pierre, though he is certainly the embodiment of it.

  So what is this it then?

  It’s the sweetness of the chocolates in the Easter egg, the swirling yellow and purple in the marble, Cinderella’s fragile glass slipper, the secret in the amber, a nonexistent garden, this it that does not, must not, need not, have a name.

  BRITT HOLMSTRÖM was born in Malmö, Sweden, and came to Canada in 1970. She has published three critically acclaimed novels: The Man Next Door (1998) won a Saskatchewan Book Award, and The Wrong Madonna (2002) and Claudia (2008) were both shortlisted. Holmström lives in Regina, Saskatchewan.