The Sinner

by Petra Hammesfahr

  "I'm trying to remember," she said. "It was an odd name, but I can't think of it just at present. I'm very tired."

  `And his telephone number?"

  "I'm sorry, I've forgotten it. I never could remember numbers."

  "The address?"

  She shrugged. "I don't remember," she said softly. "Maybe the name and address will come back to me tomorrow A person can't remember things to order, you know"

  "Yes, I know," Grovian said. `And if a person is lying through their teeth, their memories aren't worth much anyway. So you acted on the man's suggestion?"

  She nodded mechanically. A dam seemed to have broken in her head. A chaotic jumble of images and words poured through the breach and swirled around in her brain. The four people on the blanket beside the lake. The tune. The apples from the supermarket and the ones from the allotment. The story she'd told and the film in which a young man and a girl descended a flight of stairs.

  Dislodged by the flood, names went tumbling through her head like boulders. Mother, Father, Magdalena, Horsti, Johnny, Margret, Gereon. Masses of names - too many of them. Some she'd never heard before - ridiculous names like Billy-Goat and Tiger. Her face twitched as if she were on the verge of tears.

  "I should have saved myself the trouble. Frankie wanted nothing more to do with me."

  "Who's Frankie?" Grovian asked.

  She gave a start. "What?"

  "Who's Frankie?" he repeated, finding it difficult to give the question a neutral wrapping. He glanced at Hoss triumphantly. That was what he'd been waiting for. To him, it was confirmation. "You said Frankie wanted nothing more to do with you, Frau Bender. Who is Frankie?"

  She wasn't aware of what she'd said, had forgotten she'd heard the name beside the lake. "What did I say? I'm sorry, I'm awfully tired."

  She clasped her forehead. Her eyes roamed across the desk and came to rest on Werner Hoss as if he could put an end to the torture. Torture, that's all it was. Her head was full to bursting like a drawer with too much stuffed into it. Now the contents were spewing out.

  But she couldn't find the little knife she needed so badly. She should have tidied everything first. If she had, she would have discovered that the knife wasn't in the drawer. It was lying on the table on which the lemons had been sliced, visible to everyone who walked in, but she hadn't seen it because she was too low down, and the table too high. And standing at the table was a short, fat man. He'd sprinkled some white powder on the back of his hand. He licked it off, drank something and bit into a slice of lemon.

  "Tell him to stop," she mumbled, still looking at Hoss. "Tell him to leave me alone, or I'll go mad. I'm seeing things, stupid things. You'd laugh yourself sick if I described them to you."

  She shook herself like a wet dog and looked down at her hands. "Something very silly happened to me once," she said. "I can't remember it, and I don't want to. I've walled it off. Lots of people do that with experiences they can't handle, Achim told me. They build a wall across their brain and hide their painful memories behind it. Achim said you must tear down the wall and digest those memories or you'll never know any peace. Personally, I found the wall solution a very good one."

  She paused, lost in thought, then raised her head and looked at Hoss again. "The brain is incredibly capacious," she said, addressing him alone. "You don't need even half of it in order to think - less than forty per cent, I believe, but it may be the other way round. Maybe thinking takes up sixty per cent. Did you know that?"

  Hoss nodded.

  She gave a melancholy smile. "Wonderful, isn't it? It's like an attic where you store all your junk. It worked too - until Christmas. Then it all came back. When I hear that tune it leaps over the wall like the wolf jumping out of the sand box. It may have something to do with the birth of our Saviour, I don't know I don't know what it's about at all. I wake up and there's nothing there. It's better that way too - it worried me. I still feel it today, when I have that dream."

  The melancholy smile faded. She drew a deep breath. "It happened to me once as a child," she went on eagerly. "But that was another dream - I could always remember that one. I enjoyed it too. I enjoyed being an animal."

  That dream about the wolf was awful. But it was wonderful as well. My dearest wish had been fulfilled. Magdalena wasn't with us any more, and it wasn't my fault. Mother didn't want to be with us either; she went on kneeling beside the empty pram. And Father had the bucket of apples. I thought he must have known in advance it would happen, or he would have filled the bucket with greens and potatoes.

  I woke up feeling light as air, although it quickly dawned on me that it hadn't really happened. But that was what I found so wonderful. I knew it was one of the very gravest sins to wish a person dead. You would some day have to suffer endless torment.

  Mother always said that hundreds of little demons armed with red-hot pincers would rip the flesh from my body in tiny little shreds, so my flesh would last for all eternity. She showed me pictures of this being done to other people. But I couldn't help it if I only dreamed it, so it definitely wasn't a sin.

  I was still feeling light as air when I got up in the morning. It was going to be a very special day, I felt. At first I even thought a miracle had occurred, but it hadn't. Everything turned out quite differently.

  In the afternoon Mother had to go shopping. She sent me upstairs to keep an eye on Magdalena. Standing beside the bed as usual, I thought she was asleep, but as soon as the front door shut she opened her eyes and said: "Will you read to me?"

  It was the first time Magdalena had spoken to me. She didn't speak much in general, and then only to Mother. I hadn't a clue what to say.

  `Are you deaf, or don't you understand German?" she said.

  "What do you want me to say?" I asked.

  "Nothing. Just read me something."

  I wasn't sure Mother would approve. "I think it'd be too tiring," I said.

  "For you or for me?" she said. "Shall I tell you what I think? I think you can't read at all."

  I was so surprised to find I could have a normal conversation with her, just as I could with the kids in the playground, that I spoke without thinking. "You bet I can read," I said. "I can read even better than Mother. I don't mumble, I read loud and clear, and I put the stresses in the right place, the teacher says. My classmates aren't half as good."

  "I'll believe that when you've read me something," she said. "Or won't you because you don't like me? Go on, admit it. Nobody here likes me, I know that. But I don't care, I don't like anyone either. Why do you think I've kept my mouth shut till now? Because I don't talk to fools. I save my breath for people with something sensible to say."

  So I took the Bible from the bedside table and read a passage Mother often read, the one about the miracle our Saviour performed when a woman touched the hem of his garment. I don't know if my conscience was pricking me because Magdalena had said we didn't like her, or whether I wanted to show her how well I could read. I may also have been feeling rather proud that she'd spoken to me at all.

  I took a lot of trouble over my reading. She listened with her eyes shut. Then she said: "Now the bit about Mary Magdalene washing the Saviour's feet and drying them on her hair. I like that bit best of all."

  When I'd finished reading that passage as well, she said: "But I'm out of luck."

  I didn't know what she meant. "Well," she went on, "our Saviour isn't wearing any clothes, just a little cloth around his tummy. Think we could dress him up? We could try, if you took him off the altar and brought him up here. We'll dress him in a handkerchief, and I'll touch the hem. After that I'll wash his feet and dry them on my hair. It's bound to do me some good."

  "Your hair is far too short," I said.

  She shrugged. "Not if I rub hard enough. I've always wanted to do that. Will you bring him upstairs, or are you scared Mother will catch you?"

  I wasn't scared of Mother, just reluctant for Magdalena to do something she pinned such hopes on. "He can't help you," I told her. "
He's only made of wood, and Mary Magdalene wasn't sick. She was a sinner."

  "I can sin too," she said. "Shall I say a dirty word?" Before I could reply she said: `Arsehole! Now will you fetch him?"

  I went downstairs. All at once I felt terribly sorry for her. That, I think, was when I realized for the first time that my sister was a normal child. A very sick child who might die at any moment. She would never be able to lead a life like mine, but she could speak like me, think like me and feel like me.

  I brought the crucifix over to the bed, and we started with the handkerchief. I borrowed one of Father's, which was big enough. I tied it around the figure's neck and Magdalena rubbed it between her fingers. Then I fetched some water from the bathroom in a tooth-mug, and Magdalena washed the feet. The figure was so small, the legs got wet too. Magdalena didn't want me to dry them on the handkerchief. "It may not work," she said.

  After I'd taken our Saviour downstairs again I asked her where she'd heard some dirty words.

  `At the hospital," she said. "You wouldn't believe the dirty words they know. They say them too, when they think you're asleep. Not the doctors, the others. A lot of sick people get really mean. I'm in with the grown-ups as a rule, and they're always cursing. They don't want to die, that's why."

  She fell silent for a moment. Then she went on slowly: "I don't want to have to go back to Eppendorf any more. Although it's nice sometimes - not as boring as here. They have board games there. The nurse brings me one when I'm well enough to sit up in bed. She also fetches some children, and we play together. Mother doesn't like that, but she doesn't dare say anything. The nurse told her off once, that's why. Mother said I couldn't play, I must rest, and the nurse said: `There'll come a day when she can rest till she turns black. Till then you should let her play for as long as she feels like it.' The dead turn black, you see, and then they get eaten by worms and rot away."

  She didn't look at me as she said that. Drawing circles on the bedclothes with a finger, she went on: `A girl of eighteen told me that. She had leukaemia too, but the treatment didn't work. They couldn't find a bone-marrow donor for her. She said she wasn't afraid of death. I am, though, a bit."

  Still drawing circles on the sheet, she raised her head and looked me in the eye. "Not of death itself," she said. "Death doesn't worry me. It may be better when you're dead and nothing hurts any more. But if nothing works and you can't go to the bathroom on your own, it really is better, I think. Except that ... I don't want to turn black - I don't want to get eaten by worms and rot away. Can you imagine how disgusting that must be? I told Mother to have me cremated. A lot of people are - it isn't all that expensive - but Mother said it wouldn't do. Earth to earth, she said. Our Saviour wasn't cremated either."

  She fell silent again and shut her eyes for a while. I thought she must be tired after talking so much, and she was, but she insisted on telling me something else. She was simply wondering if she could trust me.

  "For all I care," she began, "you can tell Mother what I'm going to tell you: I hate him! I hope he rots away now his feet got wet. Wood rots too when it gets wet. That's why I wanted to wash him - that was the only reason. Don't get the idea I believe he'll make my heart better. They only tell you that nonsense so you keep your mouth shut and do what they want. But I'm sick of it. Will you tell Mother?"

  I shook my head.

  "Then we're friends now?" she asked.

  "We're sisters," I said. "That's more than friends."

  "No, it isn't," she retorted. "Friends like each other. Sometimes sisters don't."

  "But I like you," I said.

  She pulled a face. It looked almost like a smile, but only almost. I think she was well aware that I'd lied. But at that moment I really did like her, and I'd told her so.

  "Do you think we could play something sometime?" she asked.

  "I don't know What?"

  "Do you know `I Spy'? It isn't tiring. You can play it perfectly well in bed."

  She explained the game and we played it for a while, but there wasn't much to see in the bedroom, and we soon got tired of it. After three goes Magdalena said: "We could also play the wishing game. I invented it myself. It's quite easy; you only have to say what you wish for, but it must be something you can buy, not like `lots of friends' or that sort of thing. And then you have to say what you want to do with it. I'd better start, then you can see how it goes."

  The first thing she wished for was a television set. She'd watched TV at the hospital, where some of the patients had sets in their rooms. She also wanted a radio and a record player and lots of records. "But it must be a hi-fi!" she said. "I'm so fond of music. Proper music, not the kind where one person sings."

  "Shall I ask Father to buy you a radio?" I suggested. "There are really small ones. You could easily keep it hidden."

  She shook her head. "That's no good. If he really did buy me one, where would I hide it? Mother would burn it in two minutes flat. Besides, I don't think he would buy me one. You, maybe, but not me. He wouldn't lift a finger for me. He wishes I was dead."

  "That's not true!" I said.

  "Yes, it is," she retorted. "When I'm dead he can sleep with Mother. All men sleep with their wives, they enjoy it. I know that from the hospital. A man asked the doctor when his wife was coming home - she'd had a heart attack - and whether he could sleep with her right away. He was very disappointed when the doctor told him it would be a while yet. Father's very disappointed too, that's why he's always such a pain."

  She wasn't altogether wrong. Father really could be a pain at times. Not to me or to her, only to Mother. He'd shout at her when she put the supper on the table. Once he even hurled a bowl of soup at her. "You can take that pigswill into the living room. Our Lord isn't picky, but I expect something decent to eat for my money."

  Then he ran upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom. Later on, when I knocked on the door because I needed a pee, he yelled: "Go and do it in the garden! I'm busy wrenching my dick off, and I could be some time. It's damned hard to shift."

  But I liked him all the same. And I liked Magdalena too, certainly that afternoon. I didn't want her to turn black and get eaten by worms - I found the idea quite as revolting as she did. I remember thinking it would be best for her if my dream came true. To be gobbled up by a big black wolf would be quick, and it probably wouldn't hurt much either.

  That night I had the dream again. It was a bit different from before. After devouring her the wolf came slowly towards me instead of going back to the sand box, as it had the first time. It stood in front of me, looking at me with Magdalena's blood still dripping from its muzzle. And it thrust its muzzle into my stomach. I thought it was going to eat me too, but it seemed more like smooching.

  And then something funny happened. The beast's muzzle disappeared into my stomach, but it didn't hurt in the least, even when the rest of it disappeared too: its legs, its paws and its whole body, the bushy tail last of all. And my stomach was fine, not a hole to be seen. That was when I knew

  The thing is, in the playground a few weeks earlier I'd heard two girls talking about a man who turned into a wolf at night and ate people. By day he was an entirely normal person. He took a lot of trouble to be nice and helpful to everyone, and everyone liked him, so it distressed him terribly to turn into an evil beast every night. But he couldn't help it. It simply happened to him.

  It must be the same with me, I thought, and Father had known it for ages. He was standing beside me - he'd seen the whole thing and was looking very grave. "Don't worry," he told me, "I won't tell anyone. Remember what I told you on your birthday? You must be as hungry as a wolf,' I said. I already knew you'd turn into an animal and kill her before she gobbled up your life."

  I woke up on the spot, feeling as big and strong as the beast the girls in the playground had been talking about. After a few minutes it occurred to me that my bed felt cold. I'd wetted it, and I was so ashamed I couldn't help crying. Father woke up, came over to me and felt the sheet. "It'
s not a tragedy, Cora," he said. "It can happen to anyone."

  My nightie and pants were wet too. Father helped me take them off. Then lie let me get into his bed because the room was so cold.

  For some minutes Rudolf Grovian felt he'd been duped. He didn't know what to make of Cora Bender's demeanour. Werner Hoss, who seemed equally baffled, was listening to her spellbound.

  With clouded gaze and trembling lips she rambled on about the wall in her brain and the beasts inside Magdalena and herself, the one being a crab with sharp claws, the other a wolf that ate children and crawled into them. The wolf kept crawling into her belly, but it didn't hurt - it couldn't because she herself was the wolf. She was an awful child who wet her bed so as to get into her father's. She had stabbed the Saviour because he wouldn't rot. Six or seven times she'd thrust the fruit knife into him! And the Saviour had looked at her and said: "This is my blood, which is shed for thy sins." And the blood on the child's face had liberated her - freed her from the curse laid upon her by the archangel.

  With the Saviour's blood on her breast and belly, the child realized that Johnny had never been an angel. His friend had called him Billy-Goat. He was Satan, who had led the woman into temptation by means of the serpent. And, when she was lying on the ground, the tiger came. There was no room left for him in the woman's belly, so he stuffed his penis into her mouth, and, when she bit it, lashed out at her.

  The tiger had paws of crystal transfixed by slivers of coloured light. Then came darkness, the great oblivion. And oblivion was death, and death was the dream, and the dream lay behind the wall in her brain. It was all quite simple as long as you knew.

  Now she did know Now she could see it all in context. Now she even knew why it had been so cruel of Gereon to smoke another cigarette beforehand. It lay in the ashtray as he turned out the light and conjured up the tune.

  She was speaking too softly for the recording machine. Grovian, who was closer to her, could understand her nonetheless. He was feeling wretched - at a loss, uncertain and rather angry. He could well believe she was putting on a show of insanity so as to gain her objective and be left in peace, but he wasn't a hundred per cent sure.