Sisters of Berlin

by Juliet Conlin

  Her receptionist, Anita, tells her that Frau Scholz had now been waiting for half an hour and was getting restless.

  ‘Okay, Anita,’ she says, ‘I’ll only be five more minutes. Thanks.’

  She puts the phone down and looks up at Franzen. He’s staring out of the window, lost in thought.

  ‘Kommissar Franzen.’ She gets to her feet. Too quickly. The blood drains from her head. ‘My patients are waiting. If there’s nothing else . . .’

  Her speech is slow and stupid, her head feels like it’s full of ash. This meeting has exhausted her and she still has a long day left at the surgery.

  ‘Of course,’ Franzen says, but he sounds disappointed. ‘Thank you for your time. I’ll be in touch, of course, but if you think of anything, or if you have any questions –’

  He pulls a card out of his pocket and hands it to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says and lays the square of white card on her desk.

  ‘One last thing.’ He frowns, as if the thought has just occurred to him. ‘Your husband, Sebastian. How does he get on with Marie?’

  She doesn’t like his tone. ‘They get on fine,’ she says tersely. ‘They’re not best friends, or enemies. They get on like brother- and sister-in-law.’

  Franzen nods. ‘Thank you, Dr Bergmann,’ he says and goes, leaving her oddly bereft and regretting the sharpness of her last words.

  2

  Nina doesn’t actually need the toilet, so instead, she stands at the sink and assesses her reflection in the mirror, waiting an appropriate amount of time before until she can re-join Sebastian and her parents at the table. She’s utterly spent. No, more than that – she’s numb and on edge at the same time, and it’s almost more than she can bear.

  But she’ll have to bear it. She’ll have to bear it until the moment Marie recovers, when she finally wakes from the barbiturate-induced coma, when they know there will be no lasting brain damage, when Nina can hold her beautiful, vibrant, glorious sister in her arms and they can joke about the faint, jagged scar that remains just above her left eye, dream up wild stories about a bar fight, or a shark attack, or a secret double-agent operation gone wrong. The kind of adventure stories Marie made up when she was younger. People assumed they stemmed from her overactive imagination; Nina has often wondered whether Marie had, in fact, simply been writing herself into roles she found easier to inhabit.

  Now Nina finds herself gripping the edge of the sink so tightly her fingers are beginning to ache. The longing for Marie to recover, and the dread she might not, leave a hot, shocked tightness in her chest. She takes a deep breath and traces the shape of her face with her hands, runs them over her cheekbones and then pulls a face, making fine wrinkles appear around her eyes. She relaxes again and waits for the wrinkles to fade.

  Kommissar Franzen hasn’t been in touch since his visit to the practice. That was four days ago and there has been no change in Marie’s condition. She is stable, they say, but because of the barb coma, they can’t tell if her vital functions are actually improving, or whether her survival is entirely dependent on the machines her body is wired up to.

  Every evening Nina goes to the hospital, where she sits in Marie’s small, sterile room with her parents. These evenings are intolerable: hours that drag on, filled with tense, silent waiting. They don’t talk much – what is there to say? – yet Nina can read the unspoken reproaches in her mother’s eyes, can barely endure her father’s wordless stoicism, while they wait for Marie to wake up or die. It was Sebastian’s suggestion that they all go for a meal after the hospital visit today, and Nina didn’t know how to refuse.

  She pulls her mobile out of her pocket and checks the time. Eleven minutes past eight. She should have checked the time as soon as she left the table, but she reckons that a little over ten minutes has passed. She leaves the Ladies’ and walks up the staircase from the toilets, where their faint stench melds unpleasantly with the smells – olive oil, garlic, rosemary – from the restaurant kitchen. From across the room she can see that Sebastian is in animated conversation with her parents. She sits down beside him.

  ‘You were gone for a while,’ he says, as Nina assesses the remains of the mixed appetiser plate: a pale, tired pile of vitello tonnato, a stuffed pepper and two greasy slices of baked aubergine.

  The sight of it makes her feel ill. Marie hated aubergine when she was a child, family dinners would erupt into arguments when she refused to finish what was on her plate. I will never make my own children eat food they hate, Nina thinks, flicking through her memory to see if she has in fact done this, with mushrooms perhaps, or asparagus soup, and then notices Sebastian looking at her as though expecting an answer.

  ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘I was wondering if you’re okay, baby. You were gone for ages.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She takes her starched napkin and unfolds it on her lap.

  ‘We haven’t left you much, I’m afraid,’ he says with a sweeping gesture.

  ‘Well, that’s what happens if you spend half the evening on the toilet,’ her mother says bluntly. She’s sitting opposite, her face softly illuminated by the candles on the table. The setting feels inappropriately romantic.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Nina says. ‘I’m not that hungry, anyway.’

  ‘But you’ve hardly eaten all day,’ Sebastian says, ‘and you barely touched your dinner last night.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s because my sister has suffered a brutal attack in her own home!’ Nina says, surprised at the loudness of her voice. ‘Perhaps you’ll concede the fact that she’s lying in intensive care and fighting for her life is reason enough to ruin my appetite.’

  Sebastian lays his hand on her arm. ‘Hey, baby, take it easy,’ he murmurs. ‘Nobody wants you to eat if you don’t feel like it.’

  She breathes out shakily. She’s not herself. No one can expect her to act normally; not under these circumstances.

  Their waiter comes to the table. ‘Va bene?’ he asks, his head tilted to one side.

  ‘Si,’ Sebastian replies.

  The waiter clears the table and no one speaks. When he walks off with his arms full of plates, her mother tells her, ‘You’re behaving like a child.’

  ‘Please,’ her father says, ‘we’re all just very tired.’

  Nina glances up at her mother. She returns the look, maintains eye contact. If you hadn’t got her that awful flat in Friedrichshain, Nina can read in her eyes, living next door to squatters and anarchists, filth and graffiti everywhere, if you hadn’t encouraged her to drop out of university, if you hadn’t sat by idly, watching as she ruined her life for the sake of ‘artistic creativity’, if you hadn’t, if you hadn’t . . .

  She feels, for a moment, exactly as she had when she was younger, when Marie had done something naughty, or something stupid, and for some reason, in the eyes of their parents, Nina was to blame. She was the one cornered into taking responsibility. Except this time, Marie hasn’t done anything at all. Someone else has done something terrible to Marie, and this fact changes the rules of the game fundamentally.

  ‘I know you think it’s my fault,’ Nina says calmly.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ her mother snaps. ‘This is not about you, for once.’

  Nina flinches, gut-punched. She is back at the dining room table of her youth, being reproached for letting a teacher’s praise go to her head, or for humming too loudly when her mother had one of her ‘migraines’.

  ‘Of course it’s not your fault,’ Sebastian says. ‘Hans is right, we’re all just very tired.’

  It’s true. She feels drained, more tired than she has in ages. It is a deep emotional and physical exhaustion, the kind that requires more than a good night’s sleep to shake off. She recognises that parched sense of hollowness: the last time she felt this way was in the weeks after Kai was born.

  Her father breaks the silence. ‘Sebastian was telling us that the doctor suggests reading to Marie while she’s in the coma. Or playing her favo
urite music.’

  ‘When did he suggest that?’ Nina asks, confused. She had been at Marie’s bedside the whole time, like always, and can’t remember hearing the doctor mention reading, or music.

  ‘Yesterday,’ her mother says.

  ‘You went to the hospital yesterday?’ Nina asks Sebastian. ‘You never told me.’

  He shrugs. ‘What’s to tell? I was seeing a client a couple of streets away and thought I’d pop in during lunch.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I think that was very thoughtful of him, Nina,’ her mother says. ‘And it’s not as though you make the effort to visit your sister during the day.’

  ‘You know very well I can’t leave the surgery whenever I feel like it,’ she replies, defensive and snappy, hating herself for reacting like this, like a child.

  ‘Yes, well –’, her mother begins, but Sebastian interrupts her gently.

  ‘She’s doing her best, Antonia, I’m sure. And Nina’s got so much on her plate right now, am I right, darling?’ He cups the nape of her neck and squeezes.

  Nina wants to scream and lash out at his touch, imagines herself jumping up and running to the hospital, shaking Marie out of her coma. A wild rushing in her ears, black and deafening, ends abruptly as the waiter arrives and places a plate of ravioli in gorgonzola sauce in front of her. She stares at the steaming pasta and is seized by an appetite so overwhelming she cannot wait until the others have their plates in front of them. Instead, she starts eating, her hunger uncontrollable. The ravioli are hot, she scalds her tongue, but she doesn’t stop until her plate is empty. Finally, without looking up, she takes one – no, two – slices of soft white bread from the basket beside her and wipes the thick, creamy sauce from the plate.

  ‘Well, you certainly seem to be hungry all of a sudden,’ Sebastian says, smiling indulgently at her.

  Nina doesn’t answer. She’s hardly eaten for two days and it’s as though her stomach has shrunk as a result. Now her jeans are cutting into her waist and she’s finding it hard to breathe; she’s afraid that if she moves, she will throw up.

  It takes almost twenty minutes until the others have finally, politely cleared their plates and the waiter returns.

  ‘Would you care for a grappa on the house?’ he asks.

  ‘I’d like to go home now,’ Nina says, before anyone can consider the offer.

  Sebastian hesitates, but she adds quickly that Rebekka is babysitting Kai and will be in a bolshy teenage mood if they get home too late.

  *

  Rebekka is sitting in the dark watching TV when they get home. Nina gives her a goodnight kiss before sending her upstairs, and asks Sebastian to check on Kai, offering to do a quick tidy up and make sure the back door is locked. She waits until he has climbed the stairs and goes into the downstairs toilet, locking herself in.

  She turns to face the wall, rests her forehead on the cool, white tiles and takes several shallow breaths. A surge of self-hatred stronger than she’s felt for years washes over her. Her mother was right, she is a selfish, over-sensitive bitch. That’s probably why Marie didn’t tell her about the baby. That tiny cluster of cells in which her sister’s DNA was hidden, now dead. She lets herself slide to the floor until she’s kneeling in front of the toilet bowl. Her waistband digs into her belly making her feel sick. Serves her right for eating such a disgusting amount of pasta. She takes a deep breath and holds it, knows what she has to do. Losing control now isn’t going to help anyone.

  Ten minutes later, at the sink, she rinses her mouth out with water several times, not daring to look in the mirror. Then, she summons all her courage and looks up at her reflection.

  ‘I swear,’ she says, not quite out loud. ‘Just this once.’

  3

  On the day Marie dies, two weeks after the attack, the summer returns forcefully and unexpectedly. It’s late September and the warm weather has turned the city inside out. On every pavement, every street corner, people sit in sunglasses or baseball caps, faces turned greedily towards the sun, ashtrays and Eiskaffees and frothy-topped beers on the tables beside them. Public parks abound with naked toddlers and overexcited dogs and Nordic walkers and multi-generation Turkish families cooking over aluminium barbecues – all desperate to relish as much outdoor life as they can before the cold, dark winter sweeps into Berlin.

  Nina drives past all of this to the hospital as fast as she can without risking an accident, or rather, as fast as traffic will permit. The air-conditioning is on the blink, and before long, she’s sitting in a moving sauna. Her skirt slid up as she got into the car, and now her thighs are sticking uncomfortably to the imitation leather seat. The sweetish smell of a half-eaten, half-rotten apple, which is lying next to Kai’s booster seat at the back, spreads through the thick air. She cranks open the window. Traffic has slowed to a crawl. She’s caught in a frustrating sequence of accelerating and braking, accelerating and braking, while her heart is beating so hard she can feel it in her mouth.

  When she arrives at the hospital, she double parks and dashes across the car park. Her clothes are sticking to her damp skin as if she’d stood under a tepid shower in them, but she hardly notices as she runs up the stairs toward the ICU. Sebastian, pale and tired, is waiting there on the other side of the automatic doors. The door opens as Nina approaches, and she shivers as the air-conditioned chill comes into contact with her skin. The tart smell of disinfectant catches in her throat. Sebastian opens his arms for her; she lets him embrace her and feels his heat.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ she whispers.

  ‘I only just got here. Your mother called me.’

  He gestures to the right with his head. Nina’s parents are locked in a desolate embrace on the landing in front of Marie’s cubicle. She can hear them weeping, and with a sudden swoop of guilt, she resents their grief.

  ‘She didn’t say it was urgent,’ she says.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My mother. She rang work and left a message with Anita that I should ring the hospital when it was convenient. Convenient. I was in a meeting with a pharma sales rep, and when I came out, Anita told me about the call. I only found out half an hour ago that – oh god – they told me she’d … she’d died.’

  She presses her hand to her mouth. Sebastian goes to put his arms around her again, but she pushes him away.

  Oh god. Marie is dead. She’s struggling to breathe and hears herself sobbing; making noises that sound alien and hoarse, as though it weren’t her making them, but instead some wounded animal.

  Sebastian breaks her resistance and takes her tightly in his arms. ‘Shhh, baby,’ he says, ‘shhh.’

  ‘I want to see her,’ Nina says, when her breathing has levelled itself out a little.

  ‘Not right now,’ he says. ‘They’re –’

  ‘I don’t care, I want to see her.’ She frees herself from his arms, walks past her parents, into Marie’s cubicle, where a nurse is in the process of removing the ventilation tube from Marie’s mouth. It makes a small sucking noise on its way out. Marie doesn’t look much different than on the previous visits; she’s lying on the bed, washed-out and sad. Just from the absolute silence, the absence of the hissing and pulsing of the machines, Nina knows this is the last time she will ever see her sister.

  The nurse looks up. ‘Give me ten minutes,’ she says gently. ‘Then you can say goodbye.’

  When Nina doesn’t respond, the nurse comes and places her hand tenderly on her arm. ‘Come on,’ she says, and guides Nina out of the room. ‘Dr Krüger will want to speak to you,’ she adds. ‘With you and your parents. To talk you through the next steps and –’ She hesitates. ‘And about whether your sister had a donor card.’

  Marie’s organs failed her, Nina wants to say, but can’t find the strength to speak. In the corridor, she lets herself be handed over into Sebastian’s arms.

  4

  ‘You look great,’ Sebastian whispers into Nina’s ear.

  She looks at herself in the bedroom mir
ror and is ashamed to feel pleased that the black dress fits her again.

  ‘Black is slimming,’ she says.

  ‘It’s not the dress,’ he replies. ‘It’s you.’

  Nina looks away. ‘Please don’t, Basti. Not now.’

  Sebastian straightens his tie in the mirror. The height difference between them is large enough for him to be able to do so over her head. Then he presses his body against hers, leans forward and kisses her on the neck.

  ‘Please, just . . . don’t,’ she says again.

  ‘What? Don’t what?’

  ‘You know what. This isn’t a good time.’

  He takes a step to the side and looks straight at her. ‘What are you implying?’ His tone is irritable, challenging.

  ‘I’m not implying anything,’ she replies. She fixes a loose strand of blond hair into a clip and then picks up a packet of tissues from the bedside table.

  ‘You know,’ says Sebastian, as she heads out of the bedroom, ‘this sort of thing brings some families closer together.’

  She pauses at the door. She can feel her eyes starting to well up. She searches for the words to explain how it’s impossible to be touched, to feel the comfort of another body, to know you are alive – as though it were nothing. ‘I’m sorry,’ is all she can manage.

  In the kitchen, Rebekka and Kai are squabbling. They fall silent as soon as Nina enters. She briefly considers asking what the fight is about, but is too numb to care.

  ‘Will there be anything to eat at the funeral?’ Kai asks.

  ‘No,’ Nina says. ‘You’d better eat now if you’re hungry.’

  ‘But what if I get hungry later?’

  She sighs. ‘Then you’ll have to wait until we get home.’

  ‘That’s typical,’ says Rebekka.

  Nina turns to look at her. ‘What is?’

  Rebekka shrugs huffily. ‘You get to wear something nice, and I have to make do with this.’ She nods at the dark blue blouse and black trousers she’s wearing. ‘Black and dark blue – it doesn’t even match. And this blouse is too small for me. I haven’t worn it since last Christmas. It makes me look fat.’