Sisters of Berlin

by Juliet Conlin

  ‘But she had bite marks! Her entire genital area was one infected, broken mess. I could clearly see that she’d been bitten.’

  He lets out a deep sigh. ‘I wasn’t questioning your professional judgement.’ He sounds tired, as if she’s deliberately bringing more unnecessary drama into their lives. ‘I was just saying that you can’t help those who don’t want to be helped. And besides –’

  ‘Besides what?’ She hates the fact that they’re having this conversation now, that the conversation has taken on this edge, but she doesn’t know how to make it stop.

  He sighs again. ‘I don’t think it would be wise to frighten off your patients at this stage,’ he says. ‘You know yourself that it’s going to take a year or so until you’re financially stable.’

  ‘So it’s best I let the woman suffer,’ she says quietly, ‘while I make sure my business is up and running.’

  He lets himself fall back and closes his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry to be talking like this.’ He opens his eyes and looks at her. ‘You’re obviously too stressed out to have a normal conversation. And I get it, I do. So why don’t we leave it for tonight?’

  She holds his gaze for a moment and then looks away. She misses Marie so acutely, she can’t bear it. She misses not having her to talk to about this. Marie would have known what to say. At the very least, she would have listened. Nina suddenly feels herself lose the ability to breathe, knowing that she will never, ever, be able to talk to her sister again.

  ‘Mama?’ It’s Kai, crumpled in his tiger pyjamas, from the top of the stairs.

  Nina snatches a breath and looks at Sebastian. ‘Maybe he should sleep with us tonight,’ she says.

  He shakes his head a fraction, blows out a thin stream of air. ‘I don’t think infantilising him is going to solve anything.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be physically close after something like this has happened,’ Nina says, getting to her feet.

  He looks up at her.

  ‘When you’re a child,’ she adds, and leaves the room to go upstairs and comfort her son.

  *

  June, 2004

  Nina spotted her through the hot crush of people. She was sitting slumped against a grimy wall, knees up, head resting on them. From inside the club behind her, strobe lighting and deafening music, a violent, hypnotic beat. Not a metre away, a young man suddenly doubled over and vomited against the wall. A cheer rose up from his friends – out on a stag night, it looked like – and the young man, reeling slightly, fist-pumped the air with a grin. Marie didn’t move.

  It was a warm night, or rather, morning. It would be dawn soon. The sharp-sour stench of the man’s vomit crept up Nina’s nose and she had to overcome the urge to gag. She had rarely been out all night clubbing or partying, even when she was younger, and sometimes wondered what she’d missed out on. Didn’t seem she’d missed out on much. She shouldered her way through the clubbers and crouched down in front of her sister.

  ‘Marie, are you all right?’

  Marie looked up through sweat-damp curls that had fallen into her face. Her eye makeup was smudged, and it seemed to take her a minute to recognise Nina. She managed a lopsided smile. ‘Hi. You’re here.’

  ‘Course I am. I was worried. Come on, up you get.’

  She took Marie’s elbow to help her to her feet and her arm came into contact with the brick wall. The wall – graffitied from top to bottom – was coated in a slimy, unrecognisable substance. She pulled away, fast, and Marie slid out of her grip, stumbling and narrowly missing the puddle of vomit.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Nina,’ she snapped, ‘don’t rush me.’

  Nina’s earlier worry, after receiving the incoherent, panicky phone call from Marie half an hour ago, telling her someone had stolen her purse and she didn’t know how to get home, was replaced by a surge of anger. ‘I’ve every bloody right to rush you. It’s half past four in the morning, I’ve got a baby at home, ready to wake up for a feed in an hour, and I’m standing in a stinking, filthy alley with an eighteen-year-old, smashed out of her head, who should know better.’

  Marie lowered her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, though the noise from the club was so loud, Nina could only lip-read the words. Then Marie started to cry, the way drunk people cry, with her face screwed up and spit and snot coming out of her nose and mouth. ‘I got my results today,’ she said, her words hopelessly slurred.

  Her school leaving exams. Of course. Nina had forgotten. ‘Oh.’

  ‘You know what Papa said?’ she continued, her sobbing angry now. ‘He said my “efforts” weren’t worth the paper they were written on . . . that I was a failure . . . that he’d never expected much from me,’ she gulped and choked on her words, ‘but that I’d managed to fall short even of that. But I passed, Nina! I passed the exams.’

  A spray of saliva hit Nina’s cheek. She put her arms around her sister and held her tight. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, although it wasn’t okay. It was far from okay. ‘C’mon, time to get you home.’

  8

  ‘Bekka, darling!’ Nina’s mother throws her arms around Rebekka and acknowledges her daughter’s presence with a nod.

  ‘Hi, Omi,’ Rebekka says, smiling.

  ‘Sorry we’re late,’ Nina says, coming up the steps that lead from the driveway to the front door. Her parents’ house isn’t quite large enough to be considered ‘grand’, but it’s nonetheless listed as a villa at the land registry. Located in the lush district of Zehlendorf – the closest the walled-in city of West Berlin ever came to having a proper suburb – the house nestles in neatly among other, similar turn-of-the-20th-century houses. The streets are hushed and leafy, rubbish bins tucked away behind the houses, the mature front gardens enclosed by wrought-iron fencing. The area exudes a sense of affluence and privacy that makes the accidental visitor feel distinctly unwelcome.

  Antonia clears her throat. ‘Hmm,’ she says, looking at her watch.

  Nina ignores her tone. ‘Sebastian wanted to take Kai to the zoo this morning, and my car wouldn’t start, so we decided I’d drop the two of them off at the zoo with Basti’s car and pick them up later.’

  ‘Oh?’ Antonia’s face crumples momentarily. ‘Kai’s not with you?’ Then she shrugs. ‘Oh well, never mind. You’d better come in. It looks as though it’s about to rain.’

  They go inside, Nina’s heels clacking noisily on the tiled floor. She likes people to remove their shoes in her own house, but her mother considers it vulgar to walk around in stockinged feet.

  ‘Hannah’s just made some coffee,’ Antonia says now, slipping her arm through Rebekka’s and pulling her closer. ‘And I had her buy some Coke for you.’ She smiles indulgently at her.

  They sit down; Antonia and Rebekka take a seat on the sofa, and Nina sits on the armchair next to the large bay window. She notices that the sofa has been re-upholstered in a dark green fabric. It’s an antique, like much of the furniture in the house, and even with its new covering, smells stale.

  Hannah, the Bergmanns’ domestic help, comes in with a tray of coffee. She smiles at Nina and says a small ‘Hello’.

  ‘Don’t forget the Coca-Cola,’ Antonia tells her. ‘It’s in the fridge.’

  Hannah nods and leaves the room.

  ‘It’s such a shame that Kai didn’t come along,’ Antonia continues, pouring two cups of coffee.

  ‘He’s into reptiles at the moment,’ Rebekka says, pulling a face. ‘He’s so gross.’

  Antonia laughs. ‘Well, it’s very sweet of Sebastian to give up his Saturday morning to spend time with his son.’

  Nina lets out a puff of air. ‘I don’t think he views it as a sacrifice to take Kai to the zoo.’

  Antonia puts down the coffee pot. ‘Don’t twist my words, Nina,’ she says without looking up. ‘You know exactly what I mean.’

  Yes, Nina does know exactly what she means, but she doesn’t want to get into an argument in front of Rebekka. The smell of her mother’s perfum
e, a heavy, musky scent she has worn as long as Nina can remember, cloys the air.

  ‘Hand me my bag there, would you?’ Antonia says brightly to Rebekka, indicating the handbag sitting on a side table. Rebekka obliges, and she snaps the bag open and retrieves her purse.

  ‘Here,’ she says, pulling out a twenty-euro note and handing it to Rebekka. ‘Because you’re such a good girl.’

  ‘Mama!’ Nina says. ‘You’re spoiling her.’

  ‘A grandmother is entitled to spoil her only granddaughter.’ Antonia winks at Rebekka. ‘Especially when she’s such a good girl.’

  Nina takes a sip of coffee, ignoring the angry look Rebekka shoots her. She should be happy that Bekka and her mother have such a playful, uncomplicated relationship, free from weighty expectations, in which Bekka can accept her grandmother’s generosity knowing it doesn’t put her in any emotional debt, a relationship in which she is safe to express herself without fear of reproach. And Nina knows should be happy about that, but she can’t help recalling what it was like for her growing up, where the honest expression of feelings was forbidden and everything she received – pocket money, praise, affection – came at a price. It puzzles her to think about how life might have been, had her relationship with her mother been different.

  ‘You know,’ Antonia says, dropping two sugar cubes into her own coffee, ‘you really ought to think about getting a new car. Yours seems so unreliable.’

  ‘I can’t afford a new car at the moment.’

  Antonia sniffs. ‘Surely Sebastian can buy you one?’

  ‘I’m not going to take money from my husband when I have a job of my own,’ Nina replies. ‘You of all people should understand that.’

  ‘It was different then,’ Antonia says crisply. ‘The women of my generation were at their husband’s mercy if they didn’t have their own income. Why you younger women can’t gratefully accept all that has been done for you, I don’t know. It doesn’t have to be fight, fight, fight all the time.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Nina says, as if she were an indifferent teenager again.

  They’d had a similar argument when Nina and Sebastian got married: Nina had decided to keep her own name, much to her mother’s displeasure, who felt that for Nina not to take Sebastian’s surname – Lanz – was an act of disrespect to him.

  ‘I just prefer to be financially independent, that’s all,’ Nina adds.

  ‘In that case –’ Her mother places her cup on the saucer, almost triumphantly. ‘I don’t understand why you gave up that position at the hospital. It was perfect for you. And you were sure of a steady income.’

  It is a blatant attempt to fuel Nina’s creeping self-doubts about the folly of setting up her own practice. She’s not playing that game. She leans back in her chair. ‘Let’s please drop it, all right?’

  Her mother looks poised to argue, but evidently thinks better of it. She straightens her posture. ‘Very well.’

  They sit in silence. The light is suddenly sucked out of the room as it begins to pour with rain outside. Antonia switches on a small Tiffany table lamp and a muted, multi-coloured glow fills the room. Nina glances over at Bekka, who is wired to her phone, nodding her head up and down to music. Her two thumbs tap the screen at high speed.

  ‘Where’s Papa?’ Nina asks finally, to break the silence.

  ‘He’s at the Ministry,’ her mother replies. She sighs. ‘I don’t know. Ever since he agreed to sit on that stupid anniversary committee, he’s been so busy. It’s as though he never retired.’

  Nina’s father retired as a judge from the Ministry of Justice nine years ago, and seemed to age ten years overnight. She strongly suspects that his involvement in the anniversary celebrations for the fall of the Wall is a welcome opportunity to do something worthwhile – even if it is only temporary. For a brief moment, she feels sorry for her mother, sitting in this pristine house, waiting, thinking, with nothing to distract her.

  ‘Well, give him my love when you see him,’ she says. ‘And tell him not to work too hard.’

  ‘From your mouth to God’s ear,’ Antonia replies. Then she says: ‘Have you heard anything from Kommissar Franzen?’

  Nina places her cup down and looks over at Rebekka, who is still lost in her own world. ‘He spoke to Sebastian on Thursday,’ she says in a hushed voice. ‘He just asked some questions about Marie – not that Basti knows anything I haven’t already told them.’ She doesn’t mention that Sebastian was asked to give a saliva sample.

  ‘Nothing new, then?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘I don’t understand it.’ Antonia throws up her hands. ‘They must have some lead, something to give them an idea who might have done it. What about her neighbours? Surely one of them must have seen someone leaving her flat, after – you know.’ Her voice trembles and drops to a whisper.

  ‘It’s a big city, Mama. People only see what they want to see.’ But still she makes a mental note to ring Franzen on Monday. She wants to know what came of his meeting with Robert. Or maybe she should call Robert. Yes, she’ll do that. As soon as she gets home.

  ‘It’s just so frustrating,’ her mother says as she dabs at her eyes with a tissue, careful not to smudge her makeup.

  ‘Are you okay, Omi?’ Rebekka asks suddenly. She looks at Nina. ‘Oh. Are you talking about –?’

  ‘Never mind, sweetheart,’ Nina says, seeing the anxiety blossom on her daughter’s face.

  But Rebekka’s attention is drawn back almost immediately to a pling coming from her phone. She pulls one earplug out. ‘Mama?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Emilia wants to know if I can come round for an hour or so. She only lives ten minutes away. We’ve got this project together at school and –’

  ‘But you’ve only just arrived!’ Antonia exclaims. ‘And you were late getting here in the first place.’

  Rebekka tilts her head to one side. ‘Sorry, Omi. You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. I’ll text her back and –’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Antonia says abruptly. ‘You go out and enjoy yourself. I insist. Just promise me you’ll visit during the week.’

  Rebekka jumps up. ‘Thanks, Omi.’ She kisses her grandmother’s cheek. Antonia closes her eyes and smiles as if being blessed.

  ‘You’re to be home at eight o’clock at the latest,’ Nina calls out as Rebekka makes her escape, wishing she could jump up and leave with such ease, then turns back to her mother. ‘Sorry, Mama. She just does as she likes these days.’

  ‘She’s fourteen, a young woman,’ Antonia says and pours herself another cup of coffee. They sit in more uncomfortable silence. Outside, it’s still pouring, and there is a far-off rumble of thunder. Nina stares down into her cup. Perhaps she should claim a forgotten appointment. They will both know it’s a lie, but Antonia will accept it as truth.

  Nina opens her mouth just as the doorbell rings. Hannah walks through from the kitchen, throwing Antonia a questioning look as she heads towards the front door.

  ‘Tell whoever it is that I already donate plenty of money to charities of my choice,’ Antonia tells her. ‘And don’t let them in!’ she adds, in a louder voice.

  Nina places her hands on her lap and looks down at them, waiting for Hannah to send away whoever has rung the doorbell, so she can finally make her excuses and leave. Her mother cranes her neck towards the door.

  Nina hears Hannah say, ‘I’m not sure. I’ll see if she’s in,’ and then she comes to stand in the doorway.

  ‘It’s Herr and Frau Klopp,’ she says to Antonia. ‘Herr Klopp has some papers for your husband. I told them I’d see if you’re available.’

  Antonia stands up. ‘Don’t just leave them waiting on the front step,’ she says. ‘Invite them in. And fetch some more cups. They can join us for coffee.’

  Hannah does as she is asked. A moment later, a man and a woman enter. The woman is dark-haired, in her early sixties perhaps, dressed with understated elegance. Her husband’s suit looks bespoke, and despite the wrinkles aro
und his eyes and the receding hairline, he carries an awareness of his own attractiveness. They both do.

  ‘Antonia,’ the woman says, walking towards her and miming a kiss on the left and right side of her face in which their faces don’t actually touch. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ she says in a low voice.

  Antonia squeezes her eyes shut briefly, mouths ‘Thank you’, and then turns to Nina.

  ‘Gloria, this is my daughter Nina. Nina, this is Gloria Klopp. Her husband, Bernhard, is a former colleague of your father’s.’

  ‘And a good friend,’ Gloria Klopp adds. Her Saxon accent is audible, though only vaguely. Like many middle-class Saxons, she has presumably worked hard to rid her speech of the squashed, centralised vowels that West Germans still associate, unpleasantly, with former communist party leaders.

  ‘Very nice to meet you,’ Nina says, getting up to shake each hand in turn.

  ‘Please, take a seat, Gloria, Bernhard,’ Antonia says. ‘Will you join us for coffee? Hannah’s making a fresh pot.’

  Herr Klopp hesitates briefly. ‘We don’t want to disturb you,’ he says. ‘We were just driving past and I remembered I have these papers in the car.’ He gestures at the blue folder he’s carrying.

  ‘You’re not disturbing us at all,’ Antonia says. ‘You must stay until the rain has eased off a little, at least. Hannah will take your coats. Hannah?’

  Hannah enters the room with a tray. She places two cups and a fresh coffee pot on the table, then helps the Klopps out of their wet coats.

  ‘Anything else?’ she asks.

  ‘Thank you,’ Antonia says. ‘That’ll be all.’

  Gloria Klopp sits down on the sofa next to Antonia, her husband takes a seat opposite Nina.

  ‘Bernhard did ask me to drop them off for Hans a couple of days ago,’ Frau Klopp says, ‘but, goodness, I’ve been so busy with one thing or another. I completely forgot.’

  ‘I hope the delay hasn’t caused any problems,’ Herr Klopp says, holding out the folder.

  Antonia takes it and places it on a side table without giving it a second look. ‘I can’t imagine so,’ she says, as she leans forward to pour the coffee. ‘It’s probably to do with this speech he’s giving at the anniversary celebrations.’