Sisters of Berlin

by Juliet Conlin

  But she doesn’t pay her friend any attention because she’s eating. The tastes and textures set off little explosions in her mouth – spices melding with fat, salt with sour. With sweet, sweet, sweet. She scrapes the spoon around the sides of the tiramisu bowl with a trembling hand and licks it. Sara is staring at her.

  ‘I haven’t had much of an appetite lately,’ she says apologetically. ‘I thought I’d better eat while I had a chance.’ She feels full to bursting, and giddy.

  ‘Great,’ Sara says. ‘I didn’t like to mention it earlier, but you are looking a little – peaky.’ She smiles. ‘I’m happy to see it’s nothing to worry about.’

  Nina shakes her head too fast. ‘No,’ she says, ‘nothing to worry about.’

  ‘You have to make sure you’re being kind to yourself. Not just to other people.’

  *

  Later, they hug goodbye outside the café. Sara promises to call when she has a couple of hours free, to go with Nina to Marie’s flat.

  ‘The sooner, the better,’ she says. ‘You don’t want it hanging over you.’

  ‘Oh, Sara, what would I do without you?’

  ‘Look, can I give you a lift?’ she asks, pointing to a shiny blue BMW parked right in front of the café in a no-parking zone.

  ‘Thanks, but no.’ The sun is still out in force. ‘I’ll take the underground. Give me a chance to clear my head before I get home.’

  Sara pulls a face at the mention of public transport, then de-activates her car’s central locking. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, or Monday at the latest. Stay strong.’ And she drives off with a smile.

  Nina doesn’t hesitate. She walks down Akazienstraße in the opposite direction of the U-Bahn station, picking up her pace so that she’s moving with a kind of half-walking, half-running skip. There is a supermarket at the end of the street, on the other side of the junction. She estimates that she has around one thousand calories churning inside her, but still there’s room for more. The pavement is crowded; people are taking advantage of the break from the rainy weather they’ve had for days. Couples, dog-walkers, joggers, shoppers – the entire city seems to be out and about, and Nina is forced to stop, swerve, pick up her pace again, slow down. She’s in a hurry now, and wishes she’d eaten the tiramisu first, to line her stomach.

  She steps aside to let an elderly man with a Zimmer frame pass only to collide with a pram. She mutters her apologies to the angry mother and finally makes it to the supermarket. She wishes she had her car. She doesn’t know how much she’ll be able to carry. She has the list ready in her mind: ice cream, crisps, salami, potato salad, wine gums, bottles of full-sugar coke, pastries. She tosses everything into the trolley and when she gets to the till, she is astonished at the cost. But it doesn’t matter. Her pulse is pounding high in her throat. She hands her debit card to the cashier and punches in her PIN. She doesn’t wait for the receipt.

  Outside, she calculates the quickest way to get to Wilmersdorf. Going home is not an option – Sebastian and the children could be there, or might arrive while she’s still eating. The urgent sense of anticipation, the surging greed and diesel fumes from the main road are making her nauseous. She takes shallow breaths and moves along the pavement, eyes down. The shopping bags are heavy, the handles are cutting into her hands, painfully.

  In an attempt to escape the stinking high street, she turns onto Pallasstraße, a grey, wide road, lined by blocks of high flats and dilapidated shops – a barber’s, a späti, vaping shops, a couple of arcades. It’s a withered area, neglected for decades, left behind when the breathless, heady days of reunification saw public spending pumped into the shiny new city centre, giving everything just east of the former Wall a fresh, gilded face. This here is not a part of Berlin tourists come to see. It’s not shabby chic, like Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg. It’s just shabby. Nina looks around for a taxi rank, her whole body buzzing, then – a hand on her arm is forcing her to a stop. She almost loses her grip on the carrier bag.

  ‘Dr Bergmann!’

  Nina looks up at the woman who just stopped her. Mid-forties, short brown hair, a hefty body. It takes a moment to place her. It’s one of her patients, Frau Schüssler.

  ‘Fancy meeting you here! Lovely weather, isn’t it? Out shopping, are you?’

  The woman eyes the shopping bags and Nina is seized by a panicky shame.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I’m in a terrible hurry,’ she says, avoiding the woman’s eye. A taxi stops at a red light in front of her and Nina hops in, leaving Frau Schüssler standing there, open-mouthed.

  ‘Rüdesheimer Platz, please,’ she says to the driver. He nods and accelerates as the light turns green. She doesn’t look back.

  When they arrive ten minutes later, she leans forward and hands the driver a twenty-euro note. ‘Keep the change,’ she says and struggles out of the car with her bags.

  It is an upmarket area; Sebastian encouraged her to set up somewhere she could get as many private patients as possible. (‘If you’re going to do this, then think big.’) But she can barely cover the rent. She puts the shopping bags down too quickly at the front door, and the one with the coke bottle topples over and spills its contents over the pavement. She curses and retrieves a set of keys from her pocket, then bends down and stuffs the food back into the bag. She shoves the bottle under her arm and enters.

  It’s beautifully quiet inside. She goes straight into the examination room, sits down on the floor and carefully spreads the food out in front of her, in the order she will eat it. The white blinds are drawn, diffusing the sunlight in the room. She closes her eyes for a moment, breathes in and out slowly, internalising the calmness of the space, the situation, the moment. Then she begins.

  *

  May, 1993

  ‘I tried, but –’

  Her father cut her off. ‘It’s not a matter of trying, Nina. It’s a matter of doing. Do you think anybody’s ever going to ask you hard you tried? No. They’re going to look at the facts.’ He stabbed his finger at the report card. ‘And you’re quite capable of getting the grades for medical school. You just have to want it enough.’

  Her mother spoke without looking up from her plate. ‘Perhaps less time spent with . . . what’s his name, Markus?’

  Nina counted the runner beans on her plate. Nine. With her fork, she separated them into two piles and scraped the gravy off the smaller pile. She felt Marie tugging at her shoelaces. She kicked out and heard a muffled ‘Ow!’

  ‘For crying out loud! What’s the child doing under the table?’ Her father directed this at her mother.

  ‘I couldn’t say.’ Antonia gave a weary sigh. ‘She’s been there all afternoon.’

  ‘She’s playing,’ Nina said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Behaving like a dog,’ her father replied, wiping the corners of his mouth with a linen napkin and getting to his feet. ‘I’ll be in my study.’

  17

  At home, the children are upstairs in bed and Sebastian is sitting in the living room, in the dark, watching TV. Nina heads for the kitchen and gets a glass of water. Her throat is still raw. With the glass in hand, she goes into the living room and sits down next to Sebastian. He doesn’t ask where she’s been. The smell of something greasy, meaty, hangs in the air. Sebastian must have got a takeaway in for supper.

  They sit in silence for a moment, then Sebastian picks up the remote control and turns off the TV. Nina doesn’t reach over to switch on the light. She knows instinctively, even before he speaks, that this is going to be one of those conversations better held in the dark.

  ‘We have to talk,’ he says and turns to face her.

  She swallows and winces. ‘It’s –’ she begins, but Sebastian holds up his hand to stop her.

  ‘I’ll start, if that’s okay,’ he says. ‘I’ve been thinking about things for a while now, and I want you to hear what I’ve got to say.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘To be honest, Nina, it can’t go on like this. I know you’re still grieving, but I believe it’s time yo
u –’ He looks towards the blank TV screen and then back at her. ‘It’s time we got back to normal, as a family and as a couple. I don’t know how to bring this up in a nice way. I understand, I do, that this has been very, very traumatic for you. But we can’t go on like this. Everything I say, every little thing, you jump down my throat. I don’t feel I can touch you even.’ He puts his hand on the nape of her neck and she flinches. ‘You see!’ he says, pulling his hand back. ‘Am I really that repellent to you?’

  He gets up and takes three paces across the room. The orange light from the streetlamp outside gives the room an alien, claustrophobic feel.

  He turns and sits back down, resting his forearms on his thighs. He lets his head hang down between his shoulders. ‘I don’t think you realise how much this is affecting us,’ he says quietly.

  Nina gazes down at the glass of water in her hand. Its surface is perfectly still.

  ‘Bekka wants to give up piano lessons,’ he continues. ‘She said, what’s the point? And Kai keeps asking me why Mama is so sad.’

  Her face crumples. It’s so unfair, she wants to say, bringing the kids into this, but instead she says, ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice is cracked and she feels herself gasping.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘So am I.’ He sighs, and she wonders at his need to be so melodramatic. ‘But I’m not willing to give our lives up, Nina. Not you, not the kids.’

  Sebastian takes the glass of water from her hand and places it on the coffee table. A car outside starts its engine, revs noisily and speeds off.

  ‘We need to talk to each other,’ he says, and puts his arms around her. ‘We need to connect.’ For a while, they remain in this limp embrace, silently.

  Nina wonders what he can possibly connect with – she has no strength, she is empty.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he says finally, ‘and I know how it’s going to sound, but hear me out.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I’ve been thinking we should maybe have another baby. While we still can.’

  He guides her chin upwards with his finger, so that he’s looking directly into her face. ‘Hmm?’

  Nina starts to laugh. She laughs and laughs until she realises she’s not laughing at all. She’s crying and crying. Sebastian embraces her again.

  ‘Shhh,’ he says. ‘It’s okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’ve been playing this over in my mind. Remember when we found out that you were pregnant with Kai? We were so happy, so relieved. Remember? That magical moment when you realise you can forget all the hurt and fighting, that you can put it behind you because all that matters is that this beautiful, exquisite little human being is going to come into your life. I want us to feel like that again, Nina.’

  Nina slips out of his arms. She clears her throat, painfully. ‘I – I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Say yes! Don’t you remember how great it was?’ He looks at her, searching her face. ‘I do, I remember how nice it was to come home to you and the kids, and everything would fall off me, the whole work stress, the annoying clients, the rush-hour traffic. It was just us, together, in our home.’ He smiles wistfully. ‘I’d like that again, I really would.’

  His expression is hopeful and vulnerable at the same time. She feels a lick of fear that he’s actually serious about it. ‘I’m forty-two, Basti.’

  ‘Then it’s now or never.’

  ‘And the practice –’

  And the morning sickness, and the back aches, and the swollen ankles, the weight gain, the excruciating labour pains, the torn perineum, stiches, mastitis, nappies, exhaustion.

  And the practice.

  ‘I’ve given that some thought, too.’ He interlocks his fingers in front of him. ‘I think the sensible thing to do might be to cut your losses.’

  She looks at him. His hair shines copper in the glow of the streetlamp.

  ‘Regardless of whether or not we have a baby,’ he continues. ‘It’s too much effort for too little reward. It was a great idea at the time, but it’s been over a year now, and, if you’re honest with yourself . . .’ he pauses. ‘At least you tried.’

  ‘And failed,’ she adds in a small, broken voice.

  He shakes his head. ‘No. No, you haven’t failed. That’s not how you should look at it. This happens to people all the time. Good people, smart people. And –’

  ‘You’ve certainly been giving this a lot of thought.’ She gets up off the sofa in a surge of something like anger. What is he thinking? That she relinquish her career, her independence, her body – for his dream of a new baby?

  Sebastian looks up at her, his initial look of vulnerability now replaced by self-assurance. ‘Yes, I have,’ he says. ‘And it’s never too late to start again.’

  ‘I’m tired, Basti. I have to go to bed.’

  ‘I understand,’ he says. ‘We don’t have to talk about it now. But promise me you’ll give it some proper thought.’

  ‘I will.’ She leaves the room, walks up the stairs and shuts the door to the spare room behind her.

  18

  September, 2009

  ‘Do you never, you know, dream of escaping?’ Marie was lying on her back, wearing a very tiny red bikini; her skin, after only three days of Greek sunshine, a deep golden tan.

  ‘What do you think I’m doing right now?’ Nina answered, dipping her right foot into the pool and watching the water travel outwards in ripples and dissolve into itself. She looked down at Marie, who was lying beside her with her forearm covering her eyes. ‘Did you cheat and go to a tanning studio before we came?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t mean this,’ Marie said, ignoring Nina’s question. She propped herself up on her elbows and squinted in Nina’s direction. ‘This is just a break. What I mean is, have you never thought of escaping, from everything?’

  ‘Actually, no.’

  ‘Never? Never ever ever? Not for one single nanosecond?’

  Three young men whom Nina recognised from the night before – they belonged to a loud, drunken group of lads on a stag do – slopped past them in flip flops and long multi-coloured surf shorts. Nina pulled her stomach in instinctively. Four years after Rebekka’s birth, her body had more or less regained its pre-pregnancy shape, except for the slight flabbiness of the skin covering her abdomen. For her, her bikini days were over, and she’d bought a painfully expensive black swimming costume for this holiday, which, she thought, made her look rather elegant. But not young. And not hot, either.

  ‘So this is it for you?’ Marie continued, sitting up and reaching into Nina’s beach bag for the sunscreen. ‘Mummy, Daddy, baby, steady job –’

  ‘A steady job that’s paying for your holiday,’ Nina said, trying to keep the bite out of her voice. She watched as her sister covered her arms and legs with the lotion, then took the bottle from her and began rubbing some onto her shoulders. In the corner of her vision, she could see the young men watching. For the briefest of moments, she had an urge to protect her sister – her gorgeous twenty-two-year old sister – from these looks by covering her with a beach towel.

  ‘And besides, any time I feel like “escaping”,’ she said, spreading the remains of the sticky lotion on her own forearms, ‘I have Sebastian to look after Bekka. He’s good like that.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Marie said, letting out a little snort.

  Nina turned and frowned at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No, come on, I want to hear it.’

  Marie licked her lower lip but said nothing.

  Nina pushed her sunglasses up onto her head. ‘What exactly is your problem with Sebastian?’ she said in a low voice, mindful of the other holidaymakers around the pool.

  Marie pulled the corners of her mouth down and shook her head slightly. ‘You know when guys say they like “strong independent women”?’ The last words in air quotes.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They don’t, more often than not. They just like the idea of strong independent women. They like the idea
that they deserve some kind of prize for being a modern man. I mean, he calls you “baby”, for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘Yes, well.’ Nina shoved her sunglasses back on. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ A pause. ‘More often than not.’

  Marie turned to look at her, then let her eyes slide away. They sat in silence for a moment.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Marie said in a small voice. She leaned in and rested her head against Nina’s. ‘You know I can’t keep my big mouth shut. Please, let’s not fight.’

  Nina felt her anger fizzle out and die.

  Marie got to her feet. ‘Where’s the camera?’ she asked, switching her attention. ‘I’ll get those guys to take a photo of us.’

  *

  Nina opens the door to the practice. As always, Anita is there before her. She gives Nina a broad smile from behind the reception counter as she enters.

  ‘Here,’ Anita says, standing up and pushing a stack of files towards Nina. ‘Lots to do today.’

  ‘Wow,’ Nina says.

  ‘Eight regulars, five new patients. I’ve rescheduled two of last Thursday’s patients for this afternoon. I hope that’s okay?’

  It’s meant to be Nina’s afternoon off, but she doesn’t care. ‘That’s fine. Thank you, Anita.’

  Anita smiles again. ‘No problem.’

  ‘I know, but truly, thanks for everything.’

  Anita puts her head to one side, looking like a young girl all of a sudden. ‘I think you’re very brave,’ she says quietly.

  Nina smiles and picks up the files. As she walks towards the examination room, Anita calls out in an urgent whisper, ‘I forgot to say. That police officer, Kommissar Frank, is waiting for you. In there.’ She points to the examination room. ‘He was here first thing, outside the door when I got here. He asked if he could wait somewhere quiet, so I told him to go in.’ She pulls up her shoulders. ‘Hope that isn’t a problem.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Dr Bergmann?’ she says. ‘I should have mentioned this sooner, but –’