by Maike Wetzel
The police took her to the hospital. The doctors there didn’t rush her, they observed her, worked by instinct. The girl cowered in the corner of the treatment room. She even relieved herself there. She hardly touched the food they brought. The doctors didn’t get any response from her for days. Eventually they took the girl to supported housing. A young female doctor would come and sit next to the girl. Every day she got a bit closer. At first the girl hid behind her chair and snarled. After five days she accepted the doctor’s presence. The girl didn’t do much during the hours the doctor sat there with her. She rocked back and forth or pulled strands of hair over her face and contemplated the ends. Sometimes she would bite her nails a bit or scratch the crook of her elbow. The doctor felt sorry for the girl. She put her in mind of a frightened animal. But the girl knows how to write, so they discovered after several weeks. A police officer called round various aid organisations and eventually ended up comparing the girl with Elly’s picture. Our telephone rang.
My parents say it’s impossible. This girl can’t be our daughter. There must be some mistake. They try to compose themselves. The prospect is too enticing. We can’t get our hopes up; it takes too much out of us. We can’t cope with another disappointment. It’s better to assume the worst. Our vocal chords rasp. We clear our throats. But the lump is too low down. We can’t shift it. We discuss which one of us should fly to Denmark. In the end both my parents go. They book separate flights in case there is a crash. I am supposed to carry on going to school like nothing has happened.
My mother has frozen meals for me. Every day I heat up the contents of one of the Tupperware tubs. The block of brown ice turns into goulash, the red one into tomato soup. I spoon the food from the tub and wipe it out with a slice of bread. I don’t tell anyone about the phone call. Then everything would come true. I don’t believe in miracles. I try to put one foot in front of the other. I get through the day bit by bit. By the evening I can no longer remember what I did in the morning. I watch TV until the sun comes up again. I can’t sleep. Something tingles under my tailbone, I can’t switch off. I run through the woods to tire myself out. I go as fast as I can. I gasp, my blood thunders in my ears. The treetops above me are spinning. I trip over a root. My chin splits open. I can smell moss. Pine needles stick to my face. My mother’s voice pounds in my head. She says: It’s true. We’ve got her back. It’s unbelievable. I ask Judith if she is really sure. My mother flies into a rage and tries to cut me off, but then she interrupts herself and says I’ll see soon enough. They will be coming back with Elly the day after tomorrow. I knock my trainers together.
The nose of the aeroplane icon is pointing down. I’m standing behind the stainless-steel barriers where I alternate between staring at the sliding door and staring at my watch again. Every few seconds the door glides to one side, releasing bunches of people with their suitcases on wheels and their baggage carts. Over the tannoy, passengers with foreign-sounding names are requested to make their way to their flight. Outside on the apron a mobile stairway docks onto an Airbus. Then the sliding door made of opaque glass glides to one side. I see my parents first. They are pushing a baggage cart. A girl is sitting on top of the cases. That must be my sister. I don’t recognise her. She has pulled the hood of her sweater up and is wearing sunglasses. I can’t even make out her figure. Her jacket and trousers swamp her. Then suddenly there are flashes. Photographers jump in front of the baggage cart, shouting loudly, gesticulating. One even reaches for her hood, but Elly clutches it tightly with both hands. My father takes my hand and pulls me away. We flee from the photographers. We run through the airport. The crowd parts before us. We’re on the motorway before we shake the press off. I ask my mother whether her former colleagues might have got wind of the arrival time from her? She had a spell as a reporter many years ago. She shakes her head. I can tell by her cheeks that she is clenching her teeth. I squint at Elly, who is sitting next to me on the back seat. She has taken her sunglasses off. I don’t know what I am supposed to say. So I say: I’m glad that you’re back again. Elly looks at me, but I don’t recognise her. She looks older than fifteen. Her skin is taut over her pointed chin. It is wrinkled around her eyes. Don’t be scared, my mother said on the phone. She has had terrible experiences. They have changed her. The Elly I know has been extinguished. I don’t like it. The new Elly next to me looks tired and tense at the same time. One hand is resting on the door handle. As if she wants to jump out of the moving car. I stare silently out of the window on the other side.
My parents and I observe Elly like an animal at the zoo. An invisible pane of glass separates her from us. Elly remains deadened, turned in on herself. She doesn’t tell us anything about her life in the past four years. Our parents know the story from the doctors. They suspect that Elly had been kept captive in a cell, without light, with very little food or water, deliberate abuse. Perhaps there was more than one captor, perhaps she was passed around or sold. In any case she is severely traumatised. The assessor prescribes complete rest and recuperation. No loud noises, no physical contact, no pressure. I feel guilty for seeing her tormented. It’s as if I’d betrayed my sister with my thoughts, as if I’d brought her to it. But I didn’t do anything. That’s what my parents reproach themselves for: for not doing anything. I was still a child when my sister disappeared. My memory is unreliable. My mother and my father are happy that we have Elly back again.
I keep looking at my newly returned sister. Her thin hair, the parchment colour of her skin, the way she splays her little finger when she holds her fork. She moves around the edges of the rooms. The middle is uncomfortable for her. I guess she is afraid of feeling exposed there. She cuts corners so fine that her sleeve sometimes gets caught on the door handle. I tell her that I don’t play tennis any more, or do athletics or trampolining. I don’t mention judo. It doesn’t feel appropriate. I don’t do any sport any more, apart from shopping. Without spending any money. That’s also very strenuous, I claim. Elly nods. She is trying to find an American radio station on the internet. She refuses my help. Finally the sound of a drawling presenter in bubblegum American, followed by a thumping pop song with a female singer whose voice keeps breaking. Elly listens to American college radio. I ask her how she knows the station. She shrugs her shoulders and says everyone knows it. I follow her gaze to the shelves on the wall. The two blue vases are standing there, presents from our grandparents. Elly points to them. Laurel and Hardy, she says, and laughs. One vase has a long neck, the other is spherical. I use the vases as hand puppets. Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who’s the fairest of them all? I nudge Elly with the neck of the vase. She purses her mouth. That’s so babyish, she says. But I don’t back down. I repeat the phrase. Eventually she sighs: Stop this nonsense. Before she would have tickled me into submission or declared that she was the fairest of them all, and we would have strutted around in front of the mirror for an imaginary casting. An electric sander screams into life in the garden next door. Our neighbour is bending over the window frames he has taken out. He is wearing a dust mask. The shavings fly up into the air. The draughts threaten to rip the papers from the pinboard. Elly asks me to shut the window. I briefly consider refusing, then stand up. The sander sounds quieter but isn’t completely silenced. Elly is shivering. I tell her it will definitely be warmer tomorrow. I persuade her to come for a walk. She trudges alongside me with her head bowed. Before she practically used to bounce. She has hardly grown in the past four years, but her hands are old. There’s not much more to see of her. The new Elly covers herself up. Even at home she never takes off her hoodie. When our mother creeps into her room at night to stuff the sweater in the washing machine, Elly wakes up immediately. Guiltily, our mother puts the hoodie back. After that Elly doesn’t even take it off at night any more.
My younger daughter is back. I still can’t quite believe it, I tell my friend from the radio. She nods encouragingly and brings the microphone closer to my face. I clear my throat, swallow. The clock tick
s. The corners of my mouth are cracked. Probably due to the smiling. What kind of feeling was it when you saw Elly again for the first time? My friend’s voice sounds unctuous. It is dripping with compassion. I was scared, I say. My voice goes up at the end of the sentence. I’m almost asking a question. In actual fact I don’t remember my feelings. I see Elly before me, as she enters the bare room. The way she gazes at the floor, hardly daring to look Hamid and me in the eyes. He squeezes my hand. I am rooted to the spot. Elly has completely changed. She slides along the wall like a shadow. Thin, pale, her hands shaking. I had never seen her so anxious before. But I knew: that’s my child. I growl the sentence. My friend’s eyes open wide. That’s what she wanted to hear. I bet she is mentally making a note of this point for a cut in the recording. She bites her lips. Did you not hesitate even for a moment? No, I say, not for a moment. I didn’t need a blood test to know. Quite the opposite, I was ashamed of myself for doubting during the years she had disappeared. For believing she was dead. I regret that. She is alive. She is so incredibly resilient. I’m proud of her. She is fighting her way back into her life right now. Of course we are trying to help her. But it’s not easy to put yourself in her place. The hardest thing for me is leaving her in peace. Obviously we’re not going to throw a party for her. I’m clear on that. But finding the right tone of voice to wrench her out of the void when her gaze drifts off, that’s not easy. My friend nods. She has children of her own. I can’t convey to her quite how far removed my Elly is from them. After the interview I am completely exhausted. Back at home I open the windows and the door to the terrace. The wind blasts through the house. I knock on Elly’s door and open it at the same time. Elly is sitting on the edge of the bed. It looks uncomfortable. As if she is expecting to be taken away any minute. I’m so shocked I can’t get a word out. She is here. She is really here. We look at each other, and it’s Elly who comes and huddles into me. I hesitate, then place my hand on her ribs. I can feel them even through the thick hoodie. Her breath goes in and out.
Sometimes I try to remember how we were before. How my sister and I used to play, the way I would tell her who she was: Little Red Riding Hood, the kraken, Pluto the hellhound, Peter the Stork. The way she followed me everywhere, and only occasionally refused to play along. The way we threw the apples to the horses in the meadow, but neither of us ever admitted that we were too cowardly to offer them on our outstretched hand.
I was the big sister, and even on holiday I told Elly what to do and what not to do. We built dens out of branches and went to sleep in them. Our parents only found us after the sun had gone down. Back then they weren’t concerned, just amused. They spent half the day dozing on sun loungers in the garden. Our mother would flick through a magazine, while our father stared into space. He was happy like that. Just being there. I think he was listening to the birds, the horses snorting, watching them chase away midges by twitching their bodies or flicking their tails. In the afternoon he would get up and make limeade from sugar, soda water, and lime. There was no shop. The village consisted of a single long strip of road with no asphalt, more like a sandy track with cobblestones in places. Prettily restored farmers’ cottages with timber frames and chickens behind fences. Beyond that nothing but forest. We rarely caught sight of the residents. We kept to ourselves. One time, my sister and I found cockchafer larvae in the ground, thick white grubs. We dug them out and put them in a jam jar, screwed the lid on tight. Every day we looked at them. Then we opened the jar, because we were afraid the creatures might die. But when the cockchafers finally hatched, we weren’t there to see it. They flew away without us. The family we were back then doesn’t exist any more. Even now Elly has returned, nothing will go back to the way it was before.
Back then, Elly and I used to act out the Greek myths too. She was Zeus and I was Europa, who allows herself to be abducted by the father of the gods disguised as a bull. Those stories are taboo now. They are all far too gruesome. My parents turn the television off when the news comes on. They don’t watch crime series any more. They get rid of everything which could remind Elly of her captivity. There are no keys in our house any more. All the doors stay open. We don’t go to the zoo, because the animals there are locked up. We avoid petrol stations with missing person posters; if my father catches sight of a flyer, he keeps on driving. If Elly so much as coughs, my parents rush her to the doctor. They insist on staying in the room during the examination.
Elly doesn’t have to go to school yet. Our parents are looking after her at home. But it’s open season now. The police would like to interview Elly. They want to investigate the criminals who abducted Elly. She shakes her head. We can see that she still feels threatened. Sometimes a sentence escapes her, an attempt at conversation. Her voice sounds strange, bruised. It takes a long time for her to thaw even slightly. Eventually she forces herself. Comes to join us at the table, on the sofa or the terrace. We show her photo albums and ask if she remembers. Do you remember when? In the theme park, when the dolphin pulled you along in a boat. When you forgot your bag on the first day of school. When you scratched the chicken pox until it bled. When we were all happy. Elly listens, sometimes she even asks questions. She asks whether Granny is still such a crosspatch, and whether Grandad is well. She asks what her friends are up to, what happened to the neighbour’s cat. Eventually our grandparents come for a visit too. Our grandfather immediately hugs Elly. She stands there stiffly and allows it to happen. He holds Elly’s hand and talks about her birthday five years ago. Elly smiles behind her sunglasses and listens to him attentively. Our grandmother stays in the background. She watches Elly carefully, but doesn’t approach her. Eventually she shakes her hand formally. Our mother pulls her mother into the kitchen. I hear her hissing in there. Our grandmother retaliates. She says: Have you lost your minds? That’s not your child. Our mother throws our grandparents out. Grandad is sad. Afterwards we play cards. Elly lets us win once each. Our father notices and admonishes her gently. Elly looks at him in horror and leaves the table. My sister always used to fight until the last card, the very last trick. She used to be mortally offended when I won. Our father repeats the mantra that Elly has changed. Something doesn’t feel right to me.
Judith is lying next to me in bed. She undressed in silence, pulled on her short nightdress, and rolled under the covers without even glancing at me. She is holding it together. I understand. Everything is too much right now. Elly is back. We ought to be cheering and celebrating. But in fact it’s exhausting. It’s like it is with a newborn. We all have to get used to one another first. Elly is much more than four years removed from us. Judith says we shouldn’t ask too much of ourselves. We can’t go back to being familiar and intimate just like that. Apparently that applies to us as a couple too. Judith acts like we’re down a mine and she is bone tired. Frankly it’s ridiculous. What, if you please, could be so difficult and exhausting between us, now that Elly is back? I try to get Judith to relax with wine. I massage her neck, put her feet up. Nothing is right. Even if I hold my breath next to her on the mattress it’s too much for her. We share a duvet, a mattress. There is no partition in our bed. It ought to be so easy to move over in the other person’s direction, to rekindle the old warmth. But it’s as if we’re holed up in the same room conducting a long-distance relationship. At first I still reached for Judith, I would put my arm round her hips in the kitchen, gently kiss her ear. If she blinked anxiously or began to manically unload the dishwasher, I would quickly step away. Have I changed? Does my breath smell? Or my fat wobble? Is that all it is? I try to pull myself together. Sulking is childish. In any case, there are more important issues. Judith is right: we need to protect Elly. Nothing must ever happen to her again. We wrap her in cotton wool, we mollycoddle her. I’m not sure whether she enjoys these ministrations. At times I get the impression my youngest daughter is much older than she is. But then again there are things she doesn’t know that every other girl her age does. She was away for too long. The police psycholog
ist advised us that Elly shouldn’t stay with us to begin with. Being near us might be too much for her. Judith didn’t take the suggestion on board. I thought we should have talked about it. But that’s what she’s like: Judith makes decisions on her own, then together we have to bear the consequences. I used to like the fact that she always takes the lead. Now I fear her harsh judgement. The flipside is that I can trust Judith. Two hundred per cent. She stands by her man. I disappear behind her. Judith would say I push her to the front. She grunts to indicate I should turn the bedside lamp off. But I want to look at her for a moment longer. The way she tosses and turns in the attempt to drift off. Her fists clenched around the duvet. Her closed eyelids with their blue veins. Darling, I murmur. Her eyeballs stop rolling for a second, her lids stay tightly shut. Guiltily, I think of all the things I didn’t accomplish today. It’s a long list. Every day it gets longer. As long as it’s light I procrastinate. I lose myself in a thousand trivial tasks, flit from one thing to another in my office or doing chores. I can’t even sit still in the evening when I try to reward myself for my day’s work with wine or snacks. It’s only when I lie down that the list catches up with me and stops me going to sleep. Elly is back. Our greatest desire has been fulfilled. Now everyday life can begin. We are trying to make everything right again. I think I’ll start with the washing up.
