Shorter Days (13 page)

Traudl burst in around nightfall. Her brown eyes flashed under her veiled hat. Though there was no hitting in the apartment, Luise heard slaps and tears from outside in the stairwell. She rushed out to pull her sister-in-law away, which only made things worse. Wenzel got angry: “It's not your place to interfere! It's their life, not yours. It's been so hard for Traudl—she never got over the fact that we lost everything. She's never really fit in here.” And there it was again—that strange solidarity that went far beyond the bounds of sibling loyalty, the mysterious ties to the cold realm across the mountains, which meant that anyone who said “C'mon aiver!” and crossed himself took a shortcut to sainthood in their eyes.

The water boils. Luise pours a bit into the dog's bowl to rinse it out, then spoons in some oats and a package of Cesar dog food. It's hard to pull the lid off. For a while now they've just bought the small portions. It smells and looks like liver pâté. In the old days she would have gobbled it up herself and sung hallelujah to boot, but nowadays it's food for Schlamper. The little golden plastic bowls with colorful logos are much more expensive than the cans, but she can't get the lid off the cans anymore, not even with a can opener—it takes more strength than she can muster. Wenzel doesn't ask about such things. She knows it's the same for him. There was the carton of orange juice that he'd ended up hurling on the kitchen floor. “God damned piece of shit, I'll show you!” They've given up cans and drinks with certain closures—they cut and bore new openings to get to their milk or their juice.

Schlamper returns from the garden with dirt on his snout and paws. He walks unhurriedly over to his bowl. “You're a good boy. The calmest we've ever had.” The coffee smells strong and stimulating. She takes the butter out of the refrigerator. They need to go shopping. They'll eat sweet buns today, it's Wenzel's day. The things she used to be able to do with one hand tied behind her back have now become full-day ordeals. They really only go to the Turk now. Bruni brings the heavier things with the car. They haven't gone downtown in ages. It's too far, too exhausting. It's not even fun anymore—everything is so ugly now, just döner kebab shops and fast-food restaurants, dirt and cars and swarms of people, shuttered storefronts, One-euro stores—they don't even use deutsch marks anymore. Better just to stay on Constantinstraße, they can manage fine here.

She pulls back the curtains—study, dining room—and checks the thermostat: twenty-five degrees Celsius. “Auntie Luise, Uncle Wenzel, I have to open a window or we'll all suffocate!” She sets the table in the kitchen, avoiding the living room for today—she doesn't want to sit by the dirty window. Maybe the Rapp woman from upstairs can help. She'll be coming to the little garden with the children later anyway. It's going to be a pretty day, you can see the sun hiding behind the fog. The world still rests amid the fog, the woods and fields still dreaming: You'll see soon when it's all unveiled, when azure sky is undisguised, autumn-strong the muted world, now golden-toned, lies gleaming. It's going like clockwork now. She puts the cozy Bruni knit over the coffeepot. Surely Wenzel will be up soon. Luise sips at her coffee. Wake up, I have to wake up.

A short bark comes from the bedroom, then a long, drawn-out yelp that repeats again and again, slowly growing softer, almost like the crying of a tired child. Luise starts—she must have fallen asleep. It can't be, honestly, it's already eight-thirty! She could smack herself for acting like such an old woman. Your head nods and off you go in broad daylight, Luise, it's been sixty years since you were getting catcalls on the street. She feels the belly of the coffeepot under the cozy. The porcelain is only lukewarm. Slowly, she raises herself and goes into the hall.

Broad strips of autumn sunlight fall through the doors on the right and left across the carpet and wallpaper—darkened yellow lilies on a green background. Luise loves the darkness of the hallway that splits her apartment in two, and the dark, heavy furniture that lines it: grandfather clock, coat closet, trumeau. They border the carpeted pathway like mighty trees. She walks softly over the mossy ground. There's Ještšd, and Dürer's rabbit, and two squirrels looking down at her from their gold frames. Schlamper howls once more from behind the half-open door. Luise is reminded of old Baumannskarle—Karl Baumann, her old history teacher in Uhlbach. He was crazy about the ancient Romans. She can still repeat a few of the mnemonics: 753—The year Rome came to be. She thinks of the picture in her history book: Varus, who sent the Roman legions goosestepping through the dark Teutoburg Forest: red plumes nodding atop helmets, the eagle on its perch buffeted by gnarled oak branches. The young soldiers freezing in the damp cold. They have dark eyes, brown skin, they're meant for more southerly shores. Their sandaled feet tread carefully, they sense that nothing good is in store for them. Jays screech, then the shortswords flash; there's a terrible clamor as they meet the Teutons.

She lays her hand on the knob—tarnished brass, almost green and so cold. The door opens wide. It's dark in the room, but she can see Schlamper sitting in front of the bed. He turns his head to her. His brown eyes shine. He wags his tail, gives a short yelp. “We'll wake your master now. Come here, we'll roll up the shutters.” She pulls the grimy old belt and the shutters clatter open. The belt snaps back into place. She walks to the bed and gently pulls back the covers. Wenzel lies on his side. His mouth is open, his eyes closed. His face looks yellowish under the wild white hair. Luise sits on the mattress and takes his hand. It's cold.

Luise is in the kitchen. She needs to fetch warm water. It has to be warm, with a splash of wine. Vinegar would work, but Wenzel shouldn't have vinegar. My throat is dried; and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink. She had helped in Uhlbach when the neighbors needed last rites. The Schuster woman from across the way had died of pneumonia, the day before Christmas Eve. The silver-topped Christmas tree had poked at the ceiling in the parlor, the curtains were freshly starched, everything smelled of scouring powder. Death had come for her when she was out in the cold, hanging up the wash: a big woman with long white limbs, laid out on the table to be washed, cloaked in her loose blond hair. Her face was terrible. Mother and the other women had spread a cloth over it immediately, murmuring ceaselessly: The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters. Frau Schuster's face was frozen in a last greedy gasp—bluish cheeks, dark violet lips on a wide mouth that no cloth could bind closed. He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Mother wiped the dead body with a wet rag, slowly circled the heavy breasts, the belly stretched from four children. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me. Luise and Aunt Annelies folded the rigid hands, bound the big fingers together with red thread. Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. They rubbed their hands with salt in the kitchen, drank coffee, and ate a few hunks of a braided loaf. Everyone who helps with a corpse has to eat and drink afterward.

The bottle of Trollinger that Wenzel bought from the Turk is in the basket behind the kitchen door. He brings home a new bottle every Saturday and makes a big production of uncorking it. How will she open the bottle with her hands?

Nana had looked completely different than the Schuster woman. The year before Luise left for Stuttgart, in the summer of 1938, she'd fallen asleep on a bench in the garden and never woken up. They'd laid her out in the parlor. She looked tiny and bent in her Sunday best, like a little doll that a child would have loved to play with: black skirt, black jacket with silver buttons, hair coiled in a little bun at the back of her neck like a puny onion. A lemon lay under her bound chin like a gleaming gem on a choker. Its subtle aroma couldn't mask the smell of vinegar and the stink of mothballs from her holiday clothes.

Standing at the kitchen cabinet, its doors wide open like the wings of an altarpiece on a feast day, Luise chooses the soup tureen from the good set. It serves twelve and has a line of burnished gold on the rim. Luise lifts the tureen out of the cabinet. It will fit a gallon; more would be impossible to carry. She turns on the tap and sets the tureen under it. It has to be warm to loosen the cold limbs. And candles, are there still candles? She rummages in the store cupboard: cans of coffee, crispbreads—she pushes aside everything that's in the way, things clatter to the ground. Doesn't matter. She has to get to the candles, and they must burn until they go out. She finds tiny stumps in the back of the cupboard, dark yellow and long as a thumb. They're stuck together and smell of honey. Christmas tree needles are embedded in them like flies in amber. There must be dozens of them, painstakingly pulled out of their holders—by her, or by Wenzel? But here they are finally, a whole pack: household candles, guaranteed drip-free. The price is still stuck to the bottom: 3.75 DM. They're pink.

Meanwhile, the tureen has overflowed. Water streams into the drain. Luise heaves the bowl out of the sink. She'll take care of this alone. No one knows what has to be done for Wenzel. She'll call someone later. Surely Bruni still has the number in her address book—that time it had been for Traudl. Or the yellow pages, they're on the telephone table in the hallway.

She hadn't been allowed to do for Traudl. “Auntie Luise, please, we're not in the village. Leave it to a professional. You know how things were between us.” Traudl's cheeks were yellow, and her mouth twisted scornfully—the whole lot covered in flour. Her rage toward Bruni seemed still alive in her moist eyes and angry face. That's how her sister-in-law had met her end: contemptuous, even in the final moments. You can kiss my ass, all of you who aren't from there, from those dear homeland peaks. She'd felt sorry for her, for Traudl. She hadn't had a very nice life. But the thing with Bruni, that was incomprehensible. That her sister-in-law had beaten and kicked the very thing she'd wanted most in life—she couldn't wrap her head around it.

At least there was still Bruni. She could call her now, on her cell phone. She takes the thing everywhere, snaps pictures, goes on the net, whatever that's supposed to be. You can reach Bruni at all hours. But Bruni can't help now. Even though she'd probably be the right person to lift the blankets and say: “It is what it is, Auntie Luise. I'll take care of it.”

Water with a splash of wine. She'll arrange everything properly. The way it's meant to be. We've gone through so much already. We'll survive this too, Wenzel and I—the golden anniversary couple. She'll get the Trollinger open. She'd had to cope with very different things in those days. A stick of wood in her mouth at midday, and then out dancing the same evening. You just have to take the bottle and hit it on the stainless steel sink. She's had her kitchen for over forty years, and it's still tip-top. The neck breaks off cleanly, green slivers of glass fall into the sink and a bit of wine splatters out. She pours the bright red wine from the jagged mouth into the tureen—a proper splash, don't be stingy. The water turns light red.

Now she just needs a rag. The rag must be moist, soaked in spirits. They'd laid a schnapps-soaked cloth over the eyes of the Schuster woman and her nana to keep them closed. And if you squeeze out the schnapps-rag into a drunk's glass, he'll be cured of his vice. Why do the eyes have to be closed, anyway? It's really a shame. Wenzel was sleeping—he slept his way into eternity, as they say. His beautiful brown eyes. If only I could look into them once more. If the dead person has one eye open, or both, you can't look—or he'll come for you. Oh Wenzel look at me, look at me. At midnight only we may ride; I come o'er land and sea: I mounted late, but soon I go; arise and come with me. O Wenzel, enter first my bower, and give me one embrace: The blasts athwart the hawthorne hiss; await a little space!

The cognac is in the study. Go on, get on with it! Anything that could jump out at you has already jumped out—before, while you were drinking coffee and dozing off. It jumped out and took your Wenzel. Or maybe even during the night, when you were sawing away like an old bag. Poor stinking bag of worms, a man dies next to you and you don't even notice. You felt nothing—no one sent you a message, not even a feeling—no darkness, no curtain torn aside. Wenzel was alone, all alone! The bedroom door is open. There he lies, her husband. The strangest thing is his silence, the fact that he doesn't turn his eyes toward her as she hurries past.

The decanter is almost empty—there's just enough to coat the bottom. It's covered with fingerprints, the glass stopper is easy to pull out. He was at it last night, he smelled like the Heidelberg Tun. That was after the ruckus. There's a smear on the lip where he drank. His mouth was here. Luise lifts the bottle. She feels the cold sharpness of the brown liquid. There's no taste of Wenzel. The cognac is mute. She sets the decanter on the living room table. The crocheted cloth absorbs a few drops. What should she use for a rag? It ought to be something beautiful. She rummages in the sideboard, tossing everything out. There they are, way in back, long unused. Starched cloth napkins, hemstitched with embroidered monograms, from Traudl. I'll take two—one to bind his chin. His teeth are in the bathroom—mustn't forget those. Shiny fabric, damask—pretty. It's from “hime,” Wenzel, you'll like that, from your sister. I've never made this kind of thing, only darned socks—I'm good at that. She tips cognac onto a napkin; the white fabric turns light brown. A bit flows onto the tablecloth and floor. No matter, I'll use it all—there's no one to drink it now. And where is, then, thy house and home; and where thy bridal bed? ‘Tis narrow, silent, chilly, dark; far hence I rest my head. And is there any room for me, wherein that I may creep? There's room enough for thee and me, wherein that we may sleep.

The tureen sloshes like crazy and makes a mess. She walks in like a waitress, the napkin over her arm. She can't help giggling. Wenzel, I'm here with your last meal—a whole harbor full. What did you have last night? Your last piece of rye bread, cut wafer-thin, with quark, radishes, ham, a small beer. That was all? My God, today you were supposed to eat sweet buns with me, and I have nothing to make them with. No fresh yeast, no plums, no poppy seeds. Just let me get everything settled here, then I can run over to the Turk. We'll just have to eat a little later. We're old, we don't need to hurry. We can take our time, right?

It's ten o'clock now. The alarm clock ticks softly on the bedside table. She used to find it too loud. Now it's just a whisper, lining up the seconds. She has to make it stop, it mustn't go on like that. And the mirror! She tears the bedspread off the bed and throws it over the glass. Now they're gone, both of them, Luise and Wenzel, Wenzel and Luise. For the last time.

When did I first see you? August '45, early evening. The air felt like lukewarm milk. The sky was light violet and pink, and it smelled so good, despite the mountains of rubble, the smoky, calcareous stink that hung over the city for so long. The bushes and flowers were in bloom—jasmine, rosebushes, elder—in the courtyards and on the edges of streets. “Makes good fertilizer—the ashes and all the people lying down there!” Pfleiderer, her old letch of a landlord, had joked. When there was still something to be had at the factory, she'd often brought him a few bars of chocolate. And a lucky thing it was, too. She hadn't known where to stay. Back to Uhlbach, to mother and Aunt Annelies—she could never have done that. And she still had her job, thank God. The molds filled with hot sweetness no longer clattered along the conveyor belts in the chocolate factory, but the Amis hadn't closed it up, either. There were no more of the melt-in-your-mouth bars, no milk chocolate in the round tins with jaybirds on top, no cat tongues. Instead there was custard powder and syrup made from chestnuts. Luise could still type: payroll, letters. Order had to be maintained. So she stayed in the broken city, holing up in empty rooms like a fox. Luise had been looking for firewood up on the Karlshöhe hill—there was only an armful—and she'd looked forward to making a little fire. She had a crust of bread, a portion of instant soup in the form of a tablet half the size of her thumb, and several bunches of stinging nettles. Cooked, they tasted like young spinach. For once, being from the country came in handy. The city folk had to read a little pamphlet called “Eating Wild Plants” so that they didn't pull up something poisonous. Food was all anyone could think about in those days—it was awful.

She walked to the factory every morning, passing the piles of rubble. But at least she had a path, some little piece of normalcy in the midst of all the chaos. The rich smell of chocolate no longer hung in the air. When she first started, in the sweet times, the warehouses had been overflowing with sugar and cacao. Then there was only herbal tea, beech oil, and dried fruit.

Someone was coming down the steps. He was big, Luise could see that, and black, like a silhouette, since the sun was so low. He wore a windbreaker and a cap, like a worker. Luise was wearing a tattered old knit jacket with leather patches on the elbows and only a thin cotton dress underneath, with men's shoes on her bare feet. The fronts were cut off so her toes could get some air. My sandals: the latest fashion. Pfleiderer had given her the jacket, “Et's mine, I've got two. S'gotta few holes but its warm. I'd ruther warm ya up myself, y'know?” It was hard to shake the old man off, but he let her have the little room for next to nothing. No one ever died from a little slap on the behind—a lot of girls had suffered much worse. Luise carried her wood in a straw bag. The ends poked out, and the nettles were tied neatly into little bundles. She looked up at the silhouette-man, with his cap cocked on his head. He was whistling “That's the Sailor's Love” when Luise stumbled. The bag leapt out of her hands and everything went crashing down the steps. Damn it! And then there he was: his warm hands helping her up, his wickedly handsome face so close to hers. He smelled clean; his small mustache was carefully trimmed. Brown eyes, black hair. “Why Miss, you don't have to kneel before me!” Cocky bastard, what are you doing whistling like that, smelling like soap and tobacco. You seem to be doing just peachy. The last time I bathed was the day before yesterday, with cold water out of a tin pail. I'd let the old man have his way for a piece of real soap, I swear I would.

Wenzel took her home—a real evening stroll, with tumbled-down houses to their right and left. She looked at him from the side. Supposedly he lived around the corner, “with a doctor's family on Johannesstraße. Seven rooms, so of course they've packed a ton of people in. But everyone's nice to a teacher—the schools will be opening again soon, and the children have to learn, no matter what state the city's in!” His laugh almost convinced her that he really was just a friendly teacher. No, he was no teacher! A swindler, more like it, and somehow he'd talked his way into staying here despite the prohibition against new residents in Stuttgart, which barely had enough habitable living spaces for the old residents after so much had been destroyed. But they were all so shifty, these men. He probably just wanted to crawl in somewhere, bum some cigarettes, soup, and socks—a bed for one night. Maybe he was a black marketeer, or a gypsy, with those eyes of his. But then he'd given her a cigarette, and they'd smoked together on the front stoop. He came again the next evening with a jar of strawberry jam and took her to the cinema. The Union on Tübinger Straße was already open again. She still had one sweater—bottle-green and tight—which she wore over her dress. In the end he was there every day, waiting outside the factory for her to come down the steps and under the company's stone crest to meet him.