The Blind Side of the Heart (4 page)

Martha didn’t cry out, she just held Helene’s hands tight. Her eyes were shining. She squeezed Helene’s hands between hers so hard that her finger joints cracked, Helene squealed, she whimpered, Martha squeezed harder until Helene gave up and the little girl kept whispering: Let go, please, let go.

Martha smiled. She wanted to read a page or so of her book now. Her little sister’s blonde eyelashes fluttered, the curve of her eyes showed under them. How fine the network of veins was round the eye. Of course Martha would forgive Helene sooner or later. All this just because of a copper hot-water bottle at their feet. Helene’s pleading was a familiar sound, it soothed Martha. She let the little girl’s hands go, turned her back to her sister and pulled the quilt away with her.

Helene was freezing. She sat up. And although her hands still hurt she reached out with them, touched Martha’s shoulder and took hold of her thick braid, which had little curls escaping from it everywhere. Martha’s hair was both soft and unruly, almost as dark as their mother’s black hair. Helene liked to watch when Martha was allowed to comb Mother’s hair. Then Mother would sit with her eyes closed, humming a tune that sounded like a cat purring. She purred contentedly in several different musical registers while Martha brushed and combed her thick, long hair, grooming it like an animal’s coat. Once Helene had been at the sink washing a sheet, and when all the soap was rinsed away she wrung it out over the big bucket, taking care not to splash any water on the kitchen floor. It was only a matter of time before Mother cried out. Her cry was not a high, clear sound, but low and throaty, uttered with the fervour of some large animal. Mother reared. The chair she had just been sitting on crashed to the floor. She pushed Martha away, the brush fell to the floor. She flailed out with her arms, violent, aimless movements, her hairslides and combs flying off the table, she hooked her foot round the chair, picked it up and flung it in Helene’s direction. Her loud cries reechoed as if the earth itself had opened up and was growling. The crochet work lying on the table shot right across the room. Something had pulled a strand of Mother’s hair, tweaking it.

But while Mother shouted at her daughters, cursing them, complaining that she’d given birth to a couple of useless brats, Helene kept on and on repeating the same thing like a prayer: May I comb your hair? Her voice quivered: May I comb your hair? As a pair of scissors flew through the air she raised her arms to protect her head: May I comb your hair? She huddled under the table: May I comb your hair?

Her mother didn’t seem to hear. Not until Helene fell silent did Mother turn to her. She bent over to see Helene under the table more clearly. Her green eyes were flashing. Stop that, snorted Mother. Straightening up, she brought the flat of her hand down on the table so hard that it must have hurt her. Helene had better come out from under that wretched table this minute. She was even clumsier than her big sister. Martha looked at the girl with the bright golden curls crawling out and carefully standing up as if she were a stranger.

You want to comb my hair, do you? Mother laughed nastily. Huh, you can’t even wring out the laundry properly! Mother snatched the sheet out of the bucket and flung it on the floor. Maybe your hands are too fine for such work? Mother gave the bucket a vigorous kick, and then another, until it fell over with a clatter.

Helene instinctively jumped and flinched away. The girls knew their mother’s fits of rage well; it was only when they came on so suddenly, without the slightest warning, that they were taken by surprise. There were tiny bubbles on their mother’s lips, new ones formed, shining. There was no mistaking it, Mother was actually foaming at the mouth, seething, boiling over. Slavering, she raised her arm. Helene stepped sideways and grasped Martha’s hand. Something brushed Helene’s shoulder in passing and, as Mother screeched, clattered to the floor and broke in half. Glass shattered. Thousands of tiny splinters of glass, thousands upon thousands. Helene whispered the unimaginable, incredible number, thousands upon thousands. Thousands upon thousands of them glittering. Mother must have snatched her Bohemian glass vase off the dresser. Helene wanted to run away, but her legs felt too heavy.

Mother doubled up, sobbed and sank to her knees. The broken glass must be coming through the fabric of her dress, but that didn’t bother her. Her hands ploughed through the green splinters and the first blood sprang between her fingers; she cried like a child in a thin little voice, asked if no damn God would help her; she whimpered, and finally she kept on stammering the name Ernst Josef, Ernst Josef.

Helene wanted to bend down, kneel beside her mother, comfort her, but Martha firmly held her back.

This is us, Mother. Martha spoke sternly and calmly. We’re here. Ernst Josef is dead, like your other sons, he was born dead, do you hear me, Mother? Dead, ten years ago. But we are here.

Helene could hear the anger and indignation in Martha’s voice. It wasn’t the first time she had faced up to their mother.

Ah! Mother cried out as if Martha had thrust a dagger into her breast.

Martha went out of the room, taking Helene with her.

Nauseating, whispered Martha, we really don’t have to listen to such things, little angel. Come on, let’s go.

Martha put her arm round Helene. They went into the garden and hung out the washing.

Again and again, Helene felt impelled to look up at the house, where Mother’s wailing and screaming could be heard through the open window, but dying down now and becoming intermittent, finally stopping altogether, so that Helene was afraid their mother had bled to death or done herself some really serious injury.

And in addition Helene thought, as she sat up in bed beside Martha, that perhaps their mother assumed her screaming might work only in front of the children. On her own, it must seem pointless. What use was screaming if there was no one to hear you? Helene shook herself, she felt so cold, and touched her sister’s braid, the braid that put out tiny curls, soft, fine little curls, the braid that was part of her kind sister who always protected her in any difficulty.

I’m freezing, said Helene. Please let me come in with you.

And she was glad when the mountain of bedclothes in front of her opened and Martha reached out a hand, holding the quilt up with her arm so that Helene could get underneath it and snuggle down. Helene nuzzled her nose into her sister’s armpit, and when Martha went back to her book Helene pressed her face into her back, taking deep breaths of the warm, familiar scent. Helene wondered whether she ought to say her bedtime prayers. She could always fold her hands. She felt good. A surge of gratitude passed through her, but she was grateful to Martha, not God.

Helene played with Martha’s braid in the shadow cast by the candlelight. Its muted glow made her hair look even darker than it was; those tiny curls were almost black. Helene stroked her forehead with the end of Martha’s braid; the hairs tickled her cheeks and ears. Martha turned a page of her book and Helene began counting the freckles on her sister’s back. Helene counted Martha’s freckles every evening. Once she was sure of the number on her left shoulder as far as the birthmark at the top of her spine, she moved the braid aside and counted the freckles on Martha’s right shoulder. Martha didn’t object; she turned another page and chuckled softly.

What are you reading?

It’s not your sort of book.

Helene loved counting. It was exciting and soothing. When Helene went to the baker’s, she counted the birds she saw on the way to the shop and the people she met on the way back. If she left the house with her father she counted the number of times his big sandy dog Baldo lifted his leg, and how often people greeted them, and she liked to score high numbers. Once she played them off against each other: each greeting cancelled out one lift of the dog’s leg. Now and then acquaintances addressed Helene’s father as ‘Professor’, which was more an expression of flattery than a misunderstanding. Everyone knew that although Ernst Ludwig Würsich had been publishing philosophical and literary books for some years now, setting them in his printing works, that didn’t make him a professor. Mayor Koban stopped and patted Baldo’s head. The two men discussed the number of copies of the commemorative Town Council volume to be printed, and Koban asked Helene’s father what kind of dog his was. But Father always declined to speculate on the mixture of breeds in Baldo and just replied: A good dog.

Helene was surprised to see how many of their acquaintances hurried past in silence as soon as she came out into the street with her mother. Mother herself didn’t seem to notice. Helene counted quietly, in secret, and often she scored no more than a single greeting. Frau Hantusch the baker’s wife, who almost hugged Father when they met, didn’t even look at mother and daughter. Instead she lowered her umbrella slightly, holding it in front of her like a shield to make sure that no glances were exchanged. Helene supposed it must have been Martha who once told her that Mother wasn’t really known as Frau Würsich at all. The people who lived in Tuchmacherstrasse spoke of her as ‘the foreign woman’. It was true that she had married that highly regarded citizen of Bautzen Herr Würsich the master printer, but she was still a foreigner, even behind the counter of his printing works or out in the street with their daughters. Although it was very usual in Lusatia for couples to marry in the bride’s home town, even ten years after the marriage there was still gossip about the origins of this particular bride. It was said that husband and wife had been married at a registry office in Breslau. A registry office – there was a dubious sound about that. Everyone knew that the foreign woman didn’t go to St Peter’s with her husband on Sundays. Rumour said she was ungodly.

Her daughters had been baptized in the cathedral, but that made no difference. The inhabitants of Bautzen obviously felt that a wedding not celebrated in church tainted their own respectable reputation. No one would deign to pass the time of day with the foreign woman. Every glance was accompanied by whispering and a disapproving shake of the head, even if Selma Würsich couldn’t meet that glance because, with wise foresight, she paid more attention to the rare finds she might spot on the paving stones than to the citizens of the town. Whether proudly or awkwardly, the people in the street ignored Helene and her mother, looking over the head of the woman crouching on the ground or right through her. If Helene met her father’s friend Mayor Koban while she was holding her mother’s hand, the mayor crossed the road without a word. Judge Fiebinger’s sons laughed and turned to stare, because they thought the flimsy fabrics Mother wore in summer were improper and her voluminous skirts in winter odd. But Mother seemed to notice none of this. She bent down, radiant, and showed Helene a little glass bead she had found. Look, isn’t that lovely? Helene nodded. The world was full of treasures.

Whenever Mother left the house she collected things she found on the ground – buttons and coins, an old shoe that looked as if it had another few months’ wear in it, perhaps it would be good for something, at least the shoelace was new, unlike the sole, and the hooks on the upper part seemed to Mother very rare and particularly valuable. Even a coloured piece of broken china down by the river would elicit a cry of delight from her if its edges were washed smooth by the water. Once, right outside their door, she found a goose’s wing that could be used as a feather duster and wept tears of emotion.

On that occasion Martha had said it was more than likely that someone had left the feather duster there on purpose, just to see the foreign woman bend down and pick it up. The feathers were already worn short with use, and several of the quills stuck out like broken teeth, shiny and bare.

Mother collected such feather dusters, although she seldom used them. She hung up the birds’ wings on the wall over her bed. A flock of birds to escort souls, that was how she described her collection. Only wings that she had found herself earned a place there above her bedhead. There were nine now, this one included, and she was hoping for a tenth. Once there were ten, she could complete the twenty-two letters of the alphabet and cast light on the roads ahead, as she put it. Neither of her two daughters asked where which souls were coming from and where they were to be escorted. The significance of a wandering soul, founded on or borrowed from the idea of parallel worlds, seemed to them eerie. It implied that side by side with their own world, where an inanimate object was an inanimate object and a living being a living being, there was another in which a reciprocal relationship between lives and objects existed. Helene covered her ears. Wasn’t it difficult enough even to imagine what a soul was made of? And what might happen to a soul if it went wandering? Did it stay the same soul, individual, identifiable? Were we really destined to meet again in another world at a given time? That was what Mother threatened them with. When I’m dead we’ll meet again, we’ll be united. There’s no escaping it. Helene was so scared that she didn’t want to know any more about souls. Mother knew of an alleged purpose for every object, inventing one if necessary. Over the years of her marriage the house had filled up with things, not just in the closets and glass-fronted cupboards; a landscape with a will of its own was always threatening to grow in the attic among the pieces of furniture there. Mother laid out hills and mounds of objects, collections of items for purposes both certain and uncertain. Only Marja the housekeeper, who was called Mariechen by her employers and was no more than a few years older than Mother herself, managed, by dint of great patience and perseverance, to create any visible kind of order in some of the rooms. Mariechen ruled the kitchen, the dining room and the narrow stairs to the two upper storeys. In Mother’s bedroom, however, and the room next to it you could hardly find any path to tread, and there was seldom a chair clear enough for anyone to sit on it. Mother collected branches and pieces of string, feathers and pieces of fabric, and no broken china could be thrown away; no box, however battered; no stool eaten away by woodworm, even if it wobbled because one of the rotten legs was now too short. If Mariechen turned anything out of the kitchen Mother took it to the upstairs rooms, where she would deposit the pan with the hole in it or the broken glass, confident that one of these days she would find a place and a use for the item. No system was discernible in her collection, only Mother herself had any idea which pile to search for a certain newspaper cutting and under which heap of clothes she had put the valuable Sorbian lace. Wasn’t the filigree pattern of that lace wonderful, where had such delicate lilies ever been seen as those growing vigorously in it?