You mean until I look like a human being again? asked Gillian.
Until you can walk properly. When can you put weight on your leg?
They’ve inserted a plate, said Gillian. I should be able to walk in a week.
Anyway, it’s very nice here, said her father. As good as a hotel. We can’t offer you that quality of care at home.
I don’t need looking after, said Gillian.
If anything crops up, give me a call. He got up and held out his hand.
I’ve got all I need, said Gillian. Say hi to Mom for me.
Try and understand her, said her father, almost in the doorway.
The anteroom to the theater was full of people in green scrubs. Gillian tried to pull herself upright to get a better view of them, but she didn’t manage. She saw the faces from below, surgical masks and oblique eyes under brows that looked more salient from that angle, ridiculous little gauze bonnets. A face bent down over her, friendly eyes with smile lines, and a voice asked her how she was feeling. Always that question: how am I feeling. She tried asking herself others: What’s left of me? And is what’s left more than a wound? Can it ever heal? Will that be “me”?
Before she could reply, the face had moved away, and the eyes were looking elsewhere. The surgical masks wagged, and she heard sentences she made no effort to understand, instructions spoken calmly and quietly. She could sense the concentration and a kind of happy expectancy. It reminded her strangely of field trips at school. The class met at the station, one person after another joining the group, curt greetings, not a lot of talk. The surgeon said something, very softly. Movements still seemed to be unconcerted, everyone was busy and trying not to get in each other’s way. The anesthetist told Gillian what he was going to do. The green shapes disappeared one after another, and for a brief moment Gillian thought she had been forgotten. That same instant she had a sensation of her legs being lifted, as if she were being shoved into a dark tube and left. She slipped down into the dark, faster and faster, lights whizzed past, sounds were suddenly very near, a bright bell sounded, an echoey voice slowed down beyond intelligibility spoke. Then it got very bright. She felt a hand gently touch her shoulder. The friendly face once more. Gillian’s stomach knotted. She felt hands raising her, a shaking, heard metallic sounds. Lamps slid past her. Breathing became difficult. Her nose was blocked. She had a nose.
In the night after the operation, Gillian had nightmares. She couldn’t remember what she had dreamed, but she could feel the nocturnal landscapes through which unseen people were moving, not talking but in some secretive way in communication with one another. If she opened a door, at that same moment the room behind it would come into being, when she turned away, it disintegrated.
The mirror wasn’t where she had left it. The doctor was holding it in his hand when he walked into the room. He explained to her exactly what he had done, taken some cartilage from her rib area and shaped it into a nose, and then folded over a piece of skin from her forehead and covered it.
It’s not very pretty just at the moment, he said. And maybe you can’t imagine how it’s all going to heal, but I can assure you …
She said it couldn’t be any worse than what it was before.
I’m very pleased with you, he said.
Why? What have I done?
You’ve been brave.
Gillian had the feeling he was playing for time. She held out her hand. The doctor nodded and put the mirror down on her covers.
In three weeks, the skin should have taken sufficiently for us to sever its connection to the forehead, and then it will look better right away. And in another three months you’ll come back to us. Now you’ve only got another couple of days here. After the second operation you should be able to work again. Do you have anyone to look after you?
No, said Gillian, and then on an impulse: Yes, it’s no problem.
The doctor shrugged. Don’t worry. It’ll all turn out well.
Breathing was still difficult for Gillian. When she touched her top lip with her tongue she could taste blood and feel the rough gauze. The doctor went away. Carefully she felt for the mirror on the cover.
Before lunch she called her father in his office. Presumably he wasn’t alone, there was a customer with him or a mechanic. He spoke quietly, and she sensed that he was in a hurry to bring the conversation to an end.
I was going to visit you, he said, I’ll come and see you for a little bit after work.
I wouldn’t, she said.
Really? he asked vaguely. Have you got everything you need?
I don’t need anything, said Gillian, just to be left alone. You don’t need to come.
I’ve got a lot going on, he said, in advance of the holidays everyone needs things done.
It looks even worse, said Gillian, and suddenly she was crying.
Her father seemed not to notice, he just said that was part of the healing process, the doctor had shown him pictures of the various phases.
It’s not like with your cars, you know, said Gillian, where you can hammer everything out.
As if you knew, said her father. How are you feeling?
She had to laugh. Oh, I’m fine.
I’ll come by tonight, he said and hung up.
The prospect of his visit made Gillian uneasy. It was conceivable that one day there would be a person with a different face, who would be her. But there was as little connecting her to that person as to the other one she had been before the accident. In drama school she had imitated faces and tried out gestures, and that had produced a sort of vague echo of whatever feeling was to be expressed. She turned down the corners of her mouth and felt a weak, unspecific sadness, she pulled them up and straightaway her mood brightened. Now, without a face, she couldn’t do that. All sorts of feelings, relief, fury, grief, were just possibilities that couldn’t be realized. Even other people’s faces, those of the nurses and people in magazines, became illegible scribbles to her.
In the evening, Gillian’s father hung his coat on a hook and hovered near the door. Then he approached her bed. He looked at her, not saying a word, gripped the bed frame, and reluctantly slid down onto the chair beside the bed. He didn’t look at her while they spoke, he took her hand in his. His voice was quieter and more hesitant than during his other visits, and he only stayed for fifteen minutes.
After he had gone, Gillian called her mother-in-law. The phone rang a long time. At last a breathless Margrit picked up. When she heard who was calling, she fell silent.
I’m sorry, said Gillian.
It’s not your fault, said Margrit.
Then she talked about Matthias’s funeral, which had been beautiful, and she wanted to get Gillian’s approval of the music and the restaurant where they had held the wake, and the text of the death announcement, which she read to her. She listed the people who had attended.
That’s fine, said Gillian, I’m sure you did everything right.
It’s too bad you couldn’t be there, said Margrit.
Yes, said Gillian. I’ll visit the grave as soon as I’m out of the hospital.
She got along with Margrit better than she did with her own mother. They talked a while longer, then Gillian said she was tired.
Call anytime, said Margrit.
Gillian wondered what Margrit and her parents would say if they saw the photographs. She was briefly alarmed that her mother might have found them in the apartment, but then she remembered that she had put the envelope away in her desk. She hadn’t looked at the pictures herself. They were evidence of an evening she would prefer to forget. She still remembered her sense of shame, and then panic. She had pulled her clothes on as in a trance. Hubert stood in the open doorway. For the first time that evening, he was looking straight at her. She grabbed the film, which was still on the table. Then she walked off without either of them saying a word. She went to the train station. There was a man on the platform who stared at her as though she had nothing on, and she realized that she didn’t feel up to taking a train or a streetcar home. She followed the road into the city center, first through the industrial precinct, then suburbs she had never set foot in before. She kept running into children in costume moving from house to house. They were strikingly quiet. A few were accompanied by their parents, who hung back a little while the children rang doorbells and asked for treats. It was fully an hour before Gillian locked the door of her apartment behind her. She was pleased that Matthias wasn’t home yet. She could have exposed the film and destroyed it, but she had the illogical feeling that that would release the pictures into the world. Instead she stashed it in her desk. Then she ran a hot bath.