This was more of an assertion than anything else, or so at least Helene interpreted the pressure she detected behind the sounds he uttered and his restless eyes.
If thou thine heart wouldst give me… Her mother began the line in a voice laden with meaning.
… then secret let it be./That others may not guess it when they see you with me. Oh yes, of course, that too, said the guest, making haste to complete the couplet. But he seemed unable to summon up much real pleasure in their complicity.
But have you thought what craftiness lies behind that vow of love? No? Yes? What a polemic! I’ll tell you: he wants her to keep her mouth shut so that he’s the only one with any say about their being a couple. And she’s not happy about it. Did you understand that? I mean, it’s monstrous. The reader can but weep to see her words so obviously dismissed, to see him reject her. At least, a woman reader must, she whispered barely audibly, adding out loud: But I don’t see you shedding any tears. You want to triumph over her. To the Fair One! I ask you!
Once again Helene heard her mother’s malicious laughter. A guest like this would have difficulty understanding the depths below it.
As for Heine, the likes of you ought not even to read him. Do you hear me? You betray him rather than understanding him. Oh, you still read him, do you? Are you in your right mind?
One ought not to read him?
Not you. You and your misunderstandings, what a gang! To the Fair One. You know, it won’t do. It’s not simply bad, it is wicked, wicked.
Please be gracious enough to forgive me, madam. The guest was stammering now.
But Helene’s mother seemed to find forgiving difficult.
Gracious? There’s no grace among mankind. Grace is not our business.
Forgive me, dear lady. Perhaps you are right and I’ve just been talking hot air. Forget it, dear Frau Würsich. It’s not worth discussing.
Talking hot air? Listen, Grumbach, talk as much hot air as you like, but spare your fellow men yourself and your nonsense! You must seek true grace and forgiveness only from your God, sir. Helene’s mother had been regaining control of herself, and spoke those last few words with stern clarity.
I really would like to ask you, Grumbach began.
To the Fair One! And again Helene heard her mother’s laughter, the laughter with depths that a guest like this could never guess at, could never plumb, which was just as well.
Helene’s mother offered the guest the remains of her cigarette.
So now, sir, take this outside with you. You’d like to ask me? No beggars here, no hawkers, no itinerant musicians… you’ll forgive me.
From her safe retreat in the darkness above, Helene saw the guest nod. He took the glowing cigarette, which must be burning close to his fingers. As her mother withdrew into her bedroom, coughing, and closed the door, the guest nodded. Carefully, stick and glowing cigarette in his hand, he climbed down the steep stairs. He was still nodding as he reached the front door and went out into Tuchmacherstrasse. The door latched behind him.
Helene stood up and tried to open her father’s door again. She shook it.
Let me in, it’s me.
At first all was still behind the door, but then Helene heard Martha’s light footsteps inside.
Why didn’t you open the door?
I didn’t want him to hear her.
Why not?
He’s forgotten her. Have you noticed that he hasn’t asked about her these last few weeks? I couldn’t tell him she’s living on the floor just below and simply doesn’t want to see him.
Martha took Helene’s hand and drew her over to their father’s bed.
How relaxed he looks, Helene remarked.
Martha said nothing.
Don’t you think he looks relaxed?
Martha still did not answer and Helene thought he must be glad to have a daughter like her, a nurse who not only dressed the inflamed stump of his left leg daily, but injected him with painkillers and was careful, day after day, to talk herself and him out of the fear that he might have typhoid. Their father could not keep down any fluids now, but there were several possible reasons for that, which Martha hastily listed, while Helene read medical manuals, allegedly to prepare herself for training as a nurse, in fact so as not to lose sight entirely of her wish to study medicine.
Helene sat down on the chair and, when Martha set about washing their father’s yellow foot, she took the top book off the pile lying beside her. She glanced up only now and then, to suggest that her father’s steadily rising temperature might be a symptom of typhoid after all, developing after some delay.
Martha said nothing to that. It had not escaped her that their father’s condition had deteriorated considerably. But she said: You don’t understand anything about it yet.
Over the last few weeks, Martha had shown Helene how to do everything she did. They handled their father’s body in turn as he lay there, looking so defenceless, Helene thought. There was nothing he could do but suffer his daughters’ hands on his body. They were not caressing him lovingly but exploring his body as if to find out something and as if, when they did, it would do them some good. Martha told Helene where every organ was, although Helene had known all that for a long time. Martha couldn’t help noticing how his spleen was swelling by the day; she must know what that meant.
For some time now, Martha had been unable to go to the hospital in the morning. She stayed at home, watching over her father’s life, easing it for him. Helene noticed that Martha was scraping and scrubbing herself more frequently every day. After each visit to her father’s bedside Martha scraped at her hands thoroughly, right up to the elbows; she called in the aid of the hairbrush and openly scrubbed her back with it.
At first she asked Helene to empty the bedpan with some hesitation, but then they came to take it for granted that Helene would carry the bedpans of fluids out of the room, rinse them with boiling water and clean the thermometer. Helene washed her hands and her arms up to the elbows, she scrubbed her fingers and the palms and backs of her hands with the nailbrush. It was not supposed to itch, it mustn’t itch. Cold water on her wrists, soap, plenty of soap, which had to foam into a lather. It didn’t itch, she just had to wash herself. Helene conscientiously entered the temperature from the thermometer on the curve of the chart recording it. Martha watched her.
You know what it means when the spleen swells, said Helene. Martha didn’t look at her. Helene wanted to help Martha, she wanted at least to take her father’s pulse, but Martha pushed her away from the bed and the sick man in it.
One evening the sweetish smell met Helene on her way upstairs. The stench of rotting almost took her breath away. She opened the window; the smell of damp leaves rose to her nostrils. A cool October day was drawing to its close. The wind blew through the elms. Her father wouldn’t open his one eye any more. He was breathing through his mouth, which was wide open.
Not without her. Martha was standing beside Helene. She reached for her hand, squeezed her little sister’s hand so hard that it hurt them both, and repeated what she had said. Not without her here.
Martha left the room, determined to break down the door to her mother’s bedroom by force if necessary.
This was the first time for days that Helene had been alone with her father. She carefully kept her breathing shallow and went over to his bed. His hand was heavy, the skin roughened. When Helene picked up that yellow skin in two fingers it did not drop back into place again. Helene was not surprised when, in the light of the lamp, she saw the red rash on his chest where his nightshirt opened. Her father’s hand was pleasantly warm, his temperature had risen daily by tenths of a degree until it reached forty.