I find myself in a transitional stage, Frau Hoffmann says.
Her mother is silent.
And I don’t know what to do, Frau Hoffmann says.
Her mother is silent.
The question is whether I’ll be able to hold out against him. He’s very powerful, and he’s very cruel to me. I’d have asked for a bit more kindness. But he doesn’t know anything about kindness. He’s rough with me, and cruel.
Her mother is silent.
It’s going to be a goddamn fight. I’m not the one attacking. It’s him attacking me — him or her. He or she is attacking me, from all sides. But I don’t want — I still have so many, so many possibilities. There are many things I don’t remember, but still something.
Oh, meydele, her mother says all at once, and her voice doesn’t really sound old.
I would like to take steps against this gentleman, or this lady, don’t you know, Frau Hoffmann says. Before now, there was no one — no one! — who would have dared to fight me.
Not even me, her mother says and smiles.
Not even you, Frau Hoffmann says.
At the beginning of the week when she is going to die, the day after her ninetieth birthday, Frau Hoffman smiles together with her mother for the first time in her life.
There’s one thing you should know, child, her mother says. You can actually put a scare into him with a handful of snow.
Really? Frau Hoffmann says, relieved.
Then she remembers it’s May.
2
Oh come, dear May, and let
The trees all bud again.
And let us to the brook
To see violets blow again.
How dearly I am longing
To see their tiny blooms
O May, how I am longing
To stroll about again.
They were five years old, or six, or seven when they learned this song. Now they sit here singing it with voices that have grown old, locked up in old age as if in a prison, they’re still the same ones who were once five, six, and seven, but they’re also irredeemably removed from this age, perhaps they won’t even live to see the end of the month they’re singing about, perhaps by the time the gardener is raking the autumn leaves of the trees that are just now starting to bud, they’ll be lying in the ground. On Tuesday from ten to eleven, they have singing group. That’s all there is on Tuesday, there’s no Herr Zabel stopping by in the afternoon, and her son doesn’t come either, he said he’ll pick her up on Saturday and take her on an outing. What is a Tuesday? For lunch, poached eggs, and a piece of cake with whipped cream is served with the coffee, outside it begins to drizzle and keeps on into the evening. At some point Frau Hoffmann asks Sister Katrin to open the window and stays there drawing in the damp, warm air in deep breaths, it smells of leaves, just like the night she slept out in the open beside the Danube with her girlfriend. Frau Buschwitz goes to sleep with her headphones on, as she does so often.
We set out to, we’ll take care of everything.
And then it all became so shabby.
We tried to take care of everything, but we went about it wrong.
If Frau Hoffmann died tonight, these would be her last words, but there wouldn’t be anyone there to hear them.
On Wednesday Frau Millner says to Sister Renate at breakfast that she always eats two slices of toast. I know, Sister Renate says, loud enough for even Frau Millner, who is hard of hearing, to hear. Frau Millner says: One with jam and one with honey. I know, says Sister Renate. Her husband, though, only used to eat one. Well, if he wasn’t hungrier than that, Sister Renate says. Yes, but that was a mistake, Frau Millner says, otherwise he might still be alive today. Eating keeps body and soul together, Sister Renate says. Exactly, Frau Millner says.
What is a Wednesday?
Beside Frau Millner, Frau Hoffman sits with her eyes shut, counting the seconds, because she knows that the executions start at eight o’clock. Every minute a group of ten prisoners is shot. She silently counts to ten, nodding along with the numbers, and then waits for the next minute to begin. She doesn’t have to look at the clock to know when a minute is over. Finally she has grown old enough to be able to move freely in time.
One. Two. Three.
Frau Schmidt: The Russians blew up Strassmannstrasse 2 because we didn’t clear away the tank barricades quickly enough. We couldn’t move any faster, we were at the end of our strength.
Four. Five. Six.
Frau Podbielski: Sometimes I would mix the insides of plum pits into the dough for the honey cake, did you know you can crack open the pits of plums just like nuts?
Seven. Eight. Nine.
Frau Giesecke: When it was subbotnik, my children always helped gather the pieces of balled-up paper from the bushes.
The day room is full of stories not being told.
Ten.
Even during the week when Frau Hoffmann is going to die, the day after her ninetieth birthday, time is a porridge made of time, it’s rubbery, refuses to pass, has to be killed, spent, served, and still keeps dragging on. What is a Thursday, a Friday? Sometimes in the afternoon this person comes by, this one or that one, and sits, and holds her hand — why? — takes her by the bony shoulder and says: Keep your chin up! Or did no one come at all? The days when someone comes and the days when she just sits there all collapse into a single day, time is a porridge made of time. Who are you? All that remains of life now is what’s left at the very bottom when all the other reserves have been used up: Then the iron reserves make their appearance.
Knit one, purl one, the instructor is helping her.
I’m such an awful sheep.
But you’re doing very well, Frau Hoffmann.
I never understood how it works.
Stick the needle in here and then pull the yarn through.
Oh, I see.
Bravo, Frau Hoffmann.
You know, it’s not that I’m a — what’s the word — a daydreamer. It’s not that. It’s something else: fear.
The iron reserves, fear.
Fear of doing something wrong again.
Fear of the day, fear of the night, fear of the storm and strangers coming to visit, fear of the poison in her food and the nurse who acts friendly but in truth is out to steal her gold bracelet, fear of where the wheelchair she’s sitting in is being pushed, and by whom? Fear of the doctor and of the pain, fear of her son who brought her here, fear of life and fear of death, fear of all the time she still has to live through.
But Frau Hoffmann, there’s nothing to be afraid of.
I have such a great fear of doing something wrong that I always do something wrong.
But look, you’ve already knitted an entire row perfectly, Frau Hoffmann.
No, no, something is always wrong. I know that, there’s no changing it.
Here, now you turn the whole thing over and start again from the beginning.
Is this the right way?
As right as right can be.
It’ll hold together?
Of course, why shouldn’t it?
Approximately eighty years ago, an arts and crafts teacher in Vienna declared the work of one of her pupils sloppy and shoddy. Is it possible that this pupil was given so long a life for the sole purpose of having the sentence uttered by that loathsome Viennese woman finally canceled out, buried by a new sentence uttered by a new teacher? Has she been in the world all these many years just so these two sentences — to give just one example — can confront each other within her, and the good one defeat the bad? Might everything that’s ever been said and that will be said everywhere in the world constitute a living whole, growing sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, always balancing out in the end? So was this the end?