All Days Are Night (3 page)

Her mother didn’t push it. She said she had been to
the apartment and cleared out the fridge and done the laundry.

Thank you, said Gillian, there’s no need. My operation’s tomorrow, and then we’ll see. She said she was tired.

Take care.

You too.

She tried to sleep, so as not to think of the crash, the operation, Matthias.

In the afternoon her father came by again. He was very matter-of-fact. After the first operation she could theoretically go home, he said.

But it’s probably advisable to stay in the hospital until you’re half —

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.

Matthias came home while Gillian was still in the bath. She heard the door shut, and then he walked into the bathroom and sat down on the side of the tub. He played with a few remaining scraps of foam that were drifting on the water. Gillian hoped he would leave, but he started telling her about some editorial meeting or other. She didn’t listen. She leaned out of the bath and reached for her robe. Matthias picked it up and held it open for her. She stood and turned her back to him. When she had climbed out of the bath, he put his arm around her and kissed her. She twisted out of his embrace and took a towel to dry her hair.

Over time, Gillian had almost forgotten about the film, the only time she was reminded of it was when she was looking for something in the drawer. She hadn’t asked Matthias what he was doing there. Maybe he was snooping, but he could have been hunting for a perfectly innocent paper clip or postage stamp. She wondered if the lab assistant who developed the film might indeed
have run off some prints for himself. But in fact she didn’t care either way. The woman in the photographs no longer existed.

The next morning, soon after breakfast, a policewoman came to the hospital. She was pretty and rather delicate looking. She shook Gillian’s hand and introduced herself, Manuela Bauer from the cantonal police. She unpacked a laptop and a small printer. Gillian said she had no memory of anything, but the policewoman was busy with the machinery and didn’t react. At last she was ready, sat in the chair by the bed, and began to type. She read Gillian her rights and said she didn’t have to make a statement that would incriminate her or her husband.

It was an accident, said Gillian.

The policewoman said it was a case of grave physical injury.

Are you going to lock him up? asked Gillian.

The policewoman said of course there wouldn’t be any proceedings against the deceased, but the case needed to be looked into just the same. She asked Gillian about the night of the accident, she wanted to know where they had been, and who else had been there. Gillian wondered if she would be made responsible for the whole thing if she confessed. She was the only person who knew the truth, and she wasn’t obliged to make a statement. In spite of that she related everything as she remembered it.

And what was this fight about? asked the policewoman.

That’s neither here nor there, said Gillian, it was silly. Anyway, I had quite a lot to drink in a short time afterward.

Did you ask your husband to drive?

It was obvious that I wasn’t capable anymore.

You could have called a taxi.

Yes, said Gillian, we could have spent the night there too. But we didn’t.

She had thought she didn’t remember anything of the night, but as she spoke, quite a lot swam into her consciousness: she had to hold on to the car as she climbed in, Dagmar had tried to persuade her to stay. Matthias had said he would take back roads, that way they wouldn’t get caught up in any police checks. Gillian felt sick, she rolled down the window, and the cold night air cut into her face. Matthias drove in silence. At that moment, she couldn’t imagine they would ever be reconciled. Only the thought that that meant a separation oppressed her.

She must have dropped off. When she awoke, they were driving along a narrow forest road. The asphalt glistened with moisture, scraps of mist appeared among the trees. There were no other cars around. The radio was playing loud rock music. Gillian switched to a jazz channel and closed her eyes. Without a word, Matthias switched back to the heavy metal station. Was that the moment he lost control of the car? Her next memory was the weightlessness. And then the ghostly silence.

He struck a deer, said the policewoman.

It wasn’t his fault, said Gillian, and she started to cry.

He shouldn’t have been driving, said the policewoman, never mind what you said or did.

It was my fault, said Gillian, still crying.

I’m sorry, said the policewoman, sounding impatient, I can’t help you. Legally, you’re not to blame.

Before she left, she gave Gillian a leaflet from a victims’ support group and asked if she wanted any support or psychological assistance.

Gillian shook her head. My parents are there for me. I need a new nose.

She tried to laugh, the whiffling sound she made disgusted her.

The taxi driver helped Gillian into the wheelchair and rolled her to the foot of the stairs, and then he went back to fetch her suitcase from the trunk.

It’s okay, she said, someone will come down.

She had to lay the suitcase across her lap because she couldn’t steer the wheelchair with just one hand. She took the elevator to the top floor. Luckily the thresholds were flush throughout the building. The silent apartment was a shock.

Hello, called Gillian, even though she knew there was no one there. Hello?