Broken Glass Park (6 page)

These are nice thoughts, but they’re taxing. I should spend some time on the other plan.

I sit down that same night at the computer. I sit there for a long time, at least an hour. It’s harder than I thought it would be. It’ll probably be easier to strangle Vadim.

All the scenes I want to write down seem to have vanished. Every syllable I try to capture seems banal. Warm hands and lullabies and dirty jokes and coffee by the liter—none of it hits the mark. All I can see is her face in my mind, and I begin to type just to avoid staring like Anton.

“Red hair,” I write. “Dyed with henna as long as I can remember. What color was her hair before that? Probably some shade of brown. She once told me she found her first gray hair early. By the time she was thirty she had skeins of gray hair. She had the type of life that makes people prematurely gray. With the henna, her gray hair became streaks of light orange. Her eyes were light brown and big. Her mouth was big, too, and, like her eyes, was usually wide open. She talked and laughed a lot. Even when she read, she talked. She would always show up in front of me with a book in her hand and say, ‘Should I read a passage to you? Here’s an incredible paragraph.’ I would answer, ‘I’m doing my homework,’ or, ‘I’m trying to read something of my own.’ She read the passage anyway, and I never understood what was so great about it. I never really listened because it annoyed me and I was happier lost in my own thoughts.”

I read through it again. I don’t cry.

I go to bed early.

In the morning I put on my sneakers with my eyes still closed. Maria is snoring loudly in her bed, and when I go to close her door so she doesn’t wake up the children, I see little Alissa next to her, half buried by Maria’s overflowing hips. Alissa’s in a hand-made floral nightgown. Memories of a pink sweater shoot through my head and I decide I need to do something about organizing the clothes.

Maria listens to me.

I run three times around the Emerald and then head off. I’m dragging. I haven’t run in a long time and wouldn’t have today if I hadn’t woken up with a sick, tense feeling. I try to run away from this feeling but just end up with stitches in my sides. So I shove my hands under my ribs and stand there wheezing in front of the newsstand.

I’ve had a subscription to the local paper for the past year. I need to. If the Emerald were being torn down, for instance, Maria would probably only realize when they carried her out of the apartment in her chair. And anyway, reading the paper often pays off for school.

I look at the headlines of the dailies, more out of a sense of duty than out of real interest.

I wonder to myself who in this area buys these. Sometimes I feel like the only literate person in the entire Emerald. The rest of them carry half-empty bottles around in the pockets of their track pants, wrap smoked fish in bright-colored papers with headlines like “Who does the severed head belong to?” or “Government covers up evidence of another UFO landing,” and look suspiciously at anyone who uses German to speak to them. “Can’t he speak normal?” they ask.

On this morning, my heart suddenly freezes—just for a second—then it kicks on again and jumps into my throat and flutters there like a bird in distress. I gasp for breath and try to swallow in order to get my heart back down where it belongs.

As I do this, I move closer so I can read a box in which one of the big Frankfurt papers highlights the main stories of the day. Under “local” I read: “A visit with the double-murderer Vadim E: ‘remorse is tearing my heart apart.’”

His heart, my heart, I think. Maybe it would be a good idea to tear that organ right out of his chest and impale it on a spear for all to see. Actually I get queasy easily. I don’t like to watch when Maria guts a chicken and explains how you have to cut the oil gland off the back of the bird and how the part with the eggs is the ovaries. And how if you hold a severed chicken foot and pull the tendon in the front, the claws will make a fist—what’s so disgusting about that, sweetie?

But for this one thing, I could get past any hang-ups.

My running pants don’t have any pockets. No pockets on the jacket either. Otherwise I wouldn’t have my keys dangling from my neck, jangling like a cowbell.

I have to read what’s in the paper right this second. In the amount of time it would take me to go upstairs and get money, the world could end. Five times.

I look over at one of the Emerald’s second-floor windows. Normally there’d be a bald head sticking out of it, with an unlit, saliva-soaked cigarette stuck in the corner of its mouth.

There’s nobody in the window. It’s still really early, and any sensible person who has to be awake at this hour is making a cup of coffee right about now. Or a second cup.

All I can think is how glad I am Ingrid and Hans don’t see me grab the paper, roll it up, and tuck it under my jacket.

On the staircase I open it up again and flip through it looking for the article about the woes of the aging Vadim E.

The first thing that catches my eye is the byline—Susanne Mahler. She’s the writer. Only after that do I see the grotesque face. The sight of it makes me feel faint.

I lean my head against the dirty green wall. A little higher up on the wall is a scribbled drawing, a detailed image of two men copulating. My head leans against the caption: “Death to all faggots.” I take a few deep breaths. Then I look at the paper again.

He hasn’t changed. The same mustache, the same dark eyes, the same hulking brow and deep creases running from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth. The ugliest face I’ve ever seen, made even worse by the pitiful expression he’s put on for the photo. The corners of his mouth hang sadly, his eyes plead, his curly hair is sticking up all crazy. Poor Vadim. He barks, but he doesn’t bite—unless someone is so mean as to bait him. Then he’ll snap at you, of course, but it’s your own fault for getting him worked up. As long as you know how to behave around him, he’s a sweetheart.

Everything goes black again. This time I have to take deliberate breaths for much longer before the darkness starts to dissipate.

He probably weaseled his way in with my mother with that pitiful grimace, I think to myself. Playing to her empathetic soul. She petted anyone who looked up at her like that. Dogs, too—and not one of them ever bit her.

But she sure as hell got suckered by Vadim. How could she have been so stupid? Couldn’t she see what a monster he was right away?

“He used to be different,” my mother said to me once. “Not so angry and so weak. You know yourself how bad it’s gotten since he began spending all day in front of the TV, barely understanding a word.”

“I know exactly what he was like before, too. And it wasn’t any better.”

“That’s not fair.”

“And what about him? Is he fair?”

“He’s having a hard time, you can see that yourself.”

Be careful of people who feel weak, I think. Because it’s possible that one day they’ll want to feel strong and you’ll never recover from it. Maybe that’s a thought to add to my file, the one I’m going to call “Marina.” The stuff I wrote last night I deleted immediately afterwards.

I can’t get over the feeling that Susanne Mahler wants to pet Vadim E. a little.

I have to read the piece a dozen times. And even then I don’t really understand it. Individual sentences stick out in my head and mix with others. I still love her. I wish I could tell her. I’m writing her a letter. It’s already 20 pages long, but the most important thing hasn’t been said yet. I’m ashamed to face my children. I’m also terribly sorry about the young man who also had to die.

The only thing that’s yours is a prison cell, I mutter. In a million years, I would never believe you said all of that on your own. Maybe Susanne Mahler took an interpreter with her who did as creative a job of translating as I do for Maria?

I’ve become a completely different person. Even my German is improving.

Susanne Mahler seems touched by it all. She looked at Vadim’s sketches—his attempts to hang onto the image of his wife’s transcendent beauty. His ex-wife, to be more precise. Whom he unfortunately killed—which perhaps he shouldn’t have done.

The drawings are primitive but heartfelt and expressive, according to Susanne Mahler.

My whole body is shaking with rage.

Vadim would be happy to show the letter he wrote to his wife to anybody who is interested. Susanne Mahler had held the handwritten pages in her hand; unfortunately she can’t read Russian.

The script is erratic, inconsistent, agitated.

Vadim has many more years to continue writing. I start to laugh. Vadim is writing about my mother. We’re rivals.

It would be better if instead he’d just kill himself. Or maybe not. I still hope to accomplish something in life.

I fold the paper, roll it up, and head upstairs. I carefully open the door and take off my shoes. For a second I think I see a ghost. But it’s only Maria in her flowing nightgown, made from the same fabric as Alissa’s.

Maria sews, too. Have I mentioned that?

She jumps when our eyes meet.

“Did you fall?” she asks and squints intently at my face. Her own face is swollen and pale like bread dough. Her cheeks quiver when she moves. She has pink and blue curlers in her hair.

A dream woman.

“Good morning,” I say, and walk past her to the bathroom.

I won’t say a word to her about it. She’s never mentioned Vadim in front of me. It’s wise of her. I know they barely saw each other. She visited us once, at most, while we were still in Moscow. I don’t know what she thinks of him and I don’t want to know.

I’ve never asked her what she thinks of my plan. It’s never occurred to me. I want to believe that she might sigh but that she wouldn’t say anything—and that she’d help me clean up the mess before the children got home.

She would understand that more blood wouldn’t be helpful for their development.

I also want to be sure that when it comes to bringing up the children, she’ll stick to my handbook while I’m in prison. Where perhaps Susanne Mahler will visit me and report: Sascha N. seems very much at peace. “I would do it all again,” she told this reporter, “if I hadn’t already succeeded in poisoning Vadim . . . ”

I update and expand my educational handbook regularly. As of now, it consists of the following:

1. Your mother was the best ever, and she lives on in you.

2. The idea that Vadim is your father is a big misunderstanding. Sascha believes that you are not his children but rather the children of the pilot who lived one floor down—a wonderful and handsome man. That’s why you are so good-looking.

3. Read everything you can get your hands on. That’s what your mother did.

4. Learn everything you want to know, and then learn some more. Don’t worry if something doesn’t go well. You are capable of so much.

5. Even if Maria likes to tell you the opposite, it doesn’t matter what other people think of you. Wear whatever you feel like, dye your hair blue if you think it looks nice. Act however you want, too.

6. Sing a lot.

7. Watch out for people who feel weak. They may want to feel strong one day and you might not survive that moment.

8. Don’t put any credence in worst-case scenarios like the one in the previous entry, even if Maria constantly predicts the end of the world is right around the corner. Be courageous and crazy and explore every wonderland you come across—just like Alice in the English fairytale, after whom your mother named Alissa.

9. Think about your older sister Sascha once in a while. But don’t visit her in prison—it’s not good for the psyche.

10. You are not poor little orphans, because your mother is immortal. Maria knows that, too.

And then I realize I don’t know anything about what Maria knows or doesn’t know.

I skip out of school two hours early one day because I just can’t take it anymore. I’ve felt for days as if I were wandering around in a thick, gray fog. I recognize the world around me, but it’s lost all color. I just don’t feel like looking any closer.

I don’t hear things around me—or to put it more accurately, I’m not listening, and the voices around me are blurred into a tangled rush of noise. The only thing I react to are children’s shrieks. I always turn to look to make sure it’s not Anton or Alissa. At home I spend most of my time lying in bed.

I’ve blown two exams—history and math. In both cases, the teachers came up to me after the class and said they wouldn’t count the exams toward my midterm grade. I didn’t understand what they were talking about at first because I hadn’t even opened the test booklet in either case.

I didn’t look at the teachers. I can’t stand those eyes. Another set of eyes examining me with worry and sympathy. Following me when I leave. I don’t want that.

I want to be invisible. But my mother wouldn’t have liked that. She always said you should be able to see, hear, and smell people.

I’m sure everyone would happily smell a little less of people than they have to smell of Vadim, I always answered. Is he allergic to water?

Once when I was a little kid I was bored in school and just got up and walked out of class, my mother told me.

I’m not bored now. But I leave two hours early because I’m afraid of just turning to stone in my chair. Unlike Anton, I don’t have an older sister to drag me back into the land of the living.