Hand Me Down World (19 page)

A long pier extends from the beach front of Binz. People walk to the end of it and stare out to open sea. Then they turn around and walk back to the shore. The feeling is they have been somewhere refreshing and intoxicatingly new and now they are returning—usually for breakfast or lunch or dinner.

It was at the end of this pier early on the first morning, Ines and Ralf were still in bed, that my mobile unexpectedly rang. It was my older sister calling with the news that our elderly mother had had a stroke. From half a world away I could hear the noise of the hospital and, just as unmistakably, my sister's edginess. She had flown home from Brisbane earlier that day. She thought I should make every effort to get back as soon as possible. I could not bear to tell her just how beautiful a scene I currently found myself in, at the end of a long pier, the Ostsee sliding beneath me, the long beach glowing white in the early-morning sun, the screen of lime trees, the boardwalk, and behind it the rows of old wooden hotels tilting towards the sea. Or that as I listened to her news I happened to be gazing towards a corner of the beach, the FFR stretch reserved for nude bathers, where a fishing boat was coming ashore as a number of early-morning enthusiasts paddled out, their white bodies swollen with purpose. The whole scene was like a postcard, still, framed, as my sister explained how earlier that day our mother had risen, got as far as sitting on the edge of her bed, and then just froze, which is how one of her elderly friends had discovered her several hours later.

I would have to return home. When I met Ralf and Ines in the breakfast room my smile was the kind doctors reserve for patients still unaware of their terminal condition. I sat down and unfolded my crisp white napkin.

Over breakfast Ralf recalled a hut that used to sell dried fish. It sat further down the beach. He thought we might go and seek it out. He asked Ines if she had eaten dried fish.

‘Yes. Of course,' she answered. ‘Mackerel.'

‘Ha! But not this mackerel…not from the Ostsee.'

This was the first time I had heard him express pride of a tribal nature. Mackerel, of all things. Some weeks earlier the European Cup had kicked off. I watched with Ines, Ralf listened with earplugs to the radio commentary. When Germany scored the opening goal against Poland the television cameras found the Chancellor in the crowd. She rose excitedly to her feet—as any reasonably loyal follower would, and then caught herself, and it was as if all of Germany's history was breathing down her neck; looking very uneasy she sat down again to the knowing mirth of the sympathetic German commentators.

That was one more thing that I failed to pass on to Ralf.

Later that afternoon I returned alone to the end of the pier and rang my sister. It was near midnight her time, she was still at the hospital but in a better mood. The stroke was of the more benign variety. There was no permanent loss of bodily movement. None of that freezing effect you hear about. But my mother's language was a bit scrambled. She had asked for a shower when she meant a cup of tea. With some remedial work she might recover some capacity. In the morning she would be shifted to the stroke ward. ‘Good,' I said. ‘That's good.' I said goodbye and switched off the mobile. Moving along the pier to claim me were Ines and Ralf.

At the back of my sister's voice, beyond the crash bang of the hospital interior, I had seen the street outside the hospital, the large egg-shaped boulder dragged up from the river and set on its end to commemorate a fracas between Maori and my forebears, a bugler, a boy in uniform, hacked to death on soil now covered with English gardens and tarseal and houses, and a kindergarten I attended pulling a large unshorn sheep behind me on a length of string, and the golf course where I and my childhood friend Megan Rabbit wandered in and out of a lime-lit dream. Well all of that came packaged with my sister's voice, as well as her sun-drowsy vowels acquired after eleven years in Queensland—a part of her life I knew little about—so that, when I rejoined Ines and Ralf, I was not quite the same person they had known at breakfast.

On the beach in the early evening we let Ralf wander confidently ahead, socks and shoes in his hand, guided by the line of the tide. A naked man and woman (a jaunty cock and floppy tits) walked hand in hand across us, and before long we found ourselves in a crowd of naked flesh, and Ines slid her fingers into mine.

I spent that night with her. She slept lightly. She was always very alert to those internal shifts in others. Every so often she would wake and remember where she was and go back to sleep. I spent most of the night listening to the voices from the boardwalk, then it was the quiet murmur of the Ostsee pushing up the beach. At a very late hour she stirred beside me, reached for my hand and placed it between her legs.

nineteen

Within a day of our return to Berlin I noticed a pair of silver plates gone from the cabinet and a number of scrimshaw pipes that had belonged to Ralf's grandfather, a seaman who used to sail between Hamburg and British ports. I had decided to tell Ralf. I would not spare myself. I would tell Ralf everything.

I waited a week. Another week spent brooding on how best to proceed. I needed to get Ralf alone. That was the first thing. Again it was as if Ines sensed my intentions. She stayed near. I don't think she went out alone all week. She visited me on three nights and asked for nothing in return. But afterwards, we lay apart in the dark.

It was the weekend of the European Cup final. A Saturday or Sunday—I forget which. Otherwise the details of that day remain deeply etched.

I took my time with everything that day. I was uncharacteristically methodical—the way I showered, the way I made a cup of tea, even the way I ate my muesli.

Late morning I visit the museum of natural history for coffee with Schreiber. I've come to show him my drawings of the lungfish. He puts on his glasses and stares. He likes what he sees. Apart from the lungfish butchered by the museum's taxidermist, which I have faithfully copied—imperfections and all. Schreiber didn't think that drawing resembled a lungfish. I smugly agreed. ‘But that's the one on display,' I said. Schreiber wants to talk football. Germany has defied the pundits and the odds to make the final, dishearteningly for some fans, against a flashy and in-form Spain. Schreiber is quietly pleased by the team's progress. He is just a few years younger than Ralf. When I tell him I will be cheering for Germany he is surprised, and then delighted.

That afternoon I follow the colourful crowd up Unter den Linden to Brandenburg Gate, where a massive screen has been erected. The game is still a few hours away. Trumpets sound, whistles blow, drummers pound away, and thousands, tens of thousands, draped in red, yellow and black, swarm through the city to arrive there in larger and larger numbers. Half a million I heard it reported later.

Everything about this day was different. Fading, I would say. A solitary disengaged soul carrying a filthy sack picked up refundable empties. Retracing my footsteps down Unter den Linden I join the tail end of the crowd, late arrivals, girls with their faces painted black, red and yellow, the faces of their boyfriends covered with glee. At Bebelplatz, where on most days tourists stand around groping for the book-burning moment of 1933, a young father crouched by his son encouraging him to kick a miniature soccer ball.

I wandered on enjoying the empty streets in a city whose concentration had been captured and drawn singularly to the one event. The way back through Tiergarten felt countrified. A solitary cyclist passed me, like myself, mysteriously untouched by the business of the hour.

I had changed my mind about watching the game in a bar. I would head back to the apartment and share the moment with Ralf. He'd sent Ines out to buy champagne in the event of Germany winning, all of which would help to lift his spirits before I passed on Ines' shoplifting, her purloining of the apartment's chattels, their sale, and the proceeds. I wasn't sure what to say about the proceeds. Perhaps I would leave it to her to explain the ghastly business of purchasing time with the kid I'd seen her with in Tiergarten.

I turn into Ralf's street. A van is parked up ahead. I kick at a plastic container and then swing my foot through a pile of rusty leaves. I am dreading the moment ahead. Ralf will think differently about me. Whatever he says, he will wonder, as he is entitled to wonder, what took me so long. What prevented me speaking out until now? I still haven't figured out what to say. There is always the truth. It just doesn't sound right. It doesn't sound flattering. This is the moment I glance up. The first thing I notice is the van. It is a police van. And the two guys dropping down the steps of Ralf's building are policemen. With them is Ines. One of them is handcuffed to her. Now another policeman gets out of the van to open the back door. He helps Ines and the handcuffed officer up the step and closes the doors behind. The other officer takes off his gloves and gets in the van. He is followed by the driver. The van moves out from the curb. I watch its ponderous three-point turn. In no hurry it bumped along the cobbles towards me. A drooping willow brushed against the roof. I turned and watched it to the end of the street. There it rolled and bumped in the direction taken by the rubbish trucks.

And then I ran.

I didn't wait for the lift. I ran up the five flights of stairs. I found Ralf in a confused state in the middle of the room. He seemed to think the police were still there. Then he said, ‘Defoe? Is that you?' His voice was shaking. I led him to the chair in the corner and tried to compose him. He said, ‘The police were here. They've taken Ines. They said it was a routine matter. They need to talk to her at the station.'

The police had left him with a number to call but said he should wait four hours before calling, so that's what we did. We waited. We watched the baby-faced Torres stroke the goal past the German keeper, and in the ecstasy of scoring Spain's first and only and, as it turned out, winning goal, he ran to the corner of the pitch sucking his thumb until mercifully he was enveloped by his jubilant team mates. We sat through the final depressing minutes waiting for the damned thing to end. I poured Ralf a schnapps but he didn't drink it. Then it was time. I brought him the phone and dialled the number.

He spoke in German so of course I have no idea what he said except I noted the shift in tone. He started out with some authority but gradually demurred and by the end was giving cooperative sighs and nods. When he handed me the phone he looked utterly lost. How big and empty the apartment seemed just then. The vast floor area stretching away from the point of the cane held between his knees. How bare the walls looked. In a voice heightened by its own incredulity he said, ‘They say she killed someone. In Sicily. A woman. Ines someone. I didn't catch the name. I should have listened more carefully. They say she killed this woman and took her identity.'

She might be a thief. A thief with some justification. Who knew? But a killer? No, no, no. Impossible. With Ralf I found myself vying for greater conviction in her innocence. He didn't know her—couldn't possibly know her in the same way that I did. Who could possibly know her better than I did? But weirdly Ralf felt the same—for days, weeks after, we continued to believe in her innocence. It was a measure of our faith in Ines. That position would change, though it was never openly stated, as more information came to light. And then, as it happens, I realised that neither one of us knew her. We knew a small part of her, one side perhaps, the costumed part on her way across the apartment with the tea-tray, when for a moment the light from the window would capture her, enhance her theatrical effect, and you might think, as I did, and logically enough,
Yes, here she is, here is Ines
. She was what we expected her to be. It never occurred to me that there might be more. Only after it fell to me to pour Ralf's tea did I appreciate the elegance she brought to the task. As much as it was amazing to think now how far that performance had taken her, it was embarrassing to think how willing an audience Ralf and I had been. I wonder if that was the reason we stuck with our agreed notion of Ines, while privately the idea of her as an innocent, a simple housekeeper was left to erode.

On a more mundane note Ralf had to adapt to the loss of a housekeeper. He went through a period of breaking everything he came into contact with, as if to say,
Can't anyone see how hopeless the situation is?

All of Ines' old chores fell to me to do. I moved into her old room, slept in her old bed and each morning woke to Ralf prodding his cane along the floorboards.

On the second morning I was reaching under the bed to retrieve a shoe when I found the condom wrapper. Ines and I never used condoms. I'd had a vasectomy more than five years before. It was strange. Baffling. After all, there was just me and Ralf.

Over the coming weeks more calls were made. We had the telephone number of the institution in Sicily where she was being held. Ines also attempted to contact us. Once I got up the stairs to Ralf's to find the phone on the floor. There was a stumbling message from Ines. She gave the trial date. Then it was as though her old life reached out to her. Her voice changed. She reminded Ralf where his pills were. She asked me to remember to change the flowers. She hoped we were managing without her. I did not erase the message. I listened to it a few times, hoping to hear more. Perhaps I'd missed a tone that on hearing again I might identify as a trace of this other person, the one who was a mystery to us both. But what I heard each time was a reiteration of the old lines of trust and loyalty. As far as Ines was concerned, that is, from what her tone indicated, nothing had changed. We could still be counted on.

Plans were made to travel down to Catania for what Ralf was convinced would be a ‘monkey trial'. He got me to contact likely places to stay. While I dialled he stood over me, an old biscuit crumb wedged into the corner of his dry lips. He wanted assurances that the rooms were non-smoking. He demanded descriptions of the surrounding neighbourhood. In one instance I had to ask the woman at the other end to stand by the window and describe the street below while Ralf bellowed from his corner chair that he wouldn't tolerate noise.