Our Endless Numbered Days: A Novel (30 page)

“Punzel,” I said, more into the bedsheets than as a reply.

“Rapunzel?” he asked, and his hand flew to his hair to flatten it.

“Just Punzel,” I said.

The man spoke to the others and said the name “Rapunzel” in the middle of his German.

“Do you know where you are?”

Everyone was silent, waiting, looking at me. I stroked my own head, feeling the soft bristles growing straight out from my scalp, while the overhead lights reflected in Dr. Biermann’s glasses winked out a warning. The glare from his glasses grew, spreading like drips of bleach on sugar paper, until his eyes were white, his face was white, and finally everything was white and I had the same sensation of falling that I had felt on the road in the little town.

The man with the cowlick was sitting on my bed when I woke up. He bounced a couple of times as if he were
testing its springiness and smiled at me. On the chair in the corner of the room, an older, fatter man took a pen and notebook from his jacket pocket. I tried to read his writing upside down and thought I could make out the words
keep off the line
, but then realized he would be writing in German.

“So, you are English?” the man next to me said. I nodded.

“I’m Wilhelm, medical student, final year,” he said, and laughed even though he hadn’t said anything funny. “And this is Herr Lang. He is a policeman . . .” He indicated the man in the corner. “. . . a detective. Dr. Biermann asked me to come to speak to you. Rapunzel, do you know where you are?”

“In the Great Divide, or I may be dead, or both,” I said.

Wilhelm laughed again, a girlish giggle, and I thought it must be true. He talked to the detective in German, and the man gave a snort.

“You’re certainly not dead,” said Wilhelm, turning back to me and smiling. “You’re in a hospital.” And his hand flew upward toward his hair. “You hurt your ear and you lost a lot of blood and you were very . . .” He paused, searching for a word. “. . . thirsty, when you were found. I think you are perhaps a little confused. We would like to find out more about you. Would that be all right?”

I nodded.

“For instance,” he said, “where do you live?”

“In die Hütte,” I said.

The man behind us shuffled around in his seat, and Wilhelm made a surprised sound in the back of his throat. He asked me a question in German.

“I only speak English,” I said.

After a pause, he tried again. “Where is die Hütte?”

His tone was gentle, but the action of his flying hand made me suspicious, and I wondered whether he was trying to catch me out. Perhaps he knew where die Hütte was, had already been there and discovered my father on the floor.

“Out there.” I waved toward the window, and Wilhelm looked behind him, as though he might see die Hütte on the other side of the patch of grass.

“Who do you live there with?” he asked.

“My father,” I said.

“Is he still in die Hütte?”

“And Reuben,” thinking while I said it that it was almost true.

“Reuben,” said Wilhelm. “Is he your brother?”

“No.” But I didn’t know what to say he was.

“Your grandfather?”

“No.”

Wilhelm’s hand rose halfway, then dropped. He kicked his heels against the floor so they squeaked, and he smiled again, and I wondered if he found the noise funny instead of irritating, like I did.

The man in the corner spoke sharply, and Wilhelm said, “How old are you, Rapunzel?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I haven’t had a birthday in a long time.”

“And what is the name of your father?” I knew that “Papa” wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

“James,” I said.

“Does he have a surname?”

I thought for a few moments. “I can’t remember,” I said honestly, but Wilhelm raised his eyebrows and translated without turning around. The man in the chair scribbled.

“Would it be OK to speak to your father? Perhaps on the telephone? He must be worried about you.”

“He’s resting,” I said, and then, “Reuben said he’s dead.”

The man in the corner coughed and I thought he must have understood me. My answer seemed to surprise Wilhelm; his hand moved even faster than before, patting down his wayward hair.

“Oh, I’m very sorry. How did he die?”

“Reuben hit him with the axe,” I said.

The detective asked a question, but Wilhelm ignored him, instead leaning forward with a look of concern.

“Did Reuben hit you too?” He raised his hand toward the bandage on the side of my head.

“No, of course not.” I flinched, alarmed that he was getting the wrong idea.

The man in the corner started to talk with more force, and Wilhelm translated as I spoke.

“Papa did that with the knife.”

“And what about your mother? Does she live in die Hütte?”

“She’s dead,” I said, and a wave of panic washed over me at the thought that they were both gone, and Reuben too, and that I was here in this white land alone.

Wilhelm frowned. “It’s OK, Rapunzel.”

“Punzel,” I said again.

He laid a hand on my arm. “Did Reuben hit her? You’re safe; you can tell me what happened.”

“No,” I said. “She died a long time ago. I lived with my father in die Hütte. I was going to live with Reuben in the forest on the other side of the Fluss, but I couldn’t find him.”

“Where is this forest man; where is Reuben now?” Wilhelm asked, his face level with mine.

“He crossed the Fluss before me, he went into the trees and then he was gone.” I put my face in my hands, my body doubling over. “He left me.” Dry heaves were coming up from my stomach. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought he might come for me in the night, I was so scared, but he was gone. And then I saw the Great Divide . . .”

Wilhelm moved closer and put his white arm over my shoulder and pulled me in toward his chest. I heard my gasping noises, but no tears came. Up close, underneath a smell of medicine, I sniffed something floral. He held me until the dry sobs had subsided, and I pulled away from him.

“What is the Great Divide? I don’t know the German for this,” he said, and spoke to the detective.

I shrugged. It was too much to explain. The three of us sat silent.

“Do you know what the date is?” Wilhelm asked after a minute or two.

I shook my head.

“It’s the twenty-first of September, 1985,” he said. “We think you walked to Lügnerberg. Do you remember if it was far? How long it took you?”

“Nine years,” I said.

Wilhelm shook his head. “My English is not so good. You were walking for nine years?”

“What’s Lügnerberg?”

“The village where you were found. You were worn out, Rapunzel, your feet are damaged. You must have walked a long time.”

I shrugged.

“Do you think you could draw a map of where you came from? The policeman”—he indicated the man with a twitch of his head—“will need to help your father and to find Reuben.”

He spoke to the detective again, who tore a page from his notebook and handed it over. Wilhelm took a pen from the top pocket of his white coat and, resting the piece of paper on the clipboard that had been hanging on the bottom of my bed, handed them to me. It was the first paper I had touched since I had held the sheet music for
La Campanella
before the forest fire. But this was blank, apart from faint blue lines on both sides. Wilhelm gave me the pen. I looked at him and at the paper. He took the pen back and clicked the end of it so the nib poked out from the bottom. He nodded at me—go on, he seemed to be saying. I pressed the end too and the nib disappeared; again, and out it came. The detective had moved forward to stand beside the bed, watching me. His gaze made my hand shake. I was worried he would tell me off for wasting his piece of paper,
that he would laugh at my drawing. I hadn’t drawn a picture since I had been at school, but I put the pen on the paper.

In the middle of the sheet I drew a little house with one window and a door and a metal chimney poking through the pitched roof. Woodsmoke puffed into the summer sky.

27

The following morning, a woman with translucent skin came into my hospital room lugging a plastic bag. She tipped a pile of clothes out over my bed, a kaleidoscope of unnatural colours; they smelled of unwashed necks and damp blankets, they smelled of die Hütte. I drew my knees up to my chest.

“This is very nice,” she said in English, picking up a long checked skirt, similar to the one she was wearing.

With my eyes, I traced the pale blue journey of a vein from the bottom of her cheek up to her temple.

“And about your size, if we can find you a safety pin.” She smiled and she held it out, trying to measure it against me. “I hear you were found in the woods,” she said, examining my face. “You had a lucky escape by the look of it.” She burrowed into the heap of clothes. “Here’s
a blouse that will do.” The collar, a nylon ruff, had a rind of grey around the inside. The woman excavated a jumper, red, green, and purple stripes zigzagging across the front.

“Do you have any underwear?” I asked.

“Bras? Knickers, do you mean? I’ll have a word with the nurses on my way out. They should be able to find you some paper knickers at least.” The woman’s eyes had become watery, but she carried on. “Now, how about shoes?”

“I have my own.” I leaned over the side of the bed for my father’s boots and remembered that I hadn’t seen them since I’d worn them when walking through the village.

“I was told you needed shoes, so you’d better have some. What about these?” She held out a pair of patent Mary Janes.

The shine had been scuffed from the toes, but I liked them. I pushed the bedcover off my legs and stuck out my feet. A little cry came from the woman, but she covered her mouth to hide it. My feet were swollen and purple bruises had blossomed, mutating into green algae where they reached my toes. A nurse had wrapped my ankles with bandages where the skin had been rubbed off. I eased my feet into the shoes, pressed the tongues onto a corresponding patch of bristles and then ripped them off, with a sound like tearing paper. I did it again.

“Velcro,” the woman told me before she left.

I put on my new clothes. They were an improvement on the hospital gown, but their smell made me worry about the health of their previous owners. I played with the Velcro and wondered whether the detective had found my father yet. I thought about Reuben and tried to imagine him in this new white world, but his hair was too long, his beard too tangled, his smile too natural. He didn’t fit. For the rest of the morning I stood at the window and watched the wind in the leaves. I breathed on the glass and, with a fingertip, traced the outline of the tree on the misty pane. Only the visits from the nurses coming in to perform their regular checks and the arrival of food broke the monotony of the little white room. Thin soup, watery porridge, rubbery egg, rice pudding—all of it wonderful.

In the afternoon, when Wilhelm poked his head around the door, I was pleased to see him.

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your . . .” he started to say as he came in, but he blushed, and his hand rushed to his own hair.

He seemed even younger than he had the day before. He was walking awkwardly, with one arm hiding something under his white coat. I hoped it was food, but instead he whipped out a newspaper and slapped it down on the bed.

“You’re famous,” he said.

On the front page was a line drawing of a girl with sharp cheekbones and a small, downturned mouth. The artist had drawn her crudely, her eyes too big for her face, and part of her ear was missing. The writing underneath wasn’t in English, but above the drawing was a headline starting with a word I knew.

“Rapunzel, the forest girl,” Wilhelm said. He picked up the paper and translated: “Police are trying to trace the family of an English-speaking teenager who was discovered wandering in Lügnerberg, a Bavarian village about twenty miles north of Freyung. The girl, who says her name is Rapunzel, claims she has been brought up by her father in a remote forest cabin. After a . . . after a . . .” Wilhelm struggled to find the words. “. . . deadly fight between her father and a wild man of the forest, the girl, who is about fourteen, walked—”

“I’m seventeen,” I said.

Wilhelm stopped reading and his eyes widened.

“I worked it out.”

“Seventeen,” he repeated.

“If it’s 1985.”

Wilhelm gave a whistle and a roll of his head. “What else? Have you remembered anything else?” He sat down on the bed and smoothed his hair. “Were you born in die Hütte? What about the rest of your family?”

“They’re all dead,” I said. “But I remember London. We had a big house, with a grand piano.”

Wilhelm bounced. “Did you play it?”

“There was a cemetery at the end of the garden.” Wilhelm was getting more excited, but when I thought of the garden, my bedroom, and the glasshouse, I remembered they had all been sucked into the Great Divide years ago.

“What else?” said Wilhelm, but I slipped back under the sheets, fully clothed, and turned my head toward the window.