The Quiet Twin (23 page)
Authors: Dan Vyleta
More than a week had passed, the autumn growing grey and cold. Throughout this week, Lieschen’s father stayed at home and drank. He had stopped shaving some time ago, slept at the kitchen table half the nights, stank. Every afternoon the bent little girl went up to Dr Beer’s practice and played with Eva, then ran into Beer’s living room to watch her father down his drink. She counted the bottles lined up by his arm, rapt in her attention, then would pick a sudden moment – seemingly no different from all the rest – when she’d tear herself away and go darting for the door.
It took Lieschen less than a minute to run down the stairs, across the yard, and up the staircase to their flat: and still it seemed too long for her. She was afraid of what might happen in that brief minute and tried to shave off seconds, taking two, three steps with every leap; arrived breathless, stars before her eyes. For more than a week now she had opened the door to their flat with a special sort of trepidation, expecting some kind of unnamed catastrophe to welcome her as soon as she had crossed the threshold; always she stopped, still on the landing, and pushed open the door with both her hands, the hedgehog sitting in its box at the tips of her feet. She rarely left him at home now, Prince Yussuf, took him to school and on to Dr Beer’s practice, kept dead spiders in a jar that she carried in her satchel. The doctor had told Lieschen to keep the animal boxed when she went in to visit Eva, and made her wash her hands in the big sink in his kitchen with a special sort of soap (he’d had to find her a stepping stool so she could reach). It wasn’t that the doctor did not like Yussuf. But he suspected him of carrying germs, which she pictured to look much like woodlice, but smaller, with yellow pincers growing from their heads. Beer told her the hedgehog might be hiding them amongst the spines upon his back. She looked, of course, but Yussuf proved too clever for her and hid the vermin far too well.
When she came to the doctor’s practice after school that day, Lieschen found the door locked and a handwritten note, placed much too high for her (she had to step back all the way to the other side of the landing and read it squinting from afar), announcing that Beer ‘begged his patients’ pardon’ but had been summoned ‘on an urgent house call’ and hence had to close the practice for the afternoon. Her heart sank. She shrugged off the heavy satchel that was pulling at her back, sat down upon the topmost stair and took Yussuf from his box (Kaiser San, who shared the hedgehog’s kennel, was sitting straw-littered in one corner, his button eyes a little sulky because he was playing second fiddle to a prince). The hedgehog stood still upon the staircase landing, twitched its pointed, mobile snout, then ran back towards its box. The girl scooped him up and put him back amongst the straw. It was best just to go home.
This time, she was in no hurry to cross the yard. Nobody was about just then, the washing lines hanging empty, no carpet being beaten under the branches of the chestnut tree. The day was wet and raw, the clouds sitting dark and heavy in their rectangle of sky, fixing to rain. She tried the door to the janitor’s basement but found it, too, was locked; no sound of his labours reaching up into the yard. Lieschen might have walked over to the hospital grounds to talk to the man with the steel-plated skull, but knew she’d get soaked on the way, arrive shivering and cold. That, and the satchel bothered her, dragged at her back. She’d just run up and drop it off.
There were twenty-five steps to their front door: two fewer than to Zuzka’s, who lived in the front of the building where the steps were wider and flatter, for rich people’s feet. As she climbed, the girl reviewed her morning. Petra had come to school that day with a pair of new lace-up boots. During break time, a red-faced Sepp had told her that his older brother had ‘buggered up’ the knife; he’d shown her the broken-off blade and they’d buried it a foot deep in the schoolyard sand. Sepp’s brother was called Adolf: like the butcher, like her mother’s father in the photograph with the torn edge, like the man who shouted on the radio and wore the stump of a moustache. It was a stupid name, but pretty, too, because like hers it started with an A. The girl arrived. She put down Yussuf, unlocked the door, pushed it open with both hands.
As always, Lieschen called ahead into the flat and – as so often – she received no answer. All was quiet, only the music of a gramophone carried from across the yard, French horns calling horsemen to the hunt. The girl picked up the box with the hedgehog, stepped over the threshold; closed the door with a shove of her hip. There was a bad smell and she told herself she must open the windows, let in the air, though Father said how much he hated a draught. She kicked off her shoes, drummed her toes against the floor. There was a smudge of blood on one wall, level with her face, and another, bigger than the first, a few steps on. The blood led to the left, towards the kitchen and her father’s bedroom, but Lieschen turned right first, towards her own room and the windowless closet with its thick yellow rug and the old iron washstand, the towels and bucket and floor-soap and lye. No tremor ran through her burdened hands.
Once in her room, the girl laid the box on her bed and, not knowing herself what she was doing, took out the hedgehog and the hunchbacked teddy, placed them both upon the floor, then opened the satchel, unscrewed the jar and shook out some spiders. Then Lieschen straightened, lingered, ran into the closet to fetch a washcloth and a scallop of soap. Some vague notion that she should scrub the stains from off the walls must have occurred to her, for she moved back out into the hallway, walking gingerly, on tiptoe, her shoulders very bent just then, head and arms jutting stiffly from the crooked trunk. The floor was cold beneath her naked feet.
The girl walked to the kitchen, then the bedroom, where she had to force the door because a dead-weight leaned against its hinges. She saw what she saw and did not find the breath to shape a scream; got her dress dirty, and the heel of one foot, and the hand that later pushed some hair out of her face. She did not stay long. Outside, out on the landing, it took no thought to reach up and shove the key into the lock. She had no plan, no care for what came next; her face was pale except for the smudge left by that careless hand. The door locked, she tried the knob once more as was her habit, then took the stairs in an awkward running stumble; heading down, that is, towards the yard. At the bottom of the stairs she got all tangled up and fell; pulled herself back to her feet, stumbling, running down the hall. There was a window in the door that led outside, and already she could see the heavy drops of rain pelting down on to the yard: she longed for them keenly, hurried forward, one foot wet with sticky blood. Then a face darkened the window – she was but two steps away – and the door was pulled open from outside, a man pushing in his chest-heavy girth. It was too late to stop, something working on her legs more exacting than momentum. She collided with his stomach and his groin, bounced back, and once again fell hard on to the ground. His pockmarked face was rain-washed as it bent towards the fallen girl.
Shine-a-man plays the trumpet.
Japan is four islands, far off to the east.
He bent down to her, water dripping from his hat, and it was now, at last, she thought that she might learn to scream. She lost her senses instead; big hands taking hold of her, at the armpit and the neck.
Nobody saw Yuu carry her off.
More than a week had passed. The fuse burned out half a dozen times, threw his practice into darkness; patients treated by the light of day, weak, glum, overcast, the city always between rains. Beer worked from eight-thirty to six; a round of house calls on Friday afternoons and Tuesday nights. There were visitors. Otto dropped by every morning, looked in on Eva. Then came his patients, then Anneliese, then Zuzka. They all had their rituals. Otto liked his coffee with lots of milk, no sugar; brought some rolls on occasion, or two or three eggs in a gesture of friendship or of payment, it was hard for Beer to tell. Anneliese brought her hedgehog and pressed her nose against the living-room window every day before she left; spun round, shouldered her satchel, then ran out the door like the wind. Zuzka came only when the last of the patients had left and he stood heating his dinner at the stove. She came to talk, it seemed, though often she said very little. She’d sit silent at his kitchen table and watch him eat, then burst out with some snatch of thought, half formed, random, following lines of association he sat down to unravel only after she was gone.
The first time she had come like this – after hours, not asking after Eva or the girl, but brushing past him at the door and heading for the kitchen where an omelette lay frying on the stove – he had thought at first she must be drunk. A smell of beer clung to her breath. She took a seat, watched him run a spoon along the rim of the frying pan, then flip the omelette on to a plate before sliding it back into the pan. Her cheeks were blotchy, marked with red. She seemed to be in a state of great excitement.
‘So what is it?’ he asked, and poured her a glass of water from the sink. ‘Shouldn’t you be at dinner with your uncle?’
She nodded, drank the water in long, greedy gulps, then sat brushing at some drops that had fallen on her blouse. Beer gave her time to find an answer.
‘I went back to him,’ she said at last. ‘Even after –’ Her eyes rose, glared at him, strangely defiant.
‘I stayed by the door, you know, holding on to the handle. Afraid, I suppose, ready to run, not looking him in the eye, but at his legs, his thighs, thinking he might pounce. I had a speech prepared, too, and let him have it. About honour and such, and how did he dare. It came out just as I rehearsed. And you know what he says to me? “
I thought you liked me
.” Just that, sulky, pulling a face. And off I am running down the stairs.’
She frowned; shook her head in wonder.
‘I saw his show, you see. It’s like someone else is hiding in that tube of paint.’
The doctor turned off the gas, poured himself some wine.
‘The show,’ he repeated, catching on. ‘So you went out all by yourself. But that’s –’
‘Dangerous, I know.’ Her eyes flashed with anger, then filled with tears.
‘I asked Frau Vesalius once how one knew one was in love.’ She laughed, mirthless, ran a sleeve across her face.
‘What did she say?’
‘I don’t remember. I think she told me that you were already married.’
He sat down across from her, took a sip of his wine.
‘You don’t love me, Fräulein Speckstein.’
‘No,’ she agreed, all too easily. Another man would have been stung.
‘But you think you love –’ He paused, picked through his words. ‘He’s a dangerous man, you know.’
‘I know what he is,’ she returned, angry, impatient with his conventionality.
His wife had told him once that every good woman loved a rake. There, too, it had been a matter of complaint.
‘I have to go,’ said Zuzka.
She stood and he hastened down the hallway ahead of her, held open the door.
‘You mustn’t come here all alone,’ he said to her, pressing her hand. ‘The neighbours will talk.’
Her laughter rang up to him as she ran down the stairs. On reflection he realised he might have said it just to conjure that laugh.
Zuzka came every night after that; came, Beer surmised, straight from some rendezvous with Otto, stayed fifteen minutes, then headed off to dinner with her uncle. On occasion he persuaded her to sit with Eva for a moment, believing somehow that exposure to Eva would soften her and make her better, the effect Eva had upon himself. Zuzka agreed but performed it as a duty, her thoughts turned inwards upon herself. Beer found her much changed, this young woman who had called him to her bedside to treat an illness he’d soon diagnosed a sham. Back then she’d been playfully mischievous, proud to be
in charge
; manipulative like a child. Now she seemed to him as though transfixed: pinned to the spot by some force stronger than herself. Another girl might have run away from that which held her, but she’d been born with more courage than good sense. It was useless to warn her; when he tried, she ceased to listen, drank her water, wished him a good night. He wondered obliquely whether he should be giving her advice on contraception, but reassured himself that this was premature. Her reputation suffered from her visits, so he felt, but the rumour served as cover for the truth.
For all his concern, the bulk of Beer’s energies went elsewhere. He was absorbed in a struggle for Eva’s life. There had been setbacks in these past few days, necrosis spreading within a sore along the bony parts of her right shoulder blade. When he spoke to Eva (quick, murmured statements of what might be called confession) it was about himself, not Zuzka. Eva answered him by winking. It was all he’d ever asked.
On Monday, Beer missed Zuzka’s visit. He had been called out to an emergency around lunchtime; closed down the practice and stayed away until late, all the time fretting that he’d left Eva alone for too long. Tuesday, Lieschen did not show. This, too, caused him some worry. He stared across the yard into her father’s flat, but the curtains were drawn. Perhaps they had gone away. Zuzka came during dinner, cold cuts and a hunk of bread: he let her in, his napkin drooping from his hand.
‘Have you seen Anneliese?’ he asked, but she did not seem to hear, ran to the kitchen, drank from his wine.
‘My uncle is out tonight,’ she announced. ‘I told Vesalius I was eating with you.’ Her eyes looked wild to him, some great disturbance running through her mind. She had yet to remove her coat; it hung open and weary from her girlish shoulders.