No Maja. Maja has gone.
You’re mad.
Maja was never here, she doesn’t exist.
There’s just us now. We’re your family.
I shoot an uncertain glance at the cabinet. The pot and the post prove she was here. With a clatter, I put the stack of dishes on the floor and venture a peek outside my door. Nothing, just the stairwell in complete silence. Not a trace of Maja. I listen out for footsteps – none. I close the door as gently as possible and tentatively turn my head to peer over my shoulder, while my heart beats in an ominous rhythm.
Why should she have slipped into my apartment? logic and reason ask. There is a reason, panic screams.
Jasmin
The apartment I moved into more than three years ago had the following listing:
Flatmate (M/F) sought for three-room apartment in Regensburg old town. 74m2 in building with twelve apartments, balcony with mostly good view. Preferably a smoker because I smoke too. Love of animals would be an advantage because apart from me, an employee in the hospitality industry, the apartment is also home to a cat. You will have exclusive use of the 12m2 bedroom. Kitchen and bathroom shared. We have a dishwasher, fridge, microwave and washing machine. Monthly rent: 310 euros including bills.
The accompanying photographs showed a home, that was my immediate impression. Not a home in the purely architectural sense of four walls and a roof over the head, but clearly a place where someone lived. The rooms looked colourful and slightly haphazard, a collection of furniture from flea markets and little treasures. A dreamcatcher by the bedroom window, a mattress for a bed, above it, in a chunky, ornate golden frame, a kitschy picture of the Virgin Mary with her baby Jesus, and a chandelier with colourful glass beads. In the kitchen, a large, rustic wooden table, its scratches and blemishes visible even from a distance, and one of those large, pink, American-style fridges. Piles of books towered behind the worn-out reading chair in the sitting room, metres of them covering the entire wall. Vast quantities of books, just on the floor, without any shelves. That alone would have driven my mother crazy, and it made me crazy too, but in a completely different way. I was electrified, I simply had to live there. Especially once I’d met Kirsten, who’d posted the ad. Kirsten, who seemed from a different world, who could have lived on Ibiza or another hippy island with her long, brown hair that looked as if it had been tangled by salt water and the wind and not brushed properly for years, in a flowery dress, countless necklaces and brown moccasin boots that were laced up to her knees. Kirsten, who was so cheerful, so full of life and only ever laughed. I was late moving out of home, but that was down to circumstances and probably a misplaced sense of responsibility towards my mother too. After my father’s death we only had each other, even if our relationship was more a matter of principle than anything to do with love or affection. Here, in this apartment, I was happy, strong, boisterous. Until Kirsten and Ignaz, a fat black tomcat, moved out about two months before I was kidnapped. I wanted to stay here just as fervently as I’d wanted to move in. I wanted to look after the apartment and the memories associated with it like a legacy, like a witness of an era, a brave remnant defying change; like a plant which grows through grey tarmac that you can pull out as often and forcefully as you like, but you’ll never get to its roots. Like the weeds in my parents’ drive that my mother never stopped complaining about.
I creep into the kitchen and take a knife from the block. The sharp one that cuts everything, including meat. I search every room, every one of the seventy-four square metres of this former home. I pay attention to the blind spots behind the doors and the floor-length curtains. I even check behind the shower curtain. There’s nobody here, the apartment is empty apart from me and my ghosts. For a moment I had been absolutely convinced that Maja had slipped in the door and was waiting in a quiet corner just to pounce on me.
Exhausted, I slump back into my reading chair and pull my knees up to my chest. My right hand is still clenched around the knife. Maybe it’s true, maybe I am going mad, properly mad in the clinical sense. Maybe I have been for a while and I really ought to go back to hospital, to a room with a door handle that can be removed for safety reasons. I rest my broken head on my knees and start sobbing. I’m trapped; freedom hasn’t changed this one bit. I smell goulash in a stew, and in a person who means me well, I smell a danger that I’m prepared to overcome with a knife. And even now, as I’m feeling mad and stupid, my thoughts cling to the question of why Maja vanished so abruptly. She went without saying goodbye, without a ‘I don’t want those dirty dishes anymore. I’ve thought it over and I’d rather you washed them up yourself’. Not even a ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go’. No explanation.
I put the knife down on the side table and struggle out of the armchair. I want to check the door again, to see if I locked it properly. The doctors and my therapists advised me not to be on my own to begin with, seeing as I was leaving the clinic at my own discretion and refused to be admitted to any other specialist institution. I told them I was going to stay with my mother for a while and must have sounded convincing enough.
The door is locked, twice. You can’t turn the key any more than that. I take a picture frame from the cabinet and balance it on the door handle. Nobody’s going to get into my apartment without the sound of breaking glass acting as a warning. I take a step back and look at the picture: Kirsten and I, our shoulders touching, our heads leaning in slightly to each other. Between us is Ignaz’s big black head. Kirsten is holding him under his armpits towards the camera. His front legs are hanging limply, his yellow eyes have narrowed to surly slits. Seconds after the photo was taken he took a swipe at Kirsten. ‘Our moody child,’ we often said. I sigh. The pile of mail on the cabinet catches my attention. On the top is a newspaper folded in half, yesterday’s edition. The front page has a picture of Hannah. She looked pale enough under the gloomy forty-watt bulb in the cabin. Here in the colour photo, which is the size of my hand, she appears almost unreal with her white skin, watery eyes and light blonde hair. With my finger I trace the line of her lips, which curve upwards but almost imperceptibly. Hannah’s way of smiling.
Zombie Girl from the Cabin of Horrors!
Cham/Munich (MK) – Two weeks after the spectacular escape from the cabin (as reported here), our editorial team has been anonymously sent a photograph of the daughter of the abducted woman, Lena B. The girl (13) and her brother (11) are currently in therapy. B has been missing since January 2004. According to Chief Inspector Frank Giesner, her whereabouts are unknown, as is the identity of the abductor. The police hope to obtain new clues and information from a three-dimensional facial reconstruction of the man who was fatally injured during the course of Jasmin G’s escape. He is believed to be the abductor of both Lena B and Jasmin G. G was kidnapped in May this year and kept captive in the cabin for four months until her escape in September. Only a few, shocking details have come to light about the circumstances of her imprisonment and the state of health of the two children . . .
My concentration wanes, the letters start to swim. Only Hannah’s photo remains in focus. I wonder who took it. Who Hannah was smiling for. And then I realise that since I was discharged from hospital I haven’t asked after her once. Nor after Jonathan. The vice around my skull tightens.
What kind of a mother are you, Lena?
What kind of monster are you?
The newspaper rustles as it flies into the corner. I massage my temples. To distract myself I grab the rest of the mail and take it into the kitchen. I sit at the table and skim through the letters. One from my health insurance, probably about them paying for the therapy which I’m not actually doing. A letter from my mobile phone provider and one from the water company. I leave them all unopened apart from one letter from an anonymous sender. A plain white envelope with just my name on it, Jasmin Grass, written in black felt tip in capital letters. Just my name, no address. I tear open the envelope and take out a folded piece of wh
ite paper. It has just two words on it: FOR LENA.
Matthias
‘No, Matthias!’
Shit, I knew it.
‘Just no.’
‘Darling—’
‘No!’ Karin’s knife and fork clatter on the rim of her plate. I’ve lost my appetite too, but I’m trying not to let it show, so I cut an especially large piece of my steak. It would be the most normal thing in the world, I tell myself, completely normal, and absolutely no reason to interrupt our dinner.
‘Karin, I beg you—’
‘I said no.’
She pointedly picks up her napkin and dabs her mouth. Then she gets up from her chair, grabs the plate with her steak, potatoes and beans, which she’s barely touched, and takes it into the kitchen. I hear the lid flip up and her dinner being scraped into the bin.
‘Karin!’ I shout above the noise. ‘Let’s at least talk about it!’
All I get by way of an answer is the bin lid again and the door of the dishwasher. I try to resume eating. I find the meat tough.
‘Are you being absolutely serious?’ Karin says, when she reappears a moment later in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room.
I swallow a mouthful of beans and say, ‘Of course I’m being serious. It would be the most normal thing in the world to bring her home, to her family. I’ve already spoken to Dr Hamstedt and she’s got no objections. On the contrary, she thinks that it might be of great help for Hannah’s therapy.’
‘When?’
‘Well, as soon as possible. Tomorrow.’
‘No, I mean when did you thrash this out with Dr Hamstedt?’
Now I reach for my napkin too and dab the corners of my mouth.
‘A few days ago,’ I say softly. ‘Which, by the way, you would have known if you’d come to visit her.’
‘Matthias, don’t.’
‘But it’s true. I mean, you are her grandmother.’
Karin disappears into the kitchen without another word. This time I hear the fridge, then a drawer and finally the plop of a cork.
‘Get me a glass too, would you?’ I ask her.
I’m going to bring Hannah home whether Karin agrees to it or not. I promised her.
‘Grandad,’ the little one said. ‘I don’t like it here. It’s a bad place. I can’t sleep at night because I’m so sad. I want to go home.’ Grandad. That was the loveliest thing I’ve heard in ages.
‘Cheers,’ Karin snarls when she comes back into the dining room and hands me a glass of red wine. ‘Here’s to you and your solo efforts.’
‘Oh, Karin, please stop that now.’
I watch her wander stiffly around the table back to her chair.
‘No, Matthias, I’m not going to stop, no way. You talk with Dr Hamstedt behind my back and then present me with a fait accompli. That’s not fair, do you hear me?’
‘I just wanted to find out first if in theory it was possible to have Hannah discharged, for a few days at least. And then Dr Hamstedt needed to think about it. But it hasn’t escaped her notice that Hannah has been very resistant since she was admitted to the trauma centre. Therapeutically she’s not going forwards or backwards. Do you understand that, Karin? They have no idea how to get her started! They can’t even make a diagnosis! They can treat the boy, but Hannah, Karin. Hannah . . .’ I put down my wine glass and throw my hands in the air. ‘For God’s sake, that girl is our granddaughter! We have to help her!’
‘And how do you suppose we’re going to do that? I mean, we’re not psychologists! If they don’t know what to do with her, how are we meant to cope?’
‘Hannah is desperate for a family, for family life, for normality and—’
‘Normality!’ Karin cuts in. ‘She doesn’t have any idea what normality is!’
‘In that case it’s even more essential for us to show her. Look around!’ I wave my arms theatrically. ‘This! All this! Our house! This is where her mother grew up!’
Karin takes a sip of her wine.
‘So how’s it going to work?’ she asks when she puts her glass back down. ‘Are we going to make up the bed in Lena’s old room for her?’
I ignore the hint of sarcasm in her voice and nod eagerly.
‘And absolutely we have to get her some books, Karin! She’s missing those too. She can’t learn anything in the trauma centre. She urgently needs a few schoolbooks.’
‘And what, next year we’re going to send her to school? Like a perfectly normal child?’
‘All I’m saying is that she’ll be delighted if we get her a few books. She’s so thirsty for knowledge and she really does know a huge amount already. You should hear her, Karin. She’s very well educated.’
I can’t help smiling when I think of Hannah telling me what ‘grandfather’ is in Spanish.
‘It’s not going to work, just think about it.’
Abuelo, that’s the Spanish word. Abuelo—
‘Matthias!’
‘Hmm?’
‘I said it’s not going to work. We can’t simply play family.’
‘Play, Karin? For God’s sake, we are a family! She is our granddaughter, our daughter’s child.’
Karin rubs her brow.
‘Just for a few days to begin with, darling,’ I try. ‘That’s what I agreed with Dr Hamstedt. And I’ll still be taking Hannah to her therapy sessions at the trauma centre. It’s just about giving the poor little girl a bit of respite.’
Silence. I know I’ve almost won Karin round, I know it. She doesn’t want to be the heartless grandmother, and she isn’t. She’s just scared and she wants to do everything properly. Leave Hannah to the professionals. The ‘professionals’, who themselves don’t know what to do with her.
‘There’s not a huge amount I can tell you at this stage,’ Dr Hamstedt said during our last conversation.
We were sitting in her office on either side of her desk. Hanging in frames on the wall behind her were countless accolades identifying her as a ‘professional’, while on the windowsill to her left, a spider plant with limp, yellowed leaves proved that this supposed ‘professional’ wasn’t even capable of looking after an undemanding houseplant.
‘But it’s already striking how differently the children seem to be processing what has happened. The way Jonathan is dealing with it is not really surprising; in fact it’s,’ she said, pausing slightly to make air quotes, ‘normal, even if in these circumstances that word might appear a little strange. Jonathan has nightmares, he screams, he refuses to talk to us. We often find that those who’ve been through traumatic experiences start by sorting things out for themselves, or at least they try to. We’re assuming, however, that over time he will open up. But first he has to feel he can trust us and realise in the longer term that we’re all on his side and that he’s secure here.’
I started jiggling my leg. Hannah must be waiting for me.
‘Well, that sounds encouraging.’
‘Hannah,’ Dr Hamstedt said emphatically.
‘What about her?’
Dr Hamstedt smiled as if she’d caught me doing something.
‘We’re seeing a completely different pattern with Hannah.’
I stiffen my back and shift on to the edge of my chair.
‘And?’
‘Her behaviour.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, it would be easiest if I tried to explain it using Jonathan as a comparison. That boy has spent his whole life inside the cabin. In cramped, makeshift surroundings, locked away without any windows or contact with the outside world.’ She gave an affected pause and only started talking again when I glanced at my watch.
‘This world here in its entirety, the hustle and bustle, all these people, the noise, all the things he’d never experienced in the cabin, he finds them completely intimidating. The lift? A disaster! If we
want to take him to a different floor we have to use the stairs. And because of his anxieties, even that proves to be a challenge each time. Quite apart from the unfamiliar physical movements. Do you understand, Herr Beck? We’re teaching him how to climb stairs like a little child. Of course he finds it frustrating as well. Sometimes he crawls under the table and stays there for hours, or at night he’ll pull off his bedclothes so he can sleep on the floor. In this way he’s giving us a very clear signal that he’s hopelessly out of his depth at the moment.’
I had no idea what she was going to tell me next, but I felt under fire. ‘Hannah isn’t particularly happy here either,’ I said. ‘She’s sleeping badly, so she tells me every time I come to visit.’
Dr Hamstedt let out a lengthy sigh.
‘That may well be, Herr Beck. All the same, she seems to be coping astonishingly well in a world that is alien to her. Or does she appear horribly frightened to you?’
‘She’s strong,’ I say, not without an element of pride.
‘Herr Beck, there is a particular neurological disorder we call Asperger’s syndrome. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s a form of autism and it influences the way in which those affected process stimuli and interact with other people—’
‘Hannah’s not ill.’
‘I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as an illness,’ Dr Hamstedt said, cocking her head. ‘More a disorder. And we’re not even certain that Hannah has this disorder, but we’d like to continue examining her.’
I checked the time again.
‘All right, Herr Beck. As to your request to take Hannah home with you for a few days, I’m prepared to take the risk. But I must insist that certain conditions are met.’
‘No problem.’ I nodded and started to get up, finally. Hannah was waiting.
‘One second, Herr Beck. I’d also like a quick word with you about your daughter. Lena.’ The way she stressed her name made the anger boil inside my chest. As if I could have forgotten it, my only child’s name.
Dear Child: The twisty thriller that starts where others end Page 13