The End of Days

by Jenny Erpenbeck

  I’ve been waiting for my husband, Frau Hoffmann says. I always stood there on the corner, waiting. I’ve spent my whole life standing on the corner, waiting.

  Frau Hoffmann, Sister Renate says in passing, you’ve got to eat something, too.

  If I start eating, Frau Hoffmann says, it’ll make me feel awful.

  But, but, says Sister Renate.

  I can’t.

  Just one spoonful at least, Frau Hoffmann.

  It would be good if I could eat something, that would make life more stable somehow.

  Precisely, Frau Hoffmann.

  But I can’t.

  After lunch she tries pushing the wheels of her wheelchair herself to return to her room, but she doesn’t get anywhere because she doesn’t have the strength in her hands.

  Oh, Frau Hoffmann, let me give you a hand, Sister Renate says, helping her.

  On the way to her room, Frau Hoffmann looks down the corridor and at its end she sees the young attendant coming out of one of the many doors, she calls: Hey there, hey! And lifts one hand to wave, but he appears to be in a hurry or perhaps he didn’t hear her shout, already he’s vanished behind one of the many other doors.

  He doesn’t have time for you right now, Frau Hoffmann, maybe later.

  Frau Hoffmann nods. We’ve got to be a little bit patient, don’t we?

  Precisely, Frau Hoffmann.

  For our struggle.

  Of course.

  But that’s not such an easy thing to do.

  No, you’re certainly right.

  The nurse pushes the wheelchair into the room, giving a wide berth to the bed of Frau Buschwitz, who has lain down for an after-lunch nap.

  Next to the window, Frau Hoffmann?

  Yes, please.

  When the nurse has locked the wheels and is about to leave, Frau Hoffmann grabs her by the sleeve:

  What should I do now?

  That’s not something I can tell you, Frau Hoffmann, the nurse says and brushes the elderly hand from her sleeve — the hand is cold — lays Frau Hoffmann’s cold hand back in her lap and leaves. The doors in this place shut so softly, Frau Hoffmann doesn’t hear that the nurse is already gone.

  Why and what? she inquires of the early afternoon silence, but receives no answer.

  Her body is a city. Her heart is a large shady square, her fingers pedestrians, her hair the light of streetlamps, her knees two rows of buildings. She tries to give people footpaths. She tries to open up her cheeks and her towers. She didn’t know streets hurt so much, nor that there were so many streets in her to begin with. She wants to take her body on a stroll, out of her body, but she doesn’t know where the key is. I’m afraid of losing my head. Afraid someone might take the key of my head away from me.

  At 3 p.m. there’s coffee along with a little bowl of ice cream. Frau Buschwitz had someone wheel her out of the room, but Frau Hoffmann stays where she is, drinking the coffee and stirring the ice cream around until it melts, then she slurps it up spoonful by spoonful. There’s a knock at the door. It’s Herr Zabel from Residential Area III, who sometimes stops by for a visit when he can’t find his wife, she died twelve years ago.

  Frau Hoffmann, do you happen to know where my wife is?

  What does she look like?

  She has curly brown hair down to her shoulders and likes to laugh.

  No, she hasn’t been here, but if she shows up, I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.

  That’s very kind of you, Frau Hoffmann.

  Herr Zabel has forgotten many times now that his wife is dead, and so again and again the horrific news of her death comes crashing down on him with all its weight whenever someone who hasn’t been paying attention replies:

  Your wife? But she’s been dead for years!

  He’s had to mourn his wife’s loss all over again many times now, but Frau Hoffmann — and for this she has his eternal gratitude — always promises to let him know if his wife passes by. Herr Zabel also enjoys sitting down to chat with Frau Hoffmann for a little while. She is courteous, and he can speak with her about anything that troubles him. He might say, for example:

  I am slowly but sickly beginning to be an animal.

  And Frau Hoffmann says:

  I’m afraid of gradually becoming transparent in both directions.

  And Herr Zabel says:

  The sick are beginning to abandon their honor.

  And Frau Hoffmann says:

  It is so difficult to bear all of this.

  And Herr Zabel:

  Why don’t we try biting open our illnesses?

  This reminds Frau Hoffmann of a verse from her childhood:

  God our Father whom we love, you gave us teeth, now give us food.

  And Herr Zabel adds:

  God our Father whom we love, if we’re all one, make us all good.

  Strange, isn’t it, Frau Hoffmann says, the way one word can find its way through the thicket of all the words.

  Yes, it certainly is strange, Herr Zabel says, and he remains silent for a while.

  At some point he gets up, makes a little bow in Frau Hoffmann’s direction and goes back to his room in Residential Area III; after all, his wife might be on her way there herself by now.

  At 5:30, all those who are able to walk or can be pushed in wheelchairs are summoned to the dining room. At six, dinner is served. Frau Hoffmann still uses the Viennese word Nachtmahl or “night meal,” even though it’s been a lifetime since she lived there. The space for her wheelchair is between Frau Schröder and Frau Millner.

  What a fuss people make about eating, Frau Hoffmann says to Sister Katrin, who is cutting an open-face sandwich into little squares for her.

  People go out for fine dining, she says with a little bleat of laughter.

  It’s nice to go out, Sister Katrin says, candlelight dinners, don’t you agree, Frau Hoffmann?

  And really you’re only eating so you won’t die.

  Goodness, Frau Hoffmann. Bon appétit!

  Without eating, you die, that’s all there is to it, Frau Hoffmann says.

  But Sister Katrin isn’t listening any longer, she’s moved on to one of the other tables, where she’s busy tying a bib around a woman’s neck.

  It’s just because you have to eat that people make such a fuss about it, Frau Hoffmann says.

  But neither Frau Schröder nor Frau Millner can hear what her neighbor is saying.

  It’s just to keep people from getting bored, she says.

  *

  Then the evening comes.

  Frau Buschwitz has put on her headphones and begun to listen to the radio. Sister Katrin helped Frau Hoffmann change into her nightgown and held the drinking glass for her while she sat on the edge of her bed and swallowed her pills. Then Sister Katrin left.

  Frau Hoffman can see quite clearly that someone has meanwhile taken a seat in her armchair next to the window. And although it’s been a long time since she last saw her, she recognizes this visitor at once. Against the yellow evening sky she looks like a silhouette.

  I find myself in a transitional stage, Frau Hoffmann says.

  Her mother is silent.

  And I don’t know what to do, Frau Hoffmann says.

  Her mother is silent.

  The question is whether I’ll be able to hold out against him. He’s very powerful, and he’s very cruel to me. I’d have asked for a bit more kindness. But he doesn’t know anything about kindness. He’s rough with me, and cruel.

  Her mother is silent.

  It’s going to be a goddamn fight. I’m not the one attacking. It’s him attacking me — him or her. He or she is attacking me, from all sides. But I don’t want — I still have so many, so many possibilities. There are many things I don’t remember, but still something . . .

  Oh, meydele, her mother says all at once, and her voice doesn’t really sound old.

  I would like to take steps against this gentleman, or this lady, don’t you know, Frau Hoffmann says. Before now, there was no one — no on
e! — who would have dared to fight me.

  Not even me, her mother says and smiles.

  Not even you, Frau Hoffmann says.

  At the beginning of the week when she is going to die, the day after her ninetieth birthday, Frau Hoffman smiles together with her mother for the first time in her life.

  There’s one thing you should know, child, her mother says. You can actually put a scare into him with a handful of snow.

  Really? Frau Hoffmann says, relieved.

  Then she remembers it’s May.

  2

  Oh come, dear May, and let

  The trees all bud again.

  And let us to the brook

  To see violets blow again.

  How dearly I am longing

  To see their tiny blooms

  O May, how I am longing

  To stroll about again.

  They were five years old, or six, or seven when they learned this song. Now they sit here singing it with voices that have grown old, locked up in old age as if in a prison, they’re still the same ones who were once five, six, and seven, but they’re also irredeemably removed from this age, perhaps they won’t even live to see the end of the month they’re singing about, perhaps by the time the gardener is raking the autumn leaves of the trees that are just now starting to bud, they’ll be lying in the ground. On Tuesday from ten to eleven, they have singing group. That’s all there is on Tuesday, there’s no Herr Zabel stopping by in the afternoon, and her son doesn’t come either, he said he’ll pick her up on Saturday and take her on an outing. What is a Tuesday? For lunch, poached eggs, and a piece of cake with whipped cream is served with the coffee, outside it begins to drizzle and keeps on into the evening. At some point Frau Hoffmann asks Sister Katrin to open the window and stays there drawing in the damp, warm air in deep breaths, it smells of leaves, just like the night she slept out in the open beside the Danube with her girlfriend. Frau Buschwitz goes to sleep with her headphones on, as she does so often.

  We set out to, we’ll take care of everything.

  And then it all became so shabby.

  We tried to take care of everything, but we went about it wrong.

  If Frau Hoffmann died tonight, these would be her last words, but there wouldn’t be anyone there to hear them.

  On Wednesday Frau Millner says to Sister Renate at breakfast that she always eats two slices of toast. I know, Sister Renate says, loud enough for even Frau Millner, who is hard of hearing, to hear. Frau Millner says: One with jam and one with honey. I know, says Sister Renate. Her husband, though, only used to eat one. Well, if he wasn’t hungrier than that, Sister Renate says. Yes, but that was a mistake, Frau Millner says, otherwise he might still be alive today. Eating keeps body and soul together, Sister Renate says. Exactly, Frau Millner says.

  What is a Wednesday?

  Beside Frau Millner, Frau Hoffman sits with her eyes shut, counting the seconds, because she knows that the executions start at eight o’clock. Every minute a group of ten prisoners is shot. She silently counts to ten, nodding along with the numbers, and then waits for the next minute to begin. She doesn’t have to look at the clock to know when a minute is over. Finally she has grown old enough to be able to move freely in time.

  One. Two. Three.

  Frau Schmidt: The Russians blew up Strassmannstrasse 2 because we didn’t clear away the tank barricades quickly enough. We couldn’t move any faster, we were at the end of our strength.

  Four. Five. Six.

  Frau Podbielski: Sometimes I would mix the insides of plum pits into the dough for the honey cake, did you know you can crack open the pits of plums just like nuts?

  Seven. Eight. Nine.

  Frau Giesecke: When it was subbotnik, my children always helped gather the pieces of balled-up paper from the bushes.

  The day room is full of stories not being told.

  Ten.

  Even during the week when Frau Hoffmann is going to die, the day after her ninetieth birthday, time is a porridge made of time, it’s rubbery, refuses to pass, has to be killed, spent, served, and still keeps dragging on. What is a Thursday, a Friday? Sometimes in the afternoon this person comes by, this one or that one, and sits, and holds her hand — why? — takes her by the bony shoulder and says: Keep your chin up! Or did no one come at all? The days when someone comes and the days when she just sits there all collapse into a single day, time is a porridge made of time. Who are you? All that remains of life now is what’s left at the very bottom when all the other reserves have been used up: Then the iron reserves make their appearance.

  Knit one, purl one, the instructor is helping her.

  I’m such an awful sheep.

  But you’re doing very well, Frau Hoffmann.

  I never understood how it works.

  Stick the needle in here and then pull the yarn through.

  Oh, I see.

  Bravo, Frau Hoffmann.

  You know, it’s not that I’m a — what’s the word — a daydreamer. It’s not that. It’s something else: fear.

  The iron reserves, fear.

  Fear of doing something wrong again.

  Fear of the day, fear of the night, fear of the storm and strangers coming to visit, fear of the poison in her food and the nurse who acts friendly but in truth is out to steal her gold bracelet, fear of where the wheelchair she’s sitting in is being pushed, and by whom? Fear of the doctor and of the pain, fear of her son who brought her here, fear of life and fear of death, fear of all the time she still has to live through.

  But Frau Hoffmann, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

  I have such a great fear of doing something wrong that I always do something wrong.

  But look, you’ve already knitted an entire row perfectly, Frau Hoffmann.

  No, no, something is always wrong. I know that, there’s no changing it.

  Here, now you turn the whole thing over and start again from the beginning.

  Is this the right way?

  As right as right can be.

  It’ll hold together?

  Of course, why shouldn’t it?

  Approximately eighty years ago, an arts and crafts teacher in Vienna declared the work of one of her pupils sloppy and shoddy. Is it possible that this pupil was given so long a life for the sole purpose of having the sentence uttered by that loathsome Viennese woman finally canceled out, buried by a new sentence uttered by a new teacher? Has she been in the world all these many years just so these two sentences — to give just one example — can confront each other within her, and the good one defeat the bad? Might everything that’s ever been said and that will be said everywhere in the world constitute a living whole, growing sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, always balancing out in the end? So was this the end?

  Knit one, purl one.

  I see.

  Now turn it over and start again from the beginning.

  That’s all there is to it?

  That’s all there is to it.

  3

  A man sits in Vienna at the Café Museum over a glass of mineral water, trying to think what he might bring back for his mother to give her pleasure, his mother who was a child in Vienna. Should he buy her a little bronze St. Stephen’s Cathedral, or a real Sacher torte from Hotel Sacher, or just bring her a twig from a tree on Arenbergplatz, not far from the apartment where she used to live? He can’t imagine that his mother was once a child. A year and a half ago, when he came to bring her to the Home and found her already waiting for him in her hat and coat on a chair in the vestibule, she introduced herself to him as a major in the Imperial and Royal army, ready to march off into battle. Beside her stood a small, dark-blue suitcase, and in her lap she held the little box with the gold buttons. He knew the box well, he’d used these buttons in Ufa to buy two or sometimes even three kilograms of air from his niania; he’d polished them when he was bored waiting for his mother, often staring at the double-headed eagle. Here in Vienna this eagle spread its wings not only atop the Hofburg, it wa
s everywhere in the city, glancing at the same time to the right and the left: on cast-iron railings, on fountains, above the entryways to buildings, and even on the shop sign of the Trafik where he’d just bought himself a pack of cigarettes — and this although the Kaiser had been dead for three-quarters of a century now. Everywhere here this eagle was still spreading its wings above its two heads, as if to hold them together.