Caging Skies

by Christine Leunens

  One Saturday morning I was on my way to this very supermarket. The clear sky and dry ground announced a fine day. I hadn't been walking thirty minutes before I heard a distinct sniffing behind me. I didn't have to turn around; their voices confirmed my intuition.

  'I'd say he's telling the truth. I smell her. I do.' Petra's voice sounded more hurt than aggressive.

  The same could not be said for Astrid's. 'Maybe he's homosexual and just wears women's perfume.'

  'There's no perfume on him, but there's the distinctive smell of a woman. If I were an animal, I could tell you more about her. Animals are smarter than people. They don't need to believe what they hear, don't have to trust what they see. They smell the truth.'

  'No wonder humans never developed their sense of smell. They're too deceptive to have ever wanted that.'

  The two must have gone their own way by then, as I didn't hear them any more. I caught a glimpse of their backs in the crowd, or rather the bright yellow raincoats, so that must have been them.

  That Monday they chatted during our lunch break the way they used to, so openly and literally behind my back, one would have thought the subject didn't concern me at all. I guess that was the point. They were trying to get me to react.

  'You're going to be cross with me, Petra, but I spoke to her. I had to, for your own good.'

  'How'd you find her?'

  'I followed my nose.'

  'You promised me you'd leave her alone!'

  'You're going to be happy I didn't.'

  'Where? What did you say? Who'd you say you were?'

  'I just went there. I knew there was no chance of him being home. It was like we'd been waiting for each other. I said I was a friend of yours, that I knew him and I knew of her, and wanted the truth.'

  'What did she say?'

  'She told me to come in.'

  I set my sandwich down, shaking so much that my coffee spilt over the edge of the cup.

  'What's she like?'

  'Not like I imagined at all. Didn't you expect her to be astonishingly thin, elongated, worldly? The broken-wrist kind?'

  'Well, yes.'

  'She's not. Quite the contrary. I'll tell you about her line of work later.'

  'So they do live together?'

  'Not much. She says he's with some other woman. But they're not married, you know.'

  'Who?'

  'He and this other woman.'

  'Are they going to be?'

  'According to her, they just play it day by day.'

  'That doesn't sound very serious.'

  'No, but it's been going on for some years.'

  'Is he too much of a milksop to commit himself?'

  'She hinted that the little lady is in trouble and hiding. I'm guessing she must be of his hoity-toity kind, trying to hook him, but ashamed of starting to show with no ring on her finger.'

  'I never would have thought that of him.'

  'Time's going by and he's still not doing anything about it.'

  'What a creep.'

  'He has problems.'

  'That much we knew on our own.'

  'Anyways, whatever she is, it was a relief to have spoken to her. And, you're never going to believe it!'

  'What?'

  'I can't here. Mm-hm. Later.'

  'Isn't she going to get it for talking to you?'

  'She swore she wouldn't tell him. I'm not going to let on myself, and don't you dare. That puts him at a definite disadvantage. Besides, if you really want the truth . . .'

  At that moment Frau Schmitt raised her hand at us, tapping her watch. It was time. I had forgotten it was today. We were perfectly still. All across Vienna there was a five-minute halt of work in protest at the four powers' failure to give Austria back its independence. It was October 30, the same day of the Moscow Declaration ten years earlier, the three powers' official intention to free Austria from German domination. One could have heard a pin drop. I spent those five minutes thinking how happy I was that something had finally shut them up, wishing it would last all day.

  ***

  I marched home in a state of fury equal to my sense of betrayal. Madeleine was gone, and so was Elsa, it seemed — she was nowhere to be found. I searched every hiding place before it occurred to me where she must be. Of course, she'd wanted her whereabouts to mock me and make me feel guilty, so where else? I tore away the thin wall and looked down at her. She kept her back to me and her nose to the skirting board, unwilling to turn her face in my direction.

  'Elsa?' I said her name twice more.

  She emitted a weak 'Mm?'

  'Did you by any chance speak to anybody?'

  'Who?' she asked.

  'If you have to ask, that means yes.'

  'I simply wish to know who you thought I spoke to.'

  'To Astrid Farrenkopf. One of the women from work who makes me reek of cigarette smoke.'

  'She says she spoke to me?'

  'What if she did?' I asked.

  Elsa turned her head briefly to give me a revolted look.

  'So you did,' I said.

  'No.'

  'What if she said you promised her you wouldn't tell me?' I asked.

  'What would be the point if she runs to tell you herself?'

  'So you did speak to her,' I said.

  'Actually, I didn't.'

  'Don't give me your lies!'

  She turned to face me with loathing now. 'My lies!' she laughed bitterly, 'Your big lies. Your little lies. Your half truths. Your bright truths. Your white lies. Your black lies. Not black, nor white, but grey. Razor-sharp truths; bloody lies.'

  Her anger caused me to take a step back.

  'She thought all along you saved me from a wretched house!'

  'A wretched house? Who?' I asked.

  'Madeleine. That's what you told her about me. That I was a Hure. From a brothel.'

  'You spoke to Madeleine?'

  'And what if I did?' she snapped. 'It was she who spoke to that Astrid woman, who came to call here all dolled up. I happened to overhear their conversation. Oh yes, I eavesdropped. When the woman left, it was time for Madeleine and me to have a long-overdue talk. How dare you tell her filthy tales about me!'

  'That's what she assumed. I never said a word! You went along with it, I hope?'

  'I would rather have died.'

  I sank to the floor, wishing I could just become part of the sweet-smelling wood. Did Elsa now know that Hitler had lost the war?

  She took a deep breath. 'I told Madeleine the whole truth.'

  I closed my eyes for some time before I chanced looking at her again. 'What . . . what did she say?'

  'What could she have said?'

  'I . . . I really don't know,' I stammered.

  'I can tell you one thing. She was scared to death. She says she was no accomplice to your deed. She wanted nothing to do with it, insisted she'd known nothing about it. So that wasn't what she was threatening you with at all! She was only after you because she thought you'd stolen off with me, or stolen me, and the man who "owned" me might not take too kindly!'

  'Can't you see? It was better you didn't know. Look what you did the minute you did!' I fought to keep up a brave face.

  'She says she hasn't taken any money from you since your father . . . since what happened. She claims she's actually been pitching in for years.'

  'Would you expect her to say otherwise?'

  'Maybe not. Still, she struck me as honest.'

  'Her? An honest woman?' Indignantly, I rose to my feet.

  'Are you such a judge of honesty? After she and I talked, I took her advice and snooped around. You always keep the cellar stairs locked, so I started there. I broke the lock off with an axe, but I couldn't get down there because the steps were blocked with stacks of neat, square lies!' In a good imitation of my mannerisms — somewhat cruel as to the dignified manner in which I attempted to hold my lesser arm out of sight behind my back — she quoted, verbatim, what I'd told her years back about her paintings.


  'Okay! So I happen to love you enough to tell you a tall tale once in a blue moon. Without me, do you know what you'd have to live with? Just like I do, every goddamn day? Knowing you're one big fat nothing! How does that feel? Because that's what you are!'

  Her thumbs were like wrestlers in a headlock pushing each other back. She knew plenty about our situation, but still she pretended to be dazed, lost, somewhere else.

  'Whatever lies Madeleine helped you to dig up, the bottom line is that I love you! You or she won't have trouble finding proof of that!'

  A long silence ensued and Elsa let her arm fall stiffly out of the nook like a falling tree. A paper was crumpled up in her schoolgirl-like hand. I thought she had written a goodbye note to me. It took me a few seconds after flattening it out to realise it was the company envelope on which Petra had typed 'I love you'.

  'So what!' I said. 'A colleague typed that. She's friends with the woman who came here.'

  'I was the one who found this in your trouser pocket. Yes, I lowered myself to sticking my nose in every nook and cranny. I guess I got good at nooks and crannies some years back.'

  'I can't help it if Petra Kunkel is chasing after me! She gets on my nerves — that's all. She's nothing to me. I only speak to her because we're in the same office.'

  'So that's what you do with your days when I'm languishing here.'

  'What? I work! That's all I do! For you, the house! All I do is work hard, then I come straight home.'

  'Why do you get home so late? I'm sure the office closes before dusk. Why does it take you so long to get back?'

  For the life of me, I couldn't bring myself to tell Elsa about my phobia of cars — linked to my fear of dying without having confessed to her. No, not until the baby was born could I risk it. Especially after this. Like an idiot I said, 'There are extra things to do when the office is closed.'

  'I see.' She bit her lip.

  'She lost her husband in the war. Maybe I remind her of him. Maybe she needs a father for her kid, I don't know.'

  'How endearing! How heartwarming! There's a lot of that kind of demand going around lately.'

  'How could you even think that? You know I love you. You know it by now, don't you?'

  'I thought you did; that's the only reason I'm still here. The only reason. I thought you did.'

  'I do. And aren't I taking care of things for us? Organising these next months, weeks? Rathaus, the hospital? I promise you, our lives will change once the baby comes. Please trust me. Have faith in me.' At some point I bent over her and sobbed, telling her how much I loved her, only her and no one else, why couldn't she believe me.

  I took her hands in mine. My heart stopped. There was something cold, icy about them, but not the kind of cold that comes from staying still too long, needing a cup of tea or a woollen jersey. No, it wasn't that kind of cold. It was icy to the touch — the skin was — but going deeper, underneath, the blood was flowing warm, the flesh was radiating. It was that icy hotness one can only get from having been outside.

  'There won't be any child.'

  'Sorry?'

  'There won't be any child.'

  I touched her cheeks, pressed them more and more. They felt the same as her hand. She understood what I was checking and got up indignantly, a besmeared towel wrapped around her bottom. She closed the partition on herself, managing in one try and no adjustments. I stood there stupidly.

  There won't be any child, she had said. And there was not. She never offered me more explanation than this.

  xxv

  Madeleine got into the habit of being absent for four, five months at a time. She'd found somewhere else, and I hoped she would just go for good. But she left her belongings in her room (my grandmother's actually, but I suppose I got used to calling it that). That was how I knew she'd been back — by what was missing. Her heap dwindled to a pile, her pile petered out to a last pair of boots in which she'd stuffed a reserve of lingerie — a world in itself, I discovered going through it, and her pretext for keeping a key.

  She made some hostile comments to me before she moved out. 'Me? No such thing as me. I only fulfil men's fantasies. Spanking grown men who miss their mummies. Letting them believe they're with that first gal they were nuts over but never did poke. I'm nothing more than the missing one. I don't sell myself. How can I, if it's not me? I'm like an actress; everyone turns me into someone else. I'm not even me to you, am I?'

  She didn't give me time to formulate my reply before she squinted at me shrewdly. 'Besides, she may think I sell my outside, but I don't sell my inside. Put my soul into a painting? Now that's indecent! Want to hang my soul up on people's walls? That's really selling yourself. That's what I call prostitution. I never sold my inside me to nobody. It's mine! It ain't for sale! Which is more than someone can say, despite her pretensions.'

  That July we had the worst flood Austria had known since the sixteenth century. The Danube spread itself across the capital. A boat was of more use than a car. Even people who lived far from the riverbanks were finding themselves in knee-deep water. It flowed inside people's homes, rearranged the furniture for them. Houses acquired waterfront views; hotels, too. I saw bottles of apple wine floating in the streets like a family of ducks. Fields turned into lakes. The ducks themselves lost no time, paddling about in their element as if these water spots had existed since the beginning of time. Pairs of swans joined in.

  Elsa ventured outside into this grand diluvial scene five days in a row, just as she had into the snow that winter, but was never long in coming back of her own free will. I didn't force her. She saw the flood as a long-awaited sign to cement her faith. Her every other word became 'God'. From burnt toast to having had no child — all was God's will. Soaking wet, shivering, she wrapped herself up in blankets in the middle of the floor, staring up, waiting for Him. She reminded me of a cocoon. I expected to find her one day with wings spread out behind her back; it wouldn't have surprised me one bit. God became a subject of tension and feud. He became an intruder, making us three instead of two, a competitor to be reckoned with, a rival lover — generous, loving, perfect, all-knowing and meddlesome.

  I told her frankly that there is no one above, no one below. I didn't believe in God, not really. No more than I believed in ghosts; that is, until a noise came to my attention at night. She said there was a light that existed in the absolute, allowing us to differentiate right from wrong, just as it did truth from lies. She believed that when we mortals perished, we'd be allowed to see this light as it shone back on our lives. We'd be able to take in the truth all at once, the general essence and every minute detail of it, just like God sees a field of grass yet knows each blade. She filled me with anguish, proclaiming that our house was saturated with this light of God — didn't I see it myself?

  I looked around at this 'light of God' to which she was pointing. True, there was more light — an unusually soft, diffuse light. The reason behind it, however, was boringly rational: the roof was in need of repair. The disastrous snowstorms that winter had knocked off some shingles, so there were gaps through which the light flowed in from above. On top of that, the ceiling was cracked throughout the house. Rain leaked in down the walls and light shimmered prettily off them, giving off a radiance rarely seen in interiors. Columns and crossbeams of light were added at random. Depressed as I was about the maintenance situation, I didn't have the money to do anything about it.

  What I didn't do to get my old Elsa back, if only for a split-second and a single smile. I spent grocery money on treats I found in the rich Americans' quarter, brought her sugar-coated almonds, fudge, caramel popcorn. I offered her packets from which marshmallow-topped chocolate could be made by just adding boiling water, or thick crêpes called pancakes by adding cold water and frying them in a pan of butter. One particular box of chocolates was a joy to her. The fillings weren't listed on the back and the surprises made her face glow — coconut, walnut, cream, toffee, raspberry jelly. She loved it all, could eat batches of these sweets u
ntil she'd roll from side to side with her hand on her belly like a pregnant woman.

  Her face lit up from the time she saw me come in with the paper bag, all the time it took to empty it. Then it was over. I was a coward, a fool. I gave in over and over, knowing the long-term consequences but ignoring them, all for a short alleviation of guilt. Of course she couldn't get both legs into any of her clothes any more, let alone both arms. I brushed it off, sold the last family pieces to buy her new garments as luxurious as those of more opulent years. I wanted her to fancy that I had a last hidden reserve. Maybe, too, it was selfish of me. I wanted her to look as cared for as she used to be, even if it was hopeless. Nothing concealed the oiliness of her face, the blotchy skin, the unhealthy shade of sugar-saturated teeth.

  Her loss of beauty gave me self-confidence. She'd joke about my having at least one good-looking half left, whereas both hers were ugly. Regularly over time, she swore my scar was getting better. I saw my body become stronger, muscular. People in the streets didn't look at me in the repelled manner they used to, weren't embarrassed any more if I caught them studying me. For some reason I captivated people. I didn't love Elsa less, but I felt reassured thinking that other men wouldn't snatch her away as greedily as they would have years earlier. I knew, too, that in her unattractive state, Elsa knew I really loved her. It was unspoken but there, hanging its heavy, embarrassed head in the air.

  At work, the sound of my typing didn't keep up with the others' any more. It stood out, became an unwanted percussion. I couldn't keep my hand in the right place. Screwed-up envelopes sprouted up like wild mushrooms around my desk, poisonous to Frau Schmitt as she shuffled through them on her way past. Everyone knew the undeniable truth about my personal life. She wasn't at home any more — she was sitting on top of my desk, swinging her legs. As I threw each wad away, she gave it a little kick in the air. When I was about to press a key, she mischievously poked another. She was visible to one and all. I could see her in Frau Schmitt's eyes as she handed me my pay, judging me: judging us. I left my job that day, knowing I'd never go back.