Caging Skies

by Christine Leunens

  I was out of options. There was no more hoping for a miracle to fall from the sky. We were in desperate need of money, all the more because Madeleine was no longer around to contribute. I had a plan in mind of Elsa and me abandoning the house without letting Madeleine know where we'd gone. It felt sneaky and low, but on the other hand, that would help me keep my secret safe. My choice to sell the house wasn't only motivated by economic considerations. If I examine the real motivation, deep down inside, finance was just the truth I needed in order to lie to myself. I could have got another job. By and large I believe I wanted to sell the house so I could stop working and thereby be home more to keep a good eye and a good grip on Elsa.

  I signed an exclusive contract with a real estate agent, who came with clients on Tuesday afternoons. The first, a journalist, examined the plumbing with his teenage sons and said he'd seen enough. The next to come was an architect. He didn't dwell on the decay, as most prospective buyers did, but spoke of extensive remodelling. The real estate agent was impressed, for the man understood the house better than I, who had lived in it all those years. The architect pointed out what belonged to the original structure, what had been modified over successive centuries — be it one stone to the next. He could hardly stand still and the agent was having trouble containing a smile.

  I became alarmed that upstairs the man would spot Elsa's partition. My fear was well founded. He ran his hand over the phoney structure, was about to test it with his fist. I had to do something.

  'If you don't mind; I need some corner for my dirty laundry without people sticking their noses in, don't I?'

  The architect was startled. The real estate agent hastened with his client to the next room.

  Elsa was aware of the stress I was going through. I lost my temper those days for no reason. If milk spilt, a tap or light were left on, I hammered into her that such inattention cost money and this was what had made me put the house up for sale. Really, I didn't believe a word I was saying. It was the uncertainty of our future rather than any loss of small change that was getting to me. Nevertheless, I could carry on for hours, blaming the whole situation on her. I called her a selfish, self-centred, wasteful, irresponsible vixen. Sometimes I acted tyrannically — shut off the water supply when I saw her bath was rising beyond half full. If she carried on too much about God, I went to the fuse box and switched off the electricity. If God provided her with so much light, I didn't see why she needed me to pay high electric bills for it.

  For once, Elsa didn't recoil in self-pity. She told me I was acting like a jealous schmuck, treating God as a rival with whom I was on a par. 'Anyway,' she said, 'I think you've sacrificed enough of your life for me now. The time has come for you to sacrifice me, for your freedom.' Her words leaned towards irony, but her voice was serious.

  'What did you just say?'

  'You're free to get rid of me.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Use your imagination to forget I ever existed. Let me out the door. That's the easiest. Fate will decide what becomes of me.'

  'Why are you speaking such madness?'

  'It's the greatest proof of love I can give you. I'm willing to sacrifice my life to give you freedom. That's the very definition of love. Giving one another space and freedom. Love isn't possessive, a way of caging someone in for your own sake. Love doesn't bind one to another. Love is as free and liberating as the air, the wind — yes, as God's light.'

  I knew every compliment she gave God was a direct attack on me. She was lecturing me on my behaviour those past years, criticising me, knowing I knew exactly what she meant. I found myself holding her against me in the most possessive of hugs.

  'That isn't love at all!' I cried. 'Love means two people staying together no matter what. Love is a glue, the strongest there is, that sticks two people together! One doesn't just get rid of the other because it's easier running on two legs than stumbling along on four! It's not selfish for one to want the other there with him! That's love! You must love the person you say you love. You must stay with him. Love is a tight bond, two becoming one, not some loose open pig-pen!'

  It was only then that I realised she was pleading with me to stop suffocating her.

  She doubled over to catch her breath. 'You pig! Pig! Of course you can't understand! How could I have ever expected you to? Pearls to swine! It's only when you have the choice to stay with someone, the free, open choice among a hundred, a thousand other possibilities, that it has any meaning!'

  We fought all through the night. If she tried to go to sleep without making up, I switched the electricity back on and shone a lamp in her face. I was childish, but then again, so was she. She called me a schlemiel, or was it schlimazel? (I get this Yiddish of hers mixed up. The former, I think, is the one who spills the soup; the latter, the one who goes through life always getting the soup spilt on him.) She told me I was a defaced klutz, and I could sleep somewhere else. With her plump legs she tried to push me out of bed. I just rocked from one buttock to the other, making fun of her the whole time, until she emptied her glass of water on my side of the mattress. I bolted to her side and pushed her over to the wet half. She got out and picked up one of her textbooks on the philosophy of metaphysics or something. She wasn't really in the mood to read — it was just a statement. The snooty look on her face said it all. What she was doing was more on her intellectual level than wasting her time on me. I switched the electricity off again.

  This went on and off. Only on hearing her turn the lock downstairs did I go down on my knees and beg her for forgiveness. I spent the rest of the night with my arm gripping her, on the wet side of the mattress, but I could feel she was still mad at me, even if she denied it every time I asked, which was about every five minutes.

  The sun was up before me. I believed she was feigning sleep because she didn't know how to act, and to be honest, I was glad because neither did I. The house was a mess. Every object was a reminder of our fight and evoked details I would've preferred to forget. Her book still insulted me from its landing place, balled-up tissues full of her and my tears were scattered about like fake white blossoms waiting to be integrated into some maudlin bouquet.

  With that numb sort of headache that comes from lack of sleep, I went out to buy bread. In passing a flower shop I contemplated the daisies, but this thought led me to a better idea altogether and I took the tram downtown.

  It was a fiasco. Her face fell as soon as she saw the bright little bird on the table. Even as it hopped prettily from perch to perch, swinging and singing, her expression didn't alter. Taking it as a casus belli, as she termed it, rather than the token of peace I meant it to be, she attacked me repeatedly, saying it was a sin to cage a creature that God meant to fly.

  'It was in a cage when I bought it — what does it matter whether it's here or in the pet shop or in some other purchaser's house?'

  'It's a horrible sin!' She covered her face so abruptly she frightened the bird, which banged its light feathery self against its white dome. Hearing this, Elsa moaned all the more.

  'Outside, a hawk or a cat will get it! It wouldn't survive. It's better off here where it's protected.'

  'It'll never know life here. It'll be a pet, but never a bird. Can't you see?' There was a distinct tone to her voice. We both knew what we were really arguing about.

  'If that's what you call living — getting torn to pieces and abused — be my guest. Personally, I call it dying. You love God's creature so much? Here do it yourself.' I ground open the handle of the kitchen window, despite the years of rust. 'I'll bring you back what's left for you to look at. But I warn you, it won't be fit for a lady's eyes.'

  Elsa looked sick. The bird sang, cocked its head innocently. She opened the cage a bit, then a bit more. Soon it was half open. The bird jumped faster and faster from perch to perch, thinking it was going to be fed. After a long hesitation Elsa opened the cage door completely. The bird stayed put. The breeze opened the window fully and a heavenly force seemed to beckon the
bird to take its freedom. Still it didn't try to fly. Elsa reached her hand in for it, but it hopped about and flapped its wings. When she wrapped her fingers around its body and drew it out of the cage it pecked her hand and darted back inside, hunkering beside its bowl of water. I couldn't help but smile.

  She reached in to take hold of it again and this time set it gently down with both hands on the windowsill, holding it a while, then loosening her fingers and letting go. The bird remained where it was, feathers ruffled. The air outside was warming with spring and had that smell of cut grass that makes one inhale deeper than usual with every breath, the soul expanding with the lungs. With a stunning dart, the bird left as if it were escaping, not as if someone had just set it free.

  I spent the next hours writing this, which I slipped into the cage:

  We to I

  Close your eyes on me

  And I will be blind

  To the fair landscapes I knew

  Through your thoughts and mind

  Just as I'd be crippled

  Left for lame behind

  If ever you unwound

  Your limbs from mine

  Pressed together

  Our blood fast dried

  Scars bind us fatally

  'Til death we be tied

  My love, tear not what

  Has merged apart

  To mutilate anew

  Our breasts, our hearts

  So soon we are severed

  Under soil must each die

  Ego's sap to be lapped

  Fallen from we to I

  Elsa was downstairs reading my poem and I was awaiting her reaction, heart pounding. There was a noise. It took me a few instants to understand what it was. It was Tuesday afternoon — I'd completely forgotten. I rushed Elsa up the stairs, and yelled down to the real estate agent that I was coming.

  By the time I got down, he was pacing the floor and his clients were standing partly with their backs to me, arms crossed in annoyance.

  'Forgive me, I'm running late. Please, come in,' I said.

  I stepped back with a startled jolt. It was Petra Kunkel and Astrid Farrenkoft.

  'No harm done, Herr Betzler.' The agent smiled unctuously.

  'So, Herr Eichel,' Astrid asked matter-of-factly as she walked past me, 'you told us there were how many bedrooms?'

  'Eight.'

  'How interesting.'

  'Depends on the buyer, really. You could use the bedrooms for whatever purpose you wish — no one will force a bed inside. A man's house is his castle, isn't it, Herr Betzler? An owner can do whatever he wants?'

  'Yes, yes,' I answered perfunctorily, racking my brain as to how I could throw them out without making myself look bad. They were looking around taking in every detail, which gave the impression they were indeed interested in buying. I saw Astrid's eyes scanning the uneaten breakfast for two, the empty cage holding the window open. She examined the circuit-breaker, sinks, concrete floors and bare cracking walls, confining her inquiries to considerations of the practical sort.

  The women stepped past Madeleine's remaining items of lingerie with smug smiles and marched up the staircase, arms linked. Our bed was unmade, a wet mark in plain view. They gaped; the agent quickly looked away. The lamp was still on its side on the floor, and an embarrassing number of balled-up tissues sullied the sheets of the bed and the far corners of the room, where we'd flung them at one another and missed. So they'd think nothing of it, I blew my nose in one and let it drop to my feet. In a mixture of bewilderment and pity they stood there, taking in the dramatic setting of a play that was over.

  Petra walked across to read the title of the book. I could tell that its being out of her league revived a certain regard she had for me. Coming back, she accidentally kicked the glass, which shattered against the wall.

  'Gosh, I'm sorry.' She kneeled down to pick up the pieces.

  I stopped her. 'Don't. You'll cut yourself. It's my fault — I shouldn't have left it lying around.' The bit I was holding had been part of the rim, where I noticed a trace of Elsa's lips. Wiping it, I cut my thumb.

  'Oh! You're bleeding . . .'

  'It's nothing.' I picked up a hardened tissue blossom and held it against the cut.

  Going up the next flight, I ran my sweaty palm along the rail. The room was closed, so Elsa was complying out of loyalty to me.

  'What's in there?' asked Astrid innocently. 'That must be the eighth? I've been counting.'

  'Yes, but it's not presentable. As usual.' I gave Herr Eichel a resigned shrug in all its phoniness.

  'Oh, I'm sure we've seen worse,' she blurted. 'We were cleaning women after the war, weren't we, Petra? We've seen it all, haven't we?'

  'I'm glad you have, but I'm afraid I'm not in the habit of showing "it all".'

  'We can look at the next room, a study, to the left, if you like,' Herr Eichel steered them away. 'It has more or less the same proportions as this one.'

  The women pretended to take an interest, but I could tell what really intrigued them was the closed one. 'Is this sturdy, all this?' Astrid rapped the sloping ceiling with rhythmic precision. She was trying to get someone to answer. Through some of the cracks, pieces of the sky could be seen because of the missing shingles. She put her face to these and strained to see more. She went to the wall that backed on to the forbidden room and cupped her face to it.

  'Are you looking for something in particular, ma'am?' I asked rudely. 'Dirty socks or dirty underpants? Have you a preference?'

  Herr Eichel coughed. 'Well, you have a general idea now, don't you, ladies?'

  'Oh, we do, we do . . .' muttered Astrid. Petra shook her head at me in disdain. Herr Eichel, sensitive to their initial eagerness gone tepid, escorted them away in an eruption of congenial small-talk. He threw a cold look behind him in case I was following.

  After they were gone, I looked down at the footprints intruding into each room, snooping in every crook and corner, examining every incriminating detail: drop-shaped soles, followed closely by the fat dots of their high heels like the exclamation points of schoolgirls. It was as though the two women continued to pass comment on their visit in their absence. I imagined everything they would be saying and thinking: everything they could and would do.

  Within an hour, Herr Eichel was back with a dentist who was considering transforming the house into a dental surgery. Downstairs he proposed a waiting room, and the foyer could be used by his receptionist. Herr Eichel was showing him the bathroom, where a dentist could conveniently wash his hands, when I joined them with the intention of regaining Herr Eichel's favour. Barely had I set a foot inside the bathroom when I drew in a sharp breath. Over the basin, where the mirror had been years earlier, was Elsa's painting of the tree breaking out of the house. Her sharp brown eyes stared knowingly at us out of the branches. Mine, dull blue, dumb and wide, stared at me out of a cluster of leaves — exactly the way I must have been staring back at them. There was one minor alteration from before, but I had to look closely to see it. My bad eye, ever so little, almost imperceptibly, seemed about to drip, which gave it the uncanny effect of straining to look at something. I followed where the drip would go if it were heavy enough to do so, and at the bottom right-hand corner of the canvas I discovered what it was trying to look at: a signature camouflaged among the hues of green. The painting was signed for the first time in her name, not mine, but in a masterful imitation of my own style. I felt a pang like a knife, and, forgetting myself, clasped my stub to my chest. Herr Eichel helped hold me up. The dentist asked me if I had asthma.

  'No. No. It's the painting. That painting.' I pointed to it, the fright I'd just undergone giving me the courage — or rather the foolhardiness — to admit it. The men inspected it, puzzled.

  'It's just . . . I wasn't at all expecting it to be there. Yes . . . my grandmother painted it. She died some years back.' I improvised as best as I could. 'I don't usually use this bathroom.'

  'Which one do you use?' Herr Eichel asked hopefully. 'Is there
another you've never shown me? You're a mysterious one to figure out — let alone your house.'

  'Two bathrooms would be good,' said the dentist. 'Just what I need. One for the clients, one for me.'

  I was caught in my lie. 'I . . . to be honest . . . usually use . . . the sink in the kitchen.' I felt my face turn deep red. 'I don't like to come here to wash up, because of . . . it. You understand, old souvenirs . . .' The towel on the floor refuted my claims, along with Elsa's wet footprints.

  'So Elsa Kor was your grandmother?' asked the dentist.

  He could make it out, too — it wasn't a figment of my imagination.

  'Yes, she was.' I rubbed my thumb affectionately over the name. Then I realised the men were looking at my thumb in horror. I thought it was because of my cut, but when I looked down I gave out a cry. My thumb had bled green. My nerves finally gave out: I ran around the house, shouting that a leaf was growing out of my thumb.

  Needless to say, the dentist decided the house was haunted by my grandmother. Poor Pimmichen. The real estate agent, on the other hand, decided I was out of my mind.

  'We'll sell the house, boy,' he promised, and gave my shoulder a heart-felt squeeze before he left. But he didn't show up the following Tuesday, nor the next.

  I was beside myself with rage at Elsa's having fouled up a sure sale. She told me she'd put the painting up as a peace offering after our fight; that it had been hanging on the wall half a day before I'd noticed it. So why was the signature still wet? Oil takes time to dry.

  I was sick of her games, her going too far, so I did something I must confess ignominious. I revisited Frau Veidler's ruins, picked a bird skeleton out of the ashes and caged it in the white dome, one wing bone poking dramatically through the bars. It was far too decomposed to have been her bird, but Elsa didn't come close enough to work that out. She covered her face and went into hysterics.

  xxvi

  My contract with the real estate agent finally expired in the spring and I was in the central district looking for another. I'd tried some in my quarter, but word must have got around because their secretaries never contacted me, despite saying they would. Just as I was about to chance an agency on Schenkenstraße, I heard cries coming from one of the grand hotels a block away on Löwelstraße. Being in no big hurry, I walked over to take a look at what was going on.