The water was ankle deep in our bathroom; in our bedroom it had just started climbing up the wall.
'People will be coming up any minute now! Get up!' I tore her out and pushed her naked and dripping to the wardrobe. 'Get in.'
She stood still, searching my eyes, pleading for reality with that knowing look of hers. It was this moment, I believe, I lost my chance.
'No time for monkey business. I'll try to sort this out. If you hear voices, not a squeak!' I had to push her to get her in and rammed the metal doors into her backside.
I ran down the stairwell and found the Campens' door ajar. Frau Hoefle was addressing Frau Campen with that stance of assumed infallibility. 'It must be you. Or one of your daughters. Your bathroom's directly above ours.'
Herr Hoefle was carrying Friedrich on his back. 'Like my wife says, our bathroom's under yours. His is situated somewhere over there. I don't see how the leak could get from his to ours. It must be you.'
Herr Campen turned his attention to Herr Hoefle in a manner that excluded the latter's wife. 'I tell you, my good man, it's not us. It's coming from Betzler's, above us. Maybe he's drowning himself. Finally. Come.'
Herr Hoefle shuffled through the puddle, his son jabbing his heels into him to make him go faster, his wife tagging along. Furniture legs stood like stilts in it; flowerpots sat in it, muddying the water with their soil.
'As I said —' Herr Campen began.
'Look! It is coming from above. God, what a mess!' exclaimed Herr Hoefle.
Frau Hoefle tugged at his sleeve. 'We're wasting time arguing; the ceiling could collapse!'
Frau Campen smirked. 'He might not be home.'
'We'll force the blasted door down,' replied her husband.
'Hello?' They acknowledged me in embarrassment. A stain darkened the Campens' ceiling, from which drops swelled before falling like anonymous teardrops. The wallpaper was rippling, the small pale roses swelling, their red dye trailing down the wall. I couldn't help note that the Campens, who had voted against red stripes, were now getting them in their own home. Herr Campen pointed to where some tiles were coming loose.
'Have you mopped it all up?' Frau Campen asked sharply.
'I . . . didn't have enough to dry it with —'
I hadn't finished my sentence before they began gathering rags and buckets. Frau Hoefle ran down for more, while the others charged upstairs and barged into my flat, with me following. I thought I must be dreaming. Elsa had positioned a chair in the centre of the west room. Her straight, stiff posture spoke for her: she had every right to be sitting there, life-size and fully naked, her hair dripping, her bounteous breasts resting on her bloated belly, her bloated belly on her podgy lap (podgy enough to be concealing the most scandalous), her hands crossed on her dimpled knees like an obedient schoolgirl, though her toes, pink, plump, wriggled like ten little piggies. There was another contradiction in her pose, for her head hung down sharply as if her neck had given out, or perhaps she was a trifle ashamed for having disobeyed.
I was behind my neighbours so I didn't see their faces, but I could see Elsa's well. Her eyes rose briefly to take them in, then she actually nodded before resuming her pose. I saw them look sharply away and either raise their hands to their heads or cover their mouths as they gasped. But by looking away, they all looked in the direction of the flooded room, so that one could almost have thought it was this that had shocked them. My mouth went dry; I could feel my throat responding to every pulse. Without wasting a second more they were on their knees, slopping rags around, wringing them into buckets, and avoiding looking in Elsa's direction. The Beyers, hearing the commotion, made their entry as if they were joining a party, until they saw what was to be seen. Herr Beyer casually removed his jacket and tossed it over to her. It landed awkwardly, like a headless lover taking to her breasts, before sliding compliantly to her feet.
I was aware of receiving dirty looks from the women. Did they judge me for having a woman in my home? Were they furious that I, cause of the calamity, wasn't pitching in? I told myself I'd better go over and help — told myself over and over: go and help — yet by then Elsa had raised just her eyes and I couldn't move out of her line of vision. A numb sensation had taken over one side of my body. The men, though visibly embarrassed, reacted more sympathetically, drying up as if it were no fault of mine but a natural disaster that they, unified, were combating. Herr Beyer assured everyone that life would go on, no one would die, the insurance company would send its experts. I could tell he was getting on everyone's nerves and wished he'd shut up.
I thought to myself, if only Elsa would pretend she was just visiting me, it wouldn't look so bad. With my eyes I ordered her to move, cover herself up, but outside of one stately blink, she ignored me. The way she just sat there, protesting against some invisible, unstated nothing, it all looked much worse than the truth. Of course the women took her for a victim. At the same time, it had been so long since Elsa had seen people, maybe she didn't know how to act? How could I expect any different?
'My wife didn't mean to . . .' I stammered. My voice, thick and forced, didn't sound like mine. I swallowed hard before going on, but it did no good. 'She's not always in control of her acts. You must understand. She's not normal.'
They all stopped what they were doing to look at me, dazed. Frau Campen had stopped wringing her rag, only its drops hitting the water could be heard.
How loud my lie sounded in the silence. They were looking at each other, completely puzzled. Maybe Elsa looked normal enough to them. Maybe they didn't believe she was my wife. What did it matter? Wed or not wed, it was my business if I chose to live with a madwoman.
'She can't help it. She isn't master of herself.'
I looked at her seated in her chair. So did they, but so incredulously, one would have thought from their gaping mouths that the chair was empty. I thought by now surely Elsa would accept the stick I was holding out to her and pull herself out of the quicksand. But instead of twisting her features, babbling nonsense, hitting herself on her head to confirm what I'd just said, she contemplated me placidly. She was gainsaying me. How dare she! She not only looked perfectly aware of what she was doing, I'd even go so far as to say she struck them all as highly intelligent, lucid, even sympathetic to the fool I was making of myself. I was taken unawares by the merging of too many emotions. One last look at her and I dipped my own head down. In front of all present, my last defences broke. I hadn't planned on my doing so, but once I'd started, it was my only chance to save face.
I sobbed, 'You don't know what it's like having a wife like her! What it's like having to hide her. The embarrassment, the shame she causes me! I'm never free — free to go out, free to live. I have to live closed up as if I've done something wrong, am a criminal who must spend his life being tortured in prison!'
Herr Beyer was at my side, patting my back. The others joined him, lending me rags on which to blow my nose. Elsa shook her head at me. Her eyes were easy enough to read: I was a disgrace. Without anyone noticing, she got up and stepped into the wardrobe. The chair was empty from then on, had anyone looked.
xxix
From behind their curtains they watched me come up the street. Without picking up his toys, Friedrich ran inside as I checked my mail, called in by his mother. Herr Beyer was peeling potatoes on his doorstep. Unshaven, he reeked of schnapps.
'Comrade. My mother-in-law took the train back to Horn. God bless her, ninety-two years old, but God bless me more, she'll be back!' He winked at me and made some crude gestures to show what a nuisance she'd been. 'Why don't you come down with your wife for a drink?'
I declined, insisting that she was potentially dangerous — saw non-existent people, threw irrational fits, broke whatever she got her hands on, aimed for the eyes if she got out of control, and wouldn't stop there if she came across a knife.
'We've all been through that, haven't we? Just spend a week with my mother-in-law! Besides, it would do her good to get out. Even a genie has to ge
t out of her bottle once in a while.'
'If she gets out, I don't know that I'll ever get her back in.'
'Then we'll keep her a few days. No harm done. You won't miss her as much as you think. If you do, you can always cork her up with your finger.' With that, he wiggled his little finger in his ear as if to suggest corking her up in my head and winked at me again.
'I'm not ready.'
'Give it some time. When you are, door's open.'
At home, I found cards dealt out on the table. I didn't think anything of it. Elsa shunned me when I asked if she'd discovered a new kind of solitaire. Though I whistled loudly as I approached the next time I came home, so she'd have time to clean up, I came home to the same. Still, she refused to give me an explanation of what she'd been playing. I had a suspicion she was resorting to reading cards to divine her future. The hands were facing down and each had a damp ring above as if drinks set on the table had just been whisked away. That's when it dawned on me that she'd been playing with other people! I threw a tantrum until I felt pins in my heart. She straddled me until she cut off my breath, explaining that nobody knew anything about her, to them she was only Frau Betzler, what reason did I have to worry? She stooped down to mess up my hair before asking, teasingly, did I worry that our dear neighbours thought perhaps Herr Betzler wasn't master of himself?
The days to come she often went barefoot, and when I reminded her to put her slippers on, she claimed they hurt her feet. I didn't want to respond to her minor affront (I'd given her the slippers). Be that as it may, it made me angry, since I'd paid for the finest quality. Before winter fully gave way to spring, I insisted she show me where they chafed her. She got up to show me, then stooped down to pick up a button of her blouse that had fallen off and had to be sewn back on before she lost it. The moment was lost. Some hours later I brought the subject up again. This time on her way to get the slippers she stubbed her toe on the table leg and had to lie down. Her feet looked fine to me, outside the fact that they were ice cold. I became angry and demanded to see her slippers then and there. Cornered, she acknowledged that she couldn't find them.
I searched the entire flat and I couldn't find them either. I wasn't long in deducing that their disappearance, added to her reluctance to look for them, was a clue. She'd left them at his place. She'd used them to toss him a note out the window. She'd thrown them away, for they reminded her of me. There was no other answer.
In the middle of the night I remembered one last place I hadn't looked — behind the kitchen sink. There was something stuffed there: it looked like a towel. I pulled it out. Anger and excitement filled my veins when I saw it was her dressing-gown, damp and stained with grime from its long stay against the old pipes. I examined it inside and out, sniffed it over, convinced her infidelity was the reason for its concealment.
I found one of its pockets bulging. I prised out what had been forced in: her slippers, one inside the other, folded in half. The real surprise was to come. Something hard was hidden inside. I could feel its weight. Not in a thousand tries would I have guessed what I was about to find. A ceramic bird, small enough to nest in my palm: an ordinary-looking bird with brown speckles on its wing, a bulging white breast, two dark eyes. It was perching on a stick, integrated into a white lump that served as a base. Apart from a tiny chip out of the tip of the beak, it appeared to be brand new. I have to say, it wasn't exactly what I'd been looking for, but it was proof she'd fooled me and was stealing away outside, amusing herself, behind my back.
I'd always known she was a smart, conniving one, but had lacked the proof I needed. All those years, my hunches had been right. She was a good — no, a great — liar. She played the angel, but she was a real devil. And that sweet innocent expression of hers! Hold on, I have to sew this button on first! Oh, my poor little toe! I'd better lie down in case it's broken . . . I was peeling away her falsehoods, layer by layer. How many layers to get down to the truth? What an imbecile I had been believing her!
My newfound certainty raised more questions than it answered. With what money had she purchased the bird? Money stolen from my desk? I itched to go and check, though the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was pointless. The deed was done. Obviously, if she hadn't stolen the money from me, she'd taken advantage of my absence to steal the bird from someone else — or a shop. Unless . . . he had given it to her? For all I knew, she could have a lover, be visiting him whenever I'm out. Or perhaps he comes to her? She could have a system all worked out, some secret way to let him know the watchdog was gone — a stocking hanging out the window, three knocks on the floor. Maybe it was Beyer! He could see from his peephole if I were thoroughly and reliably gone or just clearing the mail.
How they must have laughed behind my back. He must have imitated me time and time again, and she too. Maybe he came up every time I was gone, had relations with her right in our bed! Put his dirty buttocks right here as he slipped off his socks! Laughed when he saw me coming up the street, loaded down with groceries, a basket of clean laundry, some special surprise for her. Or maybe he hadn't even bothered to keep an eye out for me, with me stupid enough to always whistle out of courtesy for her! A last go at it and he was off! What a fool I'd been. A sucker. I, the underdog, who had to blind myself to all that went on in order to stay with her. And she, the strong heroic figure who probably told him that she only stayed out of pity, obligation.
All this had started since she'd flooded the building, since he saw her sitting naked in the chair. No wonder he kept inviting us both to dinner, making all those sympathetic comments. Now I understood why he'd been so nice to me, had kept on. He was getting his kicks out of it, chuckling at my aloofness. He probably knew all there was to know about me. In fact, I saw now that their affair had been going on long before that day! Yes, while the water was being sopped up, they'd acted as if they'd never seen each other before, fooling his wife, the others, me. She'd flooded the building on purpose so she could see him, for it had been some time since he'd come up to see her. He had wanted to end it. That was what her silent protest was all about! It was aimed at him, not me. She'd only had relations with me that day to get back at him. It was all so blindingly obvious. It had nothing at all to do with me, nothing whatsoever!
Elsa and I had breakfast together. My jealousy blackened. I saw how he'd used her, how she'd given her body to that low-down conniver because he had lent her an ear. What parts of her had he touched? These parts disgusted me. I let them dissolve before my eyes. I amused myself looking through her until I could see the wall on the other side.
The minute she isolated herself in her usual spot, the bathroom, I set her slippers down, ready to step into when she stepped out. I crammed her dressing gown back behind the kitchen sink, leaving just the sleeves hanging out as if they were begging for help. I awaited her reaction, hardly able to sit still. As I heard her snap her vanity case shut, a wave of anticipation swept through me.
The door-handle turned and she gave a last-second jump to the side; after which she fell to her knees and slid her hands into the slippers. Finding them empty, she ran over to the sink and pulled out the dressing gown. Finding the pockets empty, and herself cornered, her eyes turned hostile. 'Where is it?'
'What?' I feigned the big-eyed, innocent expression she herself was so good at.
She huffed, rifled through the kitchen drawers, felt under the mattress, pulled the sheets to one side, patted the shelves of the wardrobe until our jerseys tumbled down. Between her and me, our place was falling into foul disorder. In the end, she found the bird on my desk. I could tell she was annoyed that it had been in open view all along. She grabbed it back, the poor loser, rubbed its cold head down to its rigid tail. She, who had let a real bird go, had the nerve to make a fuss over a fake one right to my face! Of course, it was a gift from him, the real bird was a gift from me. Just as I was at the peak of my aversion, she tried to hand it to me. I stepped back, swatting the air lest she approach me again.
She tr
ied a hurt look and some disingenuous blinks. 'I didn't want you to find it; not yet.'
'I have no time for your foolishness. Just tell me where you bought it.'
'Found it.'
'Where?'
'I won't lie. It's true, I went out. To those trees just behind the square.'
'To those trees just behind the square? A good twenty-minute walk?'
'Mm, that's all.'
'Poor birdie, fell out of its nest?'
'What were the chances of me finding it that day? Of all the trees I could have lain by, of all the days there are in a life, what were the chances of me coming upon it under that tree, on that particular day?'
'I'd say zero.'
'I was led to it.'
'Elsa, I'd like you to abbreviate your charming anecdote and tell me the truth.'
'I am. It came from above.'
'God let a ceramic knick-knack fall down from the sky? I didn't know He had a liking for such things. Maybe an archangel didn't, and gave it a knock when he was dusting around with his feathered wing?'
'You're being a block-headed pragmatist. Who knows. It might've belonged to a child who dropped it. You know, a plaything. Angels carry out spiritual works, not physical. They must resort to mortal help for that.'
'You didn't want me to find it. You had no intention whatsoever of me finding it. Make a clean breast.'
'It was a surprise. You noticed the days have been getting longer? Well, I was waiting for the longest day. I feel something is in the air — a change for the better. It's a sign.'
'God went to a lot of trouble for you, used a lot of mortal assistance for you, and you hide it so your gift . . . from whom? From God, that's right, from the Almighty Himself, via His ambassador angels, will eventually be a surprise for me on the midsummer solstice? Your story stinks.'
Caging Skies Page 33