I look at the tables, the floor, the door. I didn’t tell the Tucumano but I recognised this place as soon as we walked in. I used to eat here with my mum while we waited for my dad to finish his class. The memory is so vivid that it makes me tremble. We would sit here and my mum would tell me about Buenos Aires, about the old house on the corner of Entre Ríos and 15 de Noviembre where my grandparents were waiting for us and sometimes her face would be very serious and she’d quickly turn her gaze to the window and order me to finish the food on my plate so I wouldn’t see her crying. I don’t know if she cried because she missed home, or just the opposite, if she was sad because we’d be going back soon and the house on Entre Ríos street was really ugly, with mildew everywhere and dust and grease that seemed impossible to get rid of and that was the house we were going to stay in until we found a place and that made her sad. Later, always, she’d remember our time in Germany as one of the happiest periods of her life. A happy exile, an exile you don’t want to return from, isn’t exile. But nevertheless she returned to Buenos Aires like someone going back home and she’d never set foot in Heidelberg again, and neither had I until now, after thirty years have passed and I’m older than she’d been when she looked out of these same windows.
And what should I do? Return to Buenos Aires, end my impulsive vacation, get my job back, look for a cheap apartment and have the baby? Whose baby? Mine, of course. Grey clouds pass in front of the sun. I put on my jacket and rummage for some coins to leave on the table. No, I’m not going to go back yet, not yet, I think and I sigh with relief.
IV
A group of students, an ambulance, two police officers, and several neighbours block the entrance to the residence. The first thing I think of is a robbery but I immediately reject the idea. As I get closer I see some faces, eyes wide, expressions of shock. The redhead comes out of the crowd and he tells me to sit down, saying that since I’m pregnant the news might be too much to handle. I tell him he can go ahead and tell me, that I’m fine standing. ‘The Japanese girl committed suicide,’ he says, looking me in the eyes. ‘What Japanese girl?’ I ask as if I didn’t already know he was talking about Shanice, as if I hadn’t imagined this outcome a thousand times talking to her, as if I had some hope that it might be someone else, some other student I didn’t know. The redhead hugs me, says he saw me with her a lot of times and that he’s sorry. Then we join the group and I catch some random phrases: they found her hanging; she left two notes; they had to notify her parents. A police officer tells me I can’t go inside until they finish investigating I don’t know what. Two other men question Frau Wittmann, who clutches her head and covers her mouth with her hands. The students’ reactions can be classified as either cynical or hysterical. The cynics discuss what a cliché it is for the Japanese girl to commit suicide, the hysterical ones are intermittently overcome with loud attacks of sobbing. The redhead now hugs an American girl who’s crying and moaning. I turn and walk away from the scene. I want to go to the river, get some air and be alone, but a man wearing a grey suit catches up with me before I get to the corner. He wants to ask me some questions.
We walk back down the middle of the street, they’ve blocked the door and set up a kind of police office in the residence dining hall. We sit at the same table where I had breakfast with Shanice a few times. The man in the grey suit takes out his badge and shows it to me. I don’t understand what it says but it doesn’t matter. I feel a powerful and unfamiliar sense of sadness and I want the questions to be over quickly. He starts the interview, he asks me my name, my age, if I’m married, my occupation in Argentina and what I’m doing here. As I hesitate on the last question the man in the suit reminds me that this is a student residence. I tell him I’m going to enrol in a postgrad program this week. He seems to accept my answer and asks me what kind of relationship I had with Shanice. He doesn’t call her by her name but says ‘Miss Takahashi.’ I tell him that I met her a few days after I arrived and that we hung out several times.
‘How would you classify your conversations with her?’
‘Classify them? I don’t know, right here for example we had breakfast some mornings. She always seemed happy, she smiled a lot.’
‘Did she ever mention any problems or talk about suicide?’
‘No. Yes. Well, she told me that two of her classmates in Tokyo had committed suicide, but she didn’t talk about any of her problems.’
‘Miss Takahashi left two notes: one for her parents and one for you.’
‘For me?’
‘Yes. Does that surprise you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to release the note to you.’
The man in the suit takes out a plastic bag which contains an envelope with my name written on it. He slowly pushes it across the table to me. I open the envelope, inside is a piece of white paper with a few words written in black ink. The man in the grey suit asks me to read the note aloud.
I had a lot of fun and I forgot my sadness for a while. Everything in my room is for you. I leave you with a hug that lasts forever.
Shanice
The man says that they’ll make an inventory of Shanice’s belongings and that her room will remain closed until her parents arrive. Then he thanks me for answering his questions and tells me I’m free to go.
I’m upset and my heart is racing. I wish the Tucumano would get back from class soon, so I can tell him what’s happened. I need to talk to someone, I need to process this and try to understand it. I feel like I’m on some kind of drug. The students look blurry, the room seems to expand and their voices are faraway echoes. I sit in the doorway until it gets dark. If I hadn’t left so early this morning maybe I could’ve talked to Shanice, maybe if I’d had breakfast with her she wouldn’t have done it. But this morning is the distant past. The doctor who looked like Barenboim now resides alongside my faded memories: my mother crying in the university cafeteria, my last night with Santiago, the karaoke party Shanice threw. I feel like this exact instant marks a break in time, as if an earthquake has split the Earth in two, everything familiar moves away forever and what’s left is an endless wasteland. I’m dizzy. I put my head between my knees, I heard somewhere that it helps with vertigo. I realise I’m crying when I see tears drip from my face and splash against the floor. Someone puts a hand on my back, when I lift my head I see the Tucumano sitting beside me. I heard about everything, he says, and he offers me a blue handkerchief, very clean, which he takes out of a pocket of his jacket.
V
Tonight my room feels bigger. The image of Shanice sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for me to take the pregnancy test is so vivid that I turn over and stare at the wall as I try to fall asleep. Her body will spend the night at the morgue. I’m consoled by the thought that the morgues here are clean places, always set to the perfect temperature. In such a charming city as this one not even places like that are unpleasant. I try to think of something else, something warm, I can’t think of anything. I’m afraid it’s going to be a long night. I feel around on the floor next to the bed for one of the books I brought. Packing my suitcase in Buenos Aires, I randomly grabbed a few books I’d never read. I turn on the lamp, the book is January by Sara Gallardo. It tells the story of a poor country girl. She’s sixteen years old and she’s pregnant. A disgrace. She wishes that the baby belonged to El Negro, the man she’s in love with. But it belongs to another man. I think of Marta Paula, that is, I think about what the Tucumano told me about his sister Marta Paula. I imagine she’s working the nightshift behind the Hotel Miami reception desk and I wonder how she’ll get home; if she’ll take a bus, if the bus will drop her off near her house, if her kids will still be asleep when she gets home or if they’ll be drinking mate cocido ready to go to school. I feel very tired. I look around the room again, it seems huge and it looks different. There are pictures on the wall I’ve never seen before, stuck up with Sellotape: Brad Pitt, Einstein, Hello Kitty.
I pull them down and the tape pulls off strips of paint with it. I don’t know when someone came in and put them up. But, of course, this can’t be my room: the door is on the other side and the bed is too. Someone in the corner with their back to me rummages through a huge suitcase. It’s Shanice. She laughs as she pulls out T-shirts and blouses, skirts and trousers. I’m scared but I’m also happy to see her. She’s happy as always. She asks me to help her organise her clothes, that it’s all for me. She shows me the tags on each shirt and dress, clothes she bought in Tokyo, New York, Paris, Frankfurt. I’ve never had such nice things. I think about how if I stay pregnant none of these clothes will fit and I’m disappointed. Shanice takes a long fuchsia scarf out of the suitcase. She starts to wrap it around my neck and tells me that it looks gorgeous. She repeatedly says that I have to keep warm because the German autumn will be starting soon. The scarf is tight and hot and suffocating. My arms hang limply. She notices that I can’t breathe and tries to remove the scarf but she can’t, her hands are very cold and her fingers are thin and stiff. She says she’s going to ask Frau Wittmann for her scissors, not to worry, that she’ll use them to cut the wool and get it off me. I get upset, Shanice is dead and no one will give a dead girl scissors. I wake up feeling anxious, the lamp is on. I can’t stay in bed.
I get up, dress quickly and go down to the dining hall with the Sara Gallardo book. It’s three in the morning. I read until the sun comes up. When I get back to my room it’s already been daylight for a while.
I wake up at midday, Frau Wittmann intercepts me on the stairs and tells me in a worried tone that I have three days left to provide proof of my course enrolment. I quickly make up an excuse and assure her that I’ll get hold of it soon. Then she says that Shanice’s parents will be arriving this afternoon and that they want to talk to me.
I go out and have a coffee in Marktplatz, the same place where I had breakfast the day I arrived. That morning I didn’t know about my pregnancy and I hadn’t met Shanice yet. My hair was down to my waist, heavy as a funeral veil. That day I worried I wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone but the language sprouted up from some dormant part of my brain and now I can talk to everyone. I’m meeting Shanice’s parents this afternoon. What do you say to two people who’ve just lost a child? The thought makes shivers run up my spine. I have no idea who Shanice really was or why she wanted to leave her things to me. We had a few conversations, she laughed a lot, but that was it. And the incident with the pregnancy test was short because I asked her to leave right after. Yesterday the Tucumano said something I found comical: the Japanese are mysterious, you can’t try to understand them. I pay for my coffee and walk along the bank of the Neckar. Some Italian tourists ask me to take a picture. When I return their camera they ask me where I’m from. For a second, I can’t remember.
THREE
I
The Takahashis greet me with a handshake and sad but kind expressions. We sit in the residence lobby, on the sofas where some of the students made out on karaoke night. Frau Wittmann brings us tea and leaves us alone. The Takahashis ask me questions about Shanice’s last days; they don’t seem interested in finding an explanation for her death but rather in keeping some images of her in their memory. We speak in English, theirs smooth and fluent, mine nervous and halting, thinking too much about every word, the conjugation of every verb. I speak very carefully. But there isn’t much to say. I go over each of my encounters with Shanice and I embellish them with details I think they’ll like. Long stretches of silence fall between us. We exchange sad smiles and change topics for a few seconds, talking about the weather in Germany, their journey from Tokyo, Shanice’s childhood in which she never wanted for anything ever. Mrs Takahashi thanks me for the time I spent with her daughter.
‘She truly had great affection for you,’ she says.
That’s absurd, I think, any affection she had for me was unwarranted and undeserved. Shanice knew me so little that any feelings of closeness were an invention of her imagination. But I don’t dare tell her parents that our acquaintance never became a fully formed friendship and I surprise myself by acting like the loss is almost as painful for me as for them. As the conversation goes on, I begin to make out Shanice’s features in their faces and I start to feel like I really miss her, like I want to see her, like her absence hurts me too in some deep way.
There won’t be a wake and they’ve decided to bury her here in Heidelberg. For some strange reason they think that their daughter had been truly happy in this city where she committed suicide, and that she would have wanted to be laid to rest here. Mrs Takahashi asks me to help her choose a dress to bury her daughter in. Then she tells me that she and her husband are aware of the note and are going to honour Shanice’s wishes.
‘Once we set aside the dress, the rest of the things are for you,’ says Mr Takahashi.
‘And for your little one on the way,’ says his wife. Then, tilting her head, she adds, ‘Shanice left us a long letter. In it, she told us how she’d helped you with the pregnancy test and said that afternoon she’d felt useful and she was happy, that it had been a great day.’
A few students, two lecturers, Frau Wittmann, the Takahashis, and I attend the burial. It’s a leaden grey morning, the ceremony is melancholy and perfect. It could be the ending to a very sad film. The Tucumano comes running up and stands beside me. I feel like the scene has suddenly changed, that he’s introduced some dissonant, strident element into it. I couldn’t find any black shoes, he says in my ear. I see that he’s dressed in a dark suit and wears light brown moccasins. His attempt to fit with protocol makes me want to laugh but I manage to contain it. Now Mr Takahashi cries and says some words in Japanese. We don’t know what he’s saying but we all understand that the sound coming from his mouth is a howl of grief. I squeeze the Tucumano’s hand tightly. A suffocating silence falls over us all. Some lower their heads and fix their gaze on Shanice’s grave, their eyes staring intently at the freshly churned soil as if the mystery of life were buried there.
II
Although I try to hide my shock, the amount of stuff in Shanice’s room is stupefying. Her mother holds up objects and names them. The task seems to give her some relief and for brief moments I think it even entertains her. I tell her shyly that I don’t need all these things. She quickly interrupts me, shakes her arms like Shanice did and tells me that I can’t refuse, that it’s already been decided, that the stuff is all mine, if I don’t want it it’ll go straight into the trash. The Takahashis are rich, I think. Anyone could tell just by looking. In Shanice’s room there are: two cameras, a mobile phone, a laptop, an iPod, an iPad, an e-book reader, a portable DVD player, a hair dryer, a makeup case, a jewellery box containing earrings, bracelets, barrettes, and necklaces, five pairs of shoes, three pairs of sandals, three pairs of sneakers, five pairs of jeans, two pairs of linen trousers, two wool sweaters, two waterproof jackets, eight blouses, eleven T-shirts, seven dresses, six sweaters, three notebooks, an electric razor, a Hello Kitty doll, a German-Japanese dictionary, reading glasses, sunglasses, a collection of postcards of castles, a map of Heidelberg, a map of Frankfurt, a book of German grammar, a book of Spanish grammar, fashion magazines, two purses, a bag, two suitcases.
When she finishes her inventory Mrs Takahashi is exhausted but her face has changed, she looks younger and more animated. We’ve put everything in boxes and now I’m supposed to take it all to my room. She says that she’s going to her hotel to rest a while and that she’ll come back later to take me out for tea. I don’t know how to thank her for this huge gift, I feel strange, a bit uncomfortable. Mrs Takahashi smiles and tells me to give away whatever I don’t want to keep and she leaves with short, hurried steps. I knock on the Tucumano’s door to ask him to help me carry the boxes. He has a book in one hand and a pencil in his mouth, he’s still wearing his suit but he’s now barefoot. He tells me to wait, that he’ll be right there. A few minutes later he comes out of hi
s room with his hair wet and combed back, he’s put on sneakers and he looks happy. He runs down the hallway ahead of me like a little kid going after the presents left by Santa Claus while everyone was sleeping.
The German Room Page 4