The German Room

by Carla Maliandi

  ‘Don’t touch that.’

  ‘I just want to get a closer look.’

  ‘I’m going to get something to wrap it up and throw it away for you.’

  The Tucumano goes into the house and comes back with a bunch of paper napkins, wraps up the bird and holds it for a moment in his hands.

  ‘I’m going to throw it away on the street.’

  ‘How long do you think it’s been lying there dead?’

  ‘Maybe a day, maybe just a few hours.’

  I think about Shanice and about whoever found her body. I remember seeing them take her out in a black bag. The Tucumano deals with the bird issue like a professional. I go into the kitchen, put the kettle on and search the drawers for a mate gourd. I quickly locate an enormous one with a silver rim and an inscription that says Souvenir of Buenos Aires. I assume it was a gift and I wonder if Mario, every once in a while, gets visitors from Argentina. I open all the containers until I find the yerba mate tea and I offer Miguel the first mate of our stay in Germany.

  ‘No, thanks, I don’t drink it.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No, everyone in my family drinks it, but not me, I think ‘sdisgusting and it gives me heartburn.’

  He goes into the bathroom to wash his hands and I remember once again that I should call Marta Paula. I bet if she were here she’d have several rounds of mate with me and she’d tell me about Feli and everything she said to her. I can’t return the call until her brother leaves.

  I lie down on the sofa. Miguel comes in, looks over the books and the CDs.

  ‘Your friend Mario has a great library. What did he go to Frankfurt for?’

  ‘He went to do something at the university, I suppose.’

  ‘Want me to help you unpack your bags?’

  ‘No, don’t worry about it, I’ll do it later. For now I don’t need to unpack hardly anything. Half of that stuff there is Shanice’s, I only came to Germany with one suitcase and a backpack and nothing else.’

  ‘On second thoughts, I’ll take some mate.’

  Miguel sucks the straw with a disgusted look on his face. I offer him sugar and he heaps on three or four spoonfuls, making it undrinkable. We talk for a while about the house and how everything works: the coffee maker, the stove, the stereo, the TV. Then he goes silent like at breakfast. I know he’s sad that I’m moving out of the residence. It would be hard for me to stay there without him too.

  ‘Do you miss home, Miguel?’

  The Tucumano sucks the straw pensively.

  ‘Yes and no. Sometimes I think I could stay here my whole life and never go back to see anyone. But when my mum or Marta Paula calls I remember things and it makes me want to be there. Mostly because I worry they might need something, that they might have a problem. My dad is old and he never knows what’s going on, that’s the truth. My mum cooks all day for the family and to sell. My sisters are busy with their kids, their problems. Marta Paula’s the only one who helps my parents, because she lives with them, the rest don’t have time. I helped her get a job. It’s a really good job but she’s always been the kind of person who just floats along, you know? She fell in love and had kids right away, she didn’t even get to finish high school. And then her husband turned out to be the worst of the worst. He doesn’t help her with money, he doesn’t see the kids. I was saving up to come here and one day three thousand pesos I had hidden went missing. I wanted to die, because you can do whatever you want to me, but to think that my sister could’ve stolen from me was something I couldn’t handle. So I confronted her and I asked her and I realised that it wasn’t her. Then I found out that her husband had come by that day. So I was left with no doubt that the guy is a scumbag.’

  Now Miguel Javier sets down the mate and jumps up from the couch with his eyes wide.

  ‘Did you open the suitcases?’

  ‘No.’

  I sit up and see that two of Shanice’s suitcases are open and clothes have spilled out.

  ‘You must’ve opened them to look for something and you don’t remember,’ Miguel Javier accuses me.

  ‘No, I haven’t touched them since we came in,’ I respond. And we argue over it for a minute.

  ‘Are you scared there might be ghosts?’

  ‘No, not at all. They must’ve opened on their own, the zips must be broken.’

  III

  It’s past noon and the Tucumano is still here. He flipped through several books from the shelves then turned on the TV. He’s now watching a German news programme that’s announcing the winning lottery numbers. I make lunch from some sausages, tomato and cheese I found in Mario’s fridge. Later on I’ll have to go grocery shopping. Later, after the Tucumano leaves and after I call Marta Paula. Miguel goes into the kitchen and says he heard the doorbell, he asks if we should answer it or pretend we’re not here.

  ‘No, go and see who it is please,’ I say as I pull the sausages out of the boiling water with a fork. I locate plates, cups, a table cloth. Miguel comes back in.

  ‘It’s a friend of yours,’ he says.

  ‘Did you let him in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Stay here, I’ll go.’

  Joseph smiles at me when I open the door. I’m going to have to cook more sausages, I think. And when I let him in, I also think that his presence makes the house perfect.

  I introduce him to the Tucumano who just stares and without many questions the three of us sit at the table and have lunch.

  Miguel Javier asks Joseph what he does for a living. Joseph answers that he helps in his family’s shop and that he’s also a photographer. I talk about Joseph’s photos, repeating Mario’s words like a parrot: Joseph’s photography is meaningful, important work.

  The Tucumano eats in silence; he’s confused, it shows on his face. He’s so nervous that he accidently knocks over his glass and has to surround his plate with napkins to dry the mess. When we finish eating he remains seated and doesn’t help us clear the table. Joseph offers to wash the dishes. Miguel Javier follows me with his gaze without moving from his chair.

  ‘I think I need to rest a bit,’ I say.

  ‘I’m going now,’ he answers and before I can say anything he gets up, puts on his jacket and walks to the door. ‘Now I understand everything,’ he says through clenched teeth and he leaves.

  IV

  Being with Joseph in this house, just the two of us, makes me fantasise about starting a family. I watch him drying the dishes, putting things away where they belong, making coffee. He moves confidently around the kitchen, opens the right drawers, quickly finds the tea towels, the coffee cups, the teaspoons. I wonder how many times he’s been here before but try not to think too hard about that.

  ‘I think you were kind of cruel to your friend.’

  ‘To Miguel Javier? Why?’

  ‘It’s obvious he’s in love with you.’

  Joseph comes over to me, cups my face in his hands and kisses me on the mouth. Is this the moment I came for, the reason I got on a plane with no plan in mind? Because simply returning to your childhood home is not much better than having no plan at all.

  I tremble thinking about everything I left behind, everything I could’ve done in Buenos Aires in all this time, my job, my family, Santiago. What would’ve happened if I’d stayed there? What would’ve happened if my parents had stayed here, if they’d never gone back to Argentina?

  ‘We can’t fuck,’ I tell Joseph clumsily and I explain that it’s doctor’s orders for the next few days. He looks like he’s just remembered I’m pregnant, he asks how I feel, my plans for when the baby comes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answer. And it’s true, I don’t know.

  Suddenly I remember the idiotic face of the guy that could be the father of my baby. Not Santiago, who looks intelligent even though he’s not that smart. The other guy, Leonardo, from
the real estate agency. I’ve been trying not to think too much about him but now his face is stamped on my brain. The face of an idiot, yes, I see it as clearly as if he were right here calling me sweetheart, doll, baby, and asking me to stay the night.

  Joseph says that I’ll know what to do when the time comes. It’s horrible to hear when I realise that ‘You’ll know what to do’ doesn’t include him at all. And now, here, the only thing I want is for this to last, for it to last a long time; forever, if possible.

  We fall into a silence interrupted intermittently by small talk, about how cold it’s been the past few days, my move from the residence, his exhibition next week. I’d ask him to stay the night but he seems restless and I don’t have the nerve. I tell him about the dead bird Miguel Javier and I found in the garden this morning, the way the Tucumano took care of it without batting an eyelid. When he smiles I say almost without taking a breath: ‘I’d like you to stay today.’

  ‘There’s something else you have to know,’ he answers.

  I tense all my muscles in anticipation of what he’s about to say, my legs, my hands, my heart, everything.

  ‘Mario is sick and he went to Frankfurt for treatment.’

  ‘Treatment? What kind of treatment? What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘It’s something liver-related that they haven’t been able to diagnose yet.’

  ‘I should go to see him.’

  ‘No, he asked me not to tell you. When he gets back we’ll see how he’s doing and how we can help him.’

  I imagine Mario in a hospital bed and my knees weaken. Joseph hugs me, we go to the sofa and we lie there for a long time staring at the ceiling.

  ‘I’ll stay over tonight,’ he says and I press myself against him.

  V

  Joseph and I speak in German, he generally uses easy words and phrases when he’s with me. To tell me that the night we spent together was incredible he says: ‘I slept well.’ Then he kisses me and gets up announcing that he’s going to make coffee. Last night we didn’t fuck, yet I think it was one of the most intense nights of my life. What could I compare it to? A blood transfusion, an earthquake of euphoria, something like that. Lying in bed I listen to him moving around downstairs in the kitchen, I try to remember his body in the dim light. I relive the feeling of his chest against my back, his hands lifting my hair to kiss my neck. And the sound of Shanice’s mobile phone ringing nonstop. The third time it rang I got up to answer it. I was naked and I wrapped myself in a blanket and went downstairs confused, thinking about Mario. It was Marta Paula. She sounded very strange. Her voice was hoarse, she almost didn’t sound like herself. I apologised for not returning her call like I’d promised. She kept saying over and over ‘We have to talk, we have to talk’. She said it mechanically and every once in a while she paused to let out a kind of sob, a muffled moan that troubled me greatly.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m like this because I went back to Feli’s. She did something to me, I don’t know… She really upset me. She told me to talk to you… ya know? To ask if you’re going to deal with that woman, the mum of the dead girl, who’s a very heavy burden… and she wanted to know… what I’d done with the shoes. “Nothing, Doña Feli, I have them at home.” And then she kind of laughs and she says to me, she asks if I’m going to have them on when they put me in a black bag too. “What black bag?” I ask her. “No one knows their destiny for certain but you’re going to have a shitty life,” she says. “What do you mean a shitty life?” And then she makes a face like she’s tired of talking to me, but I keep asking her, and then she said that everyone sooner or later ends up in a black bag, and she told me to ask you. And she told me more things, but I can’t remember now…’

  ‘Don’t go back to that place, Marta. Forget everything she said.’

  ‘I threw the shoes away.’

  ‘Good, I think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘What’s the black bag?’

  ‘Don’t listen to her. Forget everything she said.’

  Then we both went silent and I heard cumbia music in the background and people talking. I asked her where she was and she didn’t answer. Then she told me that for the past few days she’s had insomnia. I told her that she was going to feel better once she got some sleep. That we’d talk tomorrow.

  When I got back to bed I told Joseph, summarising as best I could, who Marta Paula was and the friendship we started over the shoes, about Feli, and how ugly it had all got. He said that he thought it was a fascinating story but then he wrapped his arms and legs around me and we didn’t talk about anything else.

  NINE

  I

  I wake up in Mario’s house and it takes me a few seconds to remember where I am. The morning light is different than it was in my room at the residence; it reminds me of my house in Buenos Aires. Joseph isn’t beside me, I hear him in the kitchen. What is he doing? Why didn’t he wake me up? I get out of bed and as I rummage in the suitcase for a pair of trousers and a T-shirt I’m struck by a memory: Santiago making breakfast, me looking for something to wear to work, Ringo coming and going between the two of us, wagging his tail in anticipation of his morning walk. Here, in this place I hardly know, the memory of that house is unbearable, I feel guilty for having abandoned it and certain that I’ll never see it again.

  Downstairs, Joseph has made coffee and is toasting bread. He says he has to leave in a bit. We speak very little. I’d like him to come back to bed with me or just leave so I can be alone. I wash the mugs we just used. Joseph moves around the house, goes into the bathroom, takes water out of the fridge, goes out into the garden to smoke. I’m impatient, why is he still here if he said he had to go?

  I should call Mario, find out how he is, if he needs anything. I stop what I’m doing and ask Joseph for the phone number of the clinic where Mario’s staying. ‘I don’t know it,’ he answers. I ask for the name, something that would help me find it on the internet. Mario doesn’t have a mobile phone and I have to get in touch with him somehow. But Joseph doesn’t have any information; Mario doesn’t want us to find him, he says. How can he be so accepting, so calm?

  I tell him I want to be alone. Joseph puts out his cigarette and stares at me for a moment. ‘See you later?’ he asks. I say ‘Yes,’ and he leaves.

  II

  Here by myself, the house seems huge. I spend hours rummaging through Mario’s things and I find the boxes he brought out the day we were reunited. I read the letters I sent him, written in my little girl’s handwriting. In some I ask him to come to visit us in Buenos Aires soon, in others I tell him that I want to visit him in Germany and live with him in the castle in Heidelberg. They all close with my signature, which hasn’t changed much since then, and a drawing of a heart or a star.

  Among the letters and postcards there are also some photos. I immediately remember the Kodak camera we had, the square one with the flash cube on top. Many of these photos must have been taken with that camera. I’m in several of them, at the house on Keplerstrasse, sliding down a hill, in a forest, beside a lake. In one photo, there are some strange animals peering out at the right edge of the image. I stare at the picture for a long while trying to figure out what these creatures are. They look like large goats, or miniature bison, or some unclassifiable beast. The date and a brief description of the place are written on the back of the photo. It’s strange that it doesn’t mention the animals at all.

  I come across a black and white photo of several men on the stairs of what looks like a public building. On the back, in delicate handwriting, it says: University of La Plata, 1975. And it names each of the people pictured. There are several lecturers mixed in with a few students. My father is there, among the faculty staff, in a suit that looks too tight and a big smile. Mario is there too, at the edge with a full head of hair and thick-rimmed glasses; he can’t be more than twenty-five years old.

  In one of the
boxes I find a handful of letters wrapped up with a blue ribbon. I carefully untie it, feeling more curiosity than guilt. It’s five letters to Mario from Elvio, his dead boyfriend. I read the first one dated March of ’79. Elvio writes from his imprisonment in what he calls ‘the cave’, and assures Mario that they’ll let him out at the end of the month and that they can meet in Mexico, Spain, or Germany. The letter is cryptic, as if written in code and with entire sections redacted, but it’s probably the most painful text I’ve ever read in my life. Through the blacked out sentences I can just decipher the words ‘regret’, ‘hell’, ‘pass out’. The paper has turned yellow over the years and it looks like it has been reread and refolded many times. ‘They’ll let me out at the end of the month and I don’t know where they’re taking me but we’ll find each other,’ he repeats further down.

  When I finish this letter I don’t have the energy to read the others. I go to the kitchen to get a tea towel or something to dry my tears, and to drink some water. Going through those boxes and delving into those old photos and letters has left me tremendously thirsty.

  Through the kitchen window I see the patio and the little garden. In the past day it’s filled up with dried leaves. I want to have everything clean and tidy when Mario returns, I don’t know when that’ll be but I hope it’s soon.

  III

  I’d been determined not to set foot in the residence again. My last encounter with Frau Wittmann was so hostile that I had no desire to see her ever again.

  But the Tucumano has just called asking me to come over immediately.

  ‘Me and Frau Wittmann and a bunch of other people are here trying to calm Mrs Takahashi down. She keeps asking for you. We can’t get her to calm down. She’s beside herself.’

  I beg him not to give her my new address and promise I’ll be there as soon as possible.

  When Miguel Javier opens the door, the scene inside is unbelievable: Mrs Takahashi is curled up on one of the dining tables blubbering phrases in Japanese interspersed with words in English. Frau Wittmann paces in front of the table threatening to call the police. A few students watch from a prudent distance, laughing nervously.