The German Room

by Carla Maliandi

  ‘I think she’s having a breakdown,’ says the Tucumano. ‘She was asking for you, pacing back and forth, and then she got on the table.’

  Frau Wittmann rushes over and grabs me by the shoulders. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she confesses, exhausted.

  I can see that I have to go over and talk to the woman. Everyone is expecting me to do it. I move slowly to the end of the table where her feet are and I walk around until I reach her head. ‘Mrs Takahashi…’ She doesn’t look at me. She’s lying on her side with a lost look in her eyes and she repeats: ‘I’m not leaving.’

  ‘It’s me, Mrs Takahashi.’

  Mrs Takahasi looks at me, slides down off the table and sits in a chair. Her movements are so elegant that they almost make us forget the ridiculous scene she just made.

  ‘I was desperate to see you. When I found out you didn’t live here anymore I got a bit nervous. That’s all. I was looking for you because I haven’t known what to do with myself lately. Could you…? You know I don’t want to go back to my country but my credit card isn’t working anymore and my husband won’t answer my calls. You were a good friend to my daughter and I’m sure you can help me. I know I’ve bought too many things but it’s not the right moment to go back yet. My husband… my husband shouldn’t have left me here alone.’

  Mrs Takahashi stops speaking and covers her face with her hands. Frau Wittmann and the Tucumano stand to one side waiting for me to decide what to say or do.

  ‘She can’t stay here, I’ve already told her that this is a residence for students only,’ Frau Wittmann’s rasping voice echoes through the dining hall.

  Mrs Takahashi sobs, ‘My daughter was a very good student. Very good! I should move into her room for a while.’

  I try to think, to find some way to help quickly and leave. But Mrs Takahashi uncovers her face and takes my hands in her cold fingers.

  ‘Let me stay with you, at least for tonight. I can’t go back to the hotel. Do it for Shanice, do it for me, I don’t have anyone else.’

  IV

  I did everything I could to avoid it. I tried calling Mr Takahashi from the phone at the residence, offered to contact the Japanese Embassy, and begged Frau Wittmann to make an exception and let her stay there for just one night, but nothing worked. At one point I thought of just leaving. I didn’t owe anyone excuses or explanations. But a horrible feeling of guilt stopped me. Mrs Takahashi was on the brink of ruin, about to break like the dry trunk of a tree blown down in a storm, her pleading eyes fixed on me.

  Now, sitting in the living room of my new house, she seems to have recovered a bit. She smiles calmly and silently nods her head at everything I say: Mrs Takahashi, should I make some tea? Mrs Takahashi, if you want to take a bath I’ll bring you a clean towel. Mrs Takahashi, tomorrow we’ll go to the embassy to resolve this situation, you should go home as soon as possible.

  I make some tea and turn on the TV. I look for a movie or some show that will make us feel less uncomfortable, something to distract us for a little while. I stop on an old black and white movie: Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck stroll through the streets of Rome speaking in dubbed German. Mrs Takahashi seems interested. She raises her eyebrows as if remembering something and then sighs.

  ‘It’s a nice movie,’ I say. She nods her head. It worries me that she hasn’t said a word. I look at her out of the corner of my eye, she seems fascinated by the movie. I pretend to concentrate on the images as I mentally consider what I should do next. First I’ll have to work out where the Japanese Embassy is, or at least a consulate, I doubt there’s one in Heidelberg. The second thing will be to find someone to go with her, maybe Miguel Javier… I don’t have the nerve to ask Joseph and I don’t want to leave this house until Mario returns. Why hasn’t Mario been in touch with me? He’d know how to sort this all out.

  Mrs Takahashi sighs, she seems to be in another world. With the excuse of making more tea, I get up from the couch and go to the computer to search for the embassy address. I find it right away: Hiroshimastraße 6, Berlin. There’s a consulate in Frankfurt too, maybe tomorrow morning I could go there with Mrs Takahashi and try to find Mario. Spend the day in Frankfurt, or as long as it takes. I could water the plants, lock up the house, and try to take care of this. If we leave very early we could be at the consulate as soon as it opens, then I’d explain: This woman is in a state of shock, alone, without any money and far away from her country. Please, help her, it’s your responsibility. And then I’d search all the clinics in Frankfurt until I found Mario, there can’t be that many. And when I find him I’ll bring him back to his house, or stay there with him, help him with whatever he needs until we can come back.

  V

  I feel Mrs Takahashi’s cold hands on my head and I jump in my seat.

  ‘You have beautiful hair,’ she says. ‘You should grow it down to your waist.’

  ‘You scared me… Is the movie over?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s an old, old movie. I think the actors are dead now. They were so good-looking. I recognised the streets of Rome. Do you think I’ll ever be able to go back there? I don’t think so. The time is past now. Thanks for bringing me to your house tonight, you are very kind.’

  I turn off the computer, but it’s slow and it takes a few seconds for the blazing Japanese flag on the embassy webpage to disappear.

  ‘Let’s go out to eat,’ I say, ‘It’s on me.’

  The woman smiles and speaks slowly.

  ‘I’d rather we stayed here. You have such an inviting home, and I’ve spent so many nights in restaurants… There’s nothing like the warmth of a home, don’t you agree? Oh, it’s so nice here. So much nicer than I’d remembered was possible.’

  Mrs Takahashi is right. It would be better to stay here and get everything ready for tomorrow. I can cook some pasta, open a bottle of wine and plan our trip to Frankfurt. If I can manage to be convincing, if I can get her to pay attention to me, she’ll see that it’s the best thing for her and we’ll be able to relax tonight.

  ‘Do you like pasta, Mrs Takahashi?’

  ‘Pasta? Yes, of course. I wanted to eat it all the time when I was pregnant with Shanice.’

  ‘It must be common with pregnant women, because I want to eat it all the time too…’

  ‘Do you know what you’re going to name your baby?’

  ‘No, not yet. I don’t even know the sex yet.’

  ‘I think everything must be easier with a boy. You know? Shanice and I never understood each other, or worse, we understood each other too well.’

  ‘That can’t be so bad.’

  Mrs Takahashi smiles bitterly and runs her long fingers over her forehead. She’s striking to look at, beautiful and terrifying at the same time. I go into the kitchen and she slowly follows. As I get out the food to make dinner she watches me silently, smiling slightly, her head tilted to one side as if it were too heavy to hold up.

  ‘I hope you have a boy, you don’t deserve so much suffering.’

  ‘Don’t get upset, please, let’s enjoy dinner. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. We’ll take the train at six fifteen to get to Frankfurt before eight and be at the consulate as soon as it opens. Everything will work out fine, you’ll see. You’ll be back home soon.’

  Mrs Takahashi remains silent as I finish making the sauce, open the wine, drain the pasta.

  Once we’re sitting at the table I again explain the plan to get her back to Japan, trying to be as detailed and optimistic as possible. She doesn’t say anything, just twirls her fork on the plate hardly taking a bite. I propose a toast, pour wine into her glass and mix mine with a splash of water. ‘To the future,’ I say, not very convincingly. The woman follows my lead almost automatically, takes a sip and speaks slowly and quietly.

  ‘What were you doing the day of the incident?’

  ‘Are you talking about the day Shanice died?’
/>   ‘Yes, the day of the suicide.’

  ‘It was a Monday. I went to the hospital early. It was my first visit to the doctor about the pregnancy. At noon I had lunch with Miguel Javier in the university cafeteria. I recognised the place, I remembered eating there with my mother when I was very little. Then I walked on my own for a long while and at around six I went back to the residence.’

  ‘And what were you thinking about when you were walking?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  Mrs Takahashi sighs and looks at me as if hoping I’ll continue the story of that day. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t want to tell her about the police, the students crying hysterically, the black bag they took her daughter’s body away in. The Japanese woman urges me on with her expectant gaze.

  I tell her that the days before that one had been fun. I tell her about the karaoke night, how her daughter had planned the party and played the host, how she’d seemed happy, radiant, that everyone was astonished by what she did. This is what I say, but it’s not true. Her suicide didn’t surprise me, it made me sad because as soon as I heard, it seemed so obvious. I see her again in my memory on the night of the karaoke party and I know that what she was projecting wasn’t happiness, it was anxiety, it was a horrible sadness disguised with bright colours and screeching music.

  TEN

  I

  I look at the alarm clock, it’s four thirty in the morning. Something, some movement inside my womb woke me up. It’s the first time I’ve felt it. I’d like to tell someone, but there’s no one beside me I can wake up to say: I think our baby just moved for the first time. I breathe deeply and pull the blanket over my shoulders. I wait a moment to see if it’s going to move again, I turn onto my side but nothing happens. I know I won’t be able to fall back asleep. The alarm’s going to go off in half an hour anyway and we’ll have to eat breakfast, get our stuff together and head for the train station. I sit up and turn on the light. Last night, after getting Mrs Takahashi settled on the living room sofa, I packed a rucksack with my passport, money, and some clothes in case I have to stay in Frankfurt for a few days. I check to make sure I’m not forgetting anything. I also want to call Joseph and let him know that I won’t be back until I find Mario. I’m going to tell him that I’ve made up my mind, I don’t care what he and Mario agreed. But it isn’t even daylight yet so I have to wait. I lie back down, I stare at the ceiling. I’m anxious. I wonder if Mrs Takahashi was able to sleep. I feel sorry for her. I feel sad and immensely unsettled by her expression that says: it’s all going to get worse, no one is safe anywhere in the world. Sometimes her gaze makes all the muscles in my body tense up. I feel hopelessly tired but now it’s time to start the day, to begin our search for a solution. Yesterday I thought that all of this was going to be easy. I was even kind of curious to see Mrs Takahashi interact with other Japanese people at the embassy and explain her situation. Now it seems like a ridiculous plan, an excessively heavy burden. Getting out of bed becomes an impossible struggle. The house is colder than normal and I wonder if the Japanese woman has turned off the heating. Maybe the living room was too warm and she decided to lower the thermostat. It’s our last day together and after I leave her at the consulate she’s not going to get anything else from me, that’s it, I repeat to myself as I put on the warmest clothes I can find.

  II

  I turn on the lights in the living room. The blankets and pillow that I handed Mrs Takahashi last night are stacked neatly on the edge of the sofa but she’s nowhere to be seen. I check the bathroom, the kitchen, I go into the garden thinking I might find her out there catching flies, hugging a tree, or something of the sort. What did she do? When did she leave? Where is she? What money is she going to use to get by?

  I lie on the sofa and wait a while, thinking maybe she’s just gone out for a minute; but her things are gone. She’s not coming back, I think, and I’m not going to Frankfurt. Not on the six fifteen train, or the eight o’clock train, or any train.

  Later on I go to see Joseph. He thinks Mrs Takahashi might turn up any moment and that I have to decide what to do if that happens. I notice he doesn’t look at me as he talks, he’s distracted by I don’t know what, he shuffles papers and throws them away, sends and receives messages on his mobile phone. He says he’d like to have lunch with me but unfortunately he’s in a hurry. I don’t know what it is he has to do, but I envy his busyness. I don’t have anything to do at all. I have a faint memory of being rushed and stressed in Buenos Aires and I want to tell Joseph that my life wasn’t always this directionless drifting, that I used to send and receive messages all the time too and I was always running late and hurrying off somewhere, and that in Buenos Aires life is much more stressful than in this tiny make-believe town. Joseph apologises as he puts on his coat and hands me mine, which I’ve only just taken off.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asks at the door.

  ‘Towards the old bridge,’ I say, pretending I have something to do there.

  ‘Then I can’t walk with you,’ he says. He gives me a kiss on the forehead and rushes off in the other direction.

  My strolls here are aimless; I move from one point to another without any rhyme or reason. I’ll say to myself: Let’s go to Marktplatz, and when I get there I’ll say to myself: Now let’s go to the cathedral. Right now I’m walking towards the old bridge, like I told Joseph, and I don’t know what I’ll do when I get there. If someone asked, I could say that I came to Heidelberg to walk, to sleep and walk. Sleeping and walking don’t sound like much, but they’re both good things.

  The temperature has dropped a lot in the past few days and there aren’t as many tourists on the streets. In Buenos Aires the weather must be quite warm by now, the heat and humidity ramping up as the year ends. I think about everyone, I imagine what clothes they’re wearing, if the heat makes it hard for them to sleep at night. I always liked summer nights, the smell of mosquito coils, the sound of the fan, the joy of staying up until dawn. The night I slept with Leonardo, the guy from the real estate agency, the likely father of my child, it was unseasonably warm. ‘There’s no springtime anymore,’ he said, ‘this is how it is now, we go straight from winter to summer,’ and he kept talking about the atrocities of climate change that our offspring will have to suffer. I can hardly remember his face, I just remember the heat and the smell of vodka, and how I embraced that strange body with a silent request: Don’t talk any more.

  Maybe the time will come when I want nothing more than to return to Buenos Aires, or maybe it will never happen. I try to imagine the feeling my parents must’ve had, the forced decision to stay so far from home. But I don’t have anything keeping me from going back, from picking my life up right where I left off. Though the life I had before is impossible now. I stop on the bridge. I rest my elbows on the parapet and look down at the Neckar, smooth and empty in the morning light. Before I came back I imagined that this part of town would’ve become more developed, but no, it looks exactly like I did when I lived here. It seems like nothing ever changes much in this city that has somehow escaped the bombardments and other onslaughts of history.

  I run my eyes along the banks of the Neckar until I see something so disturbing that I have to look away, turn completely around and sit down to decide if I really saw what I thought I did. Crouching on the riverbank, barefoot, Mrs Takahashi was trying to put one of her feet into the water. How can I be so sure it was her? It looked like her same straight hair, all in a mess, her same long-sleeved black dress; but she was too far away to be sure, it could’ve been someone else, it could’ve been anything.

  III

  I go back home, that is to say to Mario’s house, and stay there. Going out in this cold wasn’t a good idea and I have to start looking after myself. I turn up the heat which was shut off in the night. Of all the houses I’ve lived in over the last few years I think this is the most comfortable. I gather and wash the mugs and cups I’ve
left lying around, trying to maintain Mario’s order as best I can. I try not to take any food into the bedroom and to put books back in their place on the shelf after I read them. I separate the rubbish into glass, paper, plastic and organic, I water the plants, and when it’s necessary I’ll vacuum the living room.

  I should’ve given Mrs Takahashi all the money I had left so she could find a place and get in touch with her husband or whoever. I should never have brought her here. I try to think of something else, but the image of her on the river bank keeps coming back to me again and again. I look out the window, it looks like it’s really cold outside. The few passers-by I see on the street are covered up to their ears. I turn on the TV, the woman on the news says it’s going to be a harsh winter, with freezing winds from the places she points to on the gigantic map of Germany. Afterwards they show images of demonstrations across several cities, students, human rights organizations and immigrants protesting the budget cuts for accepting refugees. A woman carrying a baby in her arms cries. I can’t understand what she’s saying. Images of the protestors are interspersed with shots of boats overflowing with people. The coast guard rescuing life rafts about to sink; men, women, and kids risking their lives to get to Europe. The reporter talks about the 800,000 asylum seekers this year alone.

  I’m startled by a bang on the door. I turn off the TV. I freeze. It’s Mrs Takahashi, I think, but she’s not strong enough to bang like that. ‘Who is it?’ I call without getting up. I hear Miguel Javier’s voice asking me to please open the door. I know it’s him even though I’ve never heard him sound so serious, so grave, so determined. When I open the door he walks in without saying hello and strides into the middle of the living room. He doesn’t look at me, he doesn’t sit, his entire body seems to be repressing an urge to break everything in his path.