Wish Me Dead

by Helen Grant

  With an effort I made myself face him. ‘What about Kai?’ I said defiantly.

  My voice was steady, although my hands were still wringing the crumpled fabric of my apron. The way he was looking at me made me feel guilty and unreasonably I retreated into indignation; being angry with him was better than feeling as though I had somehow betrayed him.

  If I had been expecting an insulting remark about my taste in men, it didn’t come; perhaps he had thought better of it. He sighed.

  ‘He’s not like you think,’ he said at last. ‘He’s not … ’

  ‘Not what?’

  I picked up a cloth lying on the inside of the counter, trying to make it plain that I had work to do. Inside I felt slightly sick, as though I had been caught out doing something I shouldn’t have.

  ‘He’s not a nice guy,’ said Julius eventually. ‘I know him,’ he added.

  I held up the cloth. ‘I’m supposed to be working.’

  ‘OK.’

  He studied me for a moment with a frankness that made my blood boil. I began to feel that if he stood there for a second longer looking at me in that way I would throw the balled-up cloth at him. But then he turned and left the bakery without a word. The door closed and the bell’s jingling faded to silence.

  Into this abyss fell the distinctive sound of someone clearing their throat. With a sinking feeling I turned to survey the room. I had been right when I thought that the bakery was almost empty; almost, but not quite. The seating area was divided up with little trelliswork screens to give the customers a sense of privacy in spite of the limited space. Behind one of these screens someone was sitting. I could see a dark shape lurking there, sufficiently well hidden by the wooden slats that I had not seen it before, but almost certainly commanding a perfect view of the counter where I stood, if whoever it was cared to lean close to the trellis and peer through one of the gaps. Having lived in Bad Münstereifel all my life, I was not naive enough to think that any of its residents would balk at such an act.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said a tart voice. It was a voice I recognized.

  Oh no. With a creeping sense of horror I stepped out from behind the counter and approached the screen. Not her. Of all the people it could have been, lurking unseen in the corner and taking in every single detail … Please, not her.

  I rounded the end of the screen and my worst fears were realized. Sitting very upright on the cushioned seat, with her gnarled old hands folded on the most enormous leather handbag I had ever seen, was Frau Kessel. Her head was tilted back so that the light flashed on the polished lenses of her spectacles, but I didn’t need to see her eyes to know that they were filled with knowing disapproval. Frau Kessel was a legend in Bad Münstereifel. They said she could hear a whispered conversation from a hundred metres away and I was not stupid enough to think that she would have missed a word of what had just passed.

  I gave her a sheepish grin, the self-deprecating smile of the prisoner in the dock trying to win the jury round but knowing that the evidence against him is too great.

  ‘Bitte schön?’ I said, resisting the insane temptation to curtsy.

  ‘If you have time, young lady,’ said Frau Kessel acidly, ‘I would like to pay.’

  ‘Certainly,’ I said, hoping that my dismay was not showing on my face. I went back to the counter and fetched the order pad. ‘Four euros seventy-five,’ I said.

  Frau Kessel counted out exactly four euros and seventy-five cents.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  I watched in silence as she gathered up her coat and bags. There was nothing to say – nothing, at any rate, that would not incriminate me further. I followed her to the door, which I held open for her.

  Frau Kessel paused for a moment on the threshold and looked me up and down very deliberately. Then she sniffed and, without a word, stepped out of the bakery and set off down the street.

  I stared after her. What can she do? I asked myself. It’s a free country. I can spend Friday night with whomever I want. It’s not like the bakery was full of customers and I was ignoring them or anything.

  All the same, as I saw her disappear into a shop I realized that there would be mischief. I could count on it.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The next few days dragged by. As I cleared tables in the cafe or carried trays of poppy-seed rolls around the kitchen I asked myself whether I should go back up to the ruined house in the woods by myself and try to retrieve the piece of paper with my wish on it. In the end I concluded that it was unnecessary. If Kai von Jülich and I were going to be an item everyone would know about it soon enough. Half the girls in town had had their eye on Kai at one time or another; it would certainly cause comment when I appeared on his arm. However did Steffi Nett get hold of him? they would all be saying. Still waters run deep.

  I saw little of the others. Timo and I were ancient history, we never met apart from the group any more. Max and Jochen were spending every spare moment trying to repair some problem with Max’s car. Hanna called at the bakery once, to see whether I wanted to meet up on Saturday night. She didn’t ask me about my wish and I didn’t volunteer any information. I saw Izabela too, briefly; we met in the street one evening and chatted for a few minutes. Izabela was one of the few people I might normally have confided in. She was quieter than the others and less likely to poke fun or threaten to tell the whole town about my date with Kai. Now, however, there was a certain restraint between us. Neither of us mentioned Timo at all, but he might just as well have been standing between us. I think we were both relieved to part.

  I didn’t see Julius at all and on the whole I was glad. I told myself that I had nothing to reproach myself with – it had nothing to do with him if I wanted to go out with Kai. All the same, I was content to let the passage of time do what it could for the inevitable awkwardness between us.

  Meanwhile I couldn’t help luxuriating in imagining the events of Friday evening. I wondered what we would do, where Kai would take me. He had a car, after all – not a dull and relatively old one like Max’s, but a sporty one with gleaming paintwork the colour of a fire engine. How people would stare if they saw me in the passenger seat of that.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ asked my mother, hearing me singing as I sped around the flat on Thursday morning, collecting up my things for college.

  She was standing by the kitchen sink, neat and compact in her green dirndl, sipping a cup of coffee before starting work. Her voice sounded vaguely disapproving, but she was smiling. Perhaps she thought I had finally done what she and my father were always hoping I would do and given my heart to the world of bakery products.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  As I walked through the town to the bus stop, that smile was still on my mind. I knew what my parents wanted. I could even see it their way. If I didn’t take over the bakery one day, what would happen to it? If in some far-distant time, say 2025, someone were standing outside the bakery on a ladder, not painting in ‘AND DAUGHTER’ but painting ‘NETT’ right out, it would break my father’s heart.

  I knew how much my parents still suffered over my sister Magdalena’s disappearance from our lives, although they rarely spoke about it any more. She never phoned, never wrote, and their sorrow had become like grief for the dead. It was almost unimaginable that I should add to their sadness by turning my back on their hopes and dreams. I felt like a wretch just for thinking of it, even as I struggled against their plans for me, longing to shape my own life, make my own decisions.

  I was thinking about my mother, and wondering whether she had ever had these restless longings, whether she had ever wanted more from life than her cosy corner of a little town where everyone knew everyone else, when the idea came to me. I had been trying to imagine my mother at my age, with her mother – my grandmother – and suddenly my mind flitted to the things my grandmother had left us. Nothing of very great value – books and ornaments and a few pieces of furniture – but most of it was still stored in the spare room that had once been M
agdalena’s, awaiting the day when my mother would go through it all and decide what to do with it. Suppose I put the five hundred euros into one of the boxes or vases? I might even volunteer to look through the things myself, and then I could ‘discover’ the money and hand it over to my mother.

  The more I thought about the idea, the more foolproof it seemed. The momentary gloom which had hung over me began to lift; the guilt that had been seeping through me was dissipated by the prospect of doing something which would thrill my mother for once. Look what Steffi’s found, she would say. Thank goodness she thought to go through all those old things. And she would hug me and say, Now we can finally replace that old coffee machine.

  I bounced along over the cobblestones with my bag swinging from my shoulder and my mind full of joyous images. Let the long-term problems wait. For once I would make my parents happy. And even better, tomorrow I was going to meet Kai von Jülich.

  I gave a sigh of delight so audible that a woman walking her dachshund gave me a second look. Kai von Jülich was going to pick me up. He might infuriate the neighbours by driving that scarlet sports car through the Werther Tor, the great medieval gateway at the north end of Bad Münstereifel – a route that was strictly deliveries-only for most of the time – and parking it right outside the bakery, where everyone would see it. Or – delicious thought – he might come and fetch me on foot, and we would stroll through the cobbled streets hand in hand, Kai leaning close to me every so often to whisper some intimate phrase, while every woman under twenty-five in the town fumed with jealousy.

  Optimism sprang up inside me like fireweed burgeoning on scorched ground. In the bright morning light it was impossible to believe that Kai’s invitation had anything to do with Rote Gertrud, or with that dank and horrible ruin in the woods. Kai had simply looked at me and seen something new. Perhaps the fact that I had been waiting for him to speak to me had worked its own magic. Perhaps – and this thought was such an enormity that I hardly dared confess it even to myself – he had wanted to ask me out for a long time and had never dared.

  If something as fabulous as this could happen, anything could happen, I thought to myself. Perhaps the confidence that always seemed to radiate from other people was not some impossibly unattainable gift but something I could learn to have myself. Maybe I had always had the power within me – I had just never known it.

  When I got on to the bus I astonished the bus driver with a cheery Guten Morgen instead of scuttling past him with my head down, as I would normally have done. I settled myself in a window seat and watched the streets and then the fields drift past and my heart was light; I felt like singing.

  Anything can happen, I thought to myself. Even the prospect of a day at college studying bakery techniques failed to affect my mood. Things are going to change, I told myself. It’s already started.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was during that bus journey that I made up my mind. I think it was the moment when the bus turned ponderously into the road where the college stood, a moment that always made my heart sink, as though I were being driven up to Castle Dracula in a horse-drawn carriage. It was not so much the actual studying itself that I dreaded; it was the fact that every day spent learning the science of baking and the properties of half a dozen different types of flour was another link in the chain shackling me to Bad Münstereifel. Once I started work at the bakery full-time, I would never get away. A family bakery is open six days a week nearly all year round and you are up half the night preparing the day’s baking, which means early nights every night, forever. What I had told Julius about being too tired to sing for him was based on truth. If I took over the bakery the only music I would be producing at night would be snores.

  There must be some way to change this, I thought. Some way to make my life my own without hurting anyone. I have to try at least. I stared at the facade of the college as it came into view. I can’t go on like this forever. Better to sort it out now than hurt them later, when it’s too late for them to make other plans.

  The morning dragged by. I felt as though I had been booked in for a risky operation: I dreaded the discussion that would inevitably come, but I could hardly wait to get it over with. I knew there was no point trying to talk to my parents while the bakery was still open, so with difficulty I made myself wait for supper time that evening. By then I was fizzing with so much suppressed tension that it was a wonder sparks didn’t come arcing out of my fingertips as I set the table.

  My father looked tired when he came to supper. In the yellow light of the glass lampshade which hung low over the table his face looked lined and pouchy. The white in his hair was no longer just a dusting of flour from his day’s work, I realized with a pang. My father was getting old; in a few years he would be sixty.

  My mother had kicked off the shoes with the edelweiss flowers on the toes and slipped on some ancient Birkenstocks, but she was still wearing her green dirndl. I hardly ever saw her in anything else. Max’s mother actually wore jeans on occasion, although admittedly they were dazzling white ones usually teamed with high-heeled sandals. I couldn’t imagine my mother wearing anything like that. I suspected that when she died she would like to be buried wearing that dirndl. She was practically married to the bakery, I thought.

  I looked from one tired face to the other and my heart misgave me. Could I really tell them that I didn’t want to continue with my bakery training? The voices of self-doubt and fear started buzzing insistently in my head: You can’t do it to them. You’ll break their hearts. You can’t do it.

  You have to, I flung back at them. It will be worse if you don’t do anything now. If you say you’re not taking over the bakery when Dad’s sixty-five, what’s he going to do then? Say it now.

  I thought of Kai von Jülich, of his fantastically handsome face, the way he had gazed at me over the counter, as though he would have liked to lay hands on me then and there. That was a miracle I had never hoped could come true, proof that life could be surprising sometimes, that things really could change. I cleared my throat.

  ‘Mum? Dad?’

  Now they were both looking at me. My father paused with a forkful of potato salad halfway to his mouth, a slightly ironic look on his face. What’s coming now? Perhaps he thought I was going to ask for a day off.

  ‘I’ve been thinking … ’

  For a moment I almost couldn’t do it, but then I made myself go on.

  ‘I really don’t want to go on with college. It’s not what I want to do.’ I looked at their blank faces. At least they weren’t screaming at me. I plunged on. ‘I’m really sorry, because I know you want me to take over the bakery, but I don’t think I can.’

  There was a pause which stretched out so long that I began to wonder if I was going crazy, if I had imagined the entire speech I had just made.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said my mother suddenly, her voice rising. ‘What do you mean, you don’t think you can?’

  ‘Irena,’ said my father, cutting across her and raising his hand as though trying to stop a flow of heavy traffic that threatened to mow him down. He put down his fork on the side of his plate and leaned towards me. ‘What’s brought this on?’

  Kai von Jülich asked me out, I thought, although I could not possibly say it. ‘Nothing brought it on,’ I said as firmly as I could, although even to my own ears my voice was wavering. ‘I’ve been thinking about it for – well, for a long time.’

  ‘And you didn’t say anything?’ shrilled my mother.

  ‘Irena,’ said my father again, and this time he gave her a significant look. He turned back to me. ‘Since when?’ he asked me. ‘A week? A month?’

  His voice was quite mild, but I began to suspect that I was treading on thin ice.

  ‘Since before I started college,’ I said, looking down at the plasticized tablecloth with its pattern of checks and flowers, unwilling to catch his eye.

  ‘Hmm.’ My father appeared to be thinking. He picked up the glass of Pils my mother had set out for h
im and took a swallow. ‘So what do you want to do if you don’t stay in the bakery?’

  I clasped my hands under the table, squeezing my fingers together, feeling the sharp edges of my nails digging into the skin. ‘I’d like to study music.’

  ‘Music?’ My father’s voice was still perfectly level and reasonable. My mother gave an indignant little snort, but if he heard it he gave no sign. ‘And what will you do if you study music?’

  ‘I want to sing,’ I said. I put my clasped hands on the table, feeling foolishly as though I were praying for mercy. ‘I know it’s not easy to make a living from it. That’s why I want to study, so I can teach music as well.’

  My father sighed. ‘Steffi, you graduated from Hauptschule.’

  ‘I know. I know it’s not enough –’

  ‘You’d need to pass the Abitur exam to study music.’

  I shook my head vigorously. ‘There are a few places that take you if you’ve graduated from Realschule.’

  ‘But you haven’t,’ my father pointed out mildly.

  ‘I could go back,’ I said. ‘I could try for the Abitur at night school. My school marks were good.’

  ‘Yes, for written work,’ said my father.

  He didn’t bother to say what we both knew, which was that I had ended up in the Hauptschule – the least academic type of German secondary school – because I had virtually never opened my mouth in class during my entire time in primary school. For four years I had flitted about the school like a little ghost, with my head down and my shoulders in a permanent hunch. When the class had had to memorize a poem to recite in front of the others I had clammed up, and stood in front of them with tight lips and tears trickling from the corners of my eyes. When the teachers spoke to me I looked at the floor. Even kindly Frau Richter, who ran the music classes, had been unable to give me a mark higher than a 3, because I never said anything in her lessons. At secondary school things had improved a little. By then, however, it was far too late to think of a place at a better school.