A Glittering Chaos

by de Nikolits, Lisa

  He hands the note to Melusine.

  Melusine, I know the boy will be better with you. I’m not going to come back ever, don’t worry. I know I don’t feel the things I should. I never have.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Melusine utters a wild howl and grabs Tommy who, not understanding that a good thing has happened, starts crying at the top of his lungs.

  Felix arrives back to find them both wailing, and she immediately assumes the worst and starts bawling too.

  “No, no,” Jürgen shouts at Felix and he shoves the note at her.

  She reads it and gives a piercing shriek of joy.

  Jürgen takes Tommy from Melusine and calms him down while Melusine and Felix grab each other and waltz around the café, laughing with happiness.

  When they finally calm down, Jürgen tells them more. “The Älterer Polizeikommissar and the public prosecutor have put the wheels in motion for the guardianship papers to be filed, so don’t worry about that. Everything will be legal and above board. Ach, poor little fellow, I hope he doesn’t hate her later, for leaving him. Things like this can leave real scars.”

  “Listen, my real father was a bastard,” Felix says. “I wish I’d had two guardian angels like me and Melu when I was young. He’ll thank his lucky stars he was rescued from El Cuckoo Burro, let me tell you. You can go through life mourning the crap that happened or you can take the gifts you’re given and this little fellow is too much of a happy lad to wallow in self-pity. He’s going to be just fine, won’t you schnookie?”

  “Oh, but wait,” Melusine asks “is Kateri or Angelika or whatever her name is, is she Hans’s sister?”

  She and Felix wait for the answer, staring at Klein. Even Tommy is still and quiet.

  “Yes. She’s his sister.”

  “My God,” Melusine says, sinking down into a chair. “Look at all the damage she caused. Yes, so she has schizoid personality disorder so maybe it’s not her fault but look at the fallout that one damaged person can cause. Jürgen, I meant to tell you, Jonas said Hans is getting worse. Can you ask Officer Richter to keep an eye on him? Apparently Hans is screaming at invisible ghosts during the day now too. I would hate any more innocent bystanders to be hurt in all of this.”

  “I’ll call him right now,” Jürgen says, taking out his phone.

  Felix is cooing at Tommy.

  “Felix,” Melusine says, “I’m sure it’s safe for us to leave Dieter’s place now, but will you come home with me? Will you stay with Tommy and me? We both need you. Gunther’s right, a new baby’s a big step at my age and I feel like we’re family, you and me.”

  Felix’s face lights up. “Yes! I would love nothing more in the whole world.” Then, “Who’s Gunther?”

  Melusine realizes she’s made a slip. “Just a friend, a penpal.”

  “I didn’t even know you were on Facebook,” Felix is disapproving, and Melusine laughs.

  “I’m not. We just email. Hey, we haven’t told Jonas the good news. I must phone him.”

  “She’s really Papa’s sister?” Jonas is incredulous. “Wow. How do we know she won’t come back?”

  “Because it would mean having to do all the things she hates,” Melusine is confident. “Family gatherings, communicating, pretending to care. She can’t find it within herself to care and she knows she’d be expected to. She can’t bear even the tiniest of responsibilities to the point where she can’t even handle a conversation. I bet she’s gone back to her town where she doesn’t even have to speak. She won’t want to come back.”

  “I must tell Nika, she’ll be so happy about Tommy. That’s great news. So are you going home then?”

  “Yes, and Felix is coming to stay with me from now on.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that. She’s family and anyway, you’ll need help to look after Tommy although we’ll help a lot too. Nika and I will come over later, we need to celebrate. And you do enough cooking, I’ll bring takeout. What do you feel like? Indian? Chinese? Pizza? Anything you like.”

  “You choose, Jonas, anything is fine. My goodness, I must say, I still feel very shocked by all of this, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Mami. The worst thing for me was that woman’s coldness. She really frightened me. She doesn’t care about anything. In a way, she doesn’t even care about herself the way other normal people do. She’s very beautiful and very crazy. I can’t stop seeing her face.”

  “Time will heal that. It’s a cliché but it’s true. And having a fantastic little baby to love will help us more than anything. What a gift, what a beautiful gift.”

  Gunther’s emailed response, later, is less than delighted and they get into a furious email argument. And what about us? Have you thought about that?

  Melusine responds without hesitation. Gunther, what us? Writing doesn’t mean a real relationship, look at Ingeborg and Paul. They wrote to each other all that time and yes, they loved each other but they couldn’t live together. While with Tommy, I have the chance to make a real difference to his life.

  Gunther is equally quick. Oh, for god’s sake, Ingeborg and Paul were crazy poets. You really think we should base the future of our relationship on them? Grow up, Melusine. Frankly, that’s just stupid.

  This time she takes a deep breath before replying. Gunther, you mean the world to me. You have, ever since we met. Let’s not say things in haste that we don’t mean, things that could ruin what we have. I care very deeply for you. You know that. It isn’t like I went out and decided to find myself a baby, he came to me. And I can’t say I am sorry he did. I love him. But I don’t want to lose you.

  There is no reply even though Melusine checks her email every fifteen minutes, uncaring if Felix notices.

  Oh Gunther, she wants to say, we were just a few days of magic. And you changed my life and brought me such joy and yes, we both had hopes, but what could we really expect? Yes, we both hoped, at least I did, but what could we expect? I love you, I admit it, I fell in love with you then and even more over this past year. I know I said writing isn’t real but it is, you helped me through tough times and brought me love every day when everything went wrong.

  Later that night, as she sits around the kitchen table with her family, with everyone laughing and joking except for her, she feels the sharp pain of heartbreak.

  Gunther had sent her one final message: You’re right, let’s not be hasty or hurt one another. I’m going to the Bahamas for a photoshoot for a few of days, it’ll be good for us to take a bit of time to think about things. I’ll email you when I get back.

  Melusine feels sick and she pushes her food around her plate.

  “Are you okay?” Nika asks and Melusine smiles at her.

  “Yes, dear, I’m fine. I look around at you lot and my heart is so happy. But I’m sad for the things that have passed, the things that will never return.”

  She knows they all think she’s talking about Hans and she doesn’t correct them.

  She looks at Jonas who’s holding fat little Tommy, their Buddha baby, and her spirits lift.

  “We have treasures and gifts in each other. I’m so grateful for this,” and she waves her hand around.

  Jonas comes and gives her a hug.

  “Everything will be fine from now. It’s been the hardest of years but the worst is behind us now.”

  She hopes he’s right.

  “Oh my,” she says. “I just remembered. We haven’t told Ana anything about this. It’s been our secret. She’s going to kill me.”

  The others laugh. “Oh yes, she will,” Jonas says. “A story this gigantic and you held out on her. Yes, Mami, you’re going to have to pay big time!”

  “Call her now and see if she can come over,” Felix says. She loves Ana. “Say there’s a lot of takeout food and that we have the most incredible story to tell her.”

  Melusine does exactly that and in less than fifteen minutes, Ana is knocking at the door.

  Six

  now the jour
ney is ending

  45.

  SEVERAL MONTHS LATER, it is early spring and the train pulls into the station. A tall woman with long dark wavy hair gets off and stands on the platform, looking around with uncertainty.

  She has no idea where to start. The town is small but to a stranger in search of one man, it is a vast landscape.

  She finds a cab driver who speaks English and asks him to take her to the part of town where the homeless men hang out.

  When the driver looks at her curiously, she tells him that she is looking for someone. “Hans Meier? Perhaps you’ve heard of him? There were lots of stories about him in the newspapers, a year or so ago.”

  “Everybody knows Hans. But what do you want with him? Rumour has it he’s very dangerous these days. He walks around screaming and trying to strangle ghosts.”

  “I believe I can help him.”

  “Do you want me to take you to meet his wife? She runs a local café near the university. She can tell you more about him.”

  “No, I just want to see him. Please. Take me there now.”

  The cab driver shrugs and takes her to the park. He points out Hans who is striding up and down, throwing his hands out in front of him and shouting.

  “Oh my. I wouldn’t have recognized him.”

  The driver glances in the rearview mirror. “When did you know him?”

  “I really thought I could help him,” she replies vaguely, not answering his question, “I really did. I can see that I’ll need some time to think about this,” she adds.

  “I told you, he’s in a bad way.”

  “Is there a fairly decent place to stay within walking distance of this park?” she asks, and he drops her off at a cheap but respectable hotel.

  “Thank you,” she says, paying him.

  “Lady, you want to be careful with Hans,” he calls out but she is walking up the steps, pulling her small piece of luggage on wheels and either she does not hear him or she chooses not to answer.

  The cab driver shrugs again and drives away, thinking about his mistress who is demanding that he leave his wife. Women.

  The Reverend Juditha Estima checks into the hotel and lets herself into her room.

  She pulls the curtains closed and does a long meditation for guidance.

  Although she firmly believes that no one person can save another, she cannot help but feel responsible for having played a part in Hans’s demise. She had understood that he was in pain but she had not acknowledged or seen the degree of vulnerability that lay beneath his organized exterior.

  After he stopped calling and seemingly vanished, she continued to focus her meditations and healing prayers on him. Having no way of contacting him, she searched the Internet, certain it was a fruitless enterprise and was horror-struck to read the news of what he had done to the schoolgirl as well as his subsequent homeless condition.

  Dismayed, she had tried, in the year that had passed, to find peace with what had happened but she could not let it go; she had to find Hans and try to help him.

  And she had been so confident in coming here, certain that she could bring him back from the brink but, having seen the degree of emotional erosion and the thorough decay of his sanity, she is less sure. Nevertheless, she has to try.

  She meditates for an hour, has a shower and then meditates again. Then she readies herself to leave. By now it is late, it is close to ten p.m., but she cannot wait until the morning; she feels that the time is right for her to see him now.

  She leaves, and quietly closes the door behind her.

  46.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Melusine and Felix are in the café, taking turns to feed Tommy who is ravenous.

  “You’d think we never feed him,” Felix says. “Our little butterball.” She wipes his chin and he beams at her.

  The door chimes, and Melusine looks up. The early morning breakfast rush has come and gone and she is surprised to see Jürgen Klein.

  “You should have let me know you were coming. I would have baked your favourites.”

  He shakes his head and she immediately knows that something is terribly wrong.

  “Hans?” she asks and he nods.

  Melusine sits down and Felix feeds Tommy quietly. They both wait.

  “I feel responsible,” Jürgen says. He looks haggard and tired. “I should have listened to my instincts and found a way to have him locked up. But he hadn’t committed any crimes, so I couldn’t but now, look what’s happened…”

  “Jürgen, just tell me, what has happened?”

  “Hans killed a woman,” he says, heavily, sitting down. “A woman named Juditha Estima, a Reverend from the Healing Lives Ministries. According to a cab driver who picked her up from the train station, she thought she could help Hans. He dropped her off at a hotel and then she must have gone to see Hans later.”

  “What? The Healing Lives Ministries? Where did she come from? Who is she really?” Melusine fires questions at Klein.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” Klein says, “but first you need to know that Hans is in hospital, in very bad shape, he most likely won’t make it.”

  He looks at Melusine and Felix. “Some kids walking through the park found them this morning on their way to school. Hans strangled Juditha Estima. He was sitting on the ground, rubbing her feet and singing to her. The kids phoned the cops.”

  “And he’s in hospital?” Melusine feels numb.

  “Yes. The Sisters of Mercy. He was half frozen to death himself. There was a cold snap last night and he wasn’t dressed for it. He’s got pneumonia and the prognosis isn’t good.”

  “Why was she here?” Melusine asks. “I don’t understand. What was she even doing here? He doesn’t have anything left to give her. I don’t understand.”

  “From what I gathered, from her sister who I spoke to, she felt very bad about having failed Hans,” Jürgen says. “Her sister said that Juditha was quite obsessed about what had happened to Hans and she wanted to try to fix things. She was convinced that she’d made things worse for him, and who knows, maybe she did, but she certainly did not deserve to die.”

  “So she came to try and help him? She really was trying to help him? Who’d ever had thought that? And now she’s paid with her own life.”

  Jürgen nods.

  “What will happen to her now?”

  “Her sister’s coming to get her and she’ll take the body back home to the States.”

  “She came all this way to try to help Hans? Oh my god.” Melusine’s eyes fill with tears. “Is there no end to this affliction? When will it end?”

  “Perhaps it’s ended now,” Jürgen says gently. “Perhaps this is the end.”

  “I must see Hans. Can you take me to the hospital? Felix, will you be all right here by yourself?”

  “Of course, yes. If I need to, I’ll call Emily to help me with the café. Melu, shouldn’t you call Jonas?”

  “Oh yes, of course, thank you, Felix. I’m not thinking straight at all.”

  She calls Jonas and tells him his father is in hospital and asks him to meet her there. She will tell him the rest in person.

  An hour later, she and Jonas are staring at the man who used to be Hans Meier. He is breathing with the help of equipment and bears no resemblance to his former self.

  Jonas is calm; he stands with his arm around Melusine who feels as if she can hardly breathe.

  “We don’t think he’s got long to live,” a doctor informs them. “His body’s in such a weakened state.”

  “We’ll stay however long we need to,” Melusine says and she puts her hand out and touches the sheet.

  She hasn’t yet told Jonas about Juditha. “Oh Jonas,” she says, “I should tell you…”

  “I know, Mami.” He gets her a chair. “I know about the woman from the Healing Lives Ministries.”

  “But how?”

  He shrugs. “Richter told me. He called me this morning. I was trying to think how to tell you but then Jürgen arrived at you first. And I’
m glad he did. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  That explains Jonas’s unearthly calm; he had already known the whole story.

  “Jonas, are you okay? I’m sorry, I’ve been so selfish, only thinking of me.”

  He sighs. “Papa died to me the day he attacked Kateri. He tried to kill a woman and that’s when I knew my father was gone.”

  “And yet I only know it now. I guess I was waiting for him to come back all this time, even though I never realized it. We’ll have a proper burial. Your father and I bought a plot in the cemetery years ago.”

  Jonas is surprised.

  “Your father,” Melusine says and her voice gets caught in her throat, “used to be the most thoughtful man. He always used to think consequentially, about everything.” She is crying now and Jonas hugs her.

  “Can I get you a nice hot coffee?” he asks. “Let me get you something. I’ve got to go and update Nika, she’s in the waiting room.”

  “Coffee would be good,” Melusine says, not really caring.

  Jonas leaves. In reality, he is the furthest thing from calm; he is in a cold sweat and he is sick with fear but he cannot let Melusine see.

  Because it is not true. He had not learned about Juditha Estima from Richter.

  For some time, Jonas had been paying Kristian, one of Hans’s homeless friends, to keep an eye on Hans and to phone him if the situation changed or if anything went wrong.

  And, the previous night, Kristian had phoned to say that a woman was trying to talk to Hans; a tall woman with dark hair, that he had never seen before. Jonas had told Kristian that he should be there in a matter of minutes and he had rushed over to the park.

  He dragged the woman away from Hans and tried to talk some sense into her but when he learned that she was from the Healing Lives Ministries, he was filled with violent anger.