Strangers on a Bridge

by Louise Mangos

  I was momentarily confused.

  ‘Oh, you mean burned that bridge; that’s the saying in English.’

  I wondered if he had left his sister and son a note. And I found it ironic that a bridge had found its way into the conversation. He needed professional help straight away. I was hoping not everything would be closed on a Sunday.

  ‘No, I will not stay there,’ he said again as I glanced at his face. ‘But it is okay, don’t worry. You are helping. Thank you, Alice.’

  It felt strange to hear him say my name for the first time. My hands gripped the wheel a little harder.

  In the neighbouring village, I pulled into a parking space in front of Aegeri Sports, where we hired the boys’ ski gear each winter.

  ‘Wait here. I’ll be a moment,’ I told Manfred as I climbed out of the car.

  The tiny suboffice of the Zuger Polizei was situated between the sports shop and a tanning salon. But as this was Sunday, as expected, it was inevitably closed. The hours were marked on the police station’s door like a grocer’s: Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons between two and four, Saturday mornings from nine until eleven. It might as well have said Citizens of Switzerland: criminal activity and social needs should be limited to these times.

  I glanced at Manfred, reflections of trees streaking light and dark across the windscreen, obscuring my view. He leaned forward, unsure what we were doing here as the police station’s sign wasn’t visible from where he sat. I looked away quickly, chewing my cheek. I realised I should have dialled 117 from home, but I hadn’t been confident enough to explain my situation in German to the emergency services.

  Anxiety tumbled my gut. Mostly because of Manfred’s potential reaction if I turned him over to the police. I was sure he wouldn’t be happy about that. I resigned myself to driving him to the hospital twenty minutes away in the valley.

  That would mean twenty more minutes in the car with him.

  Chapter Five

  As I climbed back into the car Manfred looked at me curiously. I started the engine and drove off without telling him why we had stopped. He didn’t notice the sign for the police station as we pulled away.

  ‘Manfred, you really need to talk to a medical professional, a psychologist,’ I said.

  ‘But you are a mother too. You will know the problems families have. You will understand. I was serious before when I said I think you can help.’

  ‘Is this only to do with your family? Your late wife? Your son?’ I asked gently.

  I’d crossed the line, asked the question that had been in my mind since I first saw him in his business suit on the bridge. Why would he be dressed like that on a Sunday?

  ‘There is a reason we met today, Alice. I realise that now. There is a reason fate chose you to save me on that bridge. We have a connection. I know you feel it.’

  I forced my gaze forward for fear of giving a false message with my eyes.

  ‘I know you’d like to help,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘I can’t help you, Manfred. I’m not a doctor or a nurse or a person remotely qualified to help you in your situation,’ I lied. ‘I can barely help my own kids when their team loses a game of football.’

  As the road curved down towards the valley, I shifted in my seat when I realised our journey would take us over the Tobel Bridge. At the next junction, I took the left fork without saying anything to Manfred, retracing our bus journey back through the other village, a minor detour from the main road to Zug. To avoid the place Manfred had stood and contemplated his demise only hours before. Despite seldom finding myself behind the wheel of our car, I felt I never wanted to set eyes on the Tobel Bridge again.

  ‘Manfred, you need to talk to someone in your own language. There will be people at the hospital who can help you deal with the conflict going on in your mind and your heart. I cannot help you. I cannot.’

  ‘You told me you’d thought about taking your life too, once. Do you think you would still do that if your husband and sons didn’t want you to be a part of their lives any more?’

  ‘No, of course not!’ I said spontaneously, thinking what the hell kind of question is that? ‘I’m not the same person I was when I was a teenager.’

  ‘But you don’t know until you’ve been there,’ said Manfred, looking away from me to the passing suburbs of Zug.

  Why did I suddenly feel he had turned the tables, was interrogating me somehow? Testing me. Making me say things I couldn’t qualify. My agitation increased as I realised he must be playing mind games with himself after a decision he couldn’t unmake.

  What would the scenario have been if I had arrived ten minutes later? I put my hand to my mouth.

  Manfred put his hand on my arm, and my heart thumped.

  ‘It’s okay, Alice. It’s okay,’ he said, as though I was the one he had just rescued.

  The clicking indicator echoed in the car as I turned towards the hospital. I shook my head, to try to shift the image of a body dressed in Hugo Boss, sprawled under the bridge, from my mind.

  I drove past the visitors’ car park and drew up next to an ambulance near the entrance to the emergency unit. I undid my seatbelt and was about to open the door, but Manfred hadn’t moved.

  ‘Please do this for me, Manfred. Please.’

  I felt like I was bargaining with him to humour me. I couldn’t help thinking I no longer had any control of this situation. He sighed, unclicked his seatbelt, opened the door and stood beside the car waiting for me as I took the key and grabbed my wallet from the console.

  At the reception, the glass window framing the front desk displayed a disorganised array of notes. Post-its and mini-posters rendered the administrators almost invisible to visitors, furtively encouraging patients to take their emergencies elsewhere.

  There was a row of plastic tube chairs lined up against the wall. The waiting area was empty.

  ‘I don’t need to be here, Alice,’ he said. ‘We’re wasting these hard-working nurses’ time.’

  I rolled my eyes, something I did at least once every day with my kids.

  ‘Did you forget where we’ve just come from?’ I whispered.

  His eyes widened, glistening behind his lenses, and his brows furled into an expression of hurt. I took his elbow as an apology and led him to one of the chairs, where he sat down and crossed an ankle over his knee.

  The receptionist gave me the silent answer of a horseshoe smile when I asked if she spoke English. I sighed. I had no idea what the word for suicide was in German. I had visions of a macabre series of charades. I tried my halting German.

  The nurse looked blankly at me until I mentioned the Töbelbrücke. At that point she meerkatted to attention with a sharp intake of breath. She knew the bridge. It was notorious.

  ‘This man needs a psychiatrist, a psychologist, someone to talk to.’

  The nurse explained that psychiatric help wouldn’t be available on a Sunday, but she was now aware that Manfred genuinely needed care.

  As he wasn’t willing to cooperate, she asked me to fill in some details on a form. She slapped a pen down on top of a clipboard, and slid it across the counter. I reluctantly pulled the board towards me. The pen in my hand hovered over the form, my mind in a jumble, trying to comprehend the German words.

  ‘What’s your name, Manfred? Your surname?’ I asked.

  ‘Sir…?’ Manfred immediately swapped his belligerence for confusion.

  ‘Your surname, your family name,’ I repeated.

  ‘Guggenbuhl,’ he said sullenly.

  How the hell do I spell that?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I explained to the nurse. ‘It’s difficult for me to do this, as it’s not my mother tongue… I don’t even know this man. Can you help him?’

  She sighed, but to my relief took the clipboard away. She asked for my personal details in the event of a police follow-up. She looked at my details on the paper I pushed across the counter.

  ‘If you have a mobile number, can we have that too?’
r />   I nodded, scribbled down the number, and I was suddenly free to go. The last of my charity had long since expired. I wanted to go home.

  Manfred stood up as I made to leave, but I seated him emphatically with a downward motion of my hand, the mistress trying to regain control of her dog.

  ‘You’re in better hands now,’ I said sympathetically.

  Manfred stared at my hands.

  ‘I think you do know me. You are the key. My Retterin. My saviour. You can help me,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Someone here can help you much more than I can, Manfred.’

  He held out his palm, and I suddenly felt bad about leaving him. I hesitated and shook his hand. Since our hug in the porch outside our building, I wasn’t sure I should touch him again, not trusting either of our reactions.

  The seal of a handshake put official finality on the departure. But as I was about to pull away, Manfred brought his other hand to the outside of mine.

  ‘You will understand, Alice.’

  As he smiled at me with what I assumed was gratitude, a flush tingled at my throat.

  The yawn of space that opened between us as I turned to go was both cleansing and disturbing. Manfred smiled resignedly at me from his chair as I backed out of the sliding doors of the emergency room.

  I walked back to the car, wondering what Simon would think about my experience, but more than anything anticipating a cup of tea and a hot shower.

  Scalding water pounded the back of my neck and shoulders. The crusted salt of dried sweat dissolved into the shower basin. I hung my head and let my arms flop, enjoying the release of tension, inhaling the whorls of steam rising up around me.

  I wondered again what had driven Manfred to the point where he was ready to jump. I’d felt down at times. Dealing with the isolation of being an only child, that stupid mistake as a teenager when my attempted suicide was considered an attention-seeking exercise, a bout of postnatal blues, or the loneliness I’d felt when Simon started travelling, and the kids were still so young, and I had no one to talk to for weeks on end. But even under the worst of circumstances, such as those Manfred had hypothesised about, I couldn’t do it. Because of the shame, the selfishness. All those hurt and confused souls wondering if it was their fault. The mess I had tried to convey to Manfred he would leave behind. I couldn’t burden anybody with that. And jumping off that godforsaken bridge? It would be the worst possible scenario for me, with my inherent fear of heights. It was either the ultimate thrill or the ultimate nightmare. And neither was plausible in my world.

  I closed my eyes, knowing I was wasting water, but unable to move from the ecstasy of cleansing. I smiled as I thought of Simon, who would soon be home from his ride. From the start we’d been the perfect fit, the perfect couple. Although we stood by our individual opinions, we both ultimately wished for the same things for the family, and were fulfilled by what life had to offer us. My forced independence in our foreign world had made our love stronger.

  Simon would be preparing for another round of business trips over the next few months as his new project developed, but I felt balanced and content in my foreign space now. Although I thought I could relate to Manfred’s despair, I couldn’t think of anything that would drive Simon and me apart, and I couldn’t imagine what had happened within Manfred’s family to lead him to that bridge.

  Chapter Six

  I was still drying my hair as they came piling through the door, and the boisterous presence of cherished humanity made me smile. My family was home. I could sense their body heat spreading to various rooms; smells, noises and movements as familiar as my own. I headed downstairs and wandered into the kitchen where Oliver was making himself a jam sandwich.

  ‘Hey, sorry, guys, I know I haven’t been here all day, but I’ve had quite an experience,’ I said, kissing the top of Oliver’s head.

  ‘This better be good,’ Simon said, not unkindly, as he came through from the sitting room still in his bike gear. He reached into the fridge for a beer. ‘Saracens are beating Sale. I missed the first half, and they’re just about to restart.’

  Simon’s Sunday afternoons watching cable, his reward for the morning’s workout, were only satisfying if a rugby match was airing.

  ‘I stopped a man jumping off the Tobel Bridge this morning,’ I said. ‘He was about to commit suicide.’

  Oliver gaped at me with his eyebrows raised, and a dollop of strawberry jam dropped onto the kitchen counter.

  ‘Wow, that’s a pretty impressive excuse,’ said Simon. ‘Where’s the guy now? Floating down the Lorze?’

  Behind Simon, Oliver giggled.

  ‘Come on, I’m serious. This isn’t a joke,’ I said. ‘It was scary. I kind of took him under my wing. Eventually took him to the hospital.’

  I was about to say more, indignation fading at the lightness of Simon’s comment. I could see in his eyes that he didn’t want to discuss suicide in front of the children, but his words only emphasised how confused I felt at that moment. Had I done all I could to help?

  Simon placed his beer bottle on the kitchen counter and put his arms around me.

  ‘Are you okay, Al? I guess that messed up your Sunday,’ he said quietly.

  I nodded silently and leaned my head against his shoulder as he rubbed my back. I closed my eyes and breathed in his familiar musky smell.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on, a nice cuppa will do it,’ said Simon, sounding vaguely like my late mother. ‘We wondered where you’d gone with the car,’ he continued, taking a mug out of the cupboard and snapping open the caddy for a teabag. And then, as an afterthought: ‘If you were at the Tobel Bridge, how come you came all the way back here to drive him to the hospital? How come you didn’t just get on a bus down to town?’

  Of course, this is what I should have done – I realised that now. My initial joy at regrouping with the family had turned from annoyance that Simon had no idea of the situation I’d found myself in, to a pang of guilt for the anguish I might cause him if he knew how much Manfred had latched on to me. I glanced at Oliver. It certainly wasn’t a conversation to be had in front of the boys.

  ‘I don’t know really. All I could think about was keeping warm, getting some dry clothes, but not leaving the poor sod alone,’ I said, watching Simon pour boiling water into my mug. ‘I made him wait outside in the porch.’

  ‘The usual good Samaritan,’ chirped Leon as he joined us in the kitchen, the main reason I’d been on the bridge already forgotten. ‘We had to walk back from the Freys, Mum. You had the car,’ he continued with a pubescent whine.

  ‘Which doesn’t happen often, young man. It wouldn’t hurt you to walk home more – it’s hardly a Himalayan expedition,’ I replied in mock anger, ruffling his hair and lightly squeezing his shoulder.

  We had reverted to the usual family banter. Simon would undoubtedly ask me later to elaborate, but for now I needed a little time to work out why I didn’t feel good about the afternoon’s outcome.

  After dinner, I stood at the sink absently washing a pan. The kitchen at the rear of the house offered a view across the garden to the barn and a track to the farm on the right. I could see the car parked in the garage, engine ticking away after its day of labour. I remembered I’d left my mobile phone sitting on the dashboard.

  Someone coming along the hallway broke into my thoughts. Seconds later, Oliver came in, cupping a handful of pencil shavings for the bin. I slid the cupboard under the sink open with my foot, my hands immersed in suds. Oliver attempted to deposit his stash, most of it fluttering to the floor. His fingers were dangerously smudged with pencil graphite.

  I pointed to his hands ‘Wash, please!’

  Oliver dipped his hands into the sink, and before I could protest ‘Not here’ he asked, ‘Mum, why would someone want to kill themselves? What happened to that man that he wanted to die? Do you think he lost a pet or something?’

  I smiled. My youngest child was growing up, but I still clung with maternal pleasure to his naivety.
/>   Oliver had always been my little saviour. The family all knew how important my running was to me. I wasn’t winning county competitions any more, but it was a part of my life not even motherhood could diminish. They could forgive a few dust balls under the furniture for the peace of mind my sport brought me. It’s my drug, I used to say. I need my fix. Physically, it certainly was a fix, the feelgood effect of endorphins kicking in as I arrived home sweaty and pleasantly spent. After heated and fruitless discussions about homework, school problems, weekend activities or helping around the house, Oliver would occasionally bring my running shoes wordlessly to the kitchen, breaking the tension. The supplier bringing my elixir in a syringe.

  At eleven years old, Oliver was too young to have experienced heartbreak, or the hormone imbalances that could lead to dark despondency. And a depression that made someone question the worth of their own life? Hard to explain to a child that it was probably all to do with chemicals. Despite the textbooks, I had a hard time understanding it myself.

  ‘People who want to kill themselves have a sickness in their heads, in their minds,’ I said, drying a pan and clattering it into a cupboard. ‘It’s like a terrible sadness, and often there’s no explanation, which makes the sadness harder to understand.’

  Oliver cocked his head to one side, thinking. As he was about to ask another question, the phone rang. He left the kitchen distractedly, returning to his room. I answered the phone. A friend of Leon’s needed to check up on a homework assignment due at school after the weekend. Exasperating teenagers! It’s a bit late to be rushing through it now.

  ‘Leon!’ I shouted up the stairs, flipping the tea towel over my shoulder. ‘Ben’s on the phone!’

  ‘I’ll take it up here!’ he shouted faintly.

  I waited until I heard their voices connect in Swiss German on the bedroom extension before placing the kitchen phone back in its cradle. I hoped at least he had remembered the assignment.

  I suddenly felt very tired. I gathered a bag of rubbish to take out to the communal bins and fetched my mobile phone from the dash of the car. I closed the garage door and walked slowly back to the house, continuing up the stairs of our duplex to start my evening ritual. Simon was at the computer in the office, fine-tuning some last-minute details of the presentation he was to give in London the following week. I could see my eldest son hunched over his messy desk, scratching his head with confused irritation. This gave away the fact that he had indeed forgotten the assignment.