She came dangerously close to me and my nightmares. She worked me into a white-hot rage. She made me hate Aman for giving me a stupid ultimatum and leaving me alone with her. For demanding more from me than I was ready to give just then. I hated the tug on my heartstrings when, before I left the apartment in the morning, I found her headband with the little stars on it on the edge of the bath; hated the sight of her lonely trainers in the hall, which made me sad. I hated the fact that she had started to make coffee for me in the mornings, and pretended this was the result of a misunderstanding; I hated the fact that she fetched the post from the pigeonhole downstairs and weeded out the junk mail.
I got to know her many tics: she had to avoid stepping on patterned paving stones, and always had to step in puddles. As soon as a traffic light changed from red to amber she would count to three, and was happy if it turned green just then, precisely then. She hummed a song whenever it started to rain. She put her hands over her ears when someone rang the doorbell. She did three press-ups when she was frightened of something and didn’t want to admit it.
But I had now recognised the rational pattern behind her seemingly irrational actions: these little tricks, which helped her to deal with day-to-day life, protected her from a permanent or imagined threat — and this threat was nothing less than Death. She believed she could protect herself from him, outwit him with these small actions. The doorbell might mean bad news. The traffic lights changing too quickly or too slowly might cause an accident. The colour red in food might provoke a calamity. Rain might lead to a storm and someone could be struck by lightning, and so on and so on. I didn’t want to rack my brains over why a twelve-year-old girl should be living in permanent fear of death. But I was already doing it.
With all her neuroses, how she got through a school day with children her own age was a mystery to me. She never mentioned any friends, classmates, neighbours’ children she had any connection with, or whom she was missing. I was taken aback by her disarming honesty and simultaneously overwhelmed by her strong value judgements, these highly developed structures in her head. The grown-up way she had of seeing things in definite terms. Dividing them into a clear yes or no. There was never a maybe with her. Never any indecision or hesitation. What she wanted and what she didn’t always seemed crystal clear. As if she had an infallible plan, invisible to others, which she had to follow with meek compliance. A vision, a mission in life. Only when she danced, when she moved, were all these compulsions, all these bad omens, rituals, and preventative measures forgotten. Then she didn’t care that it might rain, or that she might fall over and hurt herself; she wasn’t interested in whether a calamity had been set in motion, whether death was lying in wait for her. She was free, relaxed. She was herself, without her fears and compulsions. When she danced, she was the sole ruler in a realm of open spaces and possibilities.
*
There was a thunderstorm outside. I couldn’t sleep. I kept turning from one side to the other. I missed Aman, and admitting it required no less of an effort than finding sleep. I got up, threw the window open, let in the rain-soaked air, lay down again. I remembered his hands, his way of looking at me as if there were no tomorrow, as if we were the last survivors of the whole human race. I remembered the quiet, tender months when he first arrived and stayed. How good and peaceful it had been, before he decided to present me with crazy decisions, knowing full well that I wouldn’t be capable of making them, that it would mean a hopeless ending.
I gave a start when I saw her standing in the doorway, wearing an old t-shirt of mine with a picture of two kangaroos on it. I hadn’t heard her come into my room; she usually knocked when she wanted something. She looked frightened and pressed herself against the door. Her eyes were wide, she had her hands over her ears, and her chin was quivering — as it always did when she was about to burst into tears. I leaped up, switched on the little table lamp, and went over to her.
‘Brilka, what’s wrong?’
‘The thunder …’ she whispered.
For the first time, she allowed me to put my arms around her. I led her back to my bed and lay down beside her. She pressed herself to me. It seemed that none of her secret rituals were any use against thunder.
‘What are you frightened of? Nothing’s going to happen to you. We’re safe here.’
‘But you’re frightened, too.’
‘Frightened? Of the lightning?’
‘No, not the lightning. Other things.’
‘Of course; sometimes I get scared, too.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of things not working out the way I planned. That people who are important to me are unhappy. That someone might hurt me. That something will be out of my control.’
‘Have I hurt you?’
‘No, you haven’t hurt me.’
She clung to me with all her might.
‘Did my mother hurt you?’
‘We hurt each other. I’m afraid it’s bound to hurt a bit, when you live with someone.’
‘And does it hurt now?’
‘No.’
‘But why? You’re still alive, aren’t you?’
‘Not really, it would seem.’
She fell asleep with her head under the covers, her arm across my stomach. I watched over her all night.
*
We set out for home again when it began to get dark. I had taken Brilka to a summer party thrown by Caro and her new flame out in Brandenburg, but I wasn’t keen to spend the night. Brilka had clearly felt at ease there, speaking English all afternoon, and was now dozing beside me. I was taking the back roads, as there had been reports of congestion on the motorway, and suddenly there it was, standing in front of me. A deer in the middle of the road. I braked, I sounded the horn, but it stayed there, rooted to the spot, blinded by my headlights. It stared at us unwaveringly, as if trying to warn us about something. We came closer and closer; I resisted my impulse to suddenly wrench the steering wheel round and stepped even harder on the brake. Brilka didn’t make a sound; like me, she was staring in fascination at the deer. I had the feeling that everything was happening in slow motion. The deer was beautiful. Lithe and wheat-coloured. It must still have been very young; its ears were beautifully shaped and unusually large. Its brown eyes with their long lashes made me feel humble.
I wondered what it must be thinking as I clutched the steering wheel and hoped to come to a stop in time without hurting the animal. In that moment its safe getaway seemed to me an existential thing. As if its survival also determined my own. And at that moment, as we came to a halt with a final, violent jerk that flung us both forwards, it bounded away and vanished into the darkness of the field.
My knees were trembling as I staggered out of the car. Brilka was still sitting motionless, not making a sound. I looked at the spot where the deer had vanished, but it was impossible to see anything in the darkness. I leaned on the bonnet and lit a cigarette. In an instant, it broke over me: I was overcome by a convulsive fit of weeping, there was no holding it back. I was choking, and there was nothing I could do about it. I just heard the car door opening and Brilka’s hurried footsteps; I felt her arms enfolding me. I felt that I was no longer capable of resisting her. I gave in, sank into her slender arms, pressed myself to her with all my despair, buried my head in the crook of her neck. We sat down at the side of the road, and she took my hand in hers and waited until I was able to think again, to drive, to live.
‘Fine. I’ll drive you. I’ll take you to Tbilisi. I can’t go on like this! You, you … you make me … We’ll go to Vienna first, and from there to Georgia. We’ll drive the whole bloody way! That’s fine with me! It has to stop. I don’t want this. I can’t do it any more!’
That was what I promised her, once I had pulled myself together a little and got behind the wheel again. If I had been expecting to hear a cry of delight from her, a little thank you at least, I was deceiving mysel
f. She said nothing for the rest of the journey; it felt as if she was almost disappointed.
*
On a humid, sticky day in July we packed everything into the car and set off.
I had spent two days studying the maps with her, and now she was desperate to prove to me that she could be a good navigator. The day before we left, I fought my desire to call Aman. I saw on the tour plan that they would just have arrived in Bern. But what was I supposed to say to him? That I missed him, that I was sleeping in his ragged vest, that I was drinking from his teacup, that I was about to take the most ludicrous trip of my life, that I hated nothing more than having to make promises, that I hoped to find another, better ending for Brilka.
I didn’t call.
The first stop was to be Vienna. I felt strangely transparent and excited at the same time. I was looking forward to the journey, but not to getting there. On the way, Brilka talked incessantly about Kitty Jashi, describing her music to me, telling me about her life. She analysed her albums, played me her songs, pointed out particular nuances and details of the composition. On the way to Vienna there was an apocalyptic rainstorm and many hours on the motorway. There were Kitty Jashi’s albums and Brilka’s euphoric voice. There were plans and speculation about the days to come. We stopped at service stations that stank of greasy food, argued about the length of our breaks and about my desire to smoke one more cigarette. We played silly word games. In between, we sat in silence, or she fell into a restless sleep, and I had to keep looking at her out of the corner of my eye to reassure myself that, even in sleep, there wasn’t anything she needed. There was us, and there was the past I was driving back to — though perhaps it held a future for Brilka, too.
There were the two of us, and with every kilometre I put behind us everything else disappeared, shearing off from me as if it had never existed. As if it had been my destiny to become her driver, driving her into the life she was pointing to with her long forefinger.
We reached Vienna. The city gave me the impression that it had witnessed something terrible and had been holding its breath in terror ever since, letting no fresh air into its lungs.
Brilka’s euphoria grew ever greater. We left the car outside the little hotel we had chosen and took the tram into the centre. She danced and hopped along in front of me, rubbing her hands, preparing herself for reaching her great goal, hardly believing that she’d really done it, that her plan was really going to come off. As the two of us searched the city map for Fred Lieblich’s address, I asked her in passing where she’d got it from. She had just called the foundation, she replied. In London. She had told them several times who she was and what she wanted. She had written, too, letters and emails. And eventually they had passed one of her letters or emails on to Vienna and Fred Lieblich had replied to her. With an envelope containing only a slip of paper with the address. ‘That was all. She didn’t write anything else. Can you imagine? She wanted me to come!’ And with that, Brilka knew she had to go to Vienna.
I concealed from her the fact that her doggedness, her persistence, and the determination with which she had acted were qualities that thoroughly impressed me.
She jumped over every second paving stone, her rucksack bouncing from side to side on her back, a tortoise whose shell had grown too big. Her hair had grown and no longer stood up from her head in hedgehog spikes. She was wearing my flip-flops, and her long, grass-stalk legs moved purposefully; unlike her upper body, they seemed to have a solid anchor, as if they always knew where they had to carry their owner. I couldn’t get enough of watching her. I walked a little way behind her, to keep her in my line of vision.
We had arrived at the Naschmarkt. She checked every street sign against her map, wanting to be sure that she would find the right house, that she would soon reach her destination. The nearer we came to her goal, the more taciturn, pensive, edgy she became. I followed her, trusting that she would find what she was looking for. We stopped outside an apartment building with balconies supported by muscular Titans’ arms. She read the nameplates with concentration, and her face lit up. She pressed the buzzer.
The door opened at once, as if our arrival was expected, and we walked up a marble staircase. On the top floor a broad wooden door stood open, awaiting us. We went in cautiously, Brilka letting me go first. As we entered the apartment, I was hit by the smell of fresh paint.
‘Hello?’ I called into the empty rooms, and heard my voice echo back from several sides at once. The parquet floor was freshly polished, the walls newly painted; the apartment must have just been completely refurbished. An elegant middle-aged woman wearing a dark blue suit and a pearl necklace appeared in the doorway, but her artificial smile soon turned to confusion.
‘Oh! I thought Mr and Mrs Lambert were due now. I must have made some sort of mistake with my appointments. I take it you’re here to view the apartment?’
Even though Brilka spoke no German and couldn’t understand the estate agent, she grasped the situation at once, and I could literally see the disappointment spread across her face. It was as if she were shrinking, pulling her shoulders further and further in. She started to slide her feet back and forth on the polished parquet beside me.
‘Oh, I’m sorry to disturb you — we’re actually here to see Frau Lieblich. We thought …’ I broke off, let my eyes wander searchingly around the apartment’s light, spacious rooms.
‘Frau Lieblich died just over a month ago. I am sorry. I’ve been brought in to show the apartment to interested parties. I’m the estate agent.’ And she handed me a business card, as if trying to interest me in taking a closer look at the place. ‘We’re selling, not letting it,’ she added, with her artificial sales smile.
Brilka had understood the news of the death, and immediately turned and left the room. I didn’t know what to say, but the estate agent jumped in first: ‘Were you related to Frau Lieblich?’
‘No. At least, not directly.’
‘A very headstrong lady. Over eighty, but so young in her mind, and —’ she had to search for the right word for a long time ‘— right to the end, how can I put it, very sharp-tongued: really, she had a mouth on her, you might say. But I was glad to have her as a customer, even if she could be very, well, headstrong.’
‘Had she always lived in this apartment?’
‘Since she moved here from London, yes. I sold her this apartment all those years ago. She had very particular ideas about what she wanted, and she wasn’t disappointed when she came here. She saw the place and stayed. And up there, you see the stairs there, it’s a kind of maisonette, she had her studio up there. But she hardly used it in the final years of her life. Her joints were too bad.’
‘Did she have relatives? Did someone take care of her?’
‘No, no relatives. She didn’t like anyone getting too close to her, anyway. She didn’t have much contact with the neighbours, either. But she certainly wasn’t lonely. No, people like her know exactly what to do with their time.’
‘What about the proceeds?’
She eyed me mistrustfully for a moment, but when I pointed out the probable absence of relatives, she decided to answer me after all.
‘Her will says the proceeds from the sale of the apartment are to go to a particular organisation, the Kitty Jashi Foundation. A well-known singer in the sixties and seventies, and a friend of Frau Lieblich. She killed herself, but that was a long time ago now,’ she explained in a conspiratorial tone, as if the fact of her suicide were the crucial thing about Kitty’s life and work.
‘A foundation, you say?’
‘For musically gifted children. The head office is in London. Very nice people. But may I ask you who you are, and —’
But before I was faced with the embarrassment of having to tell her the story of our family and our journey to Vienna, the doorbell rang and her next client released me from the awkward situation.
I started looking
for Brilka, but she was no longer in the apartment. Before leaving, I asked the estate agent exactly when Fred Lieblich had died, and worked out the dates. It had been three days after I had arrived in Mödling and forced Brilka to go with me to Berlin. I ran down the stairs, almost colliding with the Lamberts, and found Brilka sitting on the pavement a few metres from the front door, her head in her hands. It was unpleasant watching her cry, but I had no choice but to sit down beside her. I made no attempt to put my arms round her or whisper useless words of comfort. I waited for her to look up of her own accord, to look at me and ask me one of her questions. A vague sense of failure was growing inside me; I felt disappointment with myself welling up: why hadn’t I brought her straight here, a month ago, when we were in Vienna?
‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ she asked, without lifting her head.
I gave her my silence in reply at first, then pulled myself together and said, ‘She died last winter. I asked the estate agent. So we shouldn’t reproach ourselves. We wouldn’t have got to meet her in any case.’
Seldom in my life have I been so disgusted with myself as at that moment, when I sold her this shameless lie as the truth.
A feeling that lifts your heart,
Swimming free through the flood.
MIKHAIL LERMONTOV
Once we had crossed the Italian border, it wasn’t just the colour of the sun and the scent of the air that changed, but Brilka’s expression. She had barely said a word to me since Vienna, and didn’t want to share her music with me any more, either, sealing herself off with her headphones as if to punish me for the disappointment our belated visit to Fred Lieblich’s apartment had caused her. When we took a break, she separated her food even more manically than usual and gave me only brief replies. She wrote frantically in her notebook, resting on her knee. Conversation was impossible. She did things she had not done in Berlin, like crossing herself three times when we drove past the site of an accident, or drawing five stars on the back of her hand with a biro every time we drove over a national border.
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