by Mariana Leky
Everyone was worried, but apart from Friedhelm, the shopkeeper’s brother, no one was terrified, because being terrified usually requires some level of certainty. Friedhelm was as terrified as if the okapi in Selma’s dream had whispered his name. He ran off stumbling through the forest, screaming and trembling, until the optician caught him and brought him to my father. My father was a doctor and gave Friedhelm a shot that made him so happy that he spent the rest of the day waltzing through the village singing, Oh, you lovely Westerwald, and getting on everyone’s nerves.
* * *
The villagers also kept a suspicious eye on their hearts, which, unused to getting so much attention, raced at a disturbing pace. They remembered that the onset of a heart attack is accompanied by a tingling in the arm, but couldn’t remember which one, so the villagers felt tingling in both arms. They kept a watchful eye on their state of mind, and these minds, also unused to so much attention, were set racing at a disturbing pace as well. They wondered, as they stepped into their cars, picked up a pitchfork, or took a pot of boiling water off the stove, if they might not lose their minds just then—be overcome by a bottomless despair and with it an urge to drive full speed into a tree, fall onto the pitchfork, or pour the boiling water over their heads. Or, if not to harm themselves, they might feel the urge to douse with boiling water, to stab with a pitchfork, or to run over someone close to them: their neighbor, their brother-in-law, their wife.
Some of the villagers avoided all activity the entire day; some even longer. Elsbeth once told Martin and me that years earlier, on the day after one of Selma’s dreams, the retired mailman had stopped moving altogether. He was convinced that any movement could mean death; he remained convinced for days, even months after Selma’s dream, long after someone had in fact died in accordance with the dream’s dictate, the shoemaker’s mother. The mailman simply stayed in his chair. His immobile joints became inflamed, his blood became clotted and finally came to a standstill halfway through his body at the very moment that his mistrusted heart stopped beating. The retired mailman lost his life from fear of losing it.
* * *
A few people felt it was high time to air hidden truths. They wrote unusually wordy letters with talk of always and never. They felt one should bring truthfulness to life—at least at the very last minute. And hidden truths, these people believed, are the most truthful of all. Left untouched, they harden over the years and, being kept secret and confined to immobility, these truths grow bulkier with time. Even truth itself wants out in extremis. Anyone holding a secret truth risks an especially agonizing end, a lengthy tug-of-war with Death pulling on one side and the bloated, hidden truth on the other. A secret truth does not want to perish in hiding. Having spent its life buried, it wants to be released, even if only for a short time, either to spread its fetid stink and appall everyone, or to show that, exposed to the light of day, it isn’t so terrible or fearsome after all. Just before the supposed end, a hidden truth urgently wants a second opinion.
* * *
The only one who was happy about Selma’s dream was old Farmer Häubel, a man who had lived so long he was almost transparent. When his great-grandson told him about Selma’s dream, Farmer Häubel stood up from the breakfast table, nodded at his great-grandson, and climbed the stairs to his room in the attic. He lay down on his bed and watched the door like a birthday boy awoken early with excitement waiting impatiently for his parents to finally bring in the cake.
Farmer Häubel was sure that Death would be polite, just as he had been himself for his entire life. He was sure that Death would not wrench life away from him but would remove it gently. He pictured Death knocking softly, opening the door just a crack, and asking, “May I?” to which Farmer Häubel would naturally answer in the affirmative. “Of course,” Farmer Häubel would say, “please come in,” and Death would enter. He would stand next to Farmer Häubel’s bed and ask: “Is this a good time? If not, I can always come back later.” Farmer Häubel would sit up and say, “No, no, this is a very good time. Let’s not put it off, who knows when you’ll be able to arrange it again.” And Death would sit on the chair placed and ready for him at the head of the bed. He would apologize in advance for his cold hands, which Farmer Häubel knew would not bother him at all, and then Death would lay a hand on Farmer Häubel’s eyes.
That’s how Farmer Häubel imagined it. He stood up one more time because he’d forgotten to open the roof hatch so his soul could fly right out.
THE OPTICIAN’S LOVE
There was nothing objectively terrible about the optician’s truth that was trying to slip out on the morning after Selma’s dream. The optician wasn’t having an affair (nor was there anyone he wanted to have one with); he’d never stolen anything; and he had never lied for any length of time to anyone other than himself.
The optician’s secret truth was that he was in love with Selma and had been for decades. He tried to hide this not only from others but also from himself. Nevertheless, his love for Selma always reappeared before long.
* * *
The optician was close by almost every day and always had been. From my perspective he was as ancient as Selma; therefore he had also helped to invent the world.
When Martin and I started kindergarten, Selma and the optician taught us how to tie our shoes. The four of us sat on the doorstep of Selma’s house as she and the optician strained their backs teaching us, bending over our little shoes, tying and retying our laces in slow motion—Selma busy with my shoelaces, the optician with Martin’s.
Selma and the optician also taught us to swim, both of them standing in the shallow pool, water up to their navels. Selma wore a large, frilled purple cap that looked like a hydrangea, which she had borrowed from Elsbeth to protect her Rudi Carrell hairdo. I lay facedown, held up by Selma’s hands, Martin by the optician’s. “We won’t let go,” they kept saying, and then at some point they said: “We’re letting go.” And Martin and I swam, awkwardly at first—our eyes wide with panic and pride—then ever more confidently. Selma hugged the optician joyfully and the optician’s eyes welled with tears.
“It’s just an allergic reaction,” he said.
“To what?” asked Selma.
“To a particular material in that bathing cap’s frills,” the optician claimed.
Selma and the optician taught us to ride bicycles, the optician holding the rack on Martin’s bike, Selma holding mine. “We won’t let go,” they kept saying, and then at some point they said: “We’re letting go.” And Martin and I rode, wobbling at first, then ever more confidently. Selma hugged the optician joyfully and the optician’s eyes welled with tears.
“It’s just an allergic reaction,” he said.
“To what?” Selma asked.
“To a particular material in the bicycle seat,” the optician claimed.
In front of the train station in the county seat, the optician and Selma taught us how to tell time. We four sat together looking up at the large round clockface, Selma and the optician pointing out the numbers and hands as if they were constellations. Once we understood how to tell time, the optician immediately explained how time zones work. He insisted on explaining it, as if he knew, even then, how much and how often time would shift in my life.
The optician taught me how to read as we sat with Selma and Martin—who could already read—in the ice-cream parlor in the county seat. Alberto, the new owner of the parlor, had given his sundaes torrid names and maybe he had so few customers because people in the Westerwald would rather order “three assorted scoops” than Flaming Temptation or Hot Desire. “Secret Love sundae” was the first thing I learned to read. Soon after, I tried to decipher the horoscope on the sugar packet that came with Selma’s coffee, hesitantly at first, then ever more confidently. “Leo,” I read, “courageous, proud, open, vain, controlling.” The optician’s index finger moved under the words in pace with my reading and slowed at “controlling.” When I read my first sugar packet fluently, a small Secret Love w
ith whipped cream was my reward.
The optician always ordered a medium Secret Love without whipped cream. “A large Secret Love would be too much for me,” he’d say, and glance at Selma out of the corner of his eye. But Selma had no feel for metaphors even when they were right in front of her, topped with a paper umbrella, on a table in an ice-cream parlor.
The optician was with us when Martin and I discovered a pop music show, which became the only thing we wanted to listen to from then on. We asked the optician to translate the lyrics for us even though we didn’t understand them any better in our own language. We were ten years old and didn’t know what burning desire or hot pain meant, whether in the ice-cream parlor or on the airwaves.
We huddled around the radio. The optician was concentrating hard. The radio was old and full of static and the singers sang very fast.
“Billie Jean is not my mistress,” the optician translated for us.
“But Billie Jean sounds like a man’s name,” Selma said.
“Billie Jean isn’t his lover, either,” the optician said indignantly.
“Quiet!” Martin and I ordered.
“What a feeling,” the optician translated, “take your ardor and make it happen.”
“Maybe it should be ‘your passion’?” Selma asked.
“Right,” the optician said. Since he couldn’t sit for long due to a herniated disk, we stretched out on a blanket on the floor next to the radio.
“… lifts us up where we belong,” he translated, “on a mountain high, where the eagles weep.”
“Maybe it should be ‘where the eagles cry’?” Selma asked.
“Six of one, half dozen of the other,” the optician said.
“Quiet!” we shouted, then my father walked in and said it was time to go to bed. “Just one more song. Please,” I begged. My father leaned against the doorframe.
“Words don’t come easy to me,” the optician translated, “how can I find a way to make you see I love you?”
“Seems to me he doesn’t have any trouble finding words,” Selma objected.
My father sighed and said, “You really need to let a bit more of the world in.”
The optician took off his glasses, looked at my father, and said, “That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
* * *
After he’d heard about Selma’s dream and told anyone who would listen that he didn’t believe in it at all, the optician put on his best suit, which was getting bigger with each passing year, picked up a stack of unfinished letters, which was also getting bigger with each passing year, and stuffed them into his large leather bag.
He set out for Selma’s house. He could have walked there backward with his eyes closed: he had gone to her house every day for decades (though not wearing his best suit or carrying the stack of unfinished letters, but always carrying deep inside the secret love that now wanted to slip out of him at what could well be the very last minute).
As he strode toward Selma’s house, his heart drummed loudly in his rib cage, beating in time with the secret truth as the leather bag bumped his hip at every step. The leather bag full of
Dear Selma, There’s something I’ve wanted to say for years
Dear Selma, After so many years of friendship, it’s surely a mistake odd strange remarkable unexpected surprising a mistake
Dear Selma, On the occasion of Inge and Dieter’s wedding I’d like to finally
Dear Selma, You’re going to laugh, but
Dear Selma, Once again your apple cake was exquisite. Speaking of exquisite, you
Dear Selma, We were just sharing a glass of wine and you rightly observed that the moon was especially full and beautiful tonight. Speaking of full and beautiful
Dear Selma, Karl’s illness hit me very hard even though I couldn’t put it into words earlier. It reminded me how limited life on earth our existence everything is and that’s why I urgently want to tell
Dear Selma, Earlier you asked why I was so quiet. The truth is
Dear Selma, Today it’s Christmas, without a trace of snow, which is not the way you like it. Speaking of liking
Dear Selma, On the occasion of Inge and Dieter’s divorce
Dear Selma, Since Christmas is the celebration of love
Dear Selma, On the occasion of Karl’s funeral
Dear Selma, On the occasion of nothing at all
Dearest
Dear Selma, Unlike you, I’m convinced that we will win the “Let’s Beautify Our Village” competition. Your beauty alone will guarantee us first place
Dear Selma, It’s clear that we can’t possibly win the “Let’s Beautify Our Village” competition. It’s already perfectly beautiful because you
Dear Selma, It’s Christmas again already. I’m sitting here, looking out at the snow and wondering when it will melt. Speaking of melting
Dear Selma, Christmas is a time for gifts. Speaking of gifts, something I’ve long wanted to lay at your feet
Dear Selma, On a completely new topic
Dear Selma, By the way, I’ve always wanted to tell
Dear Selma, Christmas again.
Dear Selma, BLAST
Dear Selma, When we were in the swimming pool with Luisa and Martin earlier, the blue of the water shone in the sun like the blue of your ey
Dear Selma, Thanks for the tip on getting rid of molehills. Speaking of molehills, or rather mountains, even a mountain can’t hide my
Dear Selma, Speaking of love
* * *
The optician hurried down the street to Selma’s house without a glance to the left or right at the few houses along the way in which everyone was busy examining their hearts and their sanity and the people closest to them, ready to reveal or receive the secret truths about to emerge, truths that probably weren’t so terrible after all in the light of day, but if one of the truths was, in fact, as awful as feared, the recipient of it might have a stroke and Selma’s dream would have done its work.
The optician briefly mulled over truths capable of causing a stroke. They all seemed to him to be straight out of the American afternoon television show Selma always watched. Unlike Selma, the optician did not get a thrill from watching the show. What did give him a thrill was Selma’s profile, and the show gave him the opportunity to gaze in rapture at Selma’s profile from the corner of his eye for forty minutes while she gazed in rapture at the show. It seemed to him that truths capable of causing a stroke must sound like the sentences delivered at the end of each episode just before the theme music began playing, leaving Selma to wait an entire week for the aftermath—sentences like “I never loved you,” or “Matthew is not your son,” or “We’re bankrupt.”
It would have been better for the optician not to think of this because he couldn’t get the theme music out of his head, a melody completely unsuited to declarations of love, and his inner voices immediately began to push him around.
There was an entire commune of voices living inside the optician. They were the worst lodgers imaginable. They were always too loud, especially after ten o’clock in the evening. They trashed the optician’s interior. They were many of them, they never paid their rent, and they couldn’t be evicted.
For years, his inner voices had been pleading in favor of keeping his love for Selma secret. So on the way to Selma’s that day, the voices were naturally in favor of holding back the truth about his love. After all, he was skilled in the art of holding things back, which he’d done very successfully for decades. The voices conceded that without a declaration of love, nothing particularly wonderful had happened, but nothing particularly terrible had occurred, either, and that, after all, was the important thing.
The optician, who always expressed himself judiciously, stopped short, raised his head, and said, “Shut up!” in a loud voice. He knew it was impossible to have a reasonable conversation with the voices. He knew that the voices would grow extremely talkative if he didn’t bark at them immediately.
And if the truth was out, the voice
s continued unfazed, something terrible very well could happen. Maybe, they hissed, Selma would find this truth—the optician’s bloated, long-cloistered love—particularly threatening or unsightly. And if the optician were to die today, if he were the one intended by Selma’s dream, then the last thing Selma should receive from him was something as unappetizing as his love, unaired for so many years.
The optician staggered a step to the right, as he did now and again. For a moment, he looked inebriated. Last year, Selma had talked him into getting a medical exam because of his sudden staggering. The optician had driven to the county seat with Selma. A neurologist had examined him but had not found anything. Inner voices, of course, cannot be detected by medical instruments. The optician had only gone to the neurologist so that Selma would leave him in peace. He knew in advance that nothing would be found; he knew he staggered because his inner voices jostled him.