What You Can See from Here

by Mariana Leky

  We did. We believed everything Selma said. When a suspicious-looking mole was found on her back some years before, Selma had written a card to a worried acquaintance the night before she received the biopsy results. “Everything went well,” Selma had written, and she had been right.

  “But you dreamed about an okapi,” Martin said. “Someone is going to die.”

  Selma sighed. She looked at the clock. It was almost six-thirty, and every evening at six-thirty Selma went for a walk in the Uhlheck, and had since she invented the world.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Even today?” we asked, because we were still afraid of a nonexistent hellhound or an impossible lightning strike.

  “Especially today,” Selma said. “We’re not going to let anything stop us.”

  It was dark in the Uhlheck. The wind blew through the trees. Martin and I held Selma’s hands. We didn’t talk. We especially didn’t talk about the fact that according to my calculations, Death only had eight hours left in which to strike. I counted off the hours on the fingers of my free hand and Selma pretended not to notice.

  “What do you two want to be when you grow up?” she suddenly asked.

  “A doctor,” I exclaimed.

  “Oh Lord,” Selma said. “Still, better than a psychiatrist. And you?”

  “The optician saw in his phoropter that I’ll be a weight lifter,” Martin said. “And it’s true.”

  “Of course it’s true,” Selma said.

  Martin looked up at her. “And you?” he asked.

  Selma caressed Martin’s hair. “Maybe a veterinarian,” she said.

  Martin picked up a stick that lay across the path. “You surely want to see exactly how Igor Nikitin was able to lift a hundred and sixty-five kilos,” he said.

  Selma smiled. “Absolutely,” she said.

  Martin pretended the stick bore a tremendous weight, lifted it over his head, held it there, his arms trembling, and let it fall. We clapped for a long time. Martin beamed and took a bow.

  “Let’s go back,” Selma said after thirty minutes had passed and rain had begun to fall. We turned around. The way back was shrouded in darkness.

  “Let’s play Hat, Stick, Umbrella; I’ll be last,” Selma said. We lined up in a row. “A hat, a stick, an umbrella,” we sang. “Forward, backward, sideways, stop.” We played the entire dark way home and arrived at Selma’s door before we knew it.

  Selma pan-fried us some potatoes. Then she called Palm and asked if Martin could spend the night, but he wasn’t allowed, not even as an exception.

  * * *

  At two o’clock in the morning, Elsbeth climbed out of bed and dressed. She had been lying awake for hours and had made a decision.

  She opened her front door and went out into the night, a tube of superglue and a roll of wire in one hand, the determination to save the optician in the other.

  Palm’s hunting blind was in a meadow that could only be reached by going through the forest. The forest was as black as the bow on a funeral wreath. Elsbeth peered into the darkness and longed for a bright, warm, sunflower shade of yellow.

  At the forest’s edge, she hesitated one last time. On the one hand, going into the forest at night alone after Selma’s dream seemed like sending Death an invitation, like throwing herself into his arms. On the other hand, it would have been cheap of Death to take advantage of such an easy opportunity. On yet another hand, Death was now under enormous pressure, since he only had about an hour left to strike, and in such circumstances, people aren’t as choosy and are more likely to be satisfied with easy solutions. On top of that, the more she thought about it, the more trouble Elsbeth had coming up with any suitably dramatic kind of death, but she came up with quite a few that would count as an easy way out.

  Elsbeth went into the forest; she did not want to go back on her decision.

  She remembered that singing helped when you were afraid. Elsbeth sang the lullaby “The Forest Is Dark and Silent.” It was, in fact, pitch-black, but it was not at all silent. There was rustling and cracking on all sides: above, behind, in front of, and next to Elsbeth. Maybe it was the imps, who were afraid of the optician’s heat patch, which she still had on. She stopped singing because her voice sounded so lost, and singing the praises of a marvelous rising fog that, in reality, was not the least bit marvelous, seemed rather desperate to her. Besides, she was afraid of attracting or not hearing something.

  Unfortunately, Elsbeth knew all about creatures you could encounter in the forest at night. She thought of the shrub woman, who emerges from the underbrush every hundred years with a basket on her back and wants to be scratched and have her hair deloused. Those who scratch her back and delouse her hair are rewarded with leaves of gold. Those who don’t are carried off.

  Elsbeth had no interest in leaves of gold. She pictured the squinty-eyed shrub woman coming out from between the fir trees, grabbing Elsbeth with twisted fingers. She pictured the shrub woman pushing Elsbeth’s hand into her matted hair so she could find the lice—but how on earth could the shrub woman expect her to see anything in the dark? Then Elsbeth pictured how, and above all, where, the shrub woman would want to be scratched, and then she thought about mind-blowing sex with Renata and how a skillet to the head and a shrub woman could both blow one’s mind as well, which doesn’t necessarily reflect on the quality of their relationship, if you ask me, and she remembered that she had decided to save the optician and that saving the optician meant saving Palm.

  Elsbeth did not have appropriate footwear. She was wearing fake leather pumps with the toes split open and the heels worn down. Elsbeth never wore rubber boots because they weren’t flattering, and whenever she went out, even if just to Selma’s or the general store, Elsbeth tried to look chic because, she always said, you never know who you’ll meet. The dampness of the fallen leaves crept up over the edges of her pumps and into her black nylons, making them even blacker.

  The forest suddenly opened up. In our region, there are no transitions. There’s no gradually clearing forest, no slightly lower trees as intermediaries between forest and meadow. In the middle of the abrupt meadow, Palm’s hunting blind rose like an unfinished monument, like the crow’s nest on a ghost ship. As she approached the blind, Elsbeth wondered if anyone had ever been here so late at night, anyone who was not a fox, a deer, or a wild boar, anyone the shrub woman could have asked to scratch and delouse her. The meadow was very still. Elsbeth longed for the cracking and creaking of the forest, because it’s scary being the only one making noise. Her steps and her breathing were suddenly as loud as in a Tatort episode just before the victim is overcome and mangled with such barbarity that even the taciturn pathologist blanches and the police commissioners who had come running have to vomit.

  Elsbeth stepped up to the stand’s rear posts. On both posts, she felt for the spot the optician had sawed. The posts were almost completely severed. Severed, Elsbeth thought, and the throat of the young girl in the last episode flashed before her eyes. She unscrewed the tube of superglue and squeezed the contents first in one crack, then in the other. Don’t think of the shrub woman, she thought, don’t think of severed things. Most of all she was afraid of her own breathing, which was much too rapid and improbably loud.

  The wire made a deafening sound when she unrolled it to wrap it around the first post. Her hands shook as if they weren’t her hands at all but hands from a Tatort episode.

  And then, above her, someone coughed.

  Elsbeth closed her eyes. I’m the one, she thought. I’m the one who dies from Selma’s dream.

  “Get lost,” someone hissed from above. Elsbeth looked up and in the hunting blind’s paneless window she saw Palm.

  Someone whose life is being saved does not murder his rescuer.

  “Good evening, Palm,” Elsbeth said. “I’m sorry, but you have to come down right now.”

  “Get lost,” Palm said, “you’re scaring away the pigs.” It took Elsbeth a moment to realize that he was actually t
alking about the wild boar.

  “Night hunting is forbidden,” Elsbeth said bravely, but when he was drunk, Palm was no more worried about laws against hunting than he was about the shrub woman.

  She started to wrap the wire around the first sawn post. Some of the glue had dripped down the post like resin and begun to harden.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Palm hissed.

  Elsbeth considered. “When you’re afraid of dying, you should wrap a hunting blind in wire.”

  Palm said nothing.

  “Seven times, and never in moonlight,” Elsbeth continued. “Besides, you shouldn’t sit in a hunting blind when you’re afraid of dying.”

  “But I’m not afraid of dying,” Palm said, and he was serious. Palm didn’t know that he was afraid of dying, deathly afraid even. He couldn’t know, because he hadn’t experienced real terror before Death came in through the door.

  “But Selma dreamed of an okapi,” Elsbeth said.

  Palm took a gulp from his bottle. “You’re all nuts. I can’t believe you people,” he said.

  Elsbeth kept wrapping wire around the post.

  It’s true, I am nuts—this will never hold, Elsbeth thought.

  Palm burped. “Here comes another idiot,” he said.

  Elsbeth spun around. Someone with a headlamp came running toward her over the meadow. He was tall and coming very quickly. It was the optician.

  He had run the entire way from his door, across the village, through the forest, over the meadow, carrying a sack with nails, a hammer, and several pieces of wood. He didn’t even notice that when he was running, his inner voices were silent. For the first time, the voices didn’t constantly want to be scratched and deloused, because such voices step aside with unexpected politeness when you’re running somewhere, determined to save a life.

  Out of breath, the optician stood in front of Elsbeth. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I’m saving you,” Elsbeth said.

  The optician had run out without his jacket. He was still wearing his sweater vest with the Employee of the Month badge. He emptied his sack at Elsbeth’s feet, stuck a few nails between his lips, and began hectically hammering the pieces of wood over the sawn cracks. The noise was deafening.

  “What’s going on now?” Palm asked overhead. “Would you piss off already?” he hissed. “You’re scaring away the pigs.”

  The optician froze and looked up. “You have to come down right now,” Elsbeth called.

  “No!” the optician yelled, and the nails fell from his mouth. “For God’s sake, Palm, stay up there. Don’t move!”

  He leaned toward Elsbeth. “If he climbs down now, the thing will collapse,” he whispered, and hammered with all his strength. His heart hammered to the same beat, as if to help.

  “Would you stop with this shit?” Palm hissed.

  “I’m sorry, I was wrong,” Elsbeth said. “Instead of wrapping wire around the post seven times, you’re supposed to hammer it.”

  Palm started yelling.

  “I’ve had it with both of you,” he roared, then grabbed his rifle and stood up.

  “Stay up there,” Elsbeth shouted.

  “Don’t come down,” the optician shouted. But Palm turned around and started to climb down the ladder, still yelling ferociously.

  “If you’re not afraid of dying, you have to stay up in a hunting blind no matter what,” Elsbeth shouted.

  “Stay up there!” the optician shouted, and hammered. Palm swayed on the ladder. The optician stopped hammering, leapt to the post that was most unstable, and wrapped his arms around it to stabilize it with his own body.

  “You’re the one scaring away the pigs,” Elsbeth shouted, and when Palm reached the sixth rung from the top, he slipped and fell.

  Palm fell far. The optician let go of the post and leapt to the ladder, believing he could catch Palm. Even though it seemed to Elsbeth that Palm was falling astonishingly slowly, as if he were falling in slow motion, the optician still wasn’t fast enough.

  He’s the one, Elsbeth thought, Palm’s the one who will die, and Palm hit the ground right in front of the optician.

  Elsbeth and the optician knelt down next to him. Palm didn’t move. His eyes were closed. He breathed heavily and stank of schnapps.

  Elsbeth asked herself if anyone other than Martin and Martin’s mother had ever dared get this close to him. She examined Palm as closely as she would a stuffed predator.

  “Palm, say something!” the optician said.

  Palm was silent.

  “Can you move your legs?” Elsbeth asked.

  Palm remained silent but rolled to his side.

  Palm was not the one who would die.

  The headlamp illuminated his profile, his nose’s cratered landscape, the blond hair stuck to the nape of his neck. Elsbeth took hold of his wrist. His pulse thundered over the meadow.

  Elsbeth was about to set down Palm’s arm when her eye fell on his wristwatch. “Look,” she yelled to the optician, even though he was kneeling right next to her, and she waved Palm’s arm in front of his face. “It’s three o’clock, it’s three o’clock! It’s over. It’s three o’clock and we’re not dead.”

  “Congratulations,” the optician said softly. “You, too, Werner Palm.”

  Without raising his head, Palm shook off Elsbeth’s hand and slipped his arm under his head. He seemed to be in a stable recovery position.

  “I’m going to kill you, you jackasses,” he murmured, “I’m going to blow you away.”

  Elsbeth patted his head as if he were the shopkeeper’s wife’s terrier. “Of course you will, Palm,” she said, then laughed and slapped the optician on the thigh, because now that the twenty-four hours were up, she felt that everything was immortal again for the time being.

  * * *

  Far behind in the village, old Farmer Häubel looked at the clock and felt himself immortal for the time being, but, unlike Elsbeth, he wasn’t in the least bit happy about it. He stood up laboriously and, nearly transparent as he was, he shuffled over to the roof hatch and shut it, since no souls would be flying through it anytime soon.

  THE TWENTY-NINTH HOUR

  When the new day began, twenty-six hours after Selma’s dream, the villagers found themselves in their pajamas, their hearts still intact, their minds still intact, with their hastily burned and hastily written letters.

  They were overjoyed and resolved to delight in and be grateful for everything in the future because they were still alive. They resolved, for example, to finally fully appreciate the morning sun playing in the branches of the apple trees. The villagers made such resolutions often, when a falling roof tile narrowly missed them, for example, or a feared diagnosis was ruled out. But inevitably, after a short time, a burst pipe or an unexpected surcharge quickly diluted their brief spell of joy and gratitude, and the sunlight in the apple trees could call it quits.

  * * *

  When the mailman came to empty the mailbox at the crack of dawn, a few people were already waiting to reclaim their hastily mailed letters because the letters now made them uncomfortable, the words having become unsuitably grandiose for a continuing life—always appeared far too often, as did never. The mailman patiently waited as they rummaged through his mailbag and recovered their escaped truths.

  The truths people had said to each other at the supposedly very last minute could not be recovered. The cobbler left his wife at daybreak and moved to the neighboring village because she had told him that his son wasn’t, strictly speaking, his son, and this long-confined truth spread an awful stink and a great commotion.

  One liberated truth, which no one tried to recapture and could therefore romp about freely, belonged to Farmer Häubel’s great-grandson. He had finally told the mayor’s daughter that at the last May Festival he had danced only with the shopkeeper’s daughter simply out of pique because he had thought she didn’t want to dance with him. After Selma’s dream, Häubel’s great-grandson told the mayor’s daughter t
hat he actually loved no one but her and that he was convinced nothing could ever get in the way of his love. The mayor’s daughter also loved Häubel’s great-grandson, and everyone was happy that this truth was out. It had escaped at the very last minute not because death was near but because otherwise life would have taken a wrong turn. Häubel’s great-grandson had almost moved to the county seat out of pique and the mayor’s daughter had almost begun to talk herself into believing that Häubel’s great-grandson was not the right one for her. Everyone was happy that this truth was free to romp about and they would all have liked to celebrate the marriage right away if not for what happened next, after which no one wanted to celebrate any wedding ever again, at least not for a while.

  * * *

  At six-fifteen, twenty-seven hours and fifteen minutes after her dream, when everyone assumed time had saved them, Selma packed my lunch box. I sat at the kitchen table. I was late and wouldn’t have time to copy all my homework into Martin’s notebook. I can still remember that my shoes were too tight, that I said to Selma, “I need new shoes,” and she answered that we would drive to the county seat the next day and get new ones—Elsbeth also needed new shoes.

  Naturally, I didn’t know that there would be no tomorrow for buying new shoes in the county seat. I didn’t know that a few days later, I’d be wearing my too-large Sunday shoes and holding Selma’s hand in the cemetery and everyone close to me, including the optician, the “Employee of the Month,” shaking with sobs, would form a circle around me so I wouldn’t see the course the world had taken, so I wouldn’t see too clearly how the coffin was lowered, a coffin, the priest said, of a size showing that here lay someone who had not been granted even half a life; but I saw it very clearly, not even all of them together were enough to hide it. And naturally I didn’t know that as soon as the coffin was set down almost without a sound, I would turn and run, and that Selma, of course it was Selma, would find me exactly in the spot under her kitchen table where my feet in their too-small shoes now stood, that I would be huddled there, my face smeared with a sticky red paste and countless Mon Chéri wrappers at my feet; I didn’t know that Selma would crouch down and I would see her tear-streaked face, that Selma would creep under the table with me and say, “Come here, you little praline,” and everything would go dark because I would press my face against Selma’s black shirt, black as the bow on a funeral wreath; naturally, I didn’t know any of this because if we did know such things in advance, if we knew in advance that the entire expanse of life could be upended in less than an hour, we would lose our minds.