What You Can See from Here

by Mariana Leky

  “Isn’t it amazing how you live through the anniversary of your death in advance your whole life long?” Selma asked as she copied the dates of birth and death from her old calendar into her new one. “One of the countless twenty-fourths of June or eighths of September or thirds of February that I’ve lived through will be the date of my death. Isn’t that something, when you think about it?”

  “Hmm,” we replied.

  “Do you also ask yourselves occasionally which of your senses goes first when you die?” Selma asked as she tried in vain with her deformed hands to fasten a button that had been hanging only by a thread onto the optician’s jacket. “Is it the sense of touch? Or sight? Maybe the first to go is your sense of smell. Or do all senses disappear at the same time?”

  “No, we don’t ask ourselves that,” the optician replied.

  When the optician picked me up at the bookstore after work and we drove to the village, Selma suddenly asked from the back seat, “Do you believe your life flashes before your eyes when you die?”

  I flinched. I hadn’t noticed Selma was in the car.

  “I picture it like a slideshow put together by Death,” she continued, “but because it can’t present your entire life, a selection has to be made. What are the criteria? Which are a life’s most important scenes? From Death’s point of view, I mean.”

  “I’m guessing this particular scene won’t make the cut,” I said. And the optician said, “Please stop with this, Selma.”

  Selma wanted to talk about death with us, but we wouldn’t let her, as if Death were a distant relative we were ignoring because he always behaved badly.

  I looked at Selma in the rearview mirror. She smiled. “You’re acting like children who believe no one can see them when they cover their eyes,” she said.

  * * *

  That night, I slept on Selma’s sofa. I woke at three-thirty in the morning and went into her bedroom. Her bed was empty and her comforter on the floor.

  I found her in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table in her flowered nightgown. Seven unopened Mon Chéris lay at her feet and she held an eighth in her hands. “I can’t unwrap these anymore,” she said. “It’s like my hands are paralyzed.”

  I ran to Selma and took her in my arms as awkwardly as you hug someone sitting in a chair. I flung my arms around her thin torso from behind. It looked like I was giving her the Heimlich maneuver.

  “Luisa, I believe it will be soon,” she said, and I closed my eyes, wishing that ears also had lids you could snap shut. Selma turned to face me, put her hands on my shoulders, and pushed me away a bit so she could see me better.

  “Will you affirm the end coming, my dear child?” she asked.

  This must be what it feels like when a scimitar is rammed into your stomach, I thought.

  Selma stroked my cheeks. I thought of Frederik for a moment.

  “You’re all crazy,” I said, my voice much too loud in Selma’s silent, nocturnal kitchen. “You all keep asking me to affirm some nonsense or other.”

  “Be happy that you’re even asked,” she replied. “Usually these things are considered valid without any affirmation.”

  I looked into her eyes and only then recognized that something sinister had played out behind her eyelids.

  “You dreamt of an okapi,” I whispered.

  Selma smiled and put her hand on my forehead as if she were feeling for a fever. “No,” she said.

  “You’re lying to me! Why are you doing that? You don’t need to be afraid to say it,” I exclaimed, even though I was the one who was afraid.

  “I thought for a long time about what I should put in order in my life, and I couldn’t come up with anything,” she said, patting my knee, “aside from that spot over there, perhaps.” She pointed to the red circle outlined on the floor. “But I would have liked to help put your life in order, Luisa.”

  “My life is in order,” I said, and the macramé owl the shopkeeper’s wife had given Selma fell at my feet from the wall.

  Selma looked at the owl, then back at me. “Do you notice anything?”

  “No,” I said, and I wasn’t lying.

  She handed me the Mon Chéri. “Unwrap it,” she said.

  * * *

  Just when she’d gone back to bed, about four-thirty in the morning, the doorbell rang. It was the optician. He had a comforter draped over his shoulder and a rolled-up air mattress under his arm. “I have a bad feeling,” he said.

  The optician lay down next to the sofa. We all slept late, and while we slept, Frederik wrote, “Luisa, please get in touch. I have a bad feeling.” But I only read it two weeks later.

  * * *

  The next morning, Selma had a slight fever. Her eyes glittered. I pulled the optician to the door of her room.

  “We should call the doctor,” I said.

  “Out of the question,” Selma called from the bedroom. “If you call a doctor, I won’t say another word to you.”

  The optician and I looked at each other.

  “Not one word for the rest of my life,” Selma shouted, and burst out laughing.

  The telephone rang. I hoped it would be my father calling, and it was. “You have to come home,” I said. “Selma’s not well.” It didn’t sound right, but I couldn’t say: “Selma’s doing great, she’s just dying.”

  “I’ll catch the next flight,” my father said. “I’m in Kinshasa right now.”

  * * *

  While I was in Selma’s apartment on the phone with my father, the phone rang in my apartment. “Please call, Luisa,” Frederik said to the answering machine, and the answering machine cut him off. Frederik said: “Making a phone call is very complicated and this damn machine doesn’t make it any less compli—” and the answering machine cut him off. “I’m calling because I’m worried,” he began, and the answering machine cut him off. A tinny female voice said: “Your connection is maintained, your connection is maintained.” With that, Frederik had enough, and the answering machine announced: “End of message, end of message, end of message.”

  * * *

  At noon my mother made chicken soup, which Selma had always liked but now didn’t want. The shopkeeper brought a plastic bag full of Mon Chéris, each one already unwrapped. But Selma politely declined them, too.

  * * *

  Early that evening I went to the garage, because it was Tuesday and I had to chase away the deer. It was, in fact, standing in the meadow at the edge of the forest, the deer that, after several generations of deer, was no longer the original one. I opened the garage door and slammed it shut. I did it again and again, long after the deer had run away. Suddenly Palm appeared behind me.

  “You don’t need to worry about the deer,” he said.

  I slammed the door one last time and looked at Palm, standing there holding a Bible to his chest.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  “Fine, but I don’t think she has much time left. Are you coming?”

  Palm followed me to the house but stopped at the doorstep. I turned around. “Come,” I said.

  But Palm stayed where he was, as if afraid of the weak spots in the floor. He stood there for hours. And no one in the world looked more lost than Palm, standing there in front of the door.

  * * *

  “I’m hot,” Selma said. The bedroom window wouldn’t stay open. I opened it and propped a photography book against it so it wouldn’t swing wide open. It was very windy.

  The optician sat on the edge of Selma’s bed. He hadn’t sat there since he’d told us about blue whales after Martin died.

  Nothing in the room had changed since then. The alarm clock in diarrhea-colored imitation leather that ticked too loudly, the quilt and the large flower pattern, the fat lambs in the picture with the carefree shepherd boy, the bronze bedside lamp with a frosted glass shade shaped like a gnome’s hat: it was all still there. And again, the optician saw none of it. Again, the room would have been very beautiful in his eyes if he had eyes for anything other than Selma.<
br />
  “I’d like something to read,” she said.

  I brought her every possible book and photo album, but not one was right. “What would you like to read?” I asked. “I’ll get you whatever you want.”

  “I don’t know,” Selma said.

  The optician stood up suddenly. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  I followed the optician to the front door to check on Palm, but he was gone. I watched the optician hurry down the slope and wondered if he was going to come back with a bat’s heart, but Selma wasn’t in pain.

  * * *

  The optician returned carrying two enormous suitcases. I opened the door for him and without a word he carried them past me, down the hall, and through the living room to Selma’s bed.

  The entire way back to Selma’s, his inner voices raged as they hadn’t for a very long time, running riot inside the optician. “Are you out of your mind?” the voices screamed as the wind whipped at his hair and banged the suitcases against his shins. They shouted that repression had always worked so well, that fear is a good counselor, that it would all end tragically if the optician finally revealed, at the very last moment, his secret love, never aired for so many decades. “Don’t do it,” they shouted, panic-stricken. “Don’t do it,” they shouted again when the optician put the suitcases next to Selma’s bed and opened them.

  They were full to the brim with paper. The optician smiled at Selma. “It’s all here,” he said.

  Dear Selma, On the occasion of Inge and Dieter’s wedding I’d like to finally

  Dear Selma, It’s amazing how fast Luisa is learning to read. When we were in the ice cream parlor just now and the small Secret Love

  Dear Selma, Do you think Marlies is crazy? Like Farmer Hassel is? I mean: that she is mentally ill? I was wondering again today. Speaking of crazy. You’ll think I’m crazy when I tell you

  Dear Selma, It’s been a year today and you are right: we have to find a way to bring back Palm’s desire to live. Speaking of desire to live. The source of my desire to live

  Dear Selma, The eclipse today was spectacular. Speaking of eclipses. You are the opposite of

  Dear Selma, As we discussed earlier today, I also don’t believe Luisa really loves Andreas. Speaking of

  * * *

  Selma took one sheet of paper after another out of the suitcase. While she read them, she took hold of the optician’s hand without looking up from the papers. The optician sat next to her as if she were studying a photography book, as if he were waiting for Selma to ask him a word she didn’t understand.

  “What does unconditionally mean?” Selma asked.

  The optician laughed. “Unconditionally means unconditionally.”

  “My life is flashing before my eyes,” Selma murmured as she read, and we were alarmed. Her time is up, we thought, but Selma said, “No, no, I just mean in these letters. It’s flashing before my eyes in these letters.”

  She read until she could not read any longer. Then she rested her head on her pillow, looked at the optician, and said, “Read them aloud to me.”

  * * *

  The optician read to Selma until well after midnight, then he grew hoarse.

  “I need a rest, Selma,” he said.

  She looked at the optician with glittering eyes. She pulled him to her and held her mouth close to his ear. “Thank you for bringing me so many new beginnings at the end,” she whispered, “and thank you for not ever telling me. Otherwise we might not have spent as much time together as we did. Imagine.”

  “I’d rather not imagine that, Selma,” the optician replied. His eyes were glittering, too, and he also had a fever, but not one that could be measured.

  “I’d also rather not, not at all.” At that moment the photography book couldn’t hold the window any longer. The window flew open and the wind raged in, pulling at the curtains and rifling through all the piles of paper next to the suitcases. All the new beginnings flew away.

  * * *

  “I need some fresh air,” the optician said an hour later while Selma slept. But before he went outside, he stopped in the kitchen.

  Frederik’s number still hung above Selma’s refrigerator. The optician examined it as if the numbers signified more than just a telephone connection. He took the paper with the number down, folded it, and put it in his breast pocket.

  * * *

  On the way home, the optician felt much lighter than he had on the way to Selma’s; instead of lugging two suitcases full of papers and a commune of panicked voices, he now carried a single piece of paper, and even the wind that had whipped at him earlier had calmed down.

  At home he picked up the telephone and the number and sat down with them on his bed, the bed that was just the right size for one person. He counted forward eight hours. He dialed the nearly interminable string of numbers, then waited an even more interminable period of time until the first monk picked up the receiver. Only six monks later did the optician reach the monk he wanted.

  “Hello?” Frederik said.

  “Hello, Frederik, this is Dietrich Hahnberg.”

  There was a short silence on the other end of the line. “Excuse me, but who am I speaking to?” Frederik finally asked.

  “The optician.”

  “I see,” Frederik exclaimed. “I beg your pardon. This is a surprise. How are you?”

  “Could you please come by?” the optician asked, as if Frederik were in the neighboring village and not at the other end of the world.

  “Of course,” he replied.

  * * *

  I sat on the windowsill in Selma’s bedroom. I looked at the carefree shepherd boy with his shawm and wondered when exactly Selma had dreamed of an okapi the night before and how much time remained in the best-case.

  Selma woke briefly and looked at me. She lay on her back with her comforter pulled up to her chin. Her eyes were more feverish than before, but also alert.

  “So far everything’s going smoothly,” she said as if talking about preparations for the May Festival.

  ON INTIMATE TERMS WITH THE WORLD

  The optician went back to Selma’s; it was one-thirty in the morning. Just before he reached our house, he noticed, despite the darkness, a movement on the edge of his field of vision. He looked to the left at the meadow through which the Apfelbach flowed. On the far side of the meadow, a figure was standing on the bridge. The optician climbed over the fence and walked toward it.

  It was Palm. The optician stepped onto the bridge and stood next to him. Palm’s eyes were glassy, his arms dangling. He held his Bible in one hand, a half-empty bottle of liquor in the other.

  Palm had been sober for so many years that the optician had forgotten how he looked larger when drunk. When he hit the bottle, Palm seemed bulkier, his shoulders, his hands, his face.

  The optician tentatively extended his hand. Palm flinched, dropping the Bible. It fell on the bridge, on the very edge. The optician nudged it to the center with his foot.

  The stream, which usually didn’t rise above a murmur, roared in the optician’s ears. On that night, the stream was a torrent. Because of the roar, the optician couldn’t hear that Palm was weeping, but he could see it. He saw tears streaming down Palm’s face, which had turned red, bulky, and ferocious again in a mere instant.

  The optician took a deep breath. Then he took a step forward, slipped his arms under Palm’s armpits. Palm staggered backward, but the optician pulled Palm to his chest with all his strength, not letting the possibility that Palm might crumble to dust at the slightest touch stop him. There and then, over the thundering Apfelbach, he had to run that risk.

  Palm did not crumble, and the optician lifted him up. He let Palm’s heavy head sink onto his shoulder. Palm stank of liquor and sweat; his entire body shook with sobs, and the optician’s body trembled from the strain. Palm’s arms, which had hung along the optician’s right and left sides, lifted and embraced him. The bottle slipped from Palm’s hand onto the bridge. Palm’s sweat-matted hair brushed the opt
ician’s neck. His shoulders pressed against the optician’s nose and pushed his glasses onto his forehead.

  The optician managed to hold Palm up for a full minute but ran out of strength. He set Palm down without letting go, and Palm did not let go, either. With Palm in his arms, the optician first dropped to his knees, then sat down.

  They stayed that way for a long time: the optician leaning against the railing with his legs extended, Palm with his torso resting diagonally on the optician’s chest. Palm’s eyes were closed and he didn’t move. The optician sat crookedly, half on Palm’s Bible. This wreaked havoc on his disks, but the optician saw no way of changing his position without disturbing Palm.

  He stroked Palm’s hair. The liquor bottle lay at his feet and he could easily read the label. Only then did the optician notice that the night was surprisingly bright from the light of the moon, the illuminated body whose path Palm had once known so well.

  IT WAS YOU

  Then things stopped going smoothly. Selma became agitated, turning from one side to the other in bed. I had made leg compresses for her and tried to lay the wet washcloths on her calves, but she kicked them off and the letter openings that still lay on her bed grew limp.

  Alaska sat at the foot of Selma’s bed. He watched me run back and forth, sit on the edge of her bed, then run back and forth again. He watched me as if he had an important question and regretted not being able to ask it.

  The optician returned. I didn’t notice how disheveled he looked because I only had eyes for Selma, whose bed we perched on only to jump up again in order to do something that didn’t need to be done. Our sense of time disappeared. Maybe it was two in the morning or maybe time had shifted forward or backward, we had no idea.