“Probably as a janitor,” I mumbled.
I have no idea whether Janne was listening to him or to me or to anything. Marlon’s hand had just started to run along the wheel of her wheelchair again and we all looked away as if the two of them might start going at it right in front of us.
Dirk’s eyes practically jumped out of his head when I appeared at dinner in the kitchen on Wednesday. He was probably under the impression by then that Claudia locked me in my room all day and only let me out late at night, when everyone had sought shelter. I was wearing jeans and had ironed a white shirt. Just because.
“Shall I set the table?” I asked.
“That would be great,” said Claudia standing at the stove with her back to me.
It smelled of garlic and some Indian spice. Claudia was turning lamb chops in a pan and the fat sizzled. Dirk sat there silent and pale.
For a moment I tried to put myself in Claudia’s position. And I tried to imagine that Janne was there in Dirk’s place. I broke out in a sweat. I wasn’t sure whether to admire or pity Claudia now. Maybe it was a mistake to start mixing with people again tonight of all nights.
“Am I in the way?” I put large flat plates on the table.
“Don’t be silly, we’re happy to have you,” Claudia answered mechanically. Dirk nodded in agreement several times.
Claudia carried the pan to the table, set it down, and kissed Dirk quickly on the cheek. I looked away.
They looked a bit ridiculous together. Given the chance, I realized I hadn’t really looked carefully at Claudia in a long time. A few years before she had seemed noticeably more cheerful. Now, with her heavy eyelids and square chin, she reminded me of an ostrich. The lines in her face were really pronounced since she’d lost weight. Though she did have a super physique as a result. Her skirts seemed to keep getting shorter, and construction workers and taxi drivers regularly whistled at her well-toned legs.
“What happened there?” Claudia asked.
“Hm?”
She waved the spatula at my head.
“Johanna cut my hair,” I said.
“Did you lose a bet?”
I felt the sides of my mouth tighten. But laughing still kind of hurt, especially when you tried not to. “I asked her to. So people wouldn’t be so scared of me anymore.”
“Nice,” said Claudia flatly.
“Yeah, well,” I said. “I actually think I would have been better off doing it myself.”
She nodded and sat down. Dirk looked even younger sitting next to Claudia. His head was covered in light-colored fluff and as we ate I couldn’t stop looking at his Adam’s apple, which looked huge against his thin neck. With every mouthful it went up and down like a mouse struggling in a snake’s throat. Since I had my sunglasses on I could stare at Dirk as much as I wanted.
“What is it you do again?” I asked.
He put his fork down on the edge of the plate and folded his hands. He was a lawyer like Claudia, he said.
“Where’s your office? Do you have any chronic diseases? Are you married?” I asked.
To his credit, Dirk didn’t turn to Claudia to look for help. He picked up his fork again and slowly sawed a piece of meat from the lamb chop as if there was nothing more important in the world.
“As a child I had eczema,” he informed the bones on his plate. “I’ve heard you are interested in medicine?”
“I’m not the slightest bit interested in medicine,” I said. “I’m interested in defects.”
Just at that moment the phone rang.
I sat there like I was nailed down. It had been a family rule since I was little: never leave the table to answer the phone. Nobody rang these days anyway. Not for me at least. The answering machine clicked on. And then I heard Janne’s voice asking me to call her back.
Excuse me, please,” I said to Claudia the next morning. I had set my alarm just to be able to apologize to her. Usually I didn’t fall asleep until dawn, when I would gulp down a tablet, and then I didn’t wake up until around noon. Dirk was already gone. The kitchen smelled like coffee and croissants that had been crisped in the oven. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said.
“It’s fine.” Claudia kept reading the paper.
“I didn’t mean to ruin it for you,” I said. “Word of honor.”
“If you could ruin something so quickly then it wouldn’t have been worth anything to begin with,” Claudia said as she continued to flip through the paper. She had on a gray skirt and a bright white top with a banded collar. The red polished toes of her bare feet felt around on the floor as if they were searching for fallen crumbs.
I sat down across from her, took a croissant from the bread basket, and broke off one of the ends. It was still warm. I dribbled a little lemon jelly from the knife into the open end of the croissant and shoved the entire thing into my mouth.
“Can I ask you something?” Claudia had put the paper to the side and glanced at me over the rims of her glasses.
“Yeah?” I asked with my mouth full.
“What’s your plan?”
“For today?”
“Today, tomorrow. In general. Are things just going to go on like this?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You had friends. You had interests. You did theater for god’s sake. Was all of that so ephemeral that it just completely disappeared into thin air? Or can I assume that you’re just taking a break and will get back to it all again at some point?”
I sighed, took a glass from the counter, made sure it was empty, and threw it onto the floor. Stupidly enough, it didn’t break. Claudia didn’t even glance at it.
“If you are so inclined to be destructive, then become a contract killer. At least it pays well.”
I closed my eyes. I tried to picture it for a moment. How I would go to his house and knock at the door. How he’d open the door, looking just like an attack dog himself, an attack dog in human form, with his deformed hairless head, little murderous eyes, bared teeth. How I would kick in the door holding my weapon. How I’d give him time to recognize me before I pulled the trigger. How I’d smash the muzzle into the face of his girlfriend, who had laughed back then but was screaming in panic now. How I would let her live but she, like me, would never look the same again.
And then how I’d hear a baby crying in the next room and understand that I wouldn’t feel any better and that I never would.
I opened my eyes. Claudia was reading the paper.
“I have no desire to live,” I said.
“Oh, my god.” She flipped the page.
“Look at me,” I said. “Look at me right now for god’s sake.”
“I don’t feel like it,” said Claudia. “It’s a horrid sight, men in their underpants at the breakfast table.”
Only after I saw the taillights of Claudia’s car out the window and was sure she wasn’t coming back to get some files or her reading glasses did I call Janne back.
“Hello, this is Janne,” she said, her voice warm and sunny, sounding every bit like a nice, carefree girl next door.
“It’s Marek,” I said. “Thanks for your call.”
No idea why I said that. She had said basically nothing on the answering machine, and even if she had said something it was unlikely to have been something to be thankful for. I had an idea of what she wanted. She was worried that I was going to bail out. I had what it took to be the face of the project.
Together with her, of course.
Well, well, Marlon, I thought. You’re blind and handsome. But I can use my face as a weapon. That counts for a bit more. Janne knows to appreciate it.
“What can I do for you, Janne?” I asked as dryly as possible. It was fun to say her name.
“Come over,” said Janne.
“What for?”
“Pick me up. We can go to the meeting
together.”
Out of the question, I wanted to answer. Fifteen minutes later I was running out the door, combing my hair with my fingers, and noticing that it was unusually short despite the fact that I’d asked Johanna to go easy.
She lived in a white concrete box, the kind Claudia called a “townhouse.” At the front gate was a sign forbidding dogs to shit there. Behind the fence colorful flowers with jagged petals bloomed. There was a fashion catalogue in the mailbox.
It was already too late when it occurred to me that I hadn’t brought her anything. I was already here. I rang the bell.
It took a while before the door to the house opened and her mother waved to me from the doorway. The gate buzzed open. I walked along the artfully winding slate walkway past the flowers and across to the house. Janne’s mother stared at me, a smile glued somewhat lopsidedly to her face. Her gaze skittered down me and landed on my hand, which I immediately stuck in my pocket.
“Janne,” she whispered. “The boy. For you.” And she quickly stepped to the side to let me in.
Janne’s room was on the ground floor, naturally. She came toward me in her wheelchair. Close your mouth, I ordered myself. Now. I’d just told her mother my name and shaken her hand.
“Is Marek a Czech name?” she asked. She was still holding my hand, as if she wanted to show me that she wasn’t the slightest bit disgusted by me.
“Slovak,” I said. Janne rolled up to me and smiled. She had on one of her long dresses, this one in blue. She’d pulled her hair back in a ponytail. Her cheeks were flushed, like she’d just been exercising or was incredibly excited.
She reached out her hand. I let go of her mother’s hand and touched Janne’s fingers. They were cold, just like I had thought. I held them in my hand. I couldn’t take my hand back because Janne was holding me tight.
“Come on.”
I threw a smile at her mother that was meant to apologize and at the same time assure her that I didn’t want to devour her daughter behind closed doors. The fact that Janne was still holding my hand was driving me crazy. Unlike her mother she seemed to be taking a perverse pleasure in it. Instead of enjoying it, I would rather have yelled at her: “What right do you have? What kind of game are you playing with me?”
Finally she let go and wheeled herself into her room ahead of me. It was exactly the way I’d imagined a girl’s room would be. A pretty big bed, big enough for two people to sleep in, bookshelves, a big table with a gigantic monitor. I looked around for webcams. I spotted two right away. There was a white wooden wardrobe and its door was open, allowing a view of quite a few long dresses. On the dresser, which was also white, was a brush. Girls with no legs apparently arranged things no differently from the way girls with legs did. Janne closed the door and turned to me.
“When exactly did the whole thing with your face happen again?” she asked.
I was expecting all kinds of things, but not this.
“What’s that question supposed to mean? Weren’t you listening? Never seen a newspaper?”
“Is it true that you were really cute beforehand and that you were the star of your theater group?”
I shrugged my shoulders. It was clear she knew everything anyway. I just didn’t understand why she was putting so much effort into getting a rise out of me.
“What do you want from me?” I asked. If she was going to get right to the point I couldn’t see any reason I shouldn’t as well. “Why did you invite me over, hold hands with me, and ask crazy questions?”
She leaned back and turned red. Bright red. It didn’t suit her, not when she was normally so hard-nosed and unflinching and arrogant and unfriendly. When she blushed she looked like a little girl. A nice little girl.
I was immediately sorry for everything I’d said.
I sat down on the bed, on the floral patchwork bedspread, squinted my eyes so I could read the spines of the books on Janne’s shelf.
“You get used to you,” said Janne from the side.
I lifted my bottom and pulled out a pen that I’d sat on and was poking me.
“Now tell me about you,” I said. “Since when have you been unable to walk, and where are your legs.”
“Right here,” she said with surprise.
I turned back to her. She was sitting perfectly straight, like a ballerina, and her cheeks were still slightly flushed. All of a sudden it occurred to me that not many boys could have been in this room before me, on this side of the webcam. Maybe the blind one. I closed my eyes to try to imagine how he experienced Janne’s home. He probably had a really good nose but I couldn’t smell anything except a hint of lime. I opened my eyes again.
“Where is right here?” I asked.
She grabbed the seam of her dress, that once again went down to the tips of her shoes, and lifted it up like a curtain.
I had pictured it completely differently. I’d assumed she had some kind of prosthetics like Richard. Or nothing, with the shoes as dummies. In any event I had not expected girls’ legs, white legs stuck into even whiter socks. Janne lifted the skirt a bit higher and now I could see her knees.
“They look totally normal,” I said. “Maybe a little thin, but otherwise . . . ”
She laughed in a way that sent shivers down my spine.
“You can touch them,” she said.
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I slid off the bed and onto my knees. Janne bit her lower lip. Then I stopped paying attention to her face.
I put my hand on her calf. It was cool and somehow soft, like a stuffed animal. I ran my hand up and down. The skin was very smooth but there didn’t seem to be any muscles beneath. But at the same time everything was beautiful. Just not really living. I didn’t ask her whether she shaved despite the long dresses or whether her skin just didn’t have the ability to grow hair. I hadn’t come across that in the Pschyrembel, but I also hadn’t read it all the way through. I moved closer and laid my head in Janne’s lap, on the gathered cloth of her dress. I looked back up at her. She had thrown her head back oddly.
“I don’t feel anything,” she said, and her voice sounded different than usual.
I stood back up. Now I could look down at her. She had an unbelievable mouth, sensual and curvy. She wants to be kissed, I thought. There’s nothing she wants more than that. I used to have a real life, but her? I didn’t want to be envied by her for things I’d long since lost.
I leaned down toward her but she flinched backward.
The door opened. I hadn’t heard her mother knock. Maybe she hadn’t knocked. She was carrying a tray with delicate white teacups with gold rims and a matching teapot, and she put it down on Janne’s bed. She looked me in the face with her eyes wide as if she was putting great effort into ignoring Janne’s exposed legs.
“Or would you prefer coffee?”
I felt unbelievably sorry for her. Her life must have been pretty hellish. Janne wouldn’t have been easy to put up with even if she had functioning legs, but from her wheelchair she could turn anyone into a wreck in an instant.
Holding her hand was enough to put me on the verge of becoming a wreck.
“Are you also pleased with the group?” asked Janne’s mother once she had found a point where she could focus her gaze: the orchid on the windowsill, which was so gorgeous that I would have taken it for plastic if not for the fallen petal lying next to the pot.
I didn’t know how I should answer.
“Janne is like a new person since it started,” said Janne’s mother. “I’m really happy . . . I have to admit that I had my doubts. But he convinced me.”
“Who?” asked Janne harshly, as if we didn’t know the answer.
Janne’s mother squinted.
“What did he tell you he had planned?” I asked as gently as possible because I felt bad for her.
“Didn’t he tell you himself?” asked Janne’s mother, con
fused.
Janne and I traded glances.
“Hinted at it,” I mumbled.
“If we don’t like it, we’re going to quit,” said Janne.
Her mother looked at her and shook her head. “I don’t think that’s possible,” she said. “No, my dear girl, I really don’t think so.”
When her mother had shut the door behind her, Janne rolled over to me again. I couldn’t understand why she had her eyes closed as she did, and wondered whether she planned to run me over and if you could get badly enough hurt by a wheelchair that you might need one yourself.
But when she coolly notified me that I was permitted to kiss her now if I still wanted to, I understood everything.
I didn’t tell her that she was a dishonest, bored beast, that she was like a carnivorous plant lurking in wait for someone to come near it. I didn’t say that I had no desire to be an extra roped into playing the lead role for her, or for her life, or for whatever else it was she had gotten into her head. I said nothing. I leaned down to her and kissed her on the mouth. She must have been pretty scared; she was shaking and her teeth, which I pushed apart with my tongue, were chattering a little.
Her lips tasted of fruit tea, the kind her mother had poured for us before she said those odd things. I thought of Lucy, the last girl I kissed before Janne. I hadn’t wanted to see Lucy afterwards. And I was pretty sure I was doing both of us a favor, a much bigger favor to her than to me. Once in a while I’d clicked her Facebook profile before I’d deactivated my account, but in the meantime I’d avoided all the places we’d gone together, including the virtual ones.
I tried to remember what Lucy’s mouth tasted like. Unlike Janne, she was a sweet-natured girl, nice and helpful and sunny, maybe not quite as pretty, but so much warmth emanated from her that I always found myself smiling for no reason when she was with me. She wanted to visit me in the hospital, but I hadn’t let anyone in. In the months afterward, she still called and wrote me letters that ended at first with “kisses, Lucy” and later “with love” and then they stopped. I’d written her an email ending things with her in case there was anything left to end. I didn’t get an answer to it and was both relieved and disappointed.
Just Call Me Superhero Page 4