Zbinden's Progress

by Christoph Simon

In the red light of the evening sun, we left the village to find a place to sleep. We found a grove and started to unpack among the bushes. The air was heavy with the scent of thyme. We rolled ourselves up in our sleeping bags and chatted to the night-time sounds of the frogs, crickets, mosquitoes, donkeys, dogs and nightingales.

  ‘There’s this yearning simply to be with him,’ I said, bitterly. ‘This odd looking forward to something you know, something familiar, and then the disappointment when we are together. Because we can’t speak to each other.’

  ‘Do you remember?’ Emilie asked. ‘At tea, once, Markus said – he was eleven at the time, maybe – “Mama, you left a piece of cauliflower earlier.” He was playing the strict father and tried to take my dessert from me. You sent him back to his seat, though. “Sit down, Markus,” you said. “You should take more exercise, you’re getting a crooked back.”’ Emilie laughed, with pleasure. ‘You fought about anything and everything. But I reckon neither of you knows what about.’

  ‘What was it about then?’

  ‘It was always very flattering when my husband and my son competed for my attention.’

  I want to tell you something quite openly, Kâzim: ever since Emilie’s beautiful, kind eyes closed for the last time, I don’t know what I can still take seriously. How can an elderly man oppose the fleeting nature of the universe? Finance anarchist groups? Invest in adopting children? Distribute Chinese plants that help against rheumatism? Sell plots at the deserted edges of towns and hope in the name of the heirs for a building boom? I miss our daily little tendernesses: touching her hair as we pass; kissing her neck as she folds the washing; her hand on my thigh as we listen to classical music requests.

  Very suddenly, Emilie was always tired. Everything was a strain for her, and she seemed to catch every infection going, every single infection from far and wide. Our GP gave her a blood test, and both he and the specialist to whom she was referred suggested a bone marrow biopsy to get a clear picture of her illness. She was assured such examinations were quite harmless. But she’d heard of a few people who had found them very painful and, certainly, very unpleasant. She knew that if you embark on such tests, you get tied up with a series of doctor and hospital appointments, and she didn’t have the least intention of spending the little time remaining to her waiting in hospital departments. What’s more, we had enquired and learned that the treatments suggested when leukaemia is diagnosed can at best prolong life for a short period. Emilie declined the bone marrow biopsy. She was always convinced that how long you live isn’t what counts. Nine months later, she died at home.

  It was a long, protracted death. Her condition worsened, remained like that for a while, worsened again. Emilie became thinner and smaller, looked like a bird. I accompanied her to the toilet – had to lift her up and drag her. On one occasion, we fell. Emilie was lying on top of me. I couldn’t move, and she didn’t have the strength to push herself off, or turn away. Our son, who – mystifyingly – had set out on a whim to visit us that evening, helped me to get up and carry her to bed. The next day, we arranged a home assistance service.

  ‘How long can you stay?’ I asked Markus as we waited for the nurse.

  ‘A week, for sure,’ he said. ‘Longer, if necessary.’

  I was grateful, and also surprised, as I’d been convinced he’d have to think long and hard about how to rearrange his professional duties.

  The nurse came in the mornings to attend to Emilie, to treat her wounds with ointments. She put a nappy on her, and clean clothes. I performed these tasks when the nurse wasn’t there. I removed the used nappy, cleaned her, put ointment on the open sores, and put a clean nappy on. Emilie put up with this without complaining, but I knew what she was feeling as I attended to her. The fact she was creating dirt, that she stank, that she was causing so much work, troubled her. When I washed her, I talked to her, an attempt to distract her.

  ‘Emilie, try hard and get well.’

  She tried to meet my gaze, smiled almost imperceptibly.

  ‘Please get well, Emilie.’

  She looked at me. Emilie had beautiful, hazelnut-brown eyes – have I mentioned that already?

  And imagine, Kâzim: she said, ‘Lukas, what do you hold on to?’

  At night I hardly slept: listening to her every breath, and jumping up immediately and sitting beside her if she made the slightest sound.

  Markus bought vegetables, in rough amounts, and threw them together in the kitchen. Emilie ate only tiny morsels, but she ate with pleasure. She was pleased with the food, praised Markus, and asked even in the morning, ‘What are we eating later? Are you cooking another fabulous stew, like yesterday?’

  The nurse attended to Emilie professionally, and lovingly. She was skilled and fast. She showed me the most important handholds. How to lift Emilie, minimising the pain. It was just that I handled her emaciated, sore body so fearfully, I prolonged the torture. Even if the nurse did the work, it hurt Emilie, and my clumsy handholds were worse still. She tried to control herself, whimpered quietly, whispered, ‘That hurts, dear,’ and I needed all my strength not to collapse beneath her pain. I couldn’t watch her lying in her own dirt – I had to hurt her. That was the worst part, believe me.

  Bouts of pain tortured her, inexpressibly. She slept in between, or lay awake. We took turns at being with her – Markus, Verena and I. So someone was always there to hold her hand.

  The last words Emilie spoke to me. We’re alone in the bedroom. Emilie’s sleeping peacefully, her face lit by the afternoon light. The light of painters. I’m exhausted but just thinking what a wonderful person Emilie is. How much joy we shared: she always had something incredible in store. Her life was full – incredibly full – of friendship and cheerfulness; she was always so buoyant, and grateful. With her, each day was a gift.

  She opens her eyes. ‘Lukas?’ she asks, faintly.

  ‘I’m here, Emilie.’

  She turns her head to me and manages to whisper, with difficulty, ‘Do you remember that crystal-clear lake we were at? You were trying to catch trout with your bare hands? Were up to your knees in the water.’

  ‘You advised me to learn to swim. So as not to drown, if ever the water was deeper.’

  ‘In Kandersteg, as we waited for the train, you stole a dark-red rose from a garden. You bit off the thorns and spat them out. You held the rose up to my face. Then said I should consider marrying you. If you’d not asked, I’d have asked you.’

  She sees the tears on my cheeks, me shaking my head. Then closes her eyes. Without stopping to think what I’m doing, I get into the bed beside her and put my head beside hers on the pillow. Her hand feels for mine, and we lie there for half an hour maybe. Then she dies. Without a sigh. Without the slightest struggle.

  Thus died the person I loved like nothing else. Losing Emilie was – but what am I saying? You know yourself what it is to lose someone, and if you don’t, you will one day. I thought of all the things I wished I’d said to her; of all the things I wished I’d done. In the end, I knew only that we should appreciate each other more. We should all appreciate each other more, and show it before it’s too late.

  May the road rise to meet you – an amateur choir, in which Emilie had sung, performed that song at the funeral. Their farewell greeting. Never had the choir failed as on this occasion. No one could hit the notes, for sobbing. I can tell you one thing: if Emilie were still here with me, and I could make a wish, I know what it would be: to be allowed to die with her.

  After her death, you see, Kâzim, I was just about crushed by the pain and loneliness. Devoured by longing for the person I missed. How was I supposed to live for a single moment without her? I broke out in cold sweats as I walked through the suddenly empty house. I tried hard to trust in God more, but I’m not very religious. After all, there isn’t just one god: all those galaxies of stars and everything – they must be gods, whole flocks of them.

  The family’s care for me was touching, as was the compassion of the many people wis
hing to express their sympathy. Flowers were sent to comfort me, but I missed Emilie terribly. It was ghastly to open the door, knowing that Emilie wasn’t there to greet me, beaming with joy and wanting to hear all about my day. I became a complete stranger to myself when people phoned and asked, with the best of intentions, how I was – they’d known Emilie well.

  ‘I don’t remember you,’ I’d say, with a tremble in my voice, and replace the receiver.

  I couldn’t bring myself to hang the wet washing up; to take the bin out; to cook. A single occasion excepted, when I roasted a tough chicken, and left it in the oven overnight. It disintegrated: a sticky black mass. The clay pot was done for. I can’t find my thermal socks. What will I do with her sewing things? I can’t find the door key – it was always Emilie who took her key out when we arrived back together. Why eat? Why put flowers in vases? I’m forced to play a role that doesn’t suit me. I think unkind things like ‘Good world, now try and get along without me.’

  The family stood by me. We sat down to share out Emilie’s jewellery. Markus, Verena, Angela and I. With each individual piece, we considered ‘Who would that suit?’

  Markus and I insisted on Verena getting a certain pair of earrings: we reckoned they were her style. And, together, Markus and I convinced Angela to accept a particular ring as, in our opinion, it suited her perfectly. At that moment, I felt as close to my son as rarely before.

  But when I’m alone again, I just stare, in jaded fashion, at our bed, where she died; I stare into drawers; stare gloomily at her hairbrushes in the bathroom cabinet; and stare at envelopes addressed to her – a form of torture. Post kept on coming for her for such a long time.

  It rains, and the rain hammers down on the flowers covering her grave, extinguishing the candles that surround it. I still have to have the gravestone erected. The neighbouring graves are already done. I don’t know what kind of stone to choose. A woman lays flowers on a child’s grave, some rows away. I cry and don’t move. It would take an earthquake to move me. A volcanic eruption. Or a trick. A simple self-deception.

  Do you remember how it was to be a child? You banged your head, and your mother kissed it better? I imagined Emilie kissing my pain better. Bending down and pressing her lips on my temple. And do you know what? Imagining that gave me strength. My voice brightened up. I felt almost protected. Protected in a way I hadn’t felt for months. And then I asked myself what Emilie would have done, in my place. How she would have proceeded. What Emilie would have thought of staring into a drawer; at a grave.

  No, she wouldn’t have allowed a healthy, intelligent person to die of grief. Especially not if she was that person. Before giving up on herself, she’d have told herself to walk round the cemetery, thrice. She’d have done what needed doing, would’ve given herself a smack in order to wake up and face reality. She’d have mopped the floor, washed the dirty cloths out, cleaned the sink. She’d have gone to the potato growers’ village, to visit a lifelong friend.

  So I pulled myself together. The photo albums made their way into the cupboard. A carpet that had slipped a little was re-positioned. A bowl of dried flowers was placed on the table. The handles of the umbrellas in the copper stand were disentangled. Bills were put away, properly, in folders. I didn’t go to the extreme of cleaning the windows, but I folded the dishcloths with a precision that even for an eighty-four-year-old bordered on pathological.

  Then I left the house and asked Emilie to join me, as she’d always done. To walk beside me, in intimate togetherness: I know what you’re feeling, you know what I’m feeling. – That’s not supernatural, Kâzim! Not any more so than the telephone. The spirits are here, around us. We just lack the right apparatus.

  On a whim, I started asking for things for other people. Two men laying a cable: I asked Emilie to give them a good wage. I saw a woman hanging out laundry: the long lines full of children’s clothes told me she had a large family to care for. I asked Emilie to give her an untroubled life, a helpful husband and healthy children. At the bus stop, I saw a young man crouched beside the bench, dozing. I asked Emilie to have him wakened; and to give him the blessing of a varied job. Is there something wrong with me, Kâzim? Something age-related, maybe? I was convinced each request had immediate effect!

  On the way home, I took the tram. I was sitting behind a woman who seemed depressed. I’d seen her face as I boarded the carriage and now asked Emilie to relieve her of her depression. At that moment, the woman reached for the back of her head, and when she got off a little later, the gloomy look had vanished from her face. There was a smile, even! I like to tell myself that Emilie often succeeds in improving the atmosphere in a tram.

  Once, Markus was struggling, resentfully, to lift a heavy stone. He’s a proud little boy. Emilie, watching, asks after a while, ‘Tell me, are you really doing all you possibly can?’

  ‘Of course. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Emilie replies, ‘because, so far, you haven’t asked me to help you.’

  He looks at his mother as if she were a magician.

  You should know, Kâzim: my daughter-in-law lives in permanent fear of some unspecified, terrible thing that might happen. She’s just waiting for some unhappy event to affect her, or her family. A runny nose, conjunctivitis, a corn – all grow, in her imagination, into something monstrous. She carefully avoids letting it show that it worries her if her daughter has a date on Saturday with a young Frenchman. But her feelings betray her when Angela comes home on Sunday and discovers that, for no reason her mother can voice, the latter is angry and irritated. Verena’s worn-out look tells me she’d give a lot to be more relaxed. I’ll ask Emilie to give her peace of mind. And let’s see what happens.

  – When? Three years ago in autumn. A stumble helped me to take the last seven rungs of the wretched ladder in a oner. I only broke a few minor bones, but the experience persuaded the family it was time to sit down and talk to me. ‘Pensioner lay helpless by his bed for nine hours’, they read aloud and told me about all the infirm elderly for whom no one comes when they cry for help. Verena confessed that it troubled her to think of me trying to struggle along all alone. I can still do everything myself, true, but I realise I’m not the youngest any more. At least, not as young as I was in my early eighties.

  Before I moved here, to the town I grew up in, and where Markus and his family live, I ceremoniously watered the roses outside our house in Unterseen, and cut the withered shoots off.

  ‘Have you ever thought about roses?’ Emilie had asked once. ‘They never hurry, don’t get into a fret. They don’t make any noise, or answer any phone calls. They just grow and bloom, and give us contentment.’

  Emilie had caressed the rosebush every now and then, she loved it so much.

  The first thing Verena’s brother did, having hardly moved into our house, I heard, was pluck out all the herbs. He didn’t know what they were. The plums and pears on the fruit trees, he left to the wasps. The walnut tree left the house too much in the shade, he claimed, which was why he wanted to decapitate it.

  I remember the day I arrived here, chauffeured by Markus. He gave me a lecture about the damage martens can do to your car, and I was terribly downcast as I thought it would be hard living with so many people I didn’t know. The bed, the lamps, the curtains, the stool, I brought with me. A few books with tattered covers; the photo albums; Emilie’s pearl necklace; and three hand-woven cushions from our honeymoon in Provence, the colours now faded. A few records. To our great pleasure, we’d chanced upon this record shop in Arles where, for a small fee, we could sit and listen to operas all that rainy afternoon. I thought it better not to have too many reminders of things round about me.

  The then manageress of the Home welcomed me to my room with a few friendly words, a bunch of flowers, information about the Home, and a flyer for a session called ‘Gymnastics for the Over-80’s’.

  ‘We don’t have a Care Department as such, but we strive to look after our residents here un
til their dying day,’ the manageress said. ‘When it comes to washing your own things, the Laundry Room – with its washing machines, airing cupboard and tumble-dryer – is at your disposal. At no extra charge, you can always have your washing done for you.’

  The information included a list of classes on a huge variety of things. The contemplation of candles with the Prayer Group; light baths; memory training; reading newspapers; the Biography Group; ‘Making Gifts with Irina’; How to use a Swiss ball – we lift a ball above our heads and try to do knee bends to make sure we haven’t stiffened up. The classes were a good way of settling in, I was told, and to get to know the residents. ‘Speaking of the residents, Herr Zbinden,’ the manageress said, ‘weren’t you a teacher in your day? What subjects did you teach?’

  ‘My favourites were Geography and German.’

  ‘Might you like to offer a class on Swiss Geography, for those who are interested?’ she asked. ‘Or on handwriting?’

  Given that my own handwriting’s terrible, I regard it as the joke of my career that I once taught it. I said. ‘No, if I take a class, then one on walking. If that’s not on offer already.

  ‘Good idea,’ the manageress said, though she couldn’t possibly know what it would entail.

  And so, in my first weeks in the Home, I immersed myself, principally, in the preparation of my class on walking. I wanted the class to be refreshing and exhilarating, and at the same time to have a moral impact, concealed – of course – beneath a cheerful surface, as people generally don’t like listening to moralising. I came across possible participants in the Dining Room; or on the leather armchairs in the Day Room, their legs crossed and stretched out before them as they tapped with their favourite gloves. I sat alone at an empty table in the Dining Room and just stared at my tray with its polenta, beans and pudding. Or sat down, bravely, with my tray in front of me, beside a trio of tame-looking ladies who were bending over their food so absentmindedly, they could have been astral-travelling between bites. Once, when I sat down beside Herr Wenk, he said, with his mouth full and typically tersely, ‘That seat’s taken.’