Zbinden's Progress
Page 14
Nowadays, Madame Revaz can no longer knit. She listens to the TV, and is forgetting her past. How long, do you think, can we depend on ourselves? On our senses? On our minds? For how much longer will I wake in the morning with the memories I took to bed the evening before?
Once, Emilie and I were lying on a freshly mown meadow, watching the evening.
‘Happiness,’ I said to Emilie, ‘what do you think of when you hear that word?’
‘Can’t you just enjoy the evening, quietly?’
‘No, tell me.’
‘Okay,’ said Emilie, scratching her leg where a mosquito bite was annoying her. ‘There is big and little happiness. Big happiness is our love. The little one would be if you’d just listen to the silence.’
Frau Schild, wait! – Just hand me the envelope. You don’t need to put it in my pigeonhole. It’s much more practical this way. – What’s in it then? Increasing the flat rate for the running costs, are we, hm? – Pardon? – Alessandra? She was turning the third floor upside down, trying to find Frau Binggeli’s crown. – And Frau Jacobs is digging with her index finger inside her collar, to get at something itchy. Perhaps you could ask Lydia or Britta – or is Britta already on maternity leave? – I know nothing about that. Kâzim, did Herr Ziegler mention wanting to visit his wife? As far as I know, he just went up to his room to peel himself out of a garment. Is that your phone ringing? – Pleasure. It’s not as if it’s of any interest to us.
In four weeks, Nurse Britta will have a child. She’s getting into a panic because the office at home is still an office and not a nursery.
Just a little spurt across the hall now and we can breathe again, after holding our breath for much too long. – What? – No, you won’t get me into a wheelchair. – No, Angela pushed me around the squeaky corridor once, then – before I could protest – squeezed me out the door and into the street. She worked up quite a speed, I was rattled around like a sack of potatoes, she turned the corner and then, just as Brunnadernstrasse starts to climb slightly, she ran out of strength. I told you, I know, that I can’t imagine a single trait my son has inherited from me. But Angela says, with a mischievous smile, ‘I always tell Dad that he talks the head off Mum the exact same way he says you always talked Emilie’s head off.’
You see, Kâzim: the shaggy carpet curls and blocks the entrance.
You can let go of my arm now, Kâzim. Thank you very much. Wind force zero. No butterfly’s going to be thrown off course. But you can never know. This is precisely the type of weather that often has a storm in tow. And then the gullies overflow, the water washes the Parliament away, and politicians hit on the idea of abandoning politics and working instead – though not a single case occurs to me, that ended so badly. – Of course, the smoking ban’s been reversed. Be my guest. As long as you don’t throw the butt into the nettles. But I don’t want to keep you any longer, have you considered it? Will you accompany me on a walk? – Really? – You mean, where? – To the river? Gladly! Do you have your boat nearby, by any chance?
I’ve told you about me, now it’s your turn. – Oh, everything! How come you’re here in the Home with us; how long you’ll stay for; and whether you row in a club. A few remarks about human existence; about being a son; having a father. And, of course, whether you’re married, engaged, or somebody’s boyfriend. Who do you tell, in the evening, about what happened to you during the day? Do you celebrate religious feast days even when there’s nothing to eat? Of the people you’ve contact with, which would only you subject yourself to, and no one else? You may also answer questions that haven’t even been put to you. I do that, myself. Every day. – Possibly, but if I’m curious, then you’re stubborn. Are we going to spend the entire evening here before the night-time bell? Fire away! – No, don’t try to change the subject. I’m not budging from here until you start to spill some beans! Tell me some stories from different parts of your life! Or I’ll go back in and dance in the lift naked, while the others try to escape as quick as they can. Then they’ll put me in a home for the senile and I’ll never be heard of ever again. – Pardon? – How to go for a proper walk? You want to know how to walk properly? Kâzim, were you listening to me at all, on the stairs? What are you even doing here at my side? I would say: if a goal has been reached and you haven’t yet homed in on the next one, isn’t there a gap there somewhere? – Now, extend that gap. That’s going for a walk.
Oh dear, look over there: Gandhi, up in the chestnut. – No, I reckon, as long as he stays there, nothing can happen. He does, though, seem to be considering whether to jump over into Frau Wyttenbach’s room. Was that a raindrop? – But please, to the river is wonderful! We could cross the footbridge and borrow a dinghy from the campers in Eichholz. I’ll leave the rowing to you, if that’s okay. I’d like to see you happy. Given you’re already doing me the priceless favour of accompanying me! You’re an angel, Kâzim!
He works away at it every Sunday. If the foot spar’s not the problem, then it’s the sliding seat, and if it’s not the sliding seat, then it’s the rowlock. I fear someone’s fobbed some rubbishy rowing boat off on Kâzim. No, no, I didn’t say I want to change him. You’re putting words in my mouth again. Of course, he can continue to row! I just want not to have to race when in his company, and that’s something quite different. At breakneck speed, we suddenly ran between parked cars out onto Brunnadernstrasse, which attracted semi-enraged, semi-worried looks from both the public and private transport using the road. I appealed to forgotten deities to give me some pace. More than once I was forced to say, ‘Listen, Kâzim, we’re not running, whether this dog chases after us or not.’
No, a big angry one. One that goes for any carer that looks it in the eye. – Emilie, listen. We finally shook off the dog in Elfenau, and I asked Kâzim could we stop to catch our breath. We were standing beside a phone box, and do you know what I thought? I thought: I could die, or lose my mind, without Markus and I having talked things out, and then I’d be terribly sorry. What are you waiting for, Lukas Zbinden? I roared at myself. Do you want to tell him what you feel for him only at the last minute? Don’t try to fool yourself. What you don’t talk about while in full command of your faculties, you’re not going to talk about as a nursing case.
I summoned up all my courage and called our son. After I’d exchanged a few words with Verena, Markus came to the phone, and I said with my heart beating – I don’t know what I was afraid of – ‘I wanted to tell you I love you.’
There was silence at the other end, then the receiver was put down, and I could hear voices in the background. Our daughter-in-law came back to the phone and asked, concerned, ‘What did you say to him?’
‘I said I loved him – something I’ve never told him, and because I thought he’d maybe like to know.’
She said, ‘Markus is sitting over there, fighting back the tears.’
And I reckon, maybe we still can go about things differently, different from before. We’re not a piece of wood, right? That one step out of the always-the-same circle, that one step out into the current, we can take by ourselves.
Have you the feeling, too, that the whole house is gradually getting ready for supper? All that sniffing at the air, trying to guess what the main course is? You know, sometimes situations get too much for me. I’m so homesick for you, I can’t sleep. At times like that, I just put one foot in front of the other and tell someone about you. Hold forth about your merits. Rave on about how complete life by your side is. That is always possible, even when nothing else is. Our names are, indeed, on those deckchairs, Emilie.
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Current & Upcoming Books by And Other Stories
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