The Other Me

by Saskia Sarginson

“It was your friend’s father.” He rubs his face. “Baumann. He would have died anyway. Later.”

  “I don’t … I don’t understand,” I say.

  “What’s so difficult, Ernst? Despite your little tryst with the girl, you know the Jews deserved to die as well as I. No. My guilt is for Gwyn. She was my wife. But her heart was too soft, like a child’s. She didn’t have our education. She didn’t know any better.” He stands over me, and the words keep falling from his mouth. “I wanted to tell her, but I had to protect her from the truth. I was afraid she might not love me if she knew. Not if she knew everything. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t lose her. And then you came into our lives, trying to pollute what was pure, forcing more lies into our marriage.”

  The room sways. He sways with it and I cringe against my pillow. There are so many wrongs—and no way of righting them. But he is my brother. And there are more unfinished things. I try to raise myself on my elbows. My arms are like cotton threads. “I am sorry … for loving your wife.”

  “Maybe God will forgive you,” Otto says. “But I can’t. I never will.”

  * * *

  He leaves quietly. The room is thick with his words. They press against me, surrounding my bed: flapping layers of darkness, impossible to breathe through, impossible to shift.

  When the door opens, my heart leaps. I think he’s come back. He made a mistake. He didn’t mean it. Any of it. But it is Klaudia. She creeps close, her face crumpled with anxiety. I inhale her clean scent, her youth. The room brightens. I can breathe. She plumps up my pillow and talks about soup and I nod, to please her. It isn’t food I need anymore.

  She asks about the medals I gave to Gwyn. She flings it out as a casual question, but I see the look on her face. She is suspicious. I want to tell her the truth. I want to tell her that I am her father. A selfish longing for it makes me tremble. But it wouldn’t be fair on her. I have no rights to this beautiful creature. I’ve played no part in her life. I am unclean. My past is ugly. I want to keep her free of it. I’m afraid it will corrupt her.

  KLAUDIA

  WEEKS SLIP BY. Time has become irrelevant. I don’t even read newspapers. We three exist, and Amoya comes and goes, bringing shreds of the outside with her, bits of gossip, the smell of buses and hospitals, and her good-humored common sense. Even my father is drawn to her, suddenly entering the kitchen when she’s in it. She is full of life, full of ordinary human grace.

  It’s late. Ernst is asleep. I draw the curtains, sitting next to him on a chair because it hurts him now when the mattress tips. His face is more skull than flesh. His mouth hangs open and the thin skin of his eyelids flickers. I wonder what he’s dreaming about. Was it really him in that picture? Does he ever think about the girl? Were there others? I thought I’d inherited guilt through my father. And all the time it was this man, a stranger, my uncle, that was the link. It’s odd, but I feel the spooling of our blood running between us. Cosmo and I could never have stayed together—not with our two histories—not when I feel love for this sleeping man, despite what he’s done. And I can’t stop thinking about my mother, how she kept Ernst’s medals for him, and the perfume he gave her. I’d thought she was angry when I asked where Uncle Ernst had gone; now I wonder if it had been disappointment, not disapproval, plucking at her.

  He moans and opens his eyes slowly, blinking. He smiles when he sees me and moves his hand to cover mine. His touch is cold and dry.

  “Beautiful Klaudia,” he whispers. “I’m glad you’re here. Talk to me.”

  “What do you want me to talk about?”

  “Tell me who you love.”

  I’m startled. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I say.

  “But there’s someone you think about, isn’t there?” he persists. “You get a look on your face. A faraway look.”

  I frown. “Yes. But I made a mistake. I lied and he discovered my lie before I could tell him the truth.”

  “Ah.” He squeezes my fingers. “Don’t let him go. Love is the thing that makes us human. Don’t lose it.”

  I shake my head. “I have lost him. It’s over.”

  “But you must explain.” His voice becomes strained. His eyes widen. “Explain your reasons. I know you would have had your reasons. If he loves you, he’ll understand.”

  “It’s too late,” I tell him.

  “It’s never too late,” he whispers.

  We sit in silence, until he stirs again. “Would you do something for me, my darling?”

  “Of course.” I lean forward.

  “I’m tired of the pain. So tired. I have nothing left to do in this life, but I seem to lack the ability to die.” He gives a faint smile. “There have been so many opportunities for me to leave. But here I am. I want to die, Klaudia. Please.”

  I stare at him. My numb mind not understanding.

  “Will you help me?”

  I gasp, sitting back, pushing myself away from the bed. “I couldn’t!” I can’t keep the horror out of my voice.

  “I know. It’s too much to ask.” He sighs and drifts away. “I’m sorry. Perhaps though … you’ll think about it?”

  I walk to the window and look out into the dark garden.

  “You don’t have to let me know right away,” he says quietly.

  Sometimes, in the night, I hear his low, keening wail. The morphine only takes the sharpness away. Nothing gets rid of it. I remember Amoya’s shoulders shifting as she told me that he could live for months. I go back to the bed and bend to kiss his forehead. I smell the sickness, the cloying scent of death that clings to him.

  Cosmo would think it was wrong. He said his family believed in saving lives, even the terminally ill. My father is adamant too: the Church teaches that we cannot make the choice to end a life. It is a sin. But I will never be free of sin. I was born into it.

  * * *

  I still can’t give Ernst an answer. I wish more than anything that I could discuss this with someone. The only person who would listen without judging is Meg. But it’s not the kind of thing you can talk about on the telephone. So I do the only thing that always helps. I pull on my running shoes.

  On the pavement, the cold air hits me. I shiver, shaking my freezing hands to get some blood into them. It will be Christmas soon. Nearly a year since I came home. A plane roars low overhead, its white undercarriage a shark’s belly moving through a dark sea. I begin to run in the direction of the park. My feet smack down on the pavement in long, purposeful strides. I begin to get warmer, rolling up my sleeves as I run. My back is damp. My fingers tingle. I increase my stride, arms pumping, my heart banging at my ribs. I notice the way my feet strike the ground, moving from heel to toe and pushing off. I’m aware of the sensations in my body, the healthy push and pull of muscles, the rush of blood.

  Behind me, stretched out in the narrow spare bed, Ernst is waiting for my answer. He is a skeleton, too weak to even sit up. Amoya fetches and empties bedpans for him, gives him bed baths, feeds morphine into his veins. I can see the pain moving inside him: a writhing, stabbing demon. I understand now why some societies try to expel it with witchcraft. I wish I could drag it out too, chase it away with prayers or spells, sprinkling the blood of hens and hair pulled from the tail of a fox. Magic is what I need. But the only magic available is hope, and it’s too late for that.

  I stride out, the road passing in a blur under my feet, my focus trained on the air just before me, as if I’m racing towards a goal. It’s Cosmo I want to run to. I imagine hurling myself at him, colliding with him, crashing chests, finding a way to cross borders of bone and flesh, a way to enter him. I keep running, tears and sweat stinging my cheeks.

  A streetlight flickers above me. I have a stitch in my side. Trees and buildings are crow-black shapes looming over me. My legs are trembling. I drag at the air with greedy gasps. It scorches my throat. I come to a halt and bend over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.

  I look up into the night sky. Something comes fluttering towards me. White stars
falling. A flickering cloud. Snow. I catch a flake on my tongue; it melts immediately, icy water pooling inside my mouth. I laugh aloud. Forgetting everything for a brief second. I can’t remember when I last saw snow. I turn to walk home, my trainers already soggy, slipping in the fresh fall that’s coating cars and bushes, sticking to trashcan lids and railings in clumps of crystals. I walk faster, breaking into a jog, suddenly anxious about Ernst, thinking of him in the darkness, the cold settling against the windows of the house like white wings, feathers folding shut.

  Our house is the only one in the street without lights, dark as a rotten tooth in the row. All four windows gape black and empty. Amoya has gone for the night. I come into the hall, kicking the snow from my trainers, brushing it from my face.

  * * *

  He is dozing. I stand by the window and pull back the curtains to look out into the falling snow. I listen to the slow wheeze and drag of air entering and leaving his body. Somehow his heart is still beating. To stop that will be murder. But it’s what I must do.

  How do you kill someone? I don’t know how to think about it, plan it. Then I remember the dead cat, my father’s handgun in the top left-hand drawer of the portmanteau. I found the key once and opened it. Stared at the pistol, too scared to pick it up. My eyes followed the heavy lines of the barrel and worn grip. This time I’d feel the weight of it in my palm, slotting bullets into the snug nest of the cylinder. But I’ve seen the films; I know what happens when a bullet tears through a skull: blood, an explosion of it, and scraps of shattered bone, the gloopy insides coming out. Anyway, I’ve never fired a gun. I could end up maiming him instead.

  I can’t believe that I’m even considering this.

  The garden is covered in a thick, dampening carpet of snow. Neat flowerbeds have become small white graves. The naked apple tree holds up silvery branches. The hushed world is transformed. Beyond our garden fence, streetlights gleam, catching snowflakes in illuminated fans. A car rolls past slowly, wheels crunching. The street is oddly deserted.

  It has to be pills. It’s the safest way, surely? I’ll have to acquire them in furtive visits to different chemists. No. That won’t work, because I don’t have weeks, not even days. It has to be now. I need another kind of drug, something immediate and powerful enough to let his dreams drag him under, so that he drowns silently, invisibly, within his own body. I think of his lungs, his heart, his muscles, the secret core of him, unclenching, letting go at last.

  I turn around and Ernst stirs, opens his eyes. He looks at me in silence. His eyes are dull and flat. But as he gazes at me, his one good eye gleams. He doesn’t need to ask the question.

  “I don’t know how,” I say quietly. “I don’t know how to do it.”

  He indicates with his fingers for me to sit, and I lower myself carefully next to him. “Morphine.” He forces the word out through his wheezing. “Amoya has it in her bag. All you have to do is take some extra vials.” He stops. Spittle shines on his lips. “It should be enough. I would go to sleep … hopefully, not wake.”

  “I’d have to steal it?”

  He grimaces as if a knife has sliced into his ribs. “She knows,” he manages to say. “But … not ethical … I can’t put her in that position. She’ll never say anything. Nobody will question the … death of an old man riddled with cancer.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  His eye brightens. His face relaxes.

  “I need to know something first.” I stare into his ravaged features. “I might have got this completely wrong. But I’ve been thinking it for a while now.”

  I look at him, my heart thundering. There is no way to do this except with the plain question. “Did you and my mother … did you ever have a relationship?”

  His eyes widen for a second, and then he nods.

  It’s like puncturing a balloon. All the tension leaves my body. I slump forwards, towards him.

  I feel his hand on my head, stroking my hair. “My dearest,” he murmurs.

  Another certainty is entering me. A knowledge that is as extraordinary and familiar as my own skin seen close up.

  I keep my eyes on the bed. The white fold of sheet. The woolen weave of the blanket.

  “You’re my father … aren’t you?”

  His hand pauses against my head. His fingers tremble.

  A small noise escapes my throat. I bend over, careful not to crush him, and put my arms around him, burying my face in the thin hollow of his neck. I could lift him up. He would weigh no more than a child. I breathe quietly, smelling the sour taste of decay. I press my lips to his scratchy, sunken cheek. His arm curls around my back. We stay like that until the pain means he has to move.

  I busy myself plumping the pillow behind his head. A hard lump of feeling is lodged in my throat: joy and grief.

  “Your mother asked me to keep it secret … she thought it best … she didn’t want Otto—”

  “I know.” I want him to stop talking because I can see that it hurts him. “I won’t say anything.”

  “We didn’t have an affair,” he says. “I need you to know that. We slept together once. We loved each other from a distance. I loved her very much.”

  Enough to let her go, I think.

  * * *

  I used to make up daydreams when I was a child, dreams of running into my father’s embrace. I imagined myself hurtling towards him: my feet swift and agile, and then the joyful leap into his open arms. He swept me up, holding me against his broad chest. And I heard the thud of his heart, felt the rasp of his chin. He wrapped himself around me, as I nuzzled into his neck, whispering against the warmth of his skin, Daddy.

  I kept my eyes tightly closed in that moment, not wanting the dream to end, but it always faltered, because however hard I tried, I couldn’t picture my father’s face.

  ERNST

  AMOYA IS HERE; her skin gleams. I smell coconut oil, sweet. There is the pin-prick. Sharp and necessary. She finds the vein first time. She’s good. She lets go of my arm. “I’ll be back later, Mr. Meyer.” Her voice floats away.

  Cold swims through me, loosening the hooks of pain. Dark eels drift away into the murk. The liquid chill travels on; it swells into my heart, washes onwards through the narrow column of my neck, breaking behind my eyes in a wave of white. White mist. Geese moving inside a cloud, crying and complaining. Otto walks ahead. Blood trickles down his calf. My feet slip on the icy lip of a puddle. Wait for me, I call. Otto. So impatient. Striding on with bright blood running down his leg.

  He was born without a sense of humor, that one, Bettina says with a wink. Bettina: impish and teasing as ever, tossing her hair out of her eyes. I look for her, wanting to return the wink, let her know we’re friends. But she’s moved beyond the edges of my vision.

  It’s strange in this borderland between living and dying. The morphine promises me more. But there is never enough. Klaudia will fetch it for me. She will take me home. My daughter. My little girl with her plaits swinging behind. Sweetheart. Liebling. Schatz. Du machst mich so glücklich. She holds out her hand to me. It should be me leading her to safety, not the other way around.

  My bed is a raft floating across the lake. Beyond there’s the forest, dark and full of wolves. But inside its thickets is the cottage. And I have to get there. I will scramble off the raft and make my way through the secret paths. Sarah and Daniel will be there, waiting for me. Sarah. The door slammed shut behind you. The train moved off. And I stood and watched. I let you go.

  Gwyn moves through the trees. “Don’t worry, cariad,” she whispers. “It will be all right. God forgives you. Sarah is there. She’s waiting for you.”

  She leans down and kisses my forehead. She kisses my blind eye and my scar. Her tongue is damp and warm; her breath is like honey. I wish that she would stay. I wanted to dance with her one more time. Dancing is a joy and the heart in love laughs. Ja da pfeift der wind so kalt. But the wind is so cold, and I’m so tired. Better that she lies down beside me and puts her arms around me. I’d like to f
eel the pressure of her head against my heart, the soft uncurling of her hair under my chin.

  There’s someone else in the room. A sturdy man moves to the other side of my bed. He’s built like an ox. I smell cigarette smoke and damp earth. He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Damaske,” I manage. “There you are.” His face is whole and round, ruddy-cheeked. He winks at me, moving the cigarette in his mouth.

  Who is missing? There’s a woman below the spreading chestnut tree at the edge of the field. But I can’t get to her. The ploughed earth between us is deep and dark. It’s seething with lice, rolls of wire; dead men’s hands stick up out of the mire, clutching their rifles. A tank’s burnt-out carcass is borne up on the swell of muck. She waves. I wave back across a drifting mist of battle smog, the stink of cordite making me cough.

  And there is Otto, young and strong, running through long grass, his head tipped back. He’s laughing. “Catch me if you can!” he calls out, and his voice is clear and loud inside the warm summer evening. There are woodpigeons calling, soft and throaty, and the swallows swoop and dip, blue wings flashing.

  * * *

  Otto looms close. He hangs over me, peering down. He’s not a boy anymore. I smell smoke in his hair. The ashy stink of old fires.

  “You should never have come back,” he says.

  KLAUDIA

  THIS MORNING, WHILE AMOYA WAS out of the room, I slipped vials of morphine into my closed hands, walked into my bedroom and hid them in my sock drawer. Ernst was right. They were easy to steal. She’d left them inside an open bag, on top of other things, so that it was the work of seconds to take them. Ernst has given her the afternoon off. Amoya will return for the night. I must help him before she gets back. My job is to inject the fluid into his poor, thin arm. I’ve never pushed a needle into a vein before. I hope I won’t hurt him.

  * * *

  There’s nobody else in the chapel. I can sit quietly in a pew and think. I don’t believe in my parents’ God. But I’m not like Ernst. I do believe in something—a force for good, something higher and better in the world. Although I feel that helping Ernst to die isn’t wrong, I wish there was someone else to tell me that it’s right. I need reassurance. But I have to do this alone.