Goodbye Lucille

by Segun Afolabi

  ‘Okay, I’ll see you at the Rio.’

  I washed my face and changed into my Hawaiian shirt and baggy chinos. A night of revelry seemed like a godsend. When the phone rang again I did not think.

  ‘You’re in, thank goodness,’ Claudia said. ‘I tried before, but it was busy. I can’t find Mum. I’ve looked everywhere.’

  I wandered into the hallway searching for my left shoe. ‘What do you mean, you can’t find her?’

  ‘I fell asleep and when I woke up, she was gone.’ She had begun to cry.

  ‘Hey – wait, wait, wait … how long has she been missing?’

  ‘Nearly two hours now. I wasn’t worried at first. I thought she’d come back soon. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘But … she’s an adult. She can go out if she wants to. Maybe she’s gone to a friend’s house or for a walk.’ I didn’t sound convinced myself. ‘You’ve checked the building?’

  ‘I’ve looked everywhere. The car’s still here, but her coat’s gone.’

  I yanked the telephone cable into the bedroom as I searched for my shoe, and knelt on the floor and squinted under the bed. ‘She didn’t leave a message?’ I was thinking only of my own desire for drunkenness, for oblivion. I shifted my dirty clothes and my suitcase, still half-unpacked and saw only balls of dust and dirt rolling away from me. I sat up, still kneeling. There was the canary-yellow shoe Frau Schlegel had given me sitting on the window ledge.

  ‘No message. Nothing. She could have gone anywhere.’ She didn’t mention what she was most afraid of.

  I crouched down, my forehead against the bed and closed my eyes. The dancer with the blue beret, the possibilities at the Jacaranda, a night of abandon ahead. In the end, what did it mean?

  A weekday night. Zehlendorf was deserted. There was no litter, no anarchists loitering on the streets. Kreuzberg was like a circus on speed compared to this. Zehlendorf felt safe, but desolate. I couldn’t imagine Frau Schlegel wandering about on her own.

  As I approached the building a battered Citroën pulled up.

  ‘Vincent – what are you doing here at this hour?’ Frau Schlegel called.

  I peered at the vehicle, at a bearded man behind the wheel. ‘Claudia said you’d disappeared. She was upset. She didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her?’ the man asked.

  ‘My God! Claudi. I completely forgot. I didn’t think – she was fast asleep.’ She held a cigarette away from her face and looked up at the balcony. Claudia was leaning against the railing, looking down at us. She didn’t move. For a moment no one spoke.

  ‘I should go now, Gaspar,’ Frau Schlegel said. ‘Thank you for all your help.’

  ‘No thanks needed,’ he replied. ‘Only remember what we talked about. Patience.’

  She nodded and emerged slowly from the car. ‘We were driving,’ Frau Schlegel said as we approached the building. ‘It was easier than sitting still. I couldn’t sit any longer. I needed … movement. Sometimes I get so agitated. What must she think of me?’

  ‘She was worried, that’s all,’ I said. I couldn’t elaborate, could not say what had been at the forefront of our minds: that she had gone to the nearest bar and ordered a double vodka and then another, and had lost herself in drink.

  Frau Schlegel headed straight for the balcony to speak to Claudia. How did it feel to be mothered by a daughter who needed mothering herself?

  I went into the kitchen to make coffee – a kitchen for a large family, with table and chairs and a vast cooking range capable of conjuring a feast.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to come all this way,’ Frau Schlegel said as they returned from outside. ‘I felt … not so strong. That’s how it was. I had to go for help – Gaspar heads our meetings. He helped me to … to calm down a little. I’ve been trying to keep busy, but it creeps back again … work, worries, everything. It’s all my fault. I’ve been neglectful.’

  ‘It was no trouble,’ I said. ‘Besides, I like coming here.’ And I realized, as I said it, that I did after all.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ Claudia said. ‘There’s no point in worrying now.’ But her face was drawn and pale.

  Her mother nodded slowly. ‘One day at a time, they say. We have to remember that.’

  ‘You look like you’ve been to a party.’ Claudia turned to me.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your clothes,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I laughed. ‘Not really a party. Just … it doesn’t matter now.’

  I remembered the dancer, Martine, the prospect of a night of pleasure. A drifting into the unknown. It seemed so easy to swerve off the ledge, down the cliff face, without apparent thought. Life seemed a process of maintaining equilibrium, from tipping too far in either direction, from inertia to absolute chaos. Often it was easier to allow things to develop at their own pace, with their own agenda, so that nothing and everything was culpable. It was a way to manage without making sense of anything, a habit as addictive as any drug, as necessary as sleep.

  29

  FRAU LIESER FELL the second week in September. A warm spell floated in – a scattering of days – before being chased away by an autumnal breeze. No one trusted the Indian summer – we kept our sweaters and umbrellas close to hand – and it was gone before it could be fully appreciated. Frau Lieser had been mopping the stairs, eight steps from the landing. She tripped on her own foot, the right playing hide and seek with the left, spraining her wrist, twisting an ankle, her soft, ageing body bruising easily as overripe fruit.

  Ezmîr Özdemi fell the very next day. Eight floors this time. His body split like a dropped watermelon. He had not fallen, of course; he had gone of his own volition. There was a piece in Der Tagesspiegel – Asylum Seeker Leaps to Death – but it was tucked in the centre, in a column so small it was easily missed. He jumped at the conclusion to an interview with immigration officers that had not gone in his favour. It was one of the warm, floating days; he ran through a wide-open window. I thought as I read the piece I could see his soul drifting one way, heavenward, the shell of him racing the other. A cheerful man. I recognized his photograph; I had taken it, after all. Arî’s one-eyed compatriot. I remembered the hostel of only a few weeks ago, the men on the bunk beds, the Somali family, subjects in my portfolio. There was a burial shortly after the event. Arî left his apartment for several days and when he came back he did not speak to any of us, only to Frau Lieser, whom he visited in hospital. He told no one where he had been. He went out and returned, but he seemed angry and afraid.

  Frau Bowker visited our building every day now. She flung open Frau Lieser’s front windows when the weather turned mild. Usually she stared wretchedly behind the panes, clinging to Schnapps. Once, when returning from a meeting at Zip, I spotted her sentinel form gazing into the street. She had already dashed into the hall by the time I reached for my key.

  ‘It’s you …I thought perhaps it was Marianne,’ she lied. She glanced over my shoulder theatrically, as if Frau Lieser was hiding behind me, and said, ‘There’s tea and milk. The milk mustn’t be wasted. I have much too much to think about. Sit anywhere; just don’t sit in Marianne’s chair. She’ll be back any minute, and what would she think, me entertaining all and sundry, morning, noon and night? Silence Schnapps!’

  I had no choice but to enter the fussy minefield and make small talk, while Schnapps pattered between kitchen and sitting room, utterly bewildered. She attempted a couple of feeble yaps, then a low growl, which fizzled into a whine, but her mistress only ignored her. In a moment she lay on the rug and focused on nothing, confused and defeated.

  ‘A few more days and she’ll be back,’ I said. Clariss and I had visited Frau Lieser in hospital the day of the accident. Now it took all of Frau Bowker’s reserves to prevent herself scaling three flights of stairs in order to engage Clariss who seemed to have become her confidante. She was lonely; she missed her old friend, we could see that clearly. Perhaps her panic-stricken features bore witness to a terror of permanently losing F
rau Lieser.

  Clariss tried to stay away from the building until she was sure Frau Bowker had left for the day, but often she was caught out when the old woman visited at odd hours. Frau Bowker spoke to anyone now – Arî, Dieter, even Caroline whose cold look rivalled her own hateful glares. We were all unnerved by her need; we trusted her more when she had been cruel and cunning.

  One night I was woken by a telephone call. ‘We have a new government!’ Uncle Raymond’s voice was thin and distant. ‘Again!’

  ‘When did this happen?’ I shouted back. It occurred to me that I too might sound stretched and far away.

  ‘This morning, or yesterday! I’m not sure. We are under curfew. Did you see it on TV?’

  ‘No! I don’t have a television. I didn’t hear it on the news, though. No one’s said anything!’

  ‘Oh.’ He sounded disappointed. ‘Anyway, it’s normal. It’s what we are used to. Don’t worry! I wanted to let you know that we are all right. I spoke to Roli and Kayode in New York just now. Only Bunmi I can’t reach. Imagine, I can call you, but I can’t even reach Lagos. Your aunty wants to …’ We were cut off. I listened for a while in case the connection returned. I hung up and waited ten minutes, but he didn’t ring back. I phoned Tunde.

  ‘Yeah, I heard,’ he said. ‘This afternoon. Non-stop palava, eh? Listen, Linda wants to party. You want to come out tonight?’

  I hung up and phoned Matty, then dialled Uncle Raymond’s number, without success. I tried eleven times before I slept. He had said not to worry, but I could not help thinking of the two elderly people alone in the large bungalow.

  When it began again it was silent or noisy, or both. I don’t remember. Perhaps we only noticed the absence of things – words and phrases and gestures we had begun to rely on. Maybe it accrued gradually; no one was fully aware. Frau Schlegel fell – it seemed a time for falling – but Claudia didn’t discover until the next day when her mother limped home from work. She said it was ‘nothing’ – she had slipped on a polystyrene food container ‘some fool’ had discarded in the street. It didn’t matter. It provided the impetus for her to draft a new kind of sole – a combination of sports and formal footwear. Something to focus on, she said. Ideas were gathering and ideas kept her occupied.

  And when I called Claudia one evening and Frau Schlegel answered to say her daughter was at a friend’s house, her words and sentences dragged. I asked if everything was all right.

  ‘I’m just tired, Vincent. We’re launching a new product tomorrow. I’ve been working day and night to make sure everything’s perfect for the presentation. I was just dozing when you phoned.’

  I apologized. ‘Just make sure you get a good night’s sleep,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll try and do that, my dear,’ she said. ‘Sleep well yourself. Remember, every day is a moment to treasure.’

  But I did not hear that phrase again, nor any of her favourite words and maxims. She began to drop her crutches like an invalid who wants only to run when she can barely crawl. No more ‘patience and humility’ and ‘time is a healer’. ‘One day at a time’ seemed an age away.

  It had begun long ago, only we had been unaware. We had been charmed into relaxing because of her initial zeal. We felt like fools, like the boy in the blindfold who tried to strike the piñata: we were in the wrong room, the wrong town, the wrong country. There were signs, like telegraph poles, for all to see. We did not see them.

  Claudia had made dinner for Sylvie and me: braised beef with garlic mushrooms and roast potatoes. The telephone rang and Claudia went to answer it.

  ‘I thought she was with you,’ Claudia said. Then silence. ‘But she was going to the meeting tonight. That’s why she’s not here.’ Her voice was small and disbelieving.

  Sylvie and I looked at each other.

  Claudia didn’t speak when she returned to the table.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Gaspar wants to know where Mum is.’

  ‘She’s not with him?’ Sylvie asked.

  Claudia shook her head.

  ‘Maybe she had somewhere else to go,’ I said. ‘She can’t attend meetings all the time.’

  ‘He says this is the second week she hasn’t shown up.’ A cloud crossed her face, a puzzled, angry nimbus. ‘What’s she been doing all this time?’

  When Frau Schlegel returned, Claudia was falsely breezy. ‘How did it go?’ she called.

  ‘Fine. Same as always,’ her mother replied.

  ‘Any newcomers tonight?’ Claudia reached for the table mats and shook them hard.

  ‘No, just the usual crowd. Gaspar says two new people are coming on Monday.’

  ‘You want some coffee, Mum?’ Claudia half-shouted.

  Frau Schlegel missed the tone in her daughter’s voice. ‘No thanks. I think I’ll just have a soak. Turn in. It’s been a long day.’

  ‘Mum, where were you tonight?’ Claudia asked. ‘You weren’t at the meeting, I know.’

  ‘What … you’re checking on me now?’ Frau Schlegel glared.

  ‘No, Mum. I just …’

  ‘I won’t have you spying! I won’t have it! You understand?’ She was shouting now and her hands were shaking. ‘If it’s so important to you, I went to visit Kirsten and the boys. Phone her if you don’t believe me.’ She marched to her room and slammed the door.

  Claudia shrugged and cleared the table. No one spoke.

  I still could not get a connection to Jos. I phoned Matty, who couldn’t get through either. Probably everything was fine, he said. I wasn’t to worry. B and Angelika continued to prepare for their wedding and for the trip to Cameroon. Tunde stopped seeing Linda soon after bumping into Martine again at the Jacaranda.

  The Zimmermans moved out a week after Frau Lieser returned. Dieter had given up the pretence of seeing them separately. He grew bold. He began to visit their apartment when they were both in. Sometimes he would dart back upstairs wearing only a dressing gown and army boots, and hurry down again while Caroline screamed at his retreating figure. What had started as an adventure had developed into an obsession.

  One evening Dieter knocked on their door and there was no reply. I no longer heard the jangle of keys or the clunk of their door in the early morning or late at night. Dieter tried again the following day. Frau Lieser lent him her spare key on the third evening after he frightened her with tales of accidental deaths, gas cookers left on, tenants swinging from pendants. They had left most of their furniture behind, but everything else had vanished. There was an envelope addressed to Frau Lieser containing one month’s rent, but no note. Dieter shrugged and said, ‘That’s fucked up. I wonder if Clari’s down at the Rio?’ He never mentioned the Zimmermans again.

  Frau Lieser hobbled about on aluminium crutches and declared she couldn’t do a thing for herself. She hovered by her window and ensnared whichever unlucky tenant she happened to spy. She seized anyone she recognized – Claudia or B or one of the punks, even the mailman – who was able to carry a tray from her kitchen to the sitting room, to turn her mattress, to sit for five minutes of conversation. Concern about her friend seemed to have drained Frau Bowker. Perched and alert one minute, her chin would slowly sag and her mouth would slacken.

  ‘She’s getting on now,’ Frau Lieser said to me. ‘Elsa’s so much older than me, you know.’ She shook her head sadly and the bows of her headscarf flapped like the ears of a cocker spaniel. ‘I didn’t notice it before.’

  ‘I’m two years older than you, Marianne,’ Frau Bowker growled, but she did not raise her head. ‘I hear every word you’re saying.’

  Frau Lieser jumped and reddened. A moment later, Frau Bowker was snoring fitfully again. Frau Lieser squinted, but couldn’t decide whether her friend was genuinely asleep.

  When next I visited Frau Schlegel’s apartment, Claudia put a finger to her lips and indicated the leather sofa. Her mother lay sprawled along its length, a blanket covering her legs.

  ‘She’s tired,’ Claudia said, matter of fact. ‘Thou
ght she could manage a glass of wine at work yesterday. She didn’t finish her lunch or her work, but the empty bottles are there for you to see. I found her on the bathroom floor when I came back.’ She pouted as if it was all beyond her now. She had tried and she had failed. What more could she do?

  Frau Schlegel woke an hour later, eyes bloodshot, face crumpled. Haggard.

  ‘Claudi … you’re back. Vincent? I must have dropped off. What time is it?’ Her eyes scanned the room as if she had lost something.

  ‘D’you want me to run you a bath, Mum?’

  She shook her head and yawned. ‘No. No, I should really get to bed. There’s a marketing meeting first thing tomorrow.’

  Claudia glanced at me, waited a moment before she spoke. ‘It’s Saturday tomorrow, Mum. Edward phoned. It’s all right, about the meeting. Don’t worry. Let me run you that bath.’

  Frau Schlegel winced and stared at her watch. She sighed and shook her head. Perhaps it had seemed like a dream, the previous day, the inebriate plunge, the vanished hours? Could it kill a part of you to know you were ill and unable to help yourself? She was quiet for a long time. I retreated to the kitchen to make coffee, to give them some privacy. When I returned Frau Schlegel was kneeling on the rug, rocking back and forth, Claudia beside her, an arm round her torso. ‘I can’t do this any more,’ Frau Schlegel cried. She was like a girl who had been forbidden to attend a dance, disconsolate and maddened.

  I backed into the kitchen and waited. I wanted to be away from the raw emotions, the tears. When I emerged Frau Schlegel was on the sofa, dabbing at her eyes with the hem of her sleeve.

  ‘Come, let’s go and have that bath,’ Claudia whispered.

  But Frau Schlegel did not move from the edge of the sofa even after Claudia had entered her mother’s room. We could hear the gush of the filling bath.