The Rose Gardener

by Charlotte Link

  Alan hadn’t understood, and looked at her in confusion. “What’s up?”

  She thought for a second. “Actually, I think I would like to change after all,” she said, switching back to English again. “And comb my hair … just, yeah, straighten myself up a bit. Will you wait for me?”

  “Of course,” said Alan. “I’ll go ahead and go down to the car.”

  She nodded and ran back to the house, went up the stairs to her room and closed the door behind her. She had forgotten that morning. She had forgotten to take her pill. She pulled open the nightstand drawer and took out the package. It was empty.

  Twenty minutes later she still had not found a last reserve anywhere in the room. The pack in the drawer was all used up. She had stared at it; she couldn’t fathom what was happening. She tried to remember the night before: She had taken a pill before driving with Beatrice to St. Peter Port. She’d been in a hurry, but it had occurred to her that she had taken the last pill in the packet. She had peered into the box and thought she had seen another, full blister packet, but now she realized that she had been mistaken: there was only the folded sheet of paper with the instructions on use.

  “Shit!” she said emphatically. She had been too much in a hurry the night before, too sloppy. But really, she had been sloppy this entire time. She couldn’t get the medication on the island. She would’ve had to order a refill from Germany two weeks ago at the very least.

  She stood in the middle of the room.

  Why didn’t I do that, she thought, why not? I’ve never let something like this happen before …

  She started rummaging around the room again, and as she did so she couldn’t help thinking of Erich, who on the last day of his life had scoured the house with the selfsame frenzy and mounting panic.

  You are not Erich, she told herself. You’re not like him. Stay calm.

  But she found it difficult to follow her own command. Her nervousness seemed to intensify with every minute. The tingling in her fingertips grew more pronounced. In just a few minutes, she knew, her hands would be shaking.

  She looked around the room, desperately trying to control the rising panic.

  I’m just anxious right now because I can’t find any pills, she thought. Otherwise I wouldn’t notice a thing. It’s pure suggestion. It’s not real.

  She couldn’t stay up here forever. She looked at her watch, it was almost one, and she had been up in the house for twenty-five minutes now. At some point Alan would show up looking for her. And she still had not changed her clothes, which she’d claimed was her reason for going up to her room.

  My suitcase, she thought, there could still be some in my suitcase. Where is it?

  She looked around, frantic, then it dawned on her that she had stowed it away on top of the dresser. She pulled up a chair, climbed on top, rummaged around in the suitcase. She couldn’t see anything. Even standing on the chair she was still too short, she couldn’t see over the edge of the suitcase. She felt along the silk lining, but the knowledge remained: the suitcase was empty.

  She tried to unzip the inside pocket, raised herself even higher, standing on the tips of her toes. Stretching out. She still had her wet rubber boots on, and suddenly she slipped on the smooth wooden seat of the chair. She tried to hold onto the edge of the dresser, but she couldn’t get a grip. She lost her balance and would have fallen over backwards had two hands not gripped her hips and caught her.

  “Careful,” said Alan. “It can turn out really nasty, a fall like that. What are you looking for up there?”

  She’d recovered her balance. She turned around and looked down at him. He let go of her.

  “Thanks,” she said. “That was really just in the nick of time.”

  “I’m sorry to go ahead and barge into your room,” said Alan, “but I was sitting down there in the car and I thought, It can’t take that long!” He looked at her. “You haven’t changed yet,” he observed. “You’ve even got your rain jacket on still. And your rain boots, too!”

  It was pointless to deny any of this, and so she simply nodded. He took her hand and helped her climb down from the chair.

  “You’re very pale,” he said. “Is something wrong?” She stood there before him, clothes dripping wet, arms hanging dully at her sides. She felt like the picture of misery. “Oh, you know what it is,” she said in resignation. “You know what’s wrong.”

  He nodded. “Your pills.”

  “I need one in the morning and one at night, then everything’s okay. This morning I didn’t take any and now I absolutely have to have one. But the pack is empty!” She gestured towards her nightstand. The drawer was open; on top, right next to the reading lamp, was the empty box, and next to it the crumpled instructions sheet. “I’m such an idiot!” There were almost tears in her eyes, she fought hard to keep them back. “I’ve been thinking the whole time that the stupid instructions sheet was another strip. I thought I still had time before I’d have to order more. And just now I’d been hoping … oh, it could have been that there was still something in the suitcase.”

  “But you were out of luck.”

  “Yes. The damn suitcase is empty! And I don’t know where else there is to look!”

  He looked around the room. “Fact is,” he said, “there’s probably nothing left.”

  “Yes. I’m afraid so too.”

  They stood across from one another, each at a loss for what to do.

  Finally, Alan said, “But you don’t need the stuff anyway!”

  Franca laughed bitterly. “Oh — you really must know better than that. You got to see me in top form last September!”

  “That was, as you are correct in saying, last September,” he said calmly. “And now it’s May, and there’s a completely different woman standing in front of me. A woman with barely anything in common with the trembling creature who latched onto my car back then after she’d caused a bit of a commotion at The Terrace.”

  “I’m not a different woman,” said Franca, but he disagreed at once. “As if you weren’t! Maybe you can’t see it yourself, since of course you don’t have enough distance. You’ve changed greatly, and I think you actually can forget about these pills.”

  She took note of the anger rising within her. She had read enough self-help guides of the pop-psychology sort to be familiar with lines like:

  You don’t need pills!

  You are strong!

  You don’t have to be afraid of anything or anyone!

  You can accomplish anything you want!

  The time when she had believed in this kind of motto was gone. Ridiculous attempts to brush aside whatever problems a person carries around with them through stubbornness and the power of suggestion. It didn’t get better, but at least it didn’t get any worse, either. But she’d had enough of people thinking they could cure her with such cheap therapy.

  “And how are you supposed to know that?” she fired back, and a certain edge hummed in her voice. “Do you think you know me well enough that you can make that judgment?”

  He didn’t try and match her aggressive tone. “You’re right, I don’t know you particularly well. But I do have eyes, I can see. And I see that you’re just different now. Whether you want to hear it or not, and no matter how vehemently you deny it — I can only tell you what my impression is.”

  “Maybe I’m not at all interested in your impression,” said Franca snottily. “And besides, you of all people should …,” she said nothing more, but Alan had already guessed what she’d wanted to say.

  “Besides, I, of all people, shouldn’t say a word,” he said. “Alcoholic that I am. But that gives me a certain authority, don’t you think? You don’t strike me as being unstable, dependent, weak, or pitiful. You’re a lively and energetic woman who goes her own way and believes, only for habitual reasons that are entirely out-of-d
ate, that she needs some kind of psychopharmaceutical to keep her on her feet.”

  She listened to what he was saying, but it seemed not to get through all the way. “I need the pills,” she said, but now there was no more rage in her, only resignation. “I can’t do without them.”

  “And they can’t be bought here?”

  “No. I found that out during last year’s stay. I can only get them from my therapist in Germany.”

  Alan walked over to the nightstand, took the instructions sheet and put it in his pocket. “The active ingredients are printed here. I assume the chemical terms don’t vary that much from one language to the next. Maybe we can find a pharmacy that can sell you something quite similar.”

  She shrugged her shoulders, disheartened. “I don’t know. It might also be hard to get a similar medication without a prescription. They’re pretty serious pills, Alan. You can’t just go out and buy them, simple as that.”

  “We’ll try,” he said calmly. “Now let’s go, or did you actually want to change still?”

  Franca looked at him, confused. “You think I’m coming with you to St. Peter Port right now?”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s quarter past one! We were supposed to be there at one o’clock. We should hurry. The two old ladies are already sitting there thinking we got into some kind of accident.”

  “I can’t come with you.”

  “Why not?”

  Again her stomach clenched tight with rage. His feigning ignorance, which she considered a ridiculous tactic, was beginning to get on her nerves.

  “Why not? I don’t know if maybe I’m mistaken, but I thought I’d already made that abundantly clear by now! What do you think we’ve been talking about this whole time? The weather?” She realized that her voice sounded shrill and unattractive, but that was on account of the panic that fluttered from nerve to nerve. It could still be held in check for now, but at some point it would break lose.

  Alan wouldn’t let her provoke him. “I think I’ve understood quite well what was just under discussion. I just don’t see why you now want to stay home. You don’t have any pills, and you’re afraid of having a panic attack. Ok — but if it comes, it comes. Here just the same as in St. Peter Port. You’re not safe anywhere. So you might as well go ahead and come along.”

  “If I stay in the house, it won’t hit me so intensely.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  She was horribly tired all of a sudden. “I don’t know. But I’ll be in a very bad state, and I’d rather not have such an episode in public.”

  “I can understand that. But here you’d be completely alone, and the way I see it, that’s not very good either.”

  Her weariness grew, and Franca understood that for the moment she was safe from the panic flaring up. When this awful exhaustion fell upon her, it meant that the panic had collapsed into itself before it could start its assault. It had transformed somewhat — into a scarcely imaginable loss of strength. It would need a while before it could again take on a new form. First the strength had to return.

  She could no longer summon the energy to hold back her tears. They simply poured from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m just tired. I’m just so awfully tired.”

  She felt Alan wrap her in his arms. Her face was pressed against his wet rain jacket, but that made no difference — it was already wet with tears anyway. A comforting darkness enveloped her, and Alan’s embrace lent her warmth and security.

  As if from far away, she heard his voice. “You don’t have to be sorry! Just cry, for God’s sake. Cry as long as you like!”

  She surrendered herself to her tears, to his arms and to his voice. She didn’t want to fight it, not even if she could have.

  I need strength, she thought. I need strength from somewhere.

  To her amazement, she realized she had found a source.

  6

  It was past two o’clock when they finally arrived at Bruno.

  “My mother will be losing it,” Alan remarked. “She’s sure to be convinced that I’m wildly drunk and lying in a corner someplace and you’re not able to get me over here.”

  They were on more familiar terms now since the scene in Franca’s room. Franca had cried for half an hour, she had shaken and sobbed and as she did so sensed that she wasn’t crying so intensely on account of her lack of medication, but rather that a very old, long pent-up pain was fighting its way out of her, that this was about the years she lost, it was about Michael’s unkindness, it was about all the emotional injuries that she had been dealt, and how she hadn’t had the strength to do anything but take them.

  He had let her sob until her tears stopped of their own accord, until she grew calmer, until the sorrow no longer poured from her in bursts. At one point he had stroked her hair and said, gently, “I know what you’re feeling. I know it all too well.” And she had had the feeling that he was clinging to her as well, that he was also finding comfort in her, even if it seemed that it was she alone who drew strength from him.

  “It’s okay now,” she had said finally and, a little embarrassed, had extracted herself from his embrace. She had brushed back her hair.

  “I must look terrible.”

  “You look pretty,” he said, “but you should wash your face. Otherwise we’d have to come up with an explanation to give to Mae and my mother.”

  She went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, blew her nose, combed her hair. The ruffled look remained, but she had no time now to change and fix herself up a bit.

  Who cares, she thought. Alan isn’t Michael. He’ll permit himself to be seen with me when I’m like this.

  In the car on the way to St. Peter Port, neither spoke a word about what had just happened. The wind had chased off the last of the clouds by then, and the sky was as blue as it had been the day before.

  “I knew it would get pretty out again today,” said Alan. He sounded content. “Looks like I still know a thing or two about the island.”

  “Do you ever think about moving back?” Franca asked, and Alan said, “Sometimes I get a bit homesick. But ultimately, for me, the island has nothing interesting to offer in the way of career opportunities. And at the end of the day I’ve got to keep that in mind … I’ve got to keep it in mind above all else,” he added, after pausing for a second, and it sounded a bit like it was himself he had to convince.

  They were standing in front of the restaurant when he made the remark about his mother, who he thought would be suspecting the worst. Franca waved it aside.

  “I’ve never once seen your mother even come close to losing it. She is an uncommonly strong person. I admire her.”

  “I’m inclined to think,” Alan said thoughtfully, “that she guarded her strength a bit too closely at times. That she clung so tightly to this image of herself that she got to where she could be taken advantage of. You told me that Helene deceived her in order to be able to spend her entire life in her house. But when you look at the matter closely, there was still no reason for Mum to house the widow of an officer of the German occupation force for fifty years. So many paths would have stood open for Mum … She wouldn’t have had to sit here and grow these roses that she disliked so much. But maybe she enjoyed it in some way, harboring Helene. Maybe she enjoyed being the strong head of the family, who raises a child and provides for a whiny old woman and somehow takes care of everything. I think what’s bothering her now is less the specific events than the realization that Helene had a step up on her when it came to strength and cunning. She’d spent time and energy on a person who hadn’t at all needed them. That’s what’s eating away at her now.”

  Franca thought about what he’d said as she followed him into the restaurant. Only a few of the tables were occupied; the tourists were drawn outside b
y the beautiful weather. At a corner table sat Mae in her summer dress, which had now proven to be the right choice for today after all. She was looking around, a bit hopelessly, as it seemed to them. She waved wildly when she spied Alan and Franca.

  “There you two are, finally! You’re over an hour late! What happened?”

  “My mother’s gone already then?” Alan asked. They joined Mae at the table and Alan continued. “Sorry, Mae. We went on a walk and went too far, we completely miscalculated. You’ve already eaten something, I hope.”

  A glass of sherry stood on the table in front of Mae. She nodded. “Yes, but actually I had no appetite at all. I sent my plate back without hardly touching it. I didn’t feel at all like eating.”

  Franca had the vague impression that it wasn’t just her and Alan’s being late that had Mae out-of-sorts. There was something in the air.

  “Where’s Beatrice?”

  “She didn’t even come here with me,” said Mae. She seemed angry and upset. “I mean, you can come out and tell me if you don’t want to do something with me. I’m not forcing anybody. But when you say that we’re going to go into town together, walk around, then go have a nice lunch, and I end up sitting in the restaurant for two hours all by my lonesome — that’s not right. I could have done something else today too, you know.”

  “Wait now, we’re not two hours late!” Alan protested. “Just a little over an hour!”

  “I’ve been sitting here since twelve o’clock,” said Mae. “And now it’s almost half past two.”

  “Since twelve? Why that long? And why didn’t my mother come with you?”

  “She met a man she knew. On the promenade,” Mae explained. “And from that moment on I didn’t exist for her anymore.”

  Alan furrowed his brow.” A man she knew? Is she with him now?”

  “They wanted to go sit somewhere on the harbor and get a coffee. The weather got pretty again. They didn’t come out and say that they didn’t want me around, but I know when I’m imposing. And I don’t push myself on people,” said Mae, hurt. “Beatrice said she’d be here around one-thirty, I was supposed to let you know that she’d be coming a bit later. But it was clear to me from the get go that she’d lose track of time.”