The Sinner

by Petra Hammesfahr

  He turned over on his side and fell asleep in no time. She stared into the darkness, waiting for the sixteen pills to take effect.

  Her stomach, which felt as if it were filled with molten lead, rumbled and burned like fire. Then its hot, scalding contents ascended into her throat. She reached the bathroom just in time to vomit. Afterwards she cried herself to sleep - cried her way through a dream that rent her night into a thousand fragments. She was still weeping when Gereon turned on the light and shook her by the shoulder. "What's the matter?" he asked, staring at her uncomprehendingly.

  "I can't take it any more," she said. "I just can't take it any more." At breakfast she was still feeling nauseous and had a raging headache - she often did at weekends. Gereon made no reference to the incident in the night, just eyed her with a mixture of doubt and suspicion.

  He'd made some coffee. It was too strong, and her tormented stomach rebelled once more. Gereon had also got the child up. He was holding his son on his lap and feeding him a slice of white bread thickly spread with butter and jam. An affectionate father, he looked after him whenever he could spare the time.

  The little boy was cared for by his grandmother during the week. He also slept at the grandparents' house, in the room that had once been Gereon's. At the weekend Cora took him home with her. Looking at the boy as he sat perched on Gereon's lap, she felt he was her finest achievement in life.

  Gereon wiped the jam off his son's chin and out of the corners of his mouth. "I'll get him dressed," he said. "You're bound to want to take him shopping."

  "I won't be going out till later on," she replied, "and I'd sooner not take him with me in this heat."

  Only nine o'clock, and the thermometer was already nudging eighty degrees. Her eyes were almost starting out of their sockets, the pain in her head was so intense. She could scarcely think, and everything needed careful planning and execution. A spontaneous decision like last night's wasn't good enough: it left too much to chance. While Gereon was cutting the grass she went across to her mother-in-law and begged one of her strong painkillers, the kind you could only get on prescription. After that she cleaned the kitchen, bathroom, stairs and hallway more thoroughly than ever before. Everything had to be spick and span.

  At eleven she left the little boy with her mother-in-law and made her way to the car with an empty shopping bag in each hand. The car seemed the simplest solution, but she dismissed the idea as she drove off. Gereon was dependent on the car. How else would he get to their customers on Monday? Besides, it wasn't like her to destroy something that had cost as much as a new car.

  Out of habit she drove to the supermarket. While filling the wire basket she debated other possibilities. Nothing occurred to her immediately. A dozen women were waiting at the sausage counter. She wondered how many of them were looking forward to tonight and how many felt as she did. None, she was sure.

  She was the exception. She'd always been an exception, the outsider with the mark on her forehead. Cora Bender, twenty-five, slim and petite, three years married, mother of a two-year-old son to whom she'd given birth almost on her feet, just after getting into the ambulance.

  A "precipitate delivery", the doctors had called it. Her motherin-law took a different view. "You only have to whore around long enough to pup that easily, you get so big down there. Who knows what she got up to before? It can't have been anything good if her parents want nothing more to do with her. They didn't even come to the wedding. You can't help wondering why."

  Cora Bender's shoulder-length auburn hair flopped across her forehead in a way that hid the dent in her skull and the jagged scar. Her pretty little face wore a questing, helpless expression, as if she'd merely forgotten to put some item of shopping in her basket. Her hands clutched the handle of the basket so tightly, the knuckles stood out white and sharp. Her brown eyes roamed restlessly over the contents of the basket, counted the pots of yoghurt, lingered on the papier mache tray of apples. Six plump, juicy apples with yellow skins. Golden Delicious, the sort she liked. She liked life too, but hers had ceased to be a life. It had never been one, strictly speaking. And then it occurred to her how to end it.

  That afternoon, when the worst of the heat was over, Gereon drove them down to the lake. Although he hadn't been delighted by her suggestion, he hadn't opposed it. He manifested his displeasure in another way, never guessing that he was only stiffening her resolve: he spent a quarter of an hour driving vainly around the dusty car park nearest the entrance.

  There were vacant spaces further off, as Cora pointed out more than once. "I don't feel like toting the whole caboodle all that way," he retorted.

  It was hot inside the car. They'd driven there with the windows up in case the child caught a cold. Cora had been calm when they set off, but all this driving around was making her nervous. "Come on," she said, "be quick, or it won't be worth it."

  "What's the hurry? A few minutes here or there won't matter. Maybe someone'll leave."

  "Nonsense, no one goes home at this hour. Either park somewhere or let me out and I'll go on ahead. Then you can drive around till nightfall, for all I care."

  It was four o'clock. Gereon scowled but said nothing. He put the car into reverse and backed up for a spell, although he knew she disliked it. At long last he parked so close to another car that the door on her side wouldn't open fully.

  She wormed her way out, relieved by the faint breeze that fanned her forehead. Then she reached into the stuffy car, retrieved her shoulder bag and hooked it over her shoulder, and released the little boy from his special seat in the back. She set him on his feet beside the car and went round the back to help Gereon unload.

  They'd brought everything needed for an afternoon at the lido. Cora didn't want anyone to assume premeditation later on. She clamped the blanket and sun umbrella under her shoulder-bag arm and carried the two folding chairs in her other hand. All that remained for Gereon to carry were the towels, the cold bag and the child.

  The sunlight made her blink. The big car park was completely devoid of shade. There were a few bushes around the edge, more dusty than green. Her sunglasses were at the bottom of the shoulder bag. She hadn't put them on in the car, just lowered the sun visor. The folding chairs bumped against her leg as she walked. A protruding piece of metal scraped the bare skin unpleasantly, leaving a red mark.

  Gereon had already reached the barrier and was waiting for her. He was pointing to the wire-mesh fence and explaining something to the child. He was only wearing shorts and sandals. His chest was bare, the skin tanned and smooth. He had a good figure: broad shoulders, muscular arms and a narrow waist. Looking at him, she felt sure he would soon find someone else. He didn't move when she got there, nor did he make any attempt to take anything from her.

  The charge for the car park covered the price of admission, but she'd stowed the tickets away. She put the folding chairs down and proceeded to rummage in the shoulder bag for her purse. She groped around in nappies and a change of pants for the child, passing two apples, a banana and a packet of biscuits on the way. Her fingers encountered a plastic yoghurt spoon and the blade of the little fruit knife, which almost cut her. At last she located the leather purse and opened it. Having extracted the tickets, she proffered them to the woman at the barrier and pushed through the turnstile in Gereon's wake.

  They had to make a long trek across the grass, which was trampled flat, threading their way between countless blankets, seated family circles and frolicking children. The shoulder strap was cutting into her flesh, the arm with the blanket and umbrella clamped beneath it going numb, and her leg hurt where the skin was being lacerated by the chair's metal frame. But these were only superficial sensations; they had ceased to trouble her. She had finished with life. Her one remaining concern was to behave normally and do nothing that might arouse Gereon's suspicions, although it was unlikely that lie would fathom the significance of a telltale gesture or remark.

  He eventually halted at a spot that conveyed at least an illusio
n of shade, thanks to a measly little tree with sparse foliage. The leaves were drooping as though asleep; the trunk was even thinner than a man's arm.

  She deposited the blanket, shoulder bag and chairs on the grass, put up the umbrella and stuck the end in the ground, spread out the blanket beneath it, erected the folding chairs and arranged them on it. Gereon stood their son on the blanket, then squatted down and removed the boy's shoes and socks. Finally, lie peeled off his thin shirt and pulled his coloured rompers down.

  The little boy sat there with a pair of white underpants over his nappy. His fringe made him look almost like a girl. Looking at him, Cora wondered if he would miss her when she wasn't there any more. She doubted it, considering that he spent most of the time with his grandmother.

  It was a peculiar feeling, standing there in the midst of all those people. A large family lay stretched out on several blankets behind the little tree to their rear. Father, mother, grandfather, grandmother and two little girls of four or five in ruched bikinis. A baby sat kicking in a bouncy chair beneath a sun umbrella.

  Just as she had in the supermarket, she wondered what was going on inside the other people's heads. The grandmother was playing with the baby. The two men were dozing in the sun. The grandfather had spread a newspaper over his face; the father was wearing a cap whose peak shaded his eyes. The mother looked harassed. She called to one of the little girls to blow her nose, rummaging in a basket for some tissues. An elderly couple were seated in deckchairs on their right. Some children were playing with a ball on an open stretch of grass to their left.

  Cora pulled her T-shirt over her head - she was wearing a swimsuit underneath - and let her skirt fall around her ankles. Then she felt in the shoulder bag for her sunglasses, put them on and sat down on one of the chairs.

  Gereon was already sitting down. "Like me to rub some sun cream on you?" he asked.

  "I already did, at home."

  "You can't reach the whole of your back."

  "But I'm not sitting with my back to the sun."

  He shrugged, sat back and closed his eyes. She looked out over the water, sensing its almost magnetic attraction. It wouldn't be easy, not for a good swimmer like her, but if she went on swimming until she was utterly exhausted ... She got up and removed her sunglasses. "I'm going in," she said. It was unnecessary to tell him that. He didn't even open his eyes.

  She walked across the grass and the narrow strip of sand and waded out through the shallows. The water was cool and refreshing. An agreeable frisson ran through her when she submerged and it closed over her head.

  She swam out to the boom that separated the supervised lido from the open lake, then along it for a little way. She felt a sudden temptation to do it at once - climb over the boom and swim out. It wasn't prohibited. There were a few groups of figures sprawled on blankets on the far shore, people who were reluctant to pay the admission charge and didn't mind lying among rocks and scrub. The lifeguard on his little wooden platform kept an eye on them too, but he couldn't see everything and wouldn't be able to reach the spot in time if something happened out there. Besides, a person would have to shout for help or at least wave their arms. If a lone head in the midst of all this turmoil simply sank beneath the surface ...

  Some man was said to have drowned in the lake and never been found; she didn't know if it was true. If it was, he must still be down there. Then she could live with him among the fish and waterweed. It must be nice in his watery world, where there were no tunes and no dark dreams, where nothing could be heard but faint gurgles and everything was a mysterious shade of green or brown. The last thing the man in the lake had heard wasn't a drum, that was certain, only his own heartbeat. No bass guitar or shrilling organ, just his own blood throbbing in his ears.

  After nearly an hour she swam back. It came hard, but she had already left most of her strength in the water. Besides, she felt she needed to play with the child for a while and explain to him, perhaps, why she had to go away - not that he would understand. She also wanted to bid Gereon a covert farewell.

  When she got back to their patch the elderly couple on the right had disappeared. Only the two deckchairs were still there, and the expanse on their left was no longer unoccupied. There wasn't a sign of the children playing ball. In their place, a pale green blanket had been spread out so close to her folding chair that it almost touched the tubular frame. Music was oozing into the afternoon air from a big radio cassette in the middle of the blanket.

  Distributed round the radio were four people, all of them roughly her own and Gereon's age. Two men, two women. Two couples, one of them seated with their knees drawn up, just talking, their faces visible in profile. The other couple were faceless at first. They were lying stretched out: the woman on her back, the man on top of her.

  Only the woman's hair could be seen. Platinum blond - almost white - and very long, it reached to her waist. The man had thick, dark hair that curled on the nape of the neck. His muscular legs were lying between the woman's splayed thighs, his hands cupping her head. He was kissing her.

  The sight abruptly froze her heart. She found it hard to breathe and felt the blood drain into her legs, leaving her head empty. Purely to replenish it, she ducked beneath the umbrella and reached for a towel, and just to drown the hammering of her heart, which had started to beat again, she stroked the little boy's head, said a few words to him, dug his red plastic fish out of her shoulder bag and put it in his hand.

  Then she turned her chair so that her back was towards the foursome with the radio. Although their image continued to float before her eyes, it gradually faded, and she grew calmer. It was no concern of hers what the couple behind her were doing - it was normal and innocuous, and even the music wasn't a nuisance. Someone was singing in English.

  In addition to the music she could hear a woman's high-pitched voice and the low, unhurried voice of a man, presumably the one sitting up. He hadn't known the woman long, from the way he spoke. Alice, he called her. The name reminded Cora of a book she'd owned - for one short day - as a child: Alice in Wonderland. She hadn't read it - she hadn't had a chance to, not in those few hours. Her father had told her what it was about, but what he'd told her was as worthless as his promise: "Things will be better some day."

  The man behind her chair was saying that he planned to become a GE He'd been invited to join a group practice - a good offer, he told Alice. Nothing could be heard from the couple lying down.

  Gereon peered past her and grinned. Instinctively, Cora glanced over her shoulder. Still with his back to her, the dark-haired man was kneeling up beside the platinum blonde. He'd removed her bikini top and poured some suntan oil between her breasts. The little pool was clearly visible, and he was busy rubbing it in. The woman stretched voluptuously under his hands. She was enjoying it, from the look on her face. Then she sat up. "Your turn now," she said. "But first let's have some decent music. This stuff is enough to send you to sleep."

  Lying beside the platinum blonde's legs was a brightly coloured cloth bag. She reached into it and took out a cassette. The darkhaired man protested. "No, Ute, not that one - that's not fair. Where did you get it from? Give it here!" He made a grab for her arm. She toppled over backwards and he fell on top of her. They wrestled around, almost rolling off the blanket.

  Gereon was still grinning.

  The man ended up underneath with the woman sitting astride him. She held the cassette in the air, laughing. "I win, I win!" she said breathlessly. "Don't be a spoilsport, sweetie. This is great stuff!" She leaned over, her long fair hair brushing the man's legs, and thrust the cassette into the slot, then pressed the start button and turned up the volume.

  The words "don't be a spoilsport, sweetie" pierced Cora like a knife and set something inside her quivering. As the first bars of the music rang out, the blonde bent down and cupped the man's face between her hands. She kissed him, her hips moving rhythmically against his crotch.

  Gereon was getting his edgy expression. "Like me to
oil you now?" he asked.

  "No!" She hadn't meant to be so vehement, but the woman's movements and Gereon's reaction to them were infuriating her. It was time to say goodbye to the child. She wanted to do so in peace, not in the immediate proximity of a bimbo who was all too vividly demonstrating where she herself had failed.

  "They might at least turn the music down," she said. "Loud music is forbidden here."

  Gereon looked scornful. "It'll be forbidden to breathe here soon. Don't get all worked up about nothing. I'm enjoying that music. I'm enjoying what goes with it too. At least she's got some fire down below."

  She ignored this. Clasping the child in one arm, she picked up the red fish with her free hand. It soothed her and did her good, the feeling of his warm, firm body bundled up in its nappy and little white pants, the plump arm around her neck and the baby face so close to her own.

  He flinched when she reached the lakeshore and put him down in the shallows. He'd been sitting in the heat for so long, the water felt cold. After a moment or two he squatted down and looked up at her. She handed him the red fish and he dunked it in the water.

  He was a quiet, good-looking child. He didn't speak much, although lie had a relatively large vocabulary and could express himself clearly in short sentences. "I'm hungry." - "Papa has to work." - "Grandma is making blancmange." - "That's Mama's bed."

  One Sunday morning shortly after they moved into their own house, when he was just a year old, she had taken him into her bed. He went back to sleep in her arms, and holding him had imparted a sensation of warmth and intimacy.

  Now, as she stood looking down at his slender white back, at the little hand wiggling the red fish in the water, the bowed head and almost white hair, the delicate little neck, that feeling returned. If there hadn't already been reasons enough, she would have done it for him alone, so that he could grow up free and unencumbered. She crouched down beside him and kissed him on the shoulder. He smelled clean and fresh from the suntan oil Gereon had rubbed into him while she was in the water.