Sisters of Berlin

by Juliet Conlin

  ‘You’re lying,’ she says slowly. Her heart is beating erratically now; she feels sick, a thick glob of nausea spreading in her gut. ‘You’re drunk and you’re angry and you’re jealous.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he almost snarls. ‘I’ll tell you what I did. I pushed her off me, threw her off the sofa.’ He laughs – a short, angry bark. ‘And she swore, and she started crying. And then she begged me, begged me, never to tell you. But to be honest, I knew she would be a lot more fun than you, you cold bony bitch.’

  He stops talking, and an exhausted hush descends on the room. Only the whistling in Nina’s ears is getting louder and louder. She wonders, vaguely, whether he hears it, too.

  ‘I would’ve known,’ she whispers.

  ‘I never told you,’ he says finally, ‘because I knew how much it would hurt you. And whatever you might think of me, I never, ever wanted to do that.’

  He takes a step forward and reaches out to touch her arm, and this contact ignites something inside her – or perhaps it simply coincides with a sudden quickening of her heart rate – but his touch stings, makes her draw her arm back and look down at it, to see if he has perhaps left a mark.

  ‘I’m not glad she’s dead,’ he says. ‘But I can’t say I’ll miss her, the selfish, spoilt little slut.’

  Something inside her crumbles. She thinks it is in the region of her heart, but it can’t be her heart, because she can still feel it hammering hard inside her chest.

  Sebastian walks towards the sideboard. ‘You have to sort yourself out, Nina. I’m serious. You need to get some help, or I’ll have to take my children somewhere safe until you’re better.’

  ‘Your children?’

  He places his glass down with a clunk. ‘To be quite honest, I don’t know if I can trust you around them anymore.’

  Nina takes a step towards him and then stops abruptly. Her head is swimming. For a moment, she’s trapped between a longing for reconciliation and the desire to hurt him as much as he is hurting her.

  ‘I think a trial separation might be in order,’ he says matter-of-factly. He’s planned this speech, she realises. ‘You could stay with your parents – the house is big enough. The kids and I could do with some peace.’

  A desperate, frightened energy seeps through her body. She closes her eyes briefly to dispel the dizziness, then takes another step towards him.

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ she says, urgently, before she changes her mind, ‘if you can stand any more of this little truth-or-dare game you seem so fond of: that conference in Zurich, seven years ago? That conference you insisted I go to, the one in fact you forced me to go to, because you said we needed time apart, to clear our heads, remember?’ She can feel her upper lip curling into a snarl. ‘Well, I fucked someone else. I had mind-blowing sex, lots of it, with a man who treated me with tenderness and respect.’ Her voice catches on a sob, but she swallows and continues. ‘And then I came back, and you pleaded with me to give us another chance. Said we owed it to Bekka to make our marriage work. Plucked at my guilt and shame and my love for my child. And then we did that obligatory making-up sex thing and three months later I still hadn’t had my period and, guess what, I was pregnant –’ She draws in a giant gulp of air. ‘So, the moral of that story is . . . Basti dear, don’t be so sure that Kai is your son.’

  She feels the blow before Sebastian’s hand makes contact with her face; molecules of air being propelled every which way by the force of his hand; tiny reverberations that alter the stillness in the room for mere nanoseconds. As her body reels across the room, she sees her mother standing in the doorway, notices her blood-red slippers and the expensive shine of her satin dressing gown, and before she hits the floor and loses consciousness, she feels acutely and profoundly ashamed that her mother should be witness to her like this.

  33

  For hours now, she has been in a steady rhythm of dozing and waking, dozing and waking. She’s not tired – not physically – because she has been sleeping for around twelve hours a night. Boredom-induced fatigue, she guesses. Antonia is looking after the children and brings them to visit her in hospital every day, but they’re only allowed to stay for an hour.

  Nina has been told it isn’t good for her to lie in bed all day, that activity will accelerate her recovery, but the few times she has been up and about, wrapping her body in layers upon layers of clothes before taking short, chilly walks in the gardens, or meandering around the building until she feels sufficiently well-informed of the its geography to be able give visitors a guided tour of geriatrics, paediatrics, cardiology, oncology, radiology, intensive care and, of course, obstetrics and gynaecology, she has returned to bed feeling drained.

  Yesterday, she discovered the physical therapy suite, and asked if she could use the weight machine or the treadmill, thinking this would at least give her activity some shape, some meaning, but she was told she would need another three weeks of intensive counselling and a weight gain of at least two kilos before they would allow her anywhere near physical exercise machinery.

  She regained consciousness in the ambulance, waking to find an oxygen mask strapped to her face and a blood-pressure cuff on her arm, which was inflating to its fullest just as she opened her eyes. Cutting through the shrill whistling inside her head, and the discordant wail of the siren, she heard a voice; the medic:

  ‘She’s bradycardic. Blood pressure’s way low. What do you know about her medical history? Medication? Allergies?’

  And Hannah’s voice (Hannah? Where did she come from?), close to hysterical: ‘I don’t know! I don’t know! Frau Bergmann said she collapsed. Will she be all right?’

  And she closed her eyes again, dipped in and out of consciousness, a delicious, seductive feeling, sliding up and under, until she awoke fully in the emergency room and was forced to confess that she’d lost a lot of weight in a very short time, and was then hydrated and fed a glucose solution intravenously, and was made to have a short, tiring conversation with the on-call psychiatrist, who diagnosed the eating disorder she could have told them about if only they’d asked. The red mark on her cheek took days to fade, but perhaps it was from where the medic pushed the oxygen mask on her face.

  The food is very good – buttery mashed potatoes and raspberry tiramisu are certainly not standard hospital fare. She’s fully aware that each meal far exceeds the number of calories she has been granting herself on a daily basis for the past two months, but she’s cooperating fully. Nina held Rebekka’s hands on her last visit and saw the fear and anxiety on her daughter’s face as she comprehended that her mother had been voluntarily starving herself. She promised Rebekka that she would get better – and she meant it. Kai seems less troubled; perhaps he’s just too young to make sense of what’s been happening, but Nina knows she’ll have to keep a close eye on him. She would never be able to forgive herself if she has caused him any lasting emotional damage.

  She is weighed twice daily: once in the mornings, just before breakfast and then again in the afternoon, when she travels two floors down in the lift to see Frau Dr Rossmann, the in-house psychiatrist. Dr Rossmann is surprisingly fun, with a wealth of jokes about elephants. She makes Nina laugh, and she makes Nina cry; mostly when they talk about Rebekka and Kai, but sometimes because Nina regrets not having had a therapist like Dr Rossmann twenty years ago. She doesn’t cry about Marie any more.

  Even so, she cries a lot, but Dr Rossmann tells her to ‘go with it’ when she feels upset or emotional, explaining that much like the transient depression many women face after childbirth, her weepiness is, among other things, likely due to a radical change in hormone levels that results from the re-nourishment process. Dr Rossmann encourages her to drink plenty of water, to restock her tears, if necessary. Therapy, thankfully, is a combination of chatting about life in general, and the cognitive-behavioural strategies Nina is gradually learning to implement.

  She is always a little melancholic when she heads back to her room, to lie and read and watch TV a
nd doze. A couple of novels lie on the small white table next to her bed, and Nina is grateful to Anita who thoughtfully brought them in for her. She’s also extremely grateful to Jan Steinmacher, who must have completed and returned the medical insurance form that grants her this single-occupancy room at the hospital.

  She opens her eyes when she hears a gentle knock on the door. She calls, ‘Come in’ and there is Kommissar Franzen holding a bunch of flowers, which he gestures with, looking somewhat unsure of himself.

  ‘I hope this isn’t a bad time,’ he says, standing at the door.

  ‘No. Not at all.’ Nina sits up, wondering if she should excuse herself briefly, so she can check her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

  ‘You look . . . well,’ he says. ‘Much better, I mean.’

  She smiles. ‘Thank you. Please,’ she says, gesturing towards the two chairs that stand close to a small round table by the window. ‘Grab a chair.’

  He takes a chair and is about to pull it closer, but Nina swings her legs out of bed.

  ‘Why don’t we sit at the table?’ she says, smoothing down her sweatshirt with one hand. ‘It’s not as though I’m bedridden or anything.’

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ he says, as he takes a seat. ‘Oh, these are for you,’ he adds, handing her the flowers.

  Nina takes them, blushing slightly. ‘Thanks, I’ll just –’ And she goes into the bathroom cubicle, which is scrubbed and disinfected every day. She runs the tap and places the flowers in the water, then quickly brushes her hair and traces the shape of her eyebrows with a wet finger.

  Franzen is staring out of the window when she comes back.

  ‘Snow,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ she agrees. ‘I remember you mentioning that it would be a harsh winter.’

  He turns to look at her. ‘Did I?’ Then, ‘You have a good memory.’

  They lapse into silence, but she doesn’t mind, because she’s glad of his company, however taciturn. For a while, they sit and watch the snowflakes. The light outside is acute and wintry, making the airborne snowflakes look almost dirty against the background of the pure white sky.

  ‘There was some –’ He clears his throat. ‘Some disagreement over whether I should come and talk to you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, the inquiry. Some thought that these things might . . . trouble you, impede your recovery. Whatever.’ He looks straight at her. ‘I thought you should know.’

  She nods slowly. ‘Okay,’ she says, but she feels a surge of fear at what he might tell her.

  ‘Last week, when Rebekka formally identified a photograph of Bernhard Klopp as the man she had seen arguing with Marie, we contacted him and requested that he appear at the police station. He didn’t show up.’

  Another pause. Nina wonders who these ‘some’ might be, who didn’t think her capable of dealing with this news. But before she has time to consider it further, Franzen is speaking again.

  ‘We went to his house, but he wasn’t at home. His wife didn’t know where he was, and from the state of distress she was in, we believed her. She was very cooperative, though; gave us the address of a weekend cottage they have in Brandenburg. When we got there, we discovered that Klopp had locked himself in his garage and left the engine running. We found a note.’

  Nina gasps, horrified by the image that instantly recalls what happened to Thiel.

  ‘He was unconscious, but alive. And he’s made a full confession.’

  She lowers her eyelids, takes some deep breaths.

  ‘Are you all right, Dr Bergmann?’ Franzen asks.

  ‘Yes. I –’ She nods, vigorously. ‘Yes. I’m fine. Please go on.’

  ‘Well, the story is that Klopp met Marie some months earlier, at a wine reception.’

  ‘It was an awards ceremony – for poetry,’ she says. ‘Frau Klopp mentioned it a while back.’

  ‘He and Marie “embarked on an affair”, as he put it, during the course of which he told her that he had worked as a secret informal collaborator with the Stasi. Right up until ’89.’

  ‘Sakoku.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s something to do with Japanese people not being allowed to leave their own country hundreds of years ago. I can’t – I don’t really know much more than that. But someone mentioned it at my parents’ dinner party and said that Klopp had first mentioned it to him.’

  Franzen tilts his head. ‘I’m not sure . . .’

  ‘I know, I’m not really making sense. It’s a word, a Japanese word I first came across in Marie’s writing. I thought it was someone’s name.’ It’s hurting her to talk about, to think about it. Dr Rossmann has encouraged her to set herself a pain threshold, to let the thoughts and memories and feelings out, and the guilt – yes, the guilt, too – but not to push herself too far. That it’s okay to keep things buried for as long as she needs to. But talking about it now, with Franzen, it’s tolerable. The pain is there but it doesn’t overwhelm her. ‘Klopp must have mentioned it to Marie when she was doing research for one of her stories,’ she says. ‘But I should have remembered. I would have made the connection much earlier if I’d been –’

  ‘Nothing about this is your fault,’ Franzen says, his eyes on her face.

  ‘I know. I do know that.’ She swallows. ‘Do you . . . has anyone read Klopp’s file? From the Stasi, I mean?’ She wants to know exactly what his role as “collaborator” involved.

  Franzen shakes his head. ‘He would’ve destroyed it as soon as the Wall fell. He had direct access to it, in his position. But he says his job was to squeeze secrets out of his targets, but using psychological, “hands-off” methods, rather than violence. Make of that what you will.’

  ‘Hands off?’ Nina says, her breathing rapid. ‘He beat my sister to a pulp.’

  ‘His words. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to upset you.’ He pauses, as if allowing them both time to absorb the hurt. ‘Marie told him she wanted to write a book about it, that his story had “inspired” her. He’d thought it was true love – as he put it – up until that point, which is why he confided in her in the first place. He thought that by giving her money – in fact, it was more than we found in her account; she’d obviously spent quite a bit of it – he thought she’d drop the story, or maybe he imagined she’d stay with him. I don’t know. But she broke it off. What Rebekka witnessed, in the bar, was the first of many arguments. The final one, well, he claims he lost control. And again,’ he raises his palms towards her, ‘those are not the words I would choose to describe what he did to your sister.’

  She looks out of the window for a long moment, knowing he will be patient, will let her take her time. Outside, two floors down, she sees a young man struggling to fold a pram into the back of his car. In his effort, he exhales large clouds of white. Still looking out of the window, she forces herself to ask, ‘And her baby?’

  ‘He wasn’t aware she was pregnant,’ Franzen says, ‘but we know now that the DNA matches.’

  The room tilts around her, as though she were out at sea. If Marie had lived, this brutal, duplicitous man would have been the father of her baby. The baby she seemed to want so badly, the baby who never had a chance. Nina didn’t think she could feel any more sadness, but she was wrong. Grief, like love, is boundless, she understands that now.

  For a long time, she can’t speak. At least, it seems like a long time, but she’s lost her ability to distinguish between one moment and the next. She blinks, notices the light has begun to drain from the sky outside. When she next speaks, she isn’t sure Franzen is even still in the room.

  ‘Will he be well enough to stand trial?’

  Franzen is still there. ‘Most certainly. He has minor lung damage, but he should make a full recovery, according to the doctors. So, yes, he will stand trial for murder.’

  Nina lets out a long breath. She doesn’t want to think about the trial. She starts to tremble, as though the air in the room has suddenly dropped to below zero. Franzen reaches out and puts
a hand on her arm.

  ‘It’s likely to be tough,’ he says, with genuine concern. ‘You should make sure you have someone to support you through it.’

  Nina looks down at his hand, his perfectly shaped nails, and realises he has stilled her whole body with his touch. She waits a moment, then says, ‘Dr Rossmann, the psychiatrist here, she’s been great.’

  Franzen clears his throat. ‘I can put you in touch with a liaison officer, if you like. We offered this to your parents at the start of the investigation, as next of kin, but they declined, and . . .’ His eyes slide to the floor, apologetically.

  ‘I would appreciate that. Thank you.’

  He raises his head and smiles. ‘And how long will you be –?’

  ‘Another two weeks. Then they’re sending me to a treatment centre for a month. On the Baltic coast.’ She lets out a small laugh. ‘The seaside. Imagine.’

  ‘And your children?’

  ‘They’re with my mother. They’re staying with her until I get better. Then we’ll –’ She goes to look of the window again, but catches her reflection and turns away. She fights against tears and wins. ‘My mother wants me to press charges, have his custody revoked, but it’s . . . it’s hard. For the children.’

  ‘You don’t owe me any explanation,’ Franzen says.

  ‘I know,’ she says quietly. What she wants him to understand is that, first, she has to sift through years of her life with Sebastian. She has to figure out a different way of existing. If – and only if – she can trust him not to harm the children, she will let him back into their lives. Because they might need a father. She certainly did.

  Franzen nods. He stretches out his hand and places it lightly on hers. ‘I understand.’ Then he gets up. ‘Well, I felt it important to let you know what’s happened,’ he says. ‘And to say goodbye.’

  She looks up at him. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘For coming to see me. Perhaps – perhaps you’d like to visit me again?’