Her memories of Oma were also memories of the woman in the red dress. Helga never tired of the tale and asked to hear the story several times. On each retelling different details emerged. Snow Red, so people had named her, was able to bewitch others until they became lovesick and allowed themselves to be abducted. Those who received the kiss of Snow Red, male or female, would disappear the next day, leaving behind all their possessions and loved ones. The kiss of Snow Red was the first and last they would receive from her. They said that whoever Snow Red kissed would follow her amid an army of demons, her worshippers. When her long dress swept the ground, it meant Snow Red had marked out her choice. The victim’s forehead would be branded with an invisible X, but we do not know at whose bidding: did Snow Red desire her victim, or did her victim desire Snow Red?
Fearing for her own safety, Helga asked: What if Snow Red wants to kidnap me? Don’t worry, said Oma, Snow Red does not kidnap children. Helga didn’t believe her, but Oma gave her a crystal snow globe. Helga’s eyes sparkled. She saw snowflakes land on a little house that reminded her of Hansel and Gretel’s gingerbread cottage. ‘Take this ball wherever you go. Oma will always pray for you.’
Helga felt calm but then worried about Oma. What if Snow Red kidnapped her?
Oma stroked her head and told Helga not to worry. Oma was happy, so she would not go. Snow Red only came to those who longed for her.
Oma, Oma, promise to hold your breath if she comes.
Helga remembered how tears had welled in her eyes as she spoke. Oma nodded and smiled warmly. But when the world is too big for us, adults often have strange thoughts that we can’t fathom. Oma had promised, but still she went away.
‘Is Snow Red so extraordinary?’ asked Ismail.
Helga was pensive for a moment. She had always thought so in her childhood. Humans able to move other humans must be very strong, and it seemed that Snow Red was beyond human. Now, as an adult, Helga saw there might be more to the tale.
‘I think she’s the type of woman that wives always fear.’
Helga’s calm, sweet observation met with the glimmer of a smile on Ismail’s lips, which made them both believe they were being teased by the other.
‘Don’t worry, she won’t be attracted to me,’ said Ismail.
What he didn’t say was, ‘Don’t worry, I love only you.’
Helga wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t because they were now past the age when one burns with love. The only thing in Ismail’s mind that smouldered, never charring, was a city. In this city, there were abandoned houses, soldiers brandishing weapons, and a row of trucks filled with anxious adults and children, ready to flee for the border.
Their marriage was an unspoken pact of mutual salvation. Ismail, a year younger than Helga, had fled to Europe when Lebanon became unbearable but, even before the civil war, Lebanon had not been his home. He was a Palestinian refugee. He was treated with sympathy but struggled to find work. With no passport to his name, he roamed far from his homeland like a ghost. But ghosts have no need for a country. They don’t have to be driven off the land because their feet don’t tread ground; Ismail, however, was a human being, and he needed to carry around his name, a letter of passage, a stamp. He, Ismail Saleh, was a man without a country, staatenlos, who had gone to Europe with a document de voyage issued in Lebanon.
Helga had roamed from city to city – Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam – only to return to Berlin. She found it more fitting to call herself a refugee than an adventurer, even though she knew she had no right to the term. It was inappropriate. Helga didn’t really know what she was taking refuge from. Perhaps all her failed relationships, or perhaps something else that she could not fully grasp. What was clear was her friends’ declaration that, given all the men who had disappeared from her life, marriage had been a crazy decision. Ismail drifted into her life as so much debris. She didn’t know how to save him, nor did she hope Ismail would rescue her. But Helga believed they were bound together by a desperate plan to find shelter in a home.
Helga worked as a librarian, leaving home at eight in the morning and returning at six. Before this, she’d gone through job after job, but this one made her feel a bit useful. Libraries were a pillar of salvation for humankind, a stronghold against oblivion (although of course, thought Helga later, they went up in flames all too easily). Ismail had not yet found a job, so he whiled away his time at home writing poetry – or so he said. Helga had never read any of her husband’s compositions. On the kitchen cupboards Helga would attach lists of chores for Ismail: shopping, taking out the rubbish, going to the laundry. Without a list, he lacked initiative to take anything upon himself, but he did complete his duties well.
After work, Helga would collapse on the couch and turn on the television. Sometimes Ismail would make her tea, but he never sat with Helga to keep her company. He refused to watch the news. At 7.30 they had dinner. They didn’t have a lot to talk about because as a librarian Helga met few people, and Ismail rarely left the apartment.
‘Some more soup, dear?’
Helga never tired of such questions: ‘Would you like to eat now, darling?’ ‘Do you want more?’ ‘What shall we cook tomorrow?’
At a certain age, we make up our minds to stop being children. For Ismail, that time came when he was twelve, when he and his family were forced to abandon their home. Seeing how sad his mother was, Ismail began training himself to hold back his emotions. He didn’t whine if he wanted something and had grown so accomplished in his self-control that, even now, he wouldn’t ask for food if he were hungry.
Helga always cleaned her plate. After all, she was a child of the Second World War. Her parents would grow furious if she didn’t finish her meal. Out there, they said, many people had no food. So Helga learned to devour everything. To the last bite. She didn’t complain – that would have been disrespectful. Even now, Helga felt a need for self-discipline. She had become ever more adept at the art of cooking precisely the right amount to avoid waste.
She was among the fortunate, and Ismail never asked for food when hungry.
One night, when the lights had been turned off and Helga had closed her eyes, she heard Ismail whisper: ‘I see her.’
Helga’s eyes opened. A question was on her lips, but something prompted her to keep silent and wait.
‘From the window. I saw her walking slowly, with a dog at her side. Her red dress was blowing in the wind. The dog was white as snow. And very strange. It had three heads.’
Helga didn’t answer, and pretended to be asleep.
That night Helga tried to hide the sound of her shallow breathing. She didn’t know if her husband was delusional or joking, but she struggled to cling to facts: Snow Red didn’t exist.
She had learned this truth one afternoon, when she had found Oma’s house empty. Snow Red had kidnapped Oma and her family, she’d thought. Oma had broken her promise. She hadn’t held her breath as Snow Red had passed.
But then the neighbours had told her the truth and Helga had stopped believing in fairy tales: Oma and her family had left on a train. Helga was devastated. If Oma had been kidnapped by Snow Red, she wouldn’t have had time to buy a ticket (at six Helga knew that you needed money for the train). Oma must have wanted to leave. Snow Red wasn’t real.
Ismail didn’t say anything the next day, but from then on, for longer and ever more often, he would stare out the window. Helga had to remind him to move from his desk and get ready for bed. Ismail claimed he was trying to do housework conscientiously, but he kept returning to that same spot, to the corner, as if awaiting a lover. He took to bringing a bottle of whiskey along. Helga remembered how Ismail had stopped drinking when they’d begun dating seriously.
Helga was reading a book in bed, a small lamp by her side, when from his desk Ismail said softly: ‘I see her. No, she sees me.’
Ismail had his back to Helga. His head was turned to his right, as if he were bewitched by something outside. Helga put down her book.
‘Snow Red,
’ muttered Ismail.
That was the first time the name had passed Ismail’s lips since Helga had told him the legend long ago.
‘The woman,’ Ismail continued. ‘She’s standing outside and gazing up. She knows I’m looking at her.’
Helga rose in a huff, and walked towards the window. She peered below, but saw no one.
‘You have to stop drinking,’ said Helga accusingly.
‘I don’t know how long she was looking at me,’ Ismail babbled, as if not hearing Helga. ‘She smiled, then turned away and kept walking.’
‘Oh, really? Was she pretty?’
‘Very.’
With a venomous look, Helga opened Ismail’s desk drawer – her desk drawer – and removed a pack of cigarettes. She pulled one out, returned to bed, and broke the promise she’d made a year ago to quit smoking. She found herself oddly jealous. She had never expressed her love even when she’d asked Ismail to live with her, but now she was jealous of a woman whose existence was likely confined to her husband’s imagination.
Snow Red officially became a third party in their marriage. ‘She’ was always between them, sometimes explicitly, sometimes knocking in silence. ‘She’ was there at dinnertime, when the two of them no longer knew what to chat about, pressing up against the closed doors, darkening the television screen. Now it was Ismail, not Helga, who turned on the television, sitting upright on the couch and searching for his native land in the news.
When she was still a child, Helga envisioned Palestine as Paradise. In a book of Christian tales, she saw a picture of palm trees in a vast expanse of sand. The description of Palestine made her forgive Oma for leaving without saying goodbye. If that’s where Oma had gone, she must be happy. Don’t we all yearn for Jerusalem?
‘Do you know who took over your house?’ Helga asked her husband.
A few years ago, Ismail’s uncle had visited, and found a Polish family occupying their former home.
They offered his uncle something to drink and were very polite. The baby they had brought from Europe in 1948 had grown into a beautiful woman.
‘They’re not thieves,’ said Ismail. ‘Their daughter, Ilana, was very beautiful.’
Ismail faced the television with blank eyes. Helga knew she could leave at any moment without Ismail being conscious of it, but – whether due to foolishness or faithfulness or neither – she chose to remain fixed at her husband’s side. Ismail walked to the kitchen cupboard, removed the umpteenth bottle of whiskey, then returned to his desk. ‘She’, Snow Red, crept from the corner of the room to their bed, and slipped under the covers. Sometimes Helga thought she heard the sound of breathing between them. Slumber had yet to overtake Helga when Ismail, in a fitful sleep, called out a name. Helga couldn’t catch it clearly, but delirium made his body tremble. Her husband was dreaming of ‘her’. The Other Woman is never so dangerous as when she has a name.
Continue on to the next page.
‘And then?’
The white-haired man next to you stretches his arms and yawns. Your question has a slightly demanding tone.
‘I’m a little drowsy. I think I need a nap.’
‘A nap?’
Your voice rises. You sound like you’re protesting.
‘What’s the matter?’ Muhammad laughs. ‘Are you afraid I’ll die in my sleep?’
You shake your head quickly. Don’t be stupid. Your fellow traveller has the right to sleep or to do whatever he wants, of course. He’s not obligated to finish his story, and you don’t have to pout like a spoiled brat, abandoned while Daddy sleeps. But really, unfinished stories always arouse your curiosity.
‘OK, I’ll continue my tale.’
‘Oh, you don’t need –’
‘Scheherazade postponed her death by telling stories.’
You’re silent. His remark is unpleasant, but you’ll have to get used to his dark humour for the next few hours.
You ask again, ‘Is your story really true?’
The man beside you smiles enigmatically.
Turn to the next page.
Ingrid and Helga would meet at the library after work. Ingrid was an old friend, born to a devout Catholic family. But about ten years before, she’d announced that she had become an atheist. Ingrid rejected God but she believed in much else that, for Helga, couldn’t be proven empirically. That evening she invited Helga along to visit her psychic.
‘Ah,’ Helga sneered. ‘You’re so full of contradictions.’
‘Your marriage is even more full of contradictions, especially considering we’re approaching the Age of Aquarius. Maybe it’s because you’re a Taurus. Your element is earth. You feel a need to plant your feet firmly on ground.’
Ingrid’s fortune-teller was a middle-aged redhead who went by the exotic-sounding name of ‘Esmeralda’. Helga knew it certainly wasn’t the name she was born with. Esme, so Ingrid addressed her, had started her career by approaching people in the park and admonishing them politely: ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help noticing that your aura is very dark.’ Esme felt a compulsion to apologise, as if she were sorry to possess knowledge of ill fortune. Then, if the person she approached was keen for advice of a spiritual nature, she would bestow a card upon them with her address and phone number. Ingrid had been one of the recipients. And maybe because the Age of Aquarius was dawning, Esmeralda never lacked for clients.
Helga had often heard about Esmeralda’s predictions, but this was her first visit with Ingrid. The room where Esme practised her art was painted dark blue and hung with colourful drapes. She wore a loose white blouse, adorned by a Tosca-green pebble necklace. Ingrid paid rapt attention as the tarot cards were laid out and as Esme, with a solemn expression, began her reading. Helga heard vague phrases like: ‘you need to be careful in making decisions’, and ‘someone will come along and change your life’.
Of course, those who don’t take predictions seriously know such sentences can mean anything.
After making her predictions for Ingrid, Esmeralda turned her gaze towards Helga. Helga steeled herself for an invitation that would begin with something like ‘your aura is dark’. But Esmeralda did no such thing. It was Ingrid who prompted Esmeralda to give Helga a tarot reading. Helga didn’t refuse. She felt a need for consolation, although in her experience fortune-tellers had never proved consoling. Not believing in prophecy is one thing, but to hear that a bitter future awaits is another.
The cards were dealt. Esmeralda asked Helga to turn several over.
‘Something refuses to depart and perhaps cannot be forgiven,’ said the soothsayer.
She turned over another card, and continued.
‘Crossroads. A choice must be made. Someone will go far.’
‘She’s certainly moved around a lot,’ Ingrid replied. ‘Next.’
Esmeralda contemplated the card for a long time, and then looked at Helga.
‘This card is important for you,’ she said. ‘The goddess of the moon. She roams at night. I prefer to call her the goddess of enchanters. Witches pray to her.’
Feeling a bit silly, Helga asked, ‘Do you think I look like a witch?’
‘I think you’re at a crossroads.’
They began to argue about this goddess of bewitchment. Christianity, said Esmeralda, had purged symbols of powerful women and replaced them with new ones. Old women came to be considered evil, bad, and associated with witches. Although Helga was not religious, she was raised by parents who gave her Christian storybooks for children. She no longer read them, but she also refused to believe pagan legends.
‘I’m sure you’ll meet her before long,’ said Esmeralda. ‘Hecate.’
The fortune-teller didn’t feign an especially dramatic air. However, at that moment, Helga felt her body tense up.
The name, so present and warm, was not unfamiliar to her. She was reminded of the nights she heard Ismail’s voice repeating something beside her, almost in a hiss.
At the end of their meeting Esmeralda gave Helga a piece of advic
e. ‘Be nice to the three-headed dog.’
Ingrid and Helga took the train home together from the fortune-teller in silence. Helga had no desire to speak.
On Saturday Helga asked her husband to go shopping. Perhaps a new tablecloth and curtains would liven up their apartment. Ismail looked preoccupied, but Helga kept asking him for his thoughts on what they needed around the house. Ismail picked cheap, low-quality goods over items that would last a long time. His choices disappointed Helga. The mentality of a refugee, she sighed.
Or was her husband preparing to leave her?
Helga tried to remember if Oma had paved the way for her departure by purchasing second-rate furnishings.
Shopping that particular day, however, wasn’t too bad. They found a new restaurant in Kreuzberg. That was enough for someone who had low expectations. Helga now understood how couples survived: investing in things that could be done together – like shopping or raising children – to forget their sense of mutual estrangement.
Later, at home and when night fell, Ismail called to Helga softly. His face was pale.
‘She wants to kiss me.’
The two of them were watching scenes on TV of truckloads of soldiers and people passing by.
Ismail spoke as if they both had a grasp of the same reality. Helga didn’t turn towards him. She refused to believe. She was aware of the madness of her decision to take on a man who’d become human debris. She also understood that Ismail had never been truly sane after he was forced from his homeland. But she was unable to accept this other madness.
‘Don’t ask me for permission to have an affair,’ said Helga. ‘It’s humiliating.’
If madness had crept into the house, let it be her husband’s alone. Helga rose from the couch but Ismail grabbed her by the arm.
The Wandering Page 5