Elly

by Maike Wetzel

  I’m still uneasy all the same. I’m not used to living with other people. Elly’s parents and sister are watching me the whole day long. I’m not allowed to be alone. There’s always one of them with me. Do you have everything you need? Do you want something to eat? Something to drink? Are you cold? Do you want to play cards? Should we shut the window? It takes a lot of effort to stay calm. I disguise my voice, I’m practically whispering. I never bathe in front of them. I never forget to wear my contact lenses and hide the solution behind the panels in the bathroom. I mustn’t forget myself. I am Elly. Everything is part of that. Even a sniff or a yawn could give me away.

  But with every new day a little bit of my fear dissipates. I’m stronger than Elly. I suppress my memory. What I am is becoming reality. Elly’s parents feed me. I’m a cuckoo in the nest. But I still don’t feel secure. I wonder what happened to the real Elly. I don’t believe that her parents genuinely love me. I no longer believe they are taken in by my deception. There must be another reason that they are keeping me in the family. Do they need me for an alibi? Did they bump their Elly off? Or do they know who did it? The thought unsettles me. Every night I awake with a start from my sleep and expect to see an axe above me in the moonlight. But Elly’s parents don’t kill me. I secretly dig around in the garden. I don’t find anything. Elly’s father notices the freshly turned earth. He pats it down again. My temples are practically exploding, even though I’m crouching quietly in front of the television. The newsreader dissolves into flickering dots. Elly’s father holds out a hand to me and pulls me up. He leads me over to the sofa. He wants us to sit down together. His arm around my shoulders is heavy like a bar.

  In secret I call my real mother and tell her that I have new parents. Once she understands that I have completely transformed myself now, that her daughter no longer exists, she hangs up. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with me any more. But I have a new home now. I’m lonelier than ever before, always on my guard. I compartmentalise myself, I become sullen, angry. Inside, I’m practically bursting. Elly’s parents and her sister believe my bad mood is their fault. They fawn on me. They never leave me in peace. I am standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom. Ines knocks at the door. She throws my towel at my feet. It is full of blood. That’s what I dream. Every night. By day I’m dull and monosyllabic through tiredness. I make mistakes, I forget the contact lenses. No one says anything. We are living in a heavy bell jar. Elly is my demon. She is nesting inside me. I can’t cast her out. I am Elly. I don’t have another role yet.

  My unease is growing. The tension is practically tearing me apart. I need to talk to someone. That’s why I request that the police officers interview me one more time. The policewoman has been asking for ages. I am supposed to help her catch the perpetrators. No other girl should suffer like I did. Her sympathy moves me. I want to give her what she desires. I tell her in full detail how I was abused and tortured, passed from hand to hand. Her eyelashes flutter. Her voice sounds strained. She thanks me several times for my courage. At the end she embraces me firmly. Now I need to go to identity parades. On the transparent side of the one-way mirror I shake my head. The policewoman is disappointed. She drives me home.

  The next day a new female doctor asks me the same questions several times in a row. I start to have doubts, get muddled, don’t finish my sentences. The doctor looks me up and down and writes something in her notebook. I am not satisfied with my performance. Elly’s parents pick me up. I would love to scream at them and ask what they have done with Elly. I’m sure they know what happened to her. She had a raging fever, went into convulsions, and her father passed her the wrong medication. Or she fell through the balcony railings that her mother had been meaning to repair for ages. Or maybe there’s a second family on the other side of the Taunus mountains. Another wife, two delightful daughters. Who don’t know about Elly and Ines, or Judith. Who complain about how frequently Hamid is away, his forgetfulness, his workaholism. Who are pleased when he shows up and brings presents for them that he can’t actually afford. A man who wants to do right by everybody, and is working himself into the ground between the two fronts that he himself opened up and has kept secret. He spends one evening with Judith, the next in the other house. He mixes up the names, birthdays, friends, and needs. Elly discovers his double life. Her father panics at the thought of the avalanche that will engulf him. Instead of confessing to the mothers, he holds the cushion over this daughter’s face and waits until she stops twitching. He disposes of the corpse in hydrochloric acid in the shed, dissolves it. Hamid is still, deep water. Judith is supremely organised, but underneath complete chaos reigns. She breaks out in sweat if a flavour of yoghurt is sold out. Seems entirely plausible that she might lose her hard-won composure in one of these moments of everyday catastrophe. To have peace and quiet at last. I’m sure that they are both in on the secret, and now I’m their bargaining chip, the living proof of their innocence. Judith and Hamid know I have to keep silent if I want to carry on being Elly. I don’t have any choice. The wind whistles round the corners of the clinic. Judith, Hamid, Ines, and I walk across the almost empty car park. We get into the car. Silently we slip through the night. The hairs on my arm are standing on end now. Hamid starts to talk to himself. He is dreaming of holidays. Ines’s gaze is boring into my side. Her mother turns to me. She asks: Elly? Are you still awake?

  Our suitcases are standing in the hallway. We haven’t unpacked them yet. Outside the window, the trains rattle past, aeroplanes thunder, cats fight. But we are slumbering. We are not dreaming. My parents are asleep even when they are awake. They sleepwalk through day and night. I’m slowly getting used to it. I’m not allowed to wake them. Only Elly sleeps deeply. Her eyelids are open just a crack. I can see the white of her eyes. I stand by her bed for a long time. She doesn’t stir. Later, the rain stops. It’s just drizzling now. Elly takes her new bike out of the garage. I stand in her way. I ask her: Where did we hide the horseshoe that time? I’m talking about the rusty iron that I won ten years ago in the sack race. That should be enough of a clue. But Elly isn’t concerned about passing my test. What do you take me for, she says, and grins at me. Her mouth puckers, wide and provocative. The black gap of her missing top tooth sucks me in. I am in danger of losing myself in it. But Elly wheels the bike out to the field. The countryside is as flat as a plate. Out here there are hardly any trees, no buildings. I can see Elly far away across the fields. I follow her in secret. I want to see what she gets up to. She cycles around aimlessly. I hide behind a haystack. Elly cycles with no hands for long stretches. Her arms dangle next to the saddle. She whistles to herself. Sometimes she closes her eyes, as if to test whether anything will happen to her. Nothing does. Elly doesn’t fall. She is careful. She reaches for the handlebars on the uneven gaps between the paving slabs. She swerves puddles. She doesn’t want to get dirty. She waves to a few horses. Whistles with two fingers when the animals don’t respond. She dismounts once. She picks some poppies, although the flowers’ red petals flutter away from her as she cycles. Out there, on her own, she seems carefree. All her hesitancy has disappeared. She pedals resolutely. The spokes of the wheels whirl, tracing spirals. Elly flies over the path on her bike. The sky is high and piercingly blue. Not a cloud. Crows and starlings hop over the stubble in the fields. It smells of burnt Plexiglas. There was an accident in the nearby factory. A rabbit runs across the furrows. My eyes follow it for a moment. My heart is beating evenly, my breath is controlled. In and out. I am mindful of breathing out for longer than I breathe in. When I was in hospital I practised letting go for hours at a time. I relaxed one muscle after the other, until I was a human blancmange. I can still do it perfectly to this day. From my feet to the top of my head. First tense, and then let go. I hesitate before I turn back to Elly. When Elly came back, my parents and I thought we had put the worst behind us. Today I know that torture is a notion that can keep on multiplying infinitely. A jay chatters in the trees behind me. The l
eaves don’t rustle. The clouds, the grass, even the birds in the sky seem to be frozen. I hesitate before I turn back to Elly. When I finally do, she’s just a tiny speck. Her silhouette melts into the trees in the wood. Then she is gone.

  This story is my story. I’m the one who is missing from it. This story isn’t lying there in the street, it isn’t sleeping in our house any more, and nothing and no one is one step ahead of me. I’m not stuck in a cage, I’m not a prostitute. I have never put on a disguise. My story begins at a crossroads on a red bike.

  A siren screams. The cars brake and clear a path. An ambulance drives across the crossroads, missing my sports bag by a hair’s breadth. It has slipped off my pannier rack. The red bike topples onto the kerb. I drop it. The wheels spin in the air. I run to the middle of the road. The asphalt softens under my feet. I start to sink, to wade. The tar sticks to my ankles, viscous and gluey. I want to take my shoes off and run. But I don’t make it. The sports bag with my judo suit in is lying on the markings in the middle of the road. I got the green belt last week. The suit mustn’t get dirty. The cars only brake for a moment. The lights will turn green any second. The headlights are shining on me. The motors screech. The cars set off and I feel a hard blow. Then nothing. Nothing I can feel. Nothing that I want. Darkness.

  I sleep and wake and wake and sleep. Nothing ever stops. I slide down the glowing rays of the rising sun into a cave. Water is flowing down the sides of the walls, it streams into the middle of the tunnel, joins together to form a river. First it splashes, then it gurgles, and behind a rock the water tumbles into a broad stream. It foams and swirls, plunges over a cliff. The rushing noise fills me entirely. I fly, light as air. I stream into the cave. I am a wave in the water, I swim without getting wet. I bubble like the water, sparkling inside. I see but I have no eyes. I feel but I have no skin. Suddenly everything is bright, dazzling. I put my hands over my face. The lid of a car boot is floating above me. Someone drags me out into the open. Pushes me onto the damp leaves. I can smell the rain. The car door thunders. The tyres spin in the mire. The tracks are clearly visible. But I’m lying in the mud, I don’t move.

  Later, I stagger to my feet. My stomach is growling. My legs are trembling. The bushes and trees around me have shapeshifted into giant black caterpillars. The furry monsters crawl towards me. I quickly limp towards the road. The darkness here is less frightening. There is a path. It leads me out of here. I walk and hiss at myself: Keep going. Don’t give up. Doesn’t matter which direction. Am I injured? I don’t want to know. I don’t feel for injuries. The dampness on my cheeks must be rain. Blood would be warm. I must keep going. I urge myself onwards. I mustn’t turn round or panic. I carry on walking. I never arrive.