Retrograde Read online

  “Really, nothing at all?”

  Helena shakes her head. “I know everything I knew a few years ago, but at a certain point, I can’t figure out exactly when, it all becomes a blank. Not blank like I forgot something, but like it didn’t happen yet.”

  Doro’s silence makes her nervous. She seems to be considering something that has nothing to do with what Helena just said. Finally, she asks, “But you said your cousin was going to take you to a specialist?”

  “No, Joachim is. What cousin do you keep talking about?” It seems almost like Doro doesn’t know her, either, like she’s only guessing the facts of Helena’s life. She doesn’t have any relatives in Berlin, let alone some cousin to take her to the doctor.

  “Joachim? Is that this Mr. Schmidt who’s been picking up and dropping off your assignments?”

  Something about Doro’s tone infuriates Helena, the way she moves the name out of her pursed lips carefully, like an overfull cup of tea she doesn’t want to spill. Yes, of course Joachim, who else? She must’ve told Doro that she and her husband were having problems, and that’s why Doro’s surprised. Doesn’t she understand that this was an emergency, the kind that wipes out all the petty fights? Of course Joachim’s looking after her.

  “Of course,” she says, trying not to raise her voice. Brain damage sounds like one step away from crazy, and she doesn’t want Doro to get any ideas. Not that it matters what she thinks. Let her sit there, drinking Helena and Joachim’s tea, thinking about how their marriage was on the rocks. If she and Helena are such good friends, where’s she been all this time?

  “But…” Doro pauses for a long moment, maybe trying to come up with the answer to some riddle. “Who is he, if he’s not your cousin?”

  “What?”

  The two women stare at each other a moment, mouths slightly open, holding their cups of tea with both hands, like children mirroring one another.

  “I asked who Joachim is,” Doro finally says, putting her cup on the coffee table.

  Helena’s pulse jumps and she glances toward the door. What if this isn’t really Doro? Does she actually know this woman, or did she somehow find out about Helena’s amnesia, and decide to use it to her advantage? Con her way into an apartment where only a defenseless invalid is home. “I heard you,” she says slowly. She puts down her cup of tea, slips one hand into her pocket and dials 1-1-0 on her cell phone. Now the police are just one button away. Will they trace the call if she isn’t able to give them her address? How can she keep this woman from knowing? Stay calm, stay calm; maybe it isn’t as bad as it seems. “Joachim,” she says, watching Doro’s blank face for any hint of recognition or guilt. “My husband, Joachim.”

  Doro’s eyes widen but her mouth remains set in a firm, flat line. This is it, Helena thinks. She’s going to attack me now, give up the pretense of knowing me.

  When Doro speaks, her words come out even more slowly than Helena’s, as if she were trying to coax a dangerous criminal into dropping his gun. “Hel, you don’t have a husband. I’ve never once heard you mention anybody named Joachim. As far as I know, you don’t even know anyone with that name.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Helena can’t figure out what this woman’s game is. If she wants to con her, shouldn’t she pretend to know all about Joachim? “Joachim and I have been married since before I started at CuttingEdge. If you don’t believe me, just wait here a few hours and you can ask him yourself. I may have gotten knocked down, but I certainly know whether I have a husband or not. And now,” Helena puts out her right arm, keeping her other hand in her pocket, ready to press the call button, “I’d like to see your ID.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “What do you need my ID for?”

  Stalling, of course. “How could you be a close friend of mine and not know I’m married? Give me your ID right now or I’ll scream for the neighbors to call the police.” Better not mention the phone. She can’t move quickly, so she has to maintain the element of surprise. Her throat is painfully dry and the sweat under her arms burns like acid, but she tries to appear composed, in control of this situation. Maybe this woman is just some kind of charlatan, not a dangerous criminal.

  To her surprise, the woman bends down to pick up her purse and takes out her wallet. She removes one card, and then another, and hands them to Helena. One is her government-issued ID, and the other is a white keycard with the logo of CuttingEdge Medien GmbH.

  “Your name is Helena Bachlein. You’re thirty-three years old, and you were born somewhere outside of Bonn. I can’t think of what the town’s called right now. I met your parents when they visited last year. You can ask them.” Doro pauses for a moment, maybe catching her breath, maybe waiting for a reaction. Helena considers calling her parents, right now, to ask them, but maybe that’s all part of the trick. The woman wouldn’t have mentioned her parents if it didn’t play into her hand. Besides, she still doesn’t have their number.

  When Helena doesn’t respond, Doro continues. “You had a tabby cat named Bienchen and a dachshund named Franzi when you were growing up. You studied marketing at Humboldt University and graphic design at BTK. You don’t like whipped cream on your hot chocolate and you can’t stand when people cut in line. You’re a very private person and don’t like when people talk about their personal lives in front of everyone at work.”

  Helena can’t breathe, can’t even take all this in because of the blood pounding in her temples. How can she know these things? Who could’ve told her? But even as her mind frantically searches for explanations, a part of her already knows that this woman is who she says she is. But if that’s true…

  “You’re not able to have children,” Doro adds in a soft voice, looking down at her folded hands.

  Helena realizes for the first time that she still has Doro’s ID and keycard clenched in one hand, the other hand still poised over the phone in her pocket. She cancels the call, takes the cards in her left hand, and wipes the damp palm of her right hand on the rolled-up leg of her pants. She hands the cards back to Doro. For a minute, several minutes, neither of them speaks. They avoid eye contact with each other and sip their cold tea. Helena feels like she’s going to cry, not because she’s sad but because she’s so exhausted, so weak, and she doesn’t have the energy to figure this out.

  “You hadn’t been on a date in years,” Doro continues after they’ve both set their empty cups on the table. “That’s why my husband and I set you up with Tobias.”

  There’s something caught in Helena’s throat she can’t quite clear out. When she finally manages to speak, she asks, “When?” She knows the answer to this question won’t explain anything, but she has to start somewhere.

  “You had a date the weekend of your accident.” Doro is looking at her hands again, but Helena doesn’t have the sense that she’s lying. Rather, she seems embarrassed.

  “Could you make us another cup of tea?” she asks. She needs to get Doro away from her, even if only for a few seconds, if only by sending her to the kitchenette at the other end of the room. She needs to be alone with this new information, alone among all the things she doesn’t understand.

  “Of course.” Doro smiles as she takes the two cups from the table. They could still speak to each other from the sofa to the kitchen, but they don’t have to. And that’s a relief for both of them.

  Helena closes her eyes and tries to put the pieces together. So Doro really knows her. Doro is her friend. But Doro doesn’t know Joachim. She had a date with someone else a couple of weeks ago. But why? Why would she let Doro set her up with someone when she’s married? Did she keep Joachim a secret on purpose? Was she cheating on him? Maybe there were others. She can’t see herself doing something like that, but who knows what her motives were. Whoever she was a few weeks ago is just another person she can no longer remember.

  She hears the low whine of the kettle getting ready to whistle. So they’ll drink another cup of tea, ask a few more questions neither
of them can really answer. And that will be all for now. Because Doro can’t stay too long. If she stays too long, Joachim will get home, and he’ll have another version of the truth ready for her, another version of who Helena is. And things will make even less sense if she has to try to put those two truths, those two selves, together tonight. She doesn’t have it in her.

  Doro sets two cups of tea on the table and sits down again. She asks a few questions about Helena’s injuries and when she’ll be able to get her casts off. But they’re like bad actors, saying the right lines while their thoughts are somewhere else.

  Doro blows on her tea and takes a cautious sip. She looks up at Helena. “So you don’t remember Tobias? Not at all?”

  “Not at all.” Apologetically, she adds, “The name sounds familiar, though.” Of course it does. Like any other common name. “What’s he like?” It isn’t the right question, but it’s one Doro can answer.

  Doro considers. “He’s blond and he’s got a bit of a beard most of the time, smiles a lot. A really nice guy,” she adds after a pause.

  There’s a touch of accusation in her tone, as if Helena had chosen to forget him. And yet he couldn’t have meant so much to her, if they only had a date or two.

  “How long had—have I known him?” she asks.

  “Just since the Saturday you had your accident. He told my husband’s friend, Hannes—that’s his cousin—that the two of you really hit it off and were planning to get together again, but then you never answered any of his messages and his calls went straight to voicemail. Of course we told him you’d been in an accident as soon as I heard at the office.”

  There’s something she wants to say but isn’t, and Helena doesn’t feel like prying it out of her. So they really hit it off that Saturday. But maybe he just saw it that way; maybe she had a terrible time. Maybe, accident or no accident, she wasn’t planning to contact him again. That’s not the point, though. The point is having met him at all.

  “But you said I don’t usually go on dates?”

  “Not as far as I know, but…” Doro takes a sip of tea and sets down her cup, then picks it up again. “To be honest, Hel, I’m feeling pretty confused myself. We’ve been friends since the week you started, and the whole time I knew you as a woman who’d resigned herself to being single forever. Now I come over after what I thought was your first date in years, and you’re talking about some husband I’ve never heard of. I mean, when did you move into this apartment?”

  Helena drains half her cup of tea as she counts the years, straining not to forget the blank ones between then and now. It’s a strange question, because she must already have been living here when she met Doro. “Just before I married Joachim, so about six years ago now.”

  “So you’ve had two apartments this whole time?”

  “What?”

  “Hel, you’ve had me over a million times. My husband, too, and a couple of our coworkers, some of your other friends. And it was never in this apartment. I’ve never seen this apartment before. You always lived in a one-room apartment in Wedding.”

  “Wedding,” Helena repeats. That district borders this one, but Joachim thinks it’s a bad part of town and never wants to go. Can it be that she lived a whole part of her life there, had a home and guests to visit her in it? She’s long past disbelieving Doro; she just wants to understand the why and how of it. “But this is my home,” she says.

  When Doro doesn’t answer, she gets to her feet and picks up her crutches. “I’ll show you,” she says.

  Silently, Doro follows her as she hobbles through the apartment, opening her drawers, the shoe closet and the bathroom cabinet to show Doro the things that are hers. Doro follows closely behind her and examines each piece of evidence carefully, inspecting garments and looking in all the corners of each room.

  When Helena finishes the tour and sinks onto an arm of the sofa, Doro asks, “What book are you reading now?”

  Exhausted, Helena points at the detective novel lying on the coffee table beside their empty cups.

  “That’s not really your genre, is it?”

  It isn’t, but what does that prove? That her friend knows her taste in books better than her husband? “Joachim brought me it in the hospital.”

  “But where are all your other books?”

  “What?”

  Doro doesn’t repeat the question. Helena looks around the living room, then gets up and goes to the bedroom again, scanning the perimeter as if shelves crammed with books had only just vanished.

  “There was a flood…” she recalls aloud, relieved to have an explanation at hand.

  “Was there?” It isn’t just a standard response. Doro is genuinely asking whether there was a flood. And Helena doesn’t know what to say.

  “I think you’d better go,” she says finally, surprising herself as much as her visitor.

  “But Hel—”

  “I’m very tired and confused, and I’ve had about all I can take for the day.”

  Doro opens her mouth to say something, then takes a deep breath instead. She picks up her purse from in front of the sofa and walks to the door. Before leaving, she turns around to face Helena. “Will you be all right?”

  “Of course,” Helena lies.

  “I could come back tomorrow, after you’ve spoken to your… husband.”

  “Please do.” Helena reaches around Doro to open the door. When the other woman has stepped out into the hall, she closes it and leans all her weight against it. She’s sweating but feels chilled. How long until Joachim comes home? She doesn’t know if she can face him. Was she lying to him all this time, or was he lying to her? Neither would really explain this. Does he know about Tobias? Maybe he wouldn’t be so nice to her if he did.

  She makes her way back to the sofa and lies down on her side in front of the blank television, the coffee table with two empty cups. In a way, this is her fault. She could’ve left well enough alone, didn’t have to have all those ugly suspicions about her marriage. But she had to go down into the cellar and see what rats she could find. She couldn’t have expected this, though. She only wanted to find out what she and Joachim were fighting about, and now she knows less than ever. At least, until Doro came through the door, she knew who she was.

  She stays still a while, not thinking, just lying in the strange circumstances as if they were bathwater going cold. When she looks at the time, she realizes that Joachim could come home at any minute. With great effort, she lifts herself from the sofa, takes Doro’s cup to the kitchen, and throws away the teabag. She washes the cup, dries it and puts it back in the cabinet, then lies down again opposite her own empty cup.

  JOACHIM

  Helena is on the sofa with a book when he comes in. With a book, not reading. She has it open across her lap as he puts down the groceries and comes over to kiss her, like she only just set it down. But he feels certain that the book is a prop, that she’s been waiting for him all this time, watching for his arrival. Her eyes don’t have the distant look of someone glancing up from a book, but rather something too alert. A predator waiting to pounce.

  “Hello, darling,” she says.

  Maybe he’s imagining it. Maybe she’s just excited to see him. He glances around the apartment, thinking how small it must be for someone who has to stay here all day and—almost—every day. The few books he bought her, maybe some daytime TV, the empty cup on the table with a teabag hanging over the side. But he did give her a phone. She could’ve called… She could only really have called him.

  “How are you?” He sits down beside her. She puts her book on the table and he takes her hand. It lies limply against his palm, neither rejecting nor reciprocating his touch. She might as well be sleeping.

  “Oh, I’m fine.”

  He can’t tell what she means by the peculiar emphasis she puts on I’m—that she’s fine, but he isn’t? Or that they aren’t? Or maybe she’s reminding him of her condition, as if he could forget.

  “I got you an appointment for next
week,” he says, trying to keep the uncertainty out of his voice. He thought she’d be happy about that. He looked forward to coming home to tell her, to her happiness. “Dr. Meier is highly respected in the field. I did some research. He can see you next Friday. I’ll take you.” He swallows and adds, “Of course.”

  “Friday?” she asks, for all the world like a woman with a jam-packed social calendar who might not be able to make this date. Or is she complaining because the appointment isn’t sooner?

  “That was the earliest I could get.” Another lie—he could’ve brought her in today—but then each little one is just part of the big, overall lie, isn’t it? So, in a way, he hasn’t been that dishonest. Once he’s told her, once he’s taken back his one big lie, it’ll all be clear between them.

  That’s why he took the appointment for next Friday, instead of one this week. He told himself he needed to make arrangements. But what arrangements? He could’ve just called his office the morning of. Everyone understands what an emergency is. They’ve been nothing but understanding since he first mentioned the accident. What will they be after, if any of this gets out? If they ask about his wife a few months from now, what will he say?

  He’s so caught up in this new thought that he doesn’t immediately notice Helena’s silence. She has so many silences, his wife; the silence of retreating so far into her own mind that she’s out of earshot, the silence of watching and listening so intently she forgets to say anything. But this is one of her menacing silences, a silence she uses to speak. She doesn’t just happen to be silent; rather, she’s actively not speaking. But the appointment isn’t that far off. She can’t be angry about that. He needed the time. He needed the fixed deadline of the appointment, a date by which he has to come clean, but he couldn’t face it right away.

  His instinct is to ask what the matter is, but he’s afraid of what she’ll say. Maybe if he just pretends not to notice, everything will be fine.