Retrograde Page 8

  She feels the heaviness of time passing, its slow weight accumulating on her shoulders, pressing her flesh into the unyielding pads of her crutches. He’s probably out, will probably be out for a while. It’s a weekday afternoon, no guarantee that anyone would be home. Just because he was home once doesn’t mean he’s home every day. And if he is home, he’s not answering the door.

  She feels something sinking in her, so low and heavy she’d like to lie down on this floor, not move until her neighbor comes home. And maybe not even then.

  She doesn’t even know his name. Silly to pin all this hope on a stranger. So many people are strangers now, strangers to her, and yet they must still know her.

  It’s not the end of the world, even if it feels like it. She moves back toward her apartment, pausing in the doorway with a last-ditch kind of hope. But no one’s coming up the stairs.

  All afternoon she works with the door ajar, listening for the sound of footsteps. Twice more she makes her way into the hallway, rings the doorbell and waits. Like she wouldn’t have heard him coming in. When she finishes her work, she doesn’t even try to distract herself, but sits on the sofa, listening. It’s evening now; he has to come soon. Everyone has to come home sooner or later.

  When she finally hears footsteps on the stairs, each one pounds within her louder than her own heart. She gets to her feet again, makes her way to the door and pulls it open, feeling that sad, fake, socially acceptable smile on her face again.

  “Well, hello,” Joachim says. “Look at you all dolled up.” He’s holding a bouquet of pink and yellow roses in one hand.

  It takes her a moment to understand. First she looks over his shoulder, as if the neighbor might be behind him; then she checks whether there’s any light coming through the bottom of his door. She let it get dark in her own apartment, she realizes; the sun went down but she never turned on the lights.

  “These are for you.” He starts to hand her the flowers, then thinks better of it and steps past her into the apartment, closing the door and switching on the light.

  The paper around the flowers crinkles as he unwraps them so it takes him, and Helena herself, a moment to hear that she’s weeping.

  JOACHIM

  Half an hour later, Joachim and Helena are in a cab, inching through the traffic of Charlottenburg toward Halensee. He called the cab, offered to take her out to a romantic dinner on the water, and carried her down the stairs, trying not to feel that she’d gotten lighter since he carried her up them. He feels miserable and more than a little afraid, but he can’t let her see.

  “How’d your work go today, darling?”

  She mumbles something he can’t understand, but at least she’s stopped crying. It was horrible, seeing her like that. Not the way that seeing someone you love in pain is horrible, but the way you feel if you see some miserable stranger in the street: guilty, sorry, moved to help but not knowing how, more than anything hoping someone else will take responsibility so you don’t have to. But he was at home and Helena was his wife again, and there was no one else.

  He strokes the copper silk of her hair from the crown to the tips, gently, like she’s an animal that might bite. Was he always this afraid of her?

  He tells her about his day in a light tone of voice that sounds false even to him, stretches insignificant events into anecdotes to fill the ride across town. He feels ashamed in front of the cabbie, as if the silent man weaving through the West Berlin traffic knew all about them, knew the reason for her mournful silence, and despised his desperately cheerful prattle. When they finally get out, he tips the cabbie to excess, buying his thanks if not his approval.

  At least she pulls herself together when they get there. She’s still quiet as he takes her arm and helps her through the half-empty restaurant to the terrace overlooking the dark water, but her silence is no longer ominous. The danger—whatever it was—has passed.

  “How nice,” she says, sounding almost surprised to find herself there.

  “Let’s try to get something close to the water.” They were here together a few years ago—he can’t be sure quite how many—not to eat but just to explore the lake. It was something of a failed excursion, because the only swimming area was already chock-full of nudists and the path around the lake was chopped up by fences surrounding private villas. Toward sundown, they’d seen the lights of this restaurant twinkling across the lake, and he hoped to rescue the day by bringing her here. But when they finally reached the other side, they saw that it was closed for a private party. She teased him for the rest of the evening about his failed attempt to take her on a date. It was good when they could laugh about things. They could just as easily have fought. They always could have.

  It’s the kind of memory he hasn’t thought about in years. Not that he’d forgotten, just that the thought never came up. There were so many things he could’ve remembered about her, it was better not to start in the first place. A wave of alarm passes over him, and he pauses a moment to regain his balance, as if the wooden boards of the terrace were moving under his feet.

  “Well, you finally got us a table,” she says when he pulls out her chair.

  He laughs, but there’s something uncanny about her now, the candlelight playing on her unreadable face. Does she really remember that evening the way he does, or did she simply pluck the thought out of his head? The light in her eyes is alarming; it’s unclear whether they’re reflecting the candlelight flickering between her and him, or being reflected by it.

  “Do you remember?” she asks. “It was closed and we ended up eating currywurst at a bus stop on the way back.”

  She touches his hand and he relaxes. So this is real, after all.

  HELENA

  Helena manages not to cry, that Saturday, when Joachim shows her the collapsible wheelchair like a surprise he’s brought home for her. Well, he did bring it home for her, at least on loan. And it certainly was a surprise when he called from the doorway that he had something for her.

  But it is more practical than flowers or some bijou from the jewelry store. So, after the first moment, she resolves to enjoy the day, to savor it as the first foretaste of good times to come. After all, how else did she think she was going to get around? This is an improvement over the drowsy tedium of the last couple of weekends, anyway. And it’s certainly an improvement over the weekend she woke up in the hospital. She can’t remember how that one started, but getting run over definitely put a damper on things.

  He helps her down the stairs, then goes back up for the chair. They stop at a bakery for sandwiches, and he wheels her toward the tram to Volkspark Friedrichshain so they can have a picnic. For the first few minutes, the sunlight dazzles her eyes the way it used to when she came out of a matinee movie as a child. They get out and she feels a lonely kind of longing for him as he pushes her along, so close and yet barely within reach, impossible to hold or be held by. She can’t stand on her toes to kiss him, can only wait for him to bend and kiss her. She feels him as a warm blur in her consciousness, behind her, above her, but never quite with her. Trying to see him without seeing him takes so much focus that she can barely keep up with the meaningless conversation he makes along the way. But it’s good to get out.

  And to be out with him. She laughs aloud and the laugh has a painful feel to it, like a cough.

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking”—she gives another wracking laugh— “that I can’t remember the last time we spent a day together like this.”

  He laughs, but it takes him a minute to get started, so she knows it hurts him, too. Knows that things didn’t really get better between them, not enough for them to be able to laugh at the bad times.

  She feels lonelier than ever, but when they reach the park, it’s only a few bumpy meters down the dirt path, then he’s parked her chair next to a bench and sat down, and they’re together, still and at last. She takes his hand, urgently, as if she needed to tell him something, then drops it again. A magpie is shrieking at a hoo
ded crow over something the two of them found in the tall grass, probably something dead. Joachim unwraps her sandwich and hands it to her.

  The day is long and short. Long because they stay out until evening, rolling through an indifferent but—for Helena—fascinating world of strange faces, dogs off their leashes, and toddlers on wooden bicycles.

  They stop at a few sidewalk cafes because she doesn’t want to go in anywhere. And that makes the day short, one continuous shot, no cuts, no fade-outs to rest the viewers’ eyes. She tries not to notice a certain residual sense of isolation, like a persistent ringing in her ears so quiet it seems imagined.

  Dinner at another outdoor table, sushi she eats with her hands because the chopsticks keep getting caught in her cast. She wants to interrupt every conversation they have, take him by the arm and shout: Know me! Come close to me! But all this is absurd. It’s only her pent-up energy, the overstimulation of being out after so long. After all, who knows her better than he does? Who could be closer to her?

  They decide to have one more drink after dinner, though it’s clear that neither of them wants to. She isn’t sure why they can’t admit this, why they can’t just go home and go to bed. Somehow, that would be admitting defeat. So she tells herself she doesn’t want to disappoint him, that he went to all this effort to take her out, and she has to show him what a good time she’s having. And maybe he’s afraid of disappointing her by cutting things short.

  A haphazard turn off of Boxhagener Platz brings them to a café they’ve never been to before. All the tables outside are taken, but for some reason she insists on being rolled into the stuffy interior instead of looking for another place, and he agrees. Maybe they’ve already given up on something.

  The inside is lightly populated with a few stray couples who give Helena sympathetic looks but don’t make eye contact. Something about the wooden newspaper rack near the bar catches her eye. Something familiar. But what? Her eyes move to the empty table nearest it, and she’s certain that she’s been here before. When? And doing what? Reading a newspaper? There’s something about the juxtaposition of the two, that wooden rack bursting with newspapers and the heavy wooden table, big enough for two, but small enough that you could get away with sitting there on your own, taking up the whole table with a newspaper. But there was something else—

  Joachim stops talking abruptly. He and Helena realize in the same moment that she wasn’t listening.

  “I’ve been here before,” she says apologetically. “I was trying to remember when.”

  “Search me.” At least he doesn’t look angry. It’s understandable—isn’t it?—that she should try to remember, when she gets the chance.

  “Maybe it was a long time ago, while I was in college or something.” She’s lost her grip on whatever fine thread connected her to that rack with the crumpled papers drooping on it. But she doesn’t believe what she just said. The interiors of cafes, the cafes themselves, change too quickly for that. Besides, the feeling was so immediate, a matter of weeks rather than years. So she was in this café without him. What does that prove?

  She keeps nodding and agreeing with whatever he’s saying while her mind wrestles with itself, trying to get out of the impossible knot it’s bound up in. It seems sometimes that if she’d just try hard enough, she could remember. But the superhuman effort it would take terrifies her: she might not withstand it. It can’t last forever, can it? The specialist will let her know, when she goes to see one. The café loses the mysterious familiarity it had when they came in and begins to take on the mundane feel of an evening winding down. When he asks whether she’s tired, she nods gratefully, somehow close to tears.

  JOACHIM

  On Monday, Joachim calls the hospital from his office kitchen. It takes him a few tries to get through to Dr. Hofstaedter, and when he does, he’s almost sorry he called.

  “You remember,” he tells the doctor. “My wife was having problems with amnesia after the accident?” He can feel Dr. Hofstaedter judging him as he asks about a specialist, judging him for having waited weeks to call. And for not really wanting his wife to recover. Is that love?

  The thought strikes him like a blow to the head, and he has to ask Dr. Hofstaedter to repeat the names she’s just given him. After he’s thanked her and hung up, he feels nauseous with fear, helplessly aware that the doctor could call his wife right now and tell her everything. He told Dr. Hofstaedter when he took Helena home that they’d discussed the situation, but he’s never been a good liar, no matter what Helena thinks. He wants to hurry home to be with her, to intercept the call and tell her the news himself. Then he remembers that he disconnected the phone, that no one can possibly get through to her.

  He leans against the wall opposite the coffeemaker, feeling a sickly breeze from the one small window. But what if something happens to her? How can he bring himself to leave her there, day after day, with no way of reaching him in an emergency? What if she fell down and hit her head again, or the apartment caught fire? He can hardly breathe for thinking of it. How many days has he left her there like that? It can’t go on this way. He’ll buy her a cell phone after work, one of those prepaid ones you can use right away. He’ll put in his number, and if anything happens, she’ll be able to reach him. He forces breath into his lungs and tries to regain his balance. This isn’t how he pictured it. But then again, it wasn’t the first time around, either. Somehow, he never knows what to expect of Helena—or himself when he’s with her.

  HELENA

  Helena finishes her project early and feels a momentary thrill. Free! She can leave work early! And then reality sinks in. Leave work and do what? What, should she go home early?

  She shuts down the laptop, becoming aware all at once of how warm the apartment is, how stifling the air. But she’s always covered in sweat nowadays; what difference does it make? Everything is so much effort.

  A walk around the block in the fresh air would be just the thing. Or sitting on a park bench and letting her mind wander, watching the passersby. Funny how humble your wishes can get. She was always so discontent before. That was different, though. A different kind of trapped. Better not to think about that now. Better not to think about stupid wishes, either. If wishes were elevators, she’d ride one out of this apartment. Ha, ha. Except it’s not funny. She gets to her feet, first balancing her weight on the tabletop, pressing the blood out of her left hand, and then on the crutches, whose soiled pads press her sweat back into her skin.

  She makes it across the room to the window and pulls the entire panel open. She props her crutches against the wall, presses her left hand to the windowsill and leans her head out. And thinks, just for a moment, of going all the way. Everyone would think it was an accident—she was injured, trying to get some fresh air and she slipped. It could happen that way. Even now it could. Everyone would think it was an accident, except maybe Joachim, and he’d tell himself it was. He’d have to.

  There’s something unsavory about the relish this thought offers her, and she moves away from the window.

  What now? She could get herself something to eat, but she doesn’t have much appetite. Eating almost never seems worth the effort now. A cup of coffee, then. The machine’s still on; she can manage that.

  But in spite of the absurd, disproportionate effort this takes her, by the time she’s on the sofa with a somewhat full cup of milky, stale coffee, there’s still at least an hour, more likely two, until Joachim gets home.

  She could go to the bedroom and get a book, but she’s tired of the books he bought her, tired of words that move without taking her with them. She isn’t a big fan of TV—not on weekday afternoons, anyway—but she wants to treat herself to something and her options are limited.

  She spends almost as much time flipping channels as actually watching anything—low-budget documentaries, poorly acted soaps, dubbed Hollywood movies. She finally settles on a vapid romantic comedy about a woman trying to win back her ex. In spite of herself, she buys into it, hoping for
the woman’s success, watching her dress to impress as if looking into a mirror, and bitterly disappointed by minor setbacks meant to provide comic relief.

  When the film’s predictable style makes it clear that the woman is unlikely to succeed, Helena is panic-stricken. She considers turning off the TV but can’t even bring herself to change the channel.

  In one of the later scenes, the woman packs a box full of things that remind her of her ex, holding up each one to examine it, sometimes with a flashback for the benefit of her audience—a moonlit picnic, a giddy joyride, a stolen kiss. Then, suddenly, she’s weeping, violently, bitterly, with childlike despair. Helena joins her and keeps sobbing long after the woman on TV, long after she’s turned off the set. What’s going on? What’s wrong with her? She can’t think, can’t breathe. But she knows this weeping, this desperate weeping after you’ve given up on everything, and it’s the last thing you can do, a thing without hope.

  Who was weeping like that? Why did that scene feel so familiar? Maybe she’d seen the movie and forgotten it. But that wouldn’t be so gutting.

  She dries her face on the hem of her shirt and slowly, slowly manages to stop. The irrational feeling of despair, of utter abandonment, stays with her, but she fights to keep it at a distance. She could swear the weeping she remembers is her own.

  But why? She doesn’t remember ever weeping like that. She often cried after a fight with Joachim, but never so achingly. And she never felt that alone in her misery—he was always there with her. It isn’t a memory she has of weeping like that or feeling like that; it’s just the familiarity of it. As if she’d tried some exotic delicacy in a far-off land, only to find that she knew the taste.

  • • •

  By the time Joachim gets home, she’s cleaned herself up and pasted a smile across her face. Because people are unhappy enough on their own; they don’t want to be married to someone who makes them miserable. But her happiness is sincere when he shows her the contents of a small shopping bag from Media Markt. A phone! Her own phone, to call anyone she wants! She could talk on it all day if she liked.