I start to sweat all of a sudden, buckets, my entire body. My T-shirt sticks to my back.
I throw three more rocks. A curtain of glass shards rains down. The flowerpots on the windowsills are still there. A white face appears in one of the windows and then disappears again.
I start to laugh again.
All of a sudden there’s pain. I don’t understand what’s happening. I put a hand on my left shoulder. Blood seeps between my fingers. There’s a rock at my feet. Someone has picked it up and thrown it back at me.
But it’s my left shoulder. I’m in luck. I can still throw.
I pick up the rock and take aim at whoever it is lurking at the corner of the building. But the person slips behind the wall.
I throw the rock at the building instead and it flies through an open window. The upper pane remains intact.
I hit with my next four throws.
And then I see them. Maria, Anton, and Alissa walking in the shade toward the building with their cooler.
A rock whizzes past my head.
Alissa starts to run. She’s coming straight for me. Her mouth is open but I can’t hear anything.
“Get away,” I shout. “It’s dangerous. Someone is trying to hit me. Maria, get her out of here.”
Maria starts walking toward us. Her entire body jiggles. She’s going to break apart, I think to myself calmly. Anton is behind her. He’s crying.
I hear sirens in the distance. Finally, I think. How long do they expect me to keep throwing? I’m getting tired.
Suddenly Alissa is right here, clinging to me.
I see the rock coming from the corner of the building. I rip Alissa’s hands off me and shove her behind me. But she’s not safe there, either. Another rock whizzes toward us, barely misses Alissa’s bare legs, and thwacks into my calf.
I feel the pain shoot through me. I think this must be what it’s like to get shot.
I never see the rock that hits me in the head.
The sheet over me is as white as new-fallen snow. There’s a spiderweb in the corner. It quivers a little. Maybe because a spider is dangling from it. Or maybe because a light breeze is wafting in through the window.
I stare at the web for a long time. There’s no alternative. If I move my eyes it feels as if my head will explode.
I groan aloud, but that hurts, too.
So I just sigh.
Then I realize my right hand is sweaty. Someone is holding it. I lower my eyes as far as I can, but I can’t make out who it is. I move my eyes to the right. There’s something colorful there. I move them to the left. On that side is an IV drip stand wired to my left arm.
“Who’s there?” I ask quietly, so it doesn’t boom in my head.
“Me,” I hear.
It’s Maria.
“Am I sick, Maria? Stop crying. I’m still alive. I can hear you crying. Where is Alissa?”
“In kindergarten,” says Maria, sniffling. And then she adds, “She’s doing fine, don’t worry.”
“And Anton?”
“He’s okay.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He’s in a new therapy program. He’s a little mixed up.”
I remember everything.
“Am I going to jail?” I ask. “I did a lot of damage.”
“I don’t know,” says Maria. “I didn’t understand what they said.”
“Is there a cop in front of the door?”
“No.”
“Good.”
I close my eyes. But I still see a lot. A thousand colorful bugs dance on the inside of my eyelids.
“How long have I been lying here,” I ask.
“Four days,” says Maria.
“Four days? Weird. Was I unconscious?”
“No,” says Maria blankly. “You were conscious almost the whole time. You talked. You laughed a lot. I thought I was going to die when I saw you lying there after you got hit. Your entire head covered in blood. I thought you were dead. My poor little girl. So thin. All bloody. Your hair all messed up.”
I feel something moist on my hand. Just for a second.
“What was that?” I ask. “Stop sobbing.”
With great effort, I lift my arm and look at the back of my hand. There’s a red mark on it.
“New lipstick?” I ask.
Maria doesn’t answer.
“Did I laugh when I was hit?” I ask.
“No, you were out cold. You came to in the ambulance.”
“Why can’t I remember that?”
“Who am I? Moses?” asks Maria.
I laugh. She learned that phrase from Anton. Laughing hurts like hell.
“What’s wrong with me?” I ask. “Do I have a concussion or a skull fracture?”
Maria sighs. “Yes,” she says. “Fractured skull.”
I try to move my arm again.
“Don’t touch the bandages,” says Maria fearfully. “You’ll mess it up.”
“Were the little ones here?” I ask.
“Alissa,” says Maria. “Anton’s scared. Alissa wanted to write something on your bandages. She said that’s what people do. Said it would look better. I scolded her, but you said it was okay. Do you remember?”
“No,” I say. “She should go ahead. Maybe she can draw a flower. Or a seagull.”
“A postcard came for you,” Maria says. “This morning. A pretty one. Do you want to see it?”
“Nah. My eyes hurt. What’s on it?”
“On the front is the ocean. On the back is some writing.”
“Do you have it in your hand?”
“Yes.”
“Read it to me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Can’t.”
“But why?”
“I can’t.”
“You’re getting on my nerves. Why can’t you?”
“Um, you know why . . . it’s not in Russian.”
“Maria!”
“And illegible. The only thing I can make out is at the bottom. Three letters. ILU. What’s that mean?”
“You don’t know?”
“No. How would I?”
“Well, I’m not going to tell you,” I say.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I say as he walks into the room, unfazed by what I’m saying.
I turn away. I don’t want to see him. And I definitely don’t want him to see me. But there’s nothing I can do now.
He takes three big steps and is right next to me. I’d like to crawl under the white covers and pull them over my head.
But I remain sitting up.
Sascha doesn’t hide from anyone.
Then he puts his hand on my arm, bends down, and kisses me gingerly on the cheek. Very gingerly.
“I’m not made of glass,” I say harshly. His hand wanders up to the base of my neck and stays there, warm, weighty.
“The other one, too,” I say. He puts his other hand on my shoulder and there’s nothing left for me to do but sigh and close my eyes.
“Hello, Sascha,” he says.
“Hello, Volker,” I say. “How was vacation?”
“Shitty,” he says, but I can hear the smile in his voice. “But getting home was worse. Felix called you. He talked to your relative, your aunt or whatever. Or rather, he tried to talk to her. But he didn’t understand. He came running to me screaming that you’d been stoned to death. Sascha . . . rock . . . head . . . hospital!”
“Her vocabulary has absolutely exploded if she was able to say all that,” I say.
“So then I called. My knees were shaking. A chirpy little girl got on the phone and said that someone had broken your head—that’s the way she put it—but that it would grow back together, your head. She said you could curse again already and that it sucked that you had been gone for such a long time.”
I try not to laugh, and put my hands on his. They are much bigger than mine.
“And I asked her whether it was possible to visit Sascha. She said Sascha didn’t want to see anyone but her. Said you didn’t even want to see Maria, but that Maria went anyway—‘she had to take me there.’ I told her to ask whether you wanted to see Volker or Felix.”
“She asked,” I say.
“Of course, and then she told me that Sascha didn’t want to see those two people. She didn’t want to see anyone, and if she didn’t want to, that meant she didn’t want to.”
My laugh is a little too loud.
“I talk to her on the phone a lot . . . ,” Volker continues.
“Huh? She didn’t tell me that!”
“Because I asked her not to. Good to know she’s so trustworthy. Yesterday she said the bones in your head weren’t broken, or not really, and that the bandages were off and that tomorrow you would be coming home and, oh, did I have a car? I said yes. So she said, ‘Why don’t you bring Sascha home—she’s not supposed to walk too much.’”
“Alissa hasn’t gotten smacked often enough,” I say. “Oh, I’m sorry, your shirt’s a little wet now, here on the sleeve.”
“Blind rain?”
I don’t answer.
“Of course I told her I would bring her Sascha home to her. Then she said, ‘That’s good,’ and just hung up.”
His watch ticks loudly in my ear. I count along to it: thirty, sixty, ninety.
“I’m scared I’ll hurt you,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this spot here. And over here. Does this hurt?”
“No. Not anymore. Everything feels pretty good now.”
“Crazy. What was this about no broken bones?”
“Turns out it was just contusions and cuts. They couldn’t tell from the initial X-ray. But there was no fracture.”
“It looks terrible.”
“Then leave, Volker. I already said you weren’t supposed to be here.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that. It doesn’t look bad at all. It’s just . . . it hurts me to look at it.”
“Get out.”
“No.”
“I don’t want you to see me this way.”
“Yeah, I got that. But it doesn’t look bad at all. Have you seen yourself in the mirror yet?”
“No. They only took the bandages off yesterday.”
“Go over there to the mirror and have a look.”
“No.”
Volker sighs.
“You’re even more of a pain than Felix,” he says.
“Thanks for the postcard, by the way,” I say.
“Thank Felix.”
“Tell him for me.”
«You can tell him yourself. He’s out in the hallway. He didn’t have the heart to come in. He was worried you’d be all deformed. Why he still wanted to come here at all is a mystery to me.»
I shake Volker’s hands off my shoulder, jump out of bed, and throw open the door.
The hall is long and bright. Plates rattle in the distance. They’re about to serve lunch. It smells pretty disgusting. Always smells like cauliflower no matter what they’re serving.
Felix is crouched against the wall opposite me. He jumps, startled, then looks up at me.
“You sure got a tan,” I say as he stands up and begins to smile. The smile continues to spread across his face until he’s beaming.
“I thought you were going to look terrible,” he says, approaching me and stretching out his arm to take my hand.
“Be careful,” I say, cringing a little. “Probably better if you don’t touch me. Everything still hurts.”
He drops my hand abruptly, as if it’s just stung him.
“Are you happy to be going home?” asks Volker, who has come out with my backpack over his shoulder. I go back in and look under the pillows to make sure I haven’t left a book or something. Then I kneel to peer under the bed for the same reason.
“No,” I say. “I hate my home.”
Felix looks away, looking frightened and hurt.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because it always reminds me of things I’d rather forget,” I say.
“This is where you live?” Felix says when we reach the group of housing blocks.
“In the tallest one,” I say.
Volker parks directly in front of the door of the Emerald and grabs my bag.
“They’ve finished the garden wall,” I say.
“You weren’t gone that long,” says Volker. Felix is silent.
“Seems like an eternity,” I say. “A few weeks in the hospital is time enough to start a new life. The windows have all been fixed. Did you hear what happened?”
“I read about it in an old issue of the paper when we got back,” Volker says. “I don’t want to piss you off, but I have to say it brought to mind that guy who tilted at windmills . . . ”
“Who?” asks Felix.
The benches in front of the building are empty.
“Where’s Oleg?” I ask.
“Who?”
“A guy. He’s handicapped. He always sits here. I wonder where he is?”
Volker is silent now, and Felix pipes up unexpectedly.
“How the hell should I know?” he asks. “Is it really that important?”
“The thing is,” I say, “around here you always assume the worst.”
“Doesn’t stink as bad as usual,” I say in the elevator. “Or maybe it just doesn’t stink as bad as hospital food. I’m desensitized.”