Little Grey Mice (11 page)

They stopped very close to the perimeter fence at a small coppice of recently planted firs, grass-tufted at their roots, and turned back towards the faraway house.

‘What happens now?' asked Ida.

‘There's lunch,' said Elke. ‘Don't you remember?'

The weather was good enough for the meal to be served in the conservatory and they managed to get an individual table, shared with no one else. The catering included families as well as inmates. Ida said she was not hungry. Elke wasn't, either. Ursula ate ravenously and badly: it was pork, with a sauce, which was messy. Elke sat close to the child, napkin in hand, thinking how much better her daughter had behaved at table when they'd lived together at Kaufmannstrasse. It was her first and only criticism against the home. It hadn't seemed to register on any previous weekend. The new cardigan became stained, on one sleeve and on the bodice, where the white flowers were patterned.

Before they left Elke told Dr Schiller about the untried skirt in Ursula's room and the man promised to let her know before the next visit if it fitted or would need changing. Elke had intended discussing the possibility of Ursula making a home visit but changed her mind. The opportunity would still be here, next Sunday.

Neither attempted any conversation during the descent to the major highway. Elke wondered whether her sister was seeking a neutral subject, something for which she was looking.

It was Ida who eventually spoke, sneeringly. ‘Horst is writing a book.'

‘A book!' In her astonishment Elke risked looking across the car, which she never did.

‘It's going to be an international bestseller and we're all going to live in luxury, happy ever after,' declared Ida, still sneering.

‘What about?'

‘God knows,' said Ida. ‘I'm sure as hell Horst doesn't.'

‘But I don't understand …' started Elke.

‘The bank won't extend his loan. We're broke.'

‘But a book! … Horst!'

‘Of course it's bullshit,' agreed her sister. ‘He's bought a lot of pads and some pencils and put a table in the bedroom, where he says he's going to work. The kids are forbidden to go near it. I am, too. The children are laughing at him. That's never happened before. I wish it wasn't happening now.'

‘I'm sorry, Ida. Very sorry.'

The woman shrugged as if it were unimportant, the theatricality of the gesture betraying the opposite. ‘I don't want to go straight home. Let's drink coffee. Or something.'

Elke drove to the Reduttchen and chanced parking on a convenient meter. Because of the weather they took a table outside in the garden instead of going into the raftered stabling from which the cafe had been created.

‘How much do you need?'

‘I don't know, not fully,' said Ida. Deep in depression, she didn't understand the point of the question.

‘I can lend you money,' Elke offered simply.

Ida blinked at her sister, fully attentive for the first time. She smiled, faintly, and said: ‘I knew you'd offer. But no.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because there wouldn't be a chance of your ever being paid back,' announced Ida, practically. ‘Because I wouldn't know how much to ask for, even if I did accept. And because it would make it all too easy yet again for Horst Kissel, for whom there's always a way out as long as he can get just one piece of luck.'

‘You've got to do something!'

‘Why have I?' Ida retorted, harshly. ‘Let Horst do something, for a change. Instead of always fucking up.'

When the waiter arrived Ida announced, without being asked, that she would accept Elke's hospitality and ordered Armagnac. Elke chose coffee.

‘Have you talked to him about it?'

‘About the bills and the demands that I know of, of course I have. He says he's handling it; that it's going to be all right.'

‘What about mother's money?'

Ida snorted a laugh, another bitter sound. ‘In the full flush of blind love I transferred it all over to a joint account! What a mistake that was! You know I can't conceive now that I ever admired that man: believed he was an important person with an important job.'

‘What's he done with it? The money?'

‘In a previous dream world our budding bestselling author was going to become the guru of the stock market: the damned fool actually spent a week in Frankfurt once, studying the market…' Ida shook her head. ‘He came back claiming he had inside sources so good he couldn't fail! Can you believe that?'

‘Did you?'

‘Hoped,' said Ida. ‘I hoped. Wasn't that stupid?'

Of course concern – genuine, deep worry – was Elke's immediate feeling but almost as quickly came another, of disappointment. ‘It makes some things easier to understand, though.'

‘Like what?' frowned Ida.

‘Why hands under dinner tables aren't offensive.'

Ida shook her head, and Elke wondered if her sister was going to make any further disclosure. Instead Ida bent over her glass and said: ‘Christ, what a mess! What a bloody awful mess!' She looked up, damp-eyed and imploring, and Elke was shocked at the despair on the other woman's face.

Remembering her own self-image gazing back at her from the lonely bedroom mirror Elke knew she had looked like that, once. Worse. Hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked, asking why me, why me, why me and beseeching a miracle. Not a miracle! she corrected at once. A miracle was a wondrous event, beyond proper human comprehension, an act of God. That wasn't what she had prayed and begged for, seeking forgiveness and understanding at the same time as asking for escape – nothing more than the normal working of her body – when the calendar date passed and then stayed there, day after day and week after week, mocking her until it came around again the next month still with nothing happening. Quickly there was a further correction. She hadn't been alone, not really. Not after those first few numbed days, those numbed why-me days when she couldn't believe she could be pregnant.

Ida had been the first person she told, long before the most agonizing confession she'd ever made in her life. It had been Ida she clung to, sobbing the words, Ida who couldn't believe it either, not at once, saying there had to be some simple upset, an imbalance, and that it sometimes happened – it had happened to her – and it was going to be all right. And when it wasn't all right it had been Ida who said she knew people because of the job she did and offered the pills, shaking her and shouting at her when she was unable to take them, saying it was wrong. Just as she shouted and said things like damn the Church when, anguished and distraught though she felt, she refused, appalled, to go to the doctor Ida recommended in Cologne as discreet and safe and hygienic. Which was only the beginning. It had been Ida who confronted Dietlef on her behalf, saying there wasn't much time: Ida who made him come to her and promise that of course he would do what he had to, do what was honourable. And Ida to whom she clung again when he didn't come back the following night or the night after that. So many tears: so many times with their arms around each other. Telling their mother. Briefly – happily despite everything when Ursula had been born – with joy. And then in agony again at the cold, clinical medical diagnosis.
Autism is a permanent abnormality …
loss of contact with reality … affects speech and social contact
…
deterioration … irreversible … no treatment …

‘Why a mess?' demanded Elke. ‘It's not the end of the world.' Not as what happened to her had seemed at the time to be the end of the world: sometimes, when she couldn't halt the self-pity, still did.

‘It just is.' Ida lifted her empty brandy glass to the passing waitress. ‘I don't want to lose the house, wreck though it is. I don't want to have to change the kids' school.'

There was more, guessed Elke. ‘You've seen him, haven't you? It's gone beyond telephone calls.'

‘Maybe.'

‘What good is it going to do?'

‘I don't know,' said Ida, listlessly. ‘It's an escape, for a while.'

The conversation was already disturbing Elke on several levels and suddenly she isolated another. She'd never known Ida helpless before, not like this. Ida had always been the dominant one: Ida the leader, Elke the follower. It was the way it had always been, the way Elke felt comfortable. Safe. She didn't want it to change.

‘You'll have to take the money.'

‘What about getting it back?'

‘I don't care about getting it back.' She didn't, Elke told herself. Just as long as she had some left. She'd always been frightened of not having any money to rely upon: she saved four hundred marks a month, sometimes more.

‘Thank you.' Ida spoke with the returned brandy glass to her lips, as if she wanted something to hide behind.

‘Wouldn't you do the same for me?' Elke insisted.
‘Haven't
you done the same for me, in other ways?' Had Ida sensed, as she had, the reversal of roles, surrendering her customary dominance by disclosing the financial crisis? With further prescience, Elke said: ‘You're comparing, aren't you? Comparing Horst with …' She waved her hand as if she were trying to grasp the name out of the air.

‘Kurt,' supplied Ida. ‘Kurt Vogel. I suppose so.'

‘So it's no longer fun? No longer just an adventure?'

Ida gave another shrug, without answering.

‘Have you been to bed with him?'

‘No.'

‘Are you going to?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Do you love him?'

There was another snorted laugh. ‘How do I know?'

‘This is the real mess, isn't it? Not being broke or losing the house or the upheaval of having to change the children's school?'

Ida smiled across the table at her, a shy expression. ‘Wise little sister!' she said.

‘Hardly,' said Elke. ‘And if this is the way you feel then I agree, it
is
a mess.' There was an unexpected surge of emotion that Elke could not recognize, a feeling she couldn't identify. Just as quickly a thought came into her mind –
not one man but two –
but that had no meaning, either, apart from jealousy, and how could there be that?

Ida straightened, a positive action. ‘It's been good to talk,' she said.

‘What about the problem we
can
solve?' pressed Elke. ‘How are you going to bring it into the open, with Horst?'

‘Make
him discuss it,' said Ida, with further determination. ‘Refuse to let it go when he says everything is under control and that he'll handle it.'

It sounded as if Ida was reciting resolutions already made: as if she'd expected Elke to make the offer and decided to accept it, after an initial refusal. Elke felt confused, uncomfortably distanced from her sister, from whom she'd never before had that impression. Had Ida come with her today because she'd genuinely wanted to see Ursula? Or to manoeuvre this encounter? Elke hurried the doubt away, disgusted with herself.

‘Let's get it settled as quickly as possible. Get one worry out of the way at least.'

‘I'll see that he pays you back. All of it. I promise.'

‘Let's not worry about that, not now.'

Ida was silent for several moments, looking down at the table. Then, with the honesty there always was between them, she said: ‘It was difficult today, darling, wasn't it?'

‘I don't …' started Elke before understanding. Showing the same truthfulness she said: ‘I don't know why it was like it was.'

‘Why do you go every week?' asked Ida, brutally. ‘Ursula's not aware of it: it doesn't mean anything to her.'

‘It's my …' Elke stumbled to a halt again. ‘… what I want to do.'

‘Duty? Or guilt?'

‘Guilt! That's preposterous!'

‘Exactly!' seized Ida. ‘How Ursula is … how she was born … is nobody's fault. It's …' There was a splayed arm waving. ‘… I don't know! Genetic fault. An accident of nature. Whatever. But there was nothing you could have done about it. No mistake you made except going to bed with the bastard in the first place, but that's not what we're talking about. So you don't have to feel guilty: exact a penance from yourself, every week.'

Oddly – incredibly – Elke was reassured by the lecture, hurtful though it was. This was how it should be – how she wanted it to be – with Ida back in control. A leader, to be followed. Elke said: ‘I don't go because of any guilt. I go because I want to.'

‘She's not going to get better, darling,' said Ida, even more brutally. ‘She was worse today than I can ever remember.'

‘It was a bad day,' said Elke, desperately, the lie like glue in her throat. If Ida hadn't made the visit with her Elke knew she would have thought of today as a good one. Ursula had been placid, unresisting, even aware of her new clothes. Elke wished the cardigan had not been so quickly stained at the lunch table.

‘Isn't every visit a bad day?'

‘Why are you doing this? Saying this?'

‘I'm trying to be kind.'

‘It's none …' blurted Elke, another false start. ‘It's what I want to do.'

Ida reached across the table, squeezing the other woman's hand. ‘You know something? I've lost count of the number of times I imagined how much I would have liked to castrate with a very blunt, very rusty knife the bastard who made you pregnant. Haven't you?'

No, thought Elke. She said: ‘He just couldn't face it.'

‘So he ran away, leaving you to face everything!'

Elke's entry in her diary that night read:
A bad day.

Reimann was discomfited by the thought of being ill-prepared. He studied the dossiers and the files and clicked his way through the freeze frames and watched the video films – always at Arbat Ulitza, never allowed to remove them to the apartment on Neglinnaya – but Elke Meyer never became a person to him. He was aware of everything about her: how she looked and how she dressed and how she conducted her contained and insular life. He knew, from afar, the few people she knew. Yet she remained as lifeless as the frozen pictures on the projector screen. Because his information
was
frozen. Even the video films did not properly show how her face developed an expression. How she actually walked: held herself. What little signs – body language, the instructors had called it – hinted a feeling or an attitude. The looks and emotions that came into her eyes. He didn't
know
her: not properly know her. But maybe he shouldn't, he reflected, following the objectivity that had also been instilled in training. For whatever mainipulation was necessary, shouldn't he have to learn about her himself, by being with her? Just as he would if he were a normal, ordinary person and their encounter was going to a meeting of normal, ordinary people?