The doctor glanced at her. His face betrayed not the slightest reaction. Perhaps he did not recognise her.
‘Doctor,’ she began. The sound of her voice made her realise how nervous she was. She had wanted to come across as strong and determined, but she sounded like a child who had come begging.
‘Doctor,’ she said again, rather more forcefully, ‘I want to speak with you . . . I must speak with you.’ She had not introduced herself, she suddenly realised.
‘I am no longer seeing patients, madam. For the time being.’
His voice was like fingernails scratching down a blackboard. She pulled a face and turned her head away. Then she shook her head and looked up at him again.
‘This is urgent,’ she said. ‘It can’t wait.’ She was shivering, but didn’t bother to hide it from the doctor.
‘Then you had better step inside,’ he said.
Following him up the garden path, she began to seethe. She had lain bedridden in his house for months and months and he didn’t even recognise her! And that despite the fact that she had scarcely changed over the past few years. Her unlined face, her short hair, even her weight - they were all the same as the day she had given birth; she had never managed to lose the nineteen kilos she’d gained.
He’s just pretending, she suddenly realised. He wanted her to think that they had never met. He would say that she was delusional, so that he could keep the children for himself. That was what he intended to do. But it wouldn’t work. Not this time.
‘Why are you pretending you don’t know me?’ she asked as soon as he shut the front door behind her.
He was startled, but said nothing.
‘You know what I’m here for,’ she went on. ‘That’s why you’re acting this way.’
She saw that he felt cornered and decided to keep up the pressure. ‘I am their mother and I have the right to see the children.’
‘You are not their mother,’ he said.
Her instincts hadn’t let her down. He wanted to make her believe that she had dreamed the whole thing up. ‘How dare you?’ she said, raising her voice. ‘How dare you lie to me, after all you’ve put me through!’
‘I am not lying, madam,’ he said calmly, which only infuriated her more. ‘They don’t have a mother.’
‘You are lying! You do nothing but lie! You pretend that I don’t even exist! You just want to keep the children for yourself!’ She had deliberately raised her voice in the hope that the children would hear her and come out of the woodwork. ‘You’ve been lying to me from day one! I don’t believe a thing you say any more! I want to see my children. Now! Do you hear? I want to see my children, right this minute!’
She noticed that the doctor was avoiding looking at her. That proved he was lying.
Then suddenly he gave in. ‘You want to see them? OK, you can see them. If you really want to see them, you may do so.’
She fell silent. All of a sudden she did not know what to say. She hadn’t expected him to give in so soon. All the courage she had mustered vanished in an instant.
The doctor stepped forward and squeezed past her. ‘Follow me,’ he said, and began climbing the stairs.
‘You can see them,’ she heard him say once more, muttering, as if to himself. ‘But you are not their mother.’
He took her to see the children, as she had demanded. He unlocked the door and told her she could go in.
She stuck out her hand. ‘The key. I want the key. I don’t want you locking me in.’
He wondered what made her think he’d ever want to do that. Nevertheless, he did give her the key, which she dropped almost as soon as she’d gone in, leaving him to pick it up again. He saw that she was hyperventilating, and waited until she had got her breathing under control. Then she asked what was wrong with the children - if they were ill.
‘Something like that,’ he replied.
She pointed at the unmade bed. Her hand was shaking.
‘Where is . . .’
‘Michael?’
That was who she meant. He told her the truth, but she said it wasn’t true.
‘It can’t be. It can’t be. You’re lying.’
He was not lying. He was sure of that.
‘When? Since when!’ she asked.
He could not tell her exactly, but approximately. So it wasn’t a lie.
‘A few days ago. Or so.’
‘You’re lying! You’re lying!’ That was what she started yelling, louder and louder, and he didn’t understand why. So he decided he should provide her with a more thorough explanation.
‘I am not lying, madam. And they’ - he pointed at the two other boys - ‘they are going to die too.’
That she did believe, for she asked how long they still had.
‘A few days. A week, maybe.’
‘It isn’t true,’ she cried. ‘Tell me it isn’t true.’
But it was true.
Then she began to cry and, gazing at her shoulders, he wondered why she was crying so bitterly. She wasn’t their mother, after all.
‘Could you leave me alone with them for a while?’
The doctor shrugged, and nodded. Then he turned around and left the room. He pulled the door shut behind him but didn’t lock it. She wouldn’t have minded if he had. Maybe she deserved to be locked up, as punishment for having left the children to their fate. Although that was too mild a punishment.
Eyes closed, she breathed slowly, in and out. She’d been ranting and raving like a lunatic, she realised, and in the presence of the children too. She ought to apologise. For that, as well as for everything else. She didn’t know where to begin.
She opened her eyes again. Not for a moment did she think she could possibly have been dreaming. The stench was too pungent, even with her eyes closed. She had smelled it as soon as Dr Hoppe had opened the door, while she was still out in the hallway. The smell was so strong that it took your breath away.
The two boys, in short-sleeved shirts, were sitting side by side in one of the beds. The middle bed. The left bed had been slept in, the sheets were turned down; the right bed had been stripped, and its mattress had a yellow stain in the middle that had spread outward.
She had to force herself to look at the boys, and once again the words came into her head that had first occurred to her a few moments ago: papier mâché. Their heads seemed to be made out of papier mâché. Only by their level gaze could you tell that there was any life in them. She did not recognise herself in that gaze. Nose, mouth, ears, chin, jaw - everything was different from what she was used to seeing in the mirror. Nor did the boys have her skin, her clear, smooth skin. Their illness had deformed them. There was no other explanation.
She had to say something, she realised. The boys seemed frozen. Maybe they were afraid of her. She took a step forward and said, ‘I’m sorry about yelling just now.’
She’d taken a quick breath in through her nose, which made her aware of the dreadful stink once more. She whipped her head around to find out where the smell was coming from. As she did so, she noticed that the walls were almost completely bare. There were just a few shreds of wallpaper left, or mostly just the dull lining, so that it was clear that the paper had not been stripped off by soaking or steaming, but had been ripped down. Here and there black lines or smudges were visible on the remnants, as if they had been written or drawn on.
She walked up to the foot of the bed, where the boys were still sitting upright, side by side, not the slightest emotion on their faces, like commuters waiting for a bus. Even without sniffing, she could now smell the stench that was rising, from the bed, the sheets, the blankets, the children.
She felt sick and knew that she would faint if she didn’t get away from that putrid smell. She also knew that if she walked out now, it would all be over. Any chance she had to do something for them, for herself, would be gone.
She looked at the children. At her children. Then she acted fast, holding her breath, and without thinking. In two steps she was by the bed. She yanked off the blankets and sheets, which were heavy and wet. The boys were naked from the waist down, stick-thin and covered in a thick layer of brown, caked-on shit.
She picked up one of the boys, and it felt as if she was holding nothing in her arms. That too was a shock, but it did not deter her. Nothing could stop her now. She picked up the other boy, threading one arm through his armpit, from the back. The bed sheet had stuck to his body and let go with a tearing sound.
She ran from the room, the two children in her arms. She didn’t even look to see where the doctor was; even if he had been in her way, she would just have marched past him, without scolding or screaming, because - opening the doors along the corridor one by one - she had taken all the guilt upon herself. If she had not rejected them, then this would never have happened. She was convinced of it. It was her fault. Entirely her fault.
In the bathroom she made a beeline for the bath and deposited the children in it. She yanked off their shirts, grabbed the shower head and turned the tap all the way on so that the water gushed out in a hard stream. She held her hand under the tap and gradually began to breathe again. A great lethargy stealthily crept over her.
‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she started yammering.
Newly hatched fledglings - that was what the boys reminded her of as she dried them off. Not only because they seemed so vulnerable, so fragile, so helpless, but also because they were pink and bald and seemed to have far too much skin. And because the large, bulging eyes took up practically their entire faces. And because their mouths opened and closed like little beaks as they gasped for air. They did so greedily, as if they had kept their breathing to a minimum all this time because of the stench.
They had submitted to the bath without any reaction. They had not cried, they had not yelled, they had not struggled. But as soon as she started to dry them, they slowly began to revive. They were coming to life, almost literally. Carefully, as if picking up baby birds that had fallen out of the nest, she lifted them out of the bath one by one, and settled them down on a little bench, because they were unable to stand. Just as carefully, using only the tips of her fingers, she starting dabbing the boys’ fragile bodies dry with a towel. Wherever she touched them, she felt their bones.
A few days. A week, maybe. The doctor’s voice kept droning inside her head.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ she told them, trying to get rid of that voice in her head. ‘It’s all going to be all right. I’m here now.’
Like drowning souls returning to life, they started to breathe.
And then one of the boys spoke up: ‘Is-My-gal-in-ev-ven?’ A voice that sounded like shattering glass.
‘Is Michael in heaven?’ she echoed, to give herself time to come up with an answer. Did the children know their brother was dead? Had they seen him die? Or had Dr Hoppe taken him away before it happened?
She decided to tell them the truth. Perhaps it would help the boys to feel less distressed about their own impending deaths. That was why she went on to say another thing. ‘Yes, Michael is in heaven. He’s waiting up there for you.’
She could detect neither grief nor fear in their eyes. The boys just nodded. For her it was harder to control her emotions. To give herself something else to think about, she asked them their names.
‘Ga-bree-el.’
‘Raf-fa-el.’
Their names sounded strange to her, just as the name Michael had. She would never have chosen such names for them. All these years she had been thinking of names, and in the end she had settled on Klaus, Thomas and Heinrich. Klaus, Thomas and Heinrich Fischer. Because they would have her surname, of course.
‘My name is Rebekka,’ she said. ‘Rebekka Fischer.’
She had wanted to add that she was their mother, but didn’t, because she did not want to upset them further. She would tell them later, when they were used to her. First she had to make them understand that she would not just abandon them to their fate. The way the doctor had.
How could he?
As she was hunting for clean pyjamas in the bedroom, the answer suddenly came to her. He did not love them. That was it. He did not love them because they weren’t his. They were her children. That was why he had neglected them so. The thought made it even plainer to her than before that she should never have given them up. It was the worst mistake she had ever made, and she could not make it right any more. The only thing left for her to do now was to make sure that she was there for them, for the two that were still alive.
She dressed the children. Underpants. Undershirt. Pyjamas. With care and tenderness; the way she used to dress her dolls when she was little. She wished she could take them away from this place, but she hadn’t the foggiest idea where she would go. Home? That was much too far. They were too weak. The hospital? If she did that, she would in all likelihood lose them immediately, and for ever. Anyway, why should anyone believe her, that she was their mother? If even the children themselves had never seen her or heard from her, she’d be the one they’d accuse of neglect, not the doctor.
‘Is it OK with you if I stay?’ she asked them, just to be sure.
They shrugged their shoulders. She did feel a pang of disappointment as she had expected the boys to be grateful.
She decided to stay anyway.
That was what she told the doctor a short time later. She had tucked the children into bed in another room; they’d almost fallen asleep on her shoulder. Then she had gone downstairs to find something for them to eat. The doctor was sitting in the kitchen eating a bowl of soup. Soup from a tin, one of the legions of empty tins that littered the worktop, spilled out of the dustbin and lay scattered all around it. Then she noticed the flies. There were flies crawling over every surface; they even landed on the doctor, who did not bother to swat them off.
‘I’d like you to tell me what exactly is going on here,’ she began, ignoring the rubbish and the flies.