"Shall I read something?" I said.
"As you wish!"
After meals, I'd made it a habit to read her the most boring things possible, hoping to put her to sleep. I hesitated a moment.
"If you like, I could tell you what I've been doing the last five days since New Year's—you'll fall asleep faster that way," I said.
She didn't laugh at my joke, nor did she answer. She just nodded as if to say, "Go on."
I began slowly, pausing now and then to gather my thoughts. I told her how I'd left the house, where I'd gone, what I'd seen and thought at Wannsee, how I'd wandered the streets at night near where she'd pass, then around her house, and finally how on that last evening, when I learned she was in the hospital, I'd rushed there and waited outside until morning.
My voice was perfectly calm. I felt no more excitement than if I were recounting someone else's story.
I lingered on details, trying to remember and analyze everything that had passed through my mind, laying it all out piece by piece.
She didn't stir. Her eyes were closed. She was so still I might have thought she'd fallen asleep. But I kept going.
It felt more like I was repeating it all to myself. I expressed feelings whose nature I still couldn't understand, argued with myself about them, then drifted to other subjects without reaching any conclusion.
Only once, when I described wanting to say goodbye to her on the phone, she opened her eyes, looked at me carefully, and closed them again. Not a single line of her face moved.
I hid nothing, saw no need to. Because I had no purpose.
The events I'd been living through felt as alien to me as memories from years ago. A distance had formed between them and me.
So when I judged both her and myself, I was utterly ruthless—free of any hidden thoughts or calculations. None of the countless persuasive phrases that had stormed my mind during the nights I'd waited for her on the streets came back to me, and I wasn't looking for them.
Inside, I felt nothing but a simple need to tell a story. I valued the events not by their relation to me, but by their own importance. And she, without making the slightest move, listened with complete attention.
I could feel that clearly.
When I told her what I'd thought while watching her at the hospital bedside, how I'd imagined her dead, she blinked a few times... That was all.
When I finished, I fell silent. She was silent too.
We stayed that way for maybe ten minutes.
Finally she turned her head toward me, opened her eyes, and for the first time in a long while, she smiled faintly—or I thought she did—and said in a very calm voice: "Shouldn't we sleep now?"
I got up, straightened my bedding, undressed, and turned off the light, but I couldn't sleep until late.
I could tell she was awake, too, from the absence of her breathing. Even as my eyes grew heavy, I found myself waiting for the start of that regular, soft sighing I'd grown used to hearing every night.
I struggled not to drift off and kept shifting. Despite that, I fell asleep first again.
I opened my eyes early in the morning. The room was still dark. Only a sliver of light seeped through the curtains.
I still couldn't find the sound I was waiting for—her breathing.
A silence that made you uneasy filled the room.
We both seemed to be waiting with all the tension of our souls. So many things were piling up inside both of us. I could almost feel it physically.
At the same time, a terrible curiosity came over me: When did she wake up? Or didn't she sleep at all? I wondered...
Despite our complete stillness, the room was filled with an air released by our thoughts, circling each other.
I lifted my head slowly. My eyes, adjusting to the dark, caught Maria propped against a pillow, looking at me.
"Good morning," I said, and stepped out to wash my face.
When I came back into the room, the sick woman was in the same position. I opened the curtains, put away the night lamp, straightened the divan I'd slept on, answered the maid's knock, and helped Maria drink her milk.
I did all this almost without speaking.
I'd been getting up the same way every day, doing the same things, going to the soap factory until noon, and in the afternoons reading to her from newspapers or books, telling her what I'd seen and heard outside, and so the evening would come.
Was this how it had to be? I didn't know.
Everything had taken this course on its own, and I just followed. I felt no desire. I didn't think about the past or the future—I only knew the moments I was living.
My soul was as calm as a windless, unruffled sea.
After shaving and dressing, I asked Maria's permission to leave.
"Where are you going?" she said.
I was surprised. "Don't you know?" I said. "To the factory."
"Can't you not go today?"
"I could, but why?"
"I don't know... I want you to stay with me all day today."
I considered it a whim of illness, but I didn't answer. I started flipping through the morning newspapers the maid had left on the edge of the bed.
There was a strange restlessness in Maria's manner, almost a discomfort.
I put the papers aside, went over and sat beside her, placing my hand on her forehead.
"How are you today?"
"I'm fine... Very fine..."
Even though she made no move, I understood she didn't want me to take my hand away. I felt my fingers clinging to her cheeks, her forehead. It was as if all her will had gathered in her skin.
In a voice that tried to seem as indifferent as possible, I said, "So you're very fine, huh? Then why didn't you sleep at all tonight?"
She was taken aback for a moment. A flush spread from her neck upward to her cheeks. It was clear she was struggling not to answer my question.
Suddenly she closed her eyes, her head fell back as if she felt immense weakness, and she said in a barely audible voice: "Oh, Raif!..."
"What is it?"
She pulled herself together a little, breathing quickly. "Nothing!" she said. "I just don't want you to leave my side today... Do you know why? I think that as soon as you're gone, everything you told me last night will storm into my head and won't leave me alone for a minute..."
"If I'd known, I wouldn't have told you," I said.
She shook her head. "No, that's not what I mean... I'm not saying it for myself... I can't trust you anymore! I'm afraid to leave you alone... Yes, I hardly slept tonight. I kept thinking about you. I saw everything you did after you left me—how you wandered around the hospital, all the details, even the parts you didn't tell me... That's why I can't leave you alone anymore! I'm afraid... Not just for today... I won't let you out of my sight from now on!..."
Tiny beads of sweat had appeared on her forehead. I wiped them away gently.
At that moment, I felt a warm wetness in the palm of my hand. I looked at her face in surprise.
She was smiling—for the first time in a long while, an open, clear smile—but tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes down her cheeks.
I took her head in both hands and laid it on my arm. Now she was laughing more freely, but her tears had increased proportionally. She didn't make a sound, and no sob shook her chest. I couldn't have imagined anyone could cry so peacefully, so quietly.
I took her hands, which lay on the white bedspread like two little white birds, and began to play with them. I curled her fingers, opened them again, and squeezed her hand into a fist in my palm. On the inside of her hand were thin lines like the veins on a leaf.
I laid her head gently back on the pillow. "You'll tire yourself out," I said.
Her eyes sparkled. "No, no!" she said, grabbing my arm.
Then, as if talking to herself, she added: "Now I know what was missing between us... That lack wasn't in you, it was in me... I was lacking faith... Because I could never believe you loved me so much, I thought I wasn't in love with you... I realize that now. So it seems people have taken away my ability to believe... But now I believe... You made me believe... I love you... Not madly, but with a perfectly clear mind... I want you... There's a terrible desire inside me... If only I could get well!... I wonder when I'll be well?.."
I didn't answer. I pressed my face to the corners of her eyes and dried her tears.
After that, until she recovered and could get up, I never left her side.
When I had to leave her alone for an hour or two to buy food or fruit, or to stop by the boarding house and change clothes, time felt unbearably long.
When I took her arm and helped her onto the sofa, or draped a thin cardigan over her shoulders, I felt the endless happiness of having devoted my life to another person.
We'd sit facing each other by the window, watching outside for hours without saying a word, only occasionally looking at each other and laughing. Her illness had made her childish, and my happiness had done the same to me.
A few weeks later, she grew a little stronger. When the weather was nice, we'd go out together and walk for half an hour.
Before going out, I'd prepare her carefully, even putting on her stockings myself because she'd cough when she bent over. Then I'd slip her fur coat over her shoulders and help her slowly down the stairs...
And we'd rest a while on a bench about a hundred and fifty meters from the house. From there we'd go to the edge of one of the small lakes in the Tiergarten, where we'd watch the mossy water and the swans.
And one day, everything ended... So simply, so coldly, that at first I couldn't grasp the magnitude of it... I was just a little surprised, quite upset; but I never thought this event would have such a great, such an irrevocable effect on my life.
In the last few days, I'd been avoiding going to the boarding house. Even though I'd paid for my room in advance, my absence had made the landlady treat me a bit coolly.
One day Frau Heppner said: "If you've moved somewhere else, let us know so we can report it to the police. Otherwise they'll hold us responsible."
I tried to brush it off with a joke. "As if I could ever leave you!" I said, and went into my room.
The room where I'd lived for over a year, the belongings I'd brought from Turkey, the books scattered here and there—all seemed completely alien to me.
I opened my suitcases, took some things I needed, and wrapped them in newspaper.
Just then, the maid came in. "There's a telegram for you—it's been waiting for three days!" she said, handing me a folded piece of paper.
At first, I didn't understand anything. I couldn't bring myself to take the telegram from the maid's hand.
No, this piece of paper couldn't have anything to do with me... I hoped that by not learning what was inside, I might keep a disaster circling around me at bay.
The maid looked at me in surprise, and when she saw I wasn't moving, she left the telegram on the table and went out.
I sprang up—this time, whatever was coming, let it come quickly—and tore open the telegram.
It was from my brother-in-law. "Your father died. I've wired your travel money. Come immediately."
That was all. Four or five simple, perfectly clear words...
Still, I stared at the paper in my hand for a long time. I read each word one by one, several times.
Then I got up, tucked the package I'd just prepared under my arm, and went out.
What had happened? I saw that nothing around me had changed.
Everything was just as it had been a moment ago when I arrived. There was no difference in me or in the objects around me.
Maria was probably waiting for me at the window. Yet I was no longer the same "me" from half an hour ago.
Thousands of kilometers away, a human being had ceased to exist; even though this event had happened days, perhaps weeks ago, neither I nor Maria had sensed a thing.
The days were all the same. But suddenly, a scrap of paper the size of a palm turned everything upside down, took me from this world and carried me there, reminding me that I belonged not here, but to those faraway places from which the telegram had come.
I realized very clearly how wrong I'd been to believe that the life surrounding me here for the past few months was real, to hope it would continue. And yet I was still struggling not to accept this truth.
It shouldn't have been this way. Being born somewhere, being someone's son—that wasn't so important.
What really mattered was two people finding each other, attaining this rare happiness in a world where it was so difficult. Everything else was details.
Those details should have somehow adjusted themselves to fit the great truth: that we had found each other.
But I also knew very well that wasn't how it worked.
I saw that our lives were toys in the hands of insignificant details, because life itself was nothing but details.
The logic of our minds and the logic of life never matched.
A woman could look out of a train window; a speck of coal could fly into her eye; she'd rub it without paying much attention, and this tiny incident could blind one of the most beautiful eyes in the world.
Or a loose tile, dislodged by a gentle wind, could shatter a head that an entire era envied.
Just as it never occurs to us to ask which is more important—the eye or the speck of coal, the tile or the head—and we simply accept all this without reasoning, so too we had to endure many other caprices of life with the same resignation.
But was it really like that?
There were unavoidable events in the world, and we couldn't understand their reasons or logic—that was true. But there were also some irrationalities and injustices that, though supposedly modeled on nature, could easily have been avoided.
For example, what tied me to Havran? A few olive groves, a couple of soap factories, some relatives I'd never cared to meet...
Yet here I was bound with my entire life, with all my living parts. So why couldn't I stay here?
Very simple: business in Havran would be left unattended, my brothers-in-law would stop sending me money, and I would struggle here unable to do anything.
And there were many other things: passports, embassies, residence permits... I had no way of understanding how necessary they were for human lives, but they were certainly important enough to determine the direction of my life.
When I explained the situation to Maria Puder, she was silent for a while.
There was a strange smile on her face—she looked ahead as if to say, "Didn't I tell you?"
I was terrified of appearing ridiculous if I poured out everything going through my soul, so I struggled fiercely to maintain my composure. Only a few times I said: "What can I do? What can I do?"
"What can you do? Naturally you'll go... I'll go too, for a while. I can't work much longer anyway. I'll stay with my mother in Prague. The countryside there will certainly be good for my health. I'll spend the spring there."
It struck me as a bit odd that she was talking about her own plans while leaving me aside. She glanced at me furtively from time to time.
"When will you leave?" she said.
"I don't know. I should leave as soon as I get the travel money."
"Maybe I'll leave before you do..."
"Oh?..."
My surprise made her laugh. "You're still such a child, Raif!" she said. "Getting upset and excited about unavoidable things is childish. Besides, we still have time. We can think things over and decide..."
I went out again to sort out my small affairs and cut my ties with the boarding house.
When I came back in the evening and saw Maria already packed for the journey, I was completely taken aback.
"No point wasting time for nothing," she said. "I'll go as soon as possible and leave you free to finish your travel preparations. And then... I don't know... I've decided to leave Berlin before you, that's all... I don't really know the reason myself."