She’d once played the accordion, first a small one, then, when her arms were long enough, a full-size instrument. Her father had given it to her for her fifteenth birthday. Her mother hated it and would say, “Learn to sew instead, it’s not as noisy.” Then one day Lothar had taken the accordion to the rubbish heap.
A red light pulsed beside a room number on the display board. Nicolette looked up in annoyance, caught sight of Marianne and turned away in a show of complete indifference. Marianne waited until Nicolette had disappeared before entering the nurses’ room. She reached out hungrily for the bag of individually wrapped madeleines on the table, and as she did so she almost knocked a brightly colored square tile, which the nurses used as a place mat, onto the floor. Hearing a door slam, she dashed across the corridor and through a second door marked “Stairs,” almost trapping the IV tube in the door as she pressed it shut.
She sat down on the bottom step and exhaled with relief. It was only then that she noticed that she was still holding the madeleine and that she was carrying the tile under her arm. She listened out for any sounds, but all was silent. She propped the tile against a window, and removed the cake from its wrapper.
So this is what it’s like, thought Marianne. So this is what it’s like to be in Paris.
She bit into the soft, sweet cake and studied the small hand-painted tile. Boats, a harbor, an infinite blaze of bright blue sky that looked freshly washed. The artist had created a magnificent scene in the tiny space. Marianne tried to read the names of the boats. Marlin. Genever. Koakar. And…Mariann.
The Mariann was a dainty red boat, bobbing half forgotten on the edge of the picture, her sails slack. Mariann. How beautiful it all was. The music on the radio seemed to belong to this place. So cheerful and gentle, so sunny and free.
By Marianne’s second bite, she was sobbing so hard that she had to cough. The crumbs exploded from her mouth with a mixture of spit and tears. Things not done: that was what the dead had been trying to tell her. Unlived moments. Marianne’s life consisted entirely of unlived moments.
She stared at the tube in her hand for a moment, then tore it out. It bled. That won’t kill me either, she thought. Besides, I’m still wearing yesterday’s knickers, and how’s that going to look in the morgue?
She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand and blinked. She’d wept more in the past few hours than for decades. It had to stop; it wouldn’t change anything.
She looked at the glazed tile again. She couldn’t bear the sight of the Mariann’s slack sail. She flipped the tile onto its back. There was an inscription: Port de Kerdruc, Fin.
Marianne ate the remainder of the madeleine and still felt hungry. Kerdruc. She turned the tile over again and sniffed it. Didn’t it smell…of the sea?
I’ve never been to such a beautiful place.
She tried to imagine what it might have been like if she and Lothar had been to such a place. But all she could see in her mind’s eye was Lothar sitting at their living room table. She saw him arranging the neighbors’ old magazines so that their edges ran parallel. She ought to have been grateful to him for the order he’d brought to her life. The house at the end of the cul-de-sac was her home.
She stroked the tile again. Would Lothar remember to water the orchid? She gave a little laugh. Of course he wouldn’t.
Kerdruc. If it was a place by the sea, then…
She gave a start as the door opened behind her. It was Nicolette. She raged at Marianne and waved imperiously for her to come back up the stairs. Marianne couldn’t look the nurse in the eye as she pressed past her into the bright corridor and let herself be guided back to her room without the slightest resistance.
With a practiced hand Nicolette inserted a fresh drip and slid two pink tablets between Marianne’s lips. Marianne feigned obedience and pretended to wash down the pills with some of the stale water on the bedside table. Her neighbor whimpered in her sleep like a bleating lamb. When Nicolette had turned out the light and closed the door behind her, Marianne spat out the pills and took the tile she’d been clasping to her chest out from under her johnny.
Kerdruc. She stroked the picture. It was absurd, but she could almost feel the mellow air under her fingertips, and she quivered. She got up and walked slowly over to the window. The wind howled at her. Thunder drew closer, the clouds parted, and for a second a bolt of lightning lit the sky. It began to rain and the drops rattled against the windowpanes like beads from a broken necklace. The moonlight magnified the raindrops so that they looked as if they were dancing on the ground. She kneeled down. The thunder was so deafening that it sounded as if the storm were hovering directly over the hospital.
My little wifey who’s scared of a storm, Lothar would have said.
She wasn’t scared of storms. She’d pretended to be for his pleasure, so he could tease her and feel good about himself. Time after time she’d allowed herself to be drawn into playing such stupid games.
She looked out at the tattered sky and hesitantly cupped her full breasts with both hands. Lothar had been her first and only man. She had slipped from virginity into marriage without so much as a kiss. He had been her home ever since she had left her parents’ house.
My husband neither touched my soul nor charmed my body. Why did I let that happen? Why?
She went over to the cupboards and found her clothes. They smelled brackish. She rinsed out her dress, dug out some deodorant and sprayed some on it. Now it smelled of roses and brackish water.
She stepped up to the washbasin, which was located in the center of the room. Didn’t the architects realize how stupid it looked for a woman to have to wash herself while standing in the middle of the room? But she washed all the same. When she felt cleaner, she balanced on her tiptoes to look in the mirror.
No, there was nothing proud about this face. Nothing dignified.
I’m older now than my grandmother was when she died. I’ve always hoped that there’d be a wise old lady lurking inside me, waiting patiently for the outer layers to peel off. First her body, then her face.
Marianne lowered her eyes. There was no wise old lady looking at her now, just an old woman with the face of a wrinkled girl, a little wife, not much taller than she’d been at fourteen. And still just as chubby. She gave a bitter laugh.
Her grandmother Nane, a midwife, whom she had admired enormously, had died on a cold January night in 1961. She had slipped and fallen into a ditch on the way back from the Von Haags’ estate, where she had just delivered a home birth. She hadn’t had enough strength to crawl out again by herself, and it was Marianne who had found her grandmother’s body. An expression of annoyance and astonishment at this freak occurrence was frozen on Nane’s face. Marianne still felt a vague sense of guilt, for that evening she hadn’t assisted her grandmother with the delivery as she usually did; she was caught up elsewhere.
She studied her own features. The longer she looked at herself, the harder she found it to breathe. Horror seeped into her, and she soaked it up with her whole being, as a garden does a devastating downpour.