Crows, large flocks in converting formations, fly over the residence to the park, to Hasenheide, every morning. The rooms bright, the water almost warm, and the toothpaste, menthol-unfastened, falls from her mouth after a short motion with the brush – a second while you can close your eyes, take a deep breath and resume the day you thought you’d already survived as soon as yesterday.
And determined her slumbering. A sip of tea on the kitchen table, the radio, minutes of information, it’s presupposed tobe getting warmer on this, the most up to date summer time on report; the lime bushes on Blücherstrasse look dusty, the synthetic pitch on the sports activities floor is warping, and the moisture it gives off within the day’s heat, who is aware of. by no means an animal on it, no longer a chook, now not one of the many rats tumbling approximately in the bushes.
sprucing his shoes, packing the little rucksack, briefcase, keys. No awkwardness, notwithstanding his few hours of sleep, no superfluous hand gestures; everything, even buttoning up the blue shirt, nevertheless clean from Marie’s ironing, is primed with a seriousness that he has by no means earlier than regarded in himself. He shuts the door, crosses the hall, and opens her rental, two rooms overlooking the courtyard to the rear. It’s smaller than his, much less cluttered, completely within the color of a birch tree, and Raul is going into the bed room and takes the icon from the wall, Saint Anna, barely bigger than a credit score card. Even the white handkerchief wherein he wraps it's far ironed.
It’s eight minutes to the Prinzenbad swimming pool; hardly any traffic at this time of day, few bicycles against the wall, the ticket desk still closed. approximately a dozen women and men are waiting out of doors the gate, the fats retired couple on the the front. prepared with insulated cool baggage, newspapers, and a touch radio, the 2 of them constantly live at the terrace of the cafeteria till eight within the evening when the pool closes, eating and drinking uninterruptedly, fixingone crossword puzzle after some other, and in no way going into the water, now not even when it’s extraordinarily warm. The others are flicking via diaries, wiry human beings, the same nearly each day, who swim their lengths from seven o’clock until simply earlier than 8 and then dash away on motorcycles with more than twenty gears and digital locks.
when the gate swings apart, they all take out their monthly passes; some guys are already unbuttoning their shirts as they visit the cabins, and Raul additionally throws his rucksack ahead of him into the open locker, quantity fifty-3, as constantly. Trunks, goggles, armband with key, and after a short bathe, bloodless, the primary unhappiness. The sports activities pool is closed for cleansing. The others maintain grumpily on to the second pool beneath the acacia bushes, heated and seething with humans at some point of the day, shrieks you may pay attention from far away. The water right here is infamous; hair, chewing gun, rotten leaves, and sticking plasters with dark red stains bob at the surface. The swimmers call it stew.
He stops. The workman within the grey overalls who's pulling the chromed device connected to a pump throughout the lowest of the sports activities pool frowns briefly however doesn’t look up. He advances one tile row after a time, has handiest 3 left to easy, and Raul sits down on the edge of the solar deck, does respiratory sporting events, and stares at the glittering surface, the photo of the poplar trees inside the quivering blue.
To reconcile the day and all of the possibilities for destruction that it incorporates with a dive into that mirror is the onlyright factor to do now. in the back of it lies the cease of fear: a glass door, a long hall, twittering within the park completeof girls in new dressing robes, young ladies taking small, shuffling steps of their compression stockings and holding their bellies. It’s enough. in the back of it lie the closing tears, a short ache, and then everything may be better, trust us, why didn’t you come faster. but Marie, with a thick needle in her arm, autotransfusion, hazard of infection, Marie laughs her vibrant giggle, nearly twelve years younger than he is, and indicates him the present from her neighbour, who wasreleased the day prior to this, a total hysterectomy, and who had come again via the large park of the hospital to carry her the clover, 4-leafed, that she had determined by means of the gate.
The body’s defences, antibodies, thousand metres each day. And who are you? An assistant who is constantly there for each examination, each ultrasound recording, who wipes the touch liquid from her stomach and even takes her blood stress. The doctors get greater careful and much less sloppy, the nurses smile a little longer, and the anaesthetist sits down once more whilst he hears the words spinal paralysis. Are you a colleague?
White clouds outside the window, a few butterflies, and he lays the fountain pen on the bed and points to the dotted strains. but Marie now not wants to know what she’s signing, Marie is tired, she eats her soup, swallows the pill, looks at the roses. till day after today, my darling. Will you come back early? The nurses wave at him from at the back of their glass partition, and he waves returned with the paperwork, takes the elevate, and places it within the folder, along with the only in which the affected person proclaims her consent to the dissection of her body inside the event of her loss of life. Which he didn’t deliver her to signal.
the man in overalls pulls the chromed instrument out of the pool, steps apart, and begins cleaning the subsequent row of tiles. rarely unwell, by no means an operation in her existence, and Raul with all his useless knowledge, the raw materialof his anxiety, he has visible people die from a great deal more straightforward interventions – a tiny anomaly, a weak point of the tissue, the tube scraping the carotid artery, and there’s blood, in a high arc, and none of the many medical doctors can deliver him returned, the sporty schoolboy who had best had a simple appendix operation and whose gaping throat is now emitting one lengthy, remaining, nearly furious sound…
Who will inform the boss? And what number of wards has he been in that were like this one, bright, pleasant, Nolde’s ‘Poppy’, what number of bathe caps has he surpassed the patients: hello, now we’d want to, do you need to visit the rest room? and then it takes Marie a long time, a desperately long term, it seems to him; the ward sister seems at her watch, the schoolgirl yawns and stares dreamily out of the window, rustling leaves, and he is taking the affected person’s chart and reads the blood-pressure values, which he has long acknowledged by using heart. ultimately she comes along, pulls the door close behind her, and looks at her hand, the punctures within the lower back of it. Opens the door once more, reaches into the room, and turns out the mild. Have I proven you in which I’ve been shaved? truely punk. And the schoolgirl laughs and facilitates her into bed.
Raul takes the bathe cap from the nurse, he does that himself too, pushes the pink curls beneath the rubber rim and frees, with one kick, the wheel lock. You appearance very clever. however Marie feels that what he certainly wants to do is burst into tears, of route she feels that and strokes his arm. It’ll be satisfactory, believe me, they did an endoscopy the day past, even the professor become there. All inside acceptable limits. Will you be there when I wake up? Will you be there?
The rattling of the wheels inside the doorway of the carry, and then from the metal shaft there comes a waving and winking without any anxiety, seemingly the impact of the pills. Then the door speedy shuts, and prefer her he leans his head to 1 side, one last look. Adieu.
enamel clenched, fists clenched, he steps into the waiting room, picks some magazines from the table at random, and staggers throughout the mat to the balcony. on the house contrary a toddler’s drawing, birds without beaks, a helicopter at the roof, and he pulls a handful of plant life out of the field, geraniums, and slings them over the parapet.
The wind, a heat breeze, blows them again. i am right here. without ingesting or consuming, that is a decision which he can’t explain, and which is still, he feels, correct. now not ingesting, no longer ingesting, not leaning in opposition tosomething, either the chair or the doorframe or the balcony’s parapet, while she is being operated on. hours, three. And two extra hours that she will spend within the healing room, and the friendly nurse, Polish, puts a tray down beside the cold television, sandwiches and tea. Raul thank you her and doesn’t touch whatever.
waiting. And again and again the horror while raise doors open and a affected person who has simply been operated on is pushed into the ward, wide awake or snoozing in the deep pillows and often recognisable handiest after the second onelook; the shadows of the plants fall at the tinted glass wall that separates the room from the corridor, he mistakes them for Marie’s silhouette, and briefly closes his eyes while the lady asks him: What approximately you? How long do you need to sit right here?
Over two decades. He had dozed off inside the pub near the university hospital wherein he had were given under the influence of alcohol after deciding to dangle up his stethoscope for ever. No more distress and death and the lies of desire, no greater of that white-coated rat-race, no more doctors taking walks over corpses to emerge as consultants… He desired to relaxation, perhaps research, he wanted to stay, journey – and he wanted some other drink from this waitress. It become so darkish inside the bar that they couldn’t find his exchange, however her hair flamed in all of the mirrors. She added him a coffee.
So it’s you, she whispered the primary time they kissed, most effective an afternoon later, in the back of the pub inside the early morning, and even then her face, her mouth, the arches of her eyebrows and the line of her brow had appearedto him like a text, a abruptly growing sacred textual content containing the phrases that might redeem him for ever.
two decades. A bat of an eyelid. He lifts the barrier, the red and white tape, he sits down on the beginning block, and the workman raises a finger in pleasant admonition as he cleans the final row. after which it's far nighttime, when the door slides open and the bed is pushed out of the carry; when his heart unexpectedly thumps in his throat, and in two or 3steps he is status on the stop of the mattress, and the nurse smiles as she whispers, Slowly! Marie, who is awake and searching at him, astonished and suffering for her bearings, her whole face mutely saying, You? What was that? Marie is paler than ever before, her lips barely distinguishable from her skin, and her hand, which he is taking and which does no longer go back his pressure, of route it doesn’t, the hand with the cannula on its returned is bloodless.
He allows the nurses to set up the bed within the room, hangs the drips on their stands, fastens the drainage tube on her nightdress and the 1/2-full bag to the brink of the mattress with a pin. Then he unpacks the bottles of glucose and saline solution, twelve of each, and corrects the drop counter. The nurses thank him and leave him on my own with Marie.
She is asleep. inside the folder with her clinical notes and the outcomes there may be no file on the operation, and he feels for her pulse, that's racing, however her blood stress is everyday. He carefully lifts the blanket, her belly is brown from the disinfection solution, the incision is best blanketed with gauze; it is just above the brink of her pubic hair, it reaches from one ridge of her pelvis to the opposite, and Marie, without starting her eyes, asks quietly: What does it appear like?
high-quality, he says, startled, of route he says that, you received’t want a brand new swimming costume. They cuthorizontally and handiest sewed up the lower layers of pores and skin; the higher layer is glued. No stitches. The scar can be nearly invisible.
She clears her throat and swallows; she isn’t allowed to drink anything yet. Her lips are uncooked. And , she murmurs, you understand what they said to me before the endoscopy? What they found?
He says not anything and waits, but she has already fallen asleep again: the painkiller, two ampoules of which nonethelesslie at the desk. The rinsing fluid drips vibrant purple from the tube in a hollow beside the sew, hydrogen and blood, now not a great deal, an inky impact. but the values are ok, even if he can’t read the time of the ultimate extraction, the stamp is blurred, and he sits at the chair beside the mattress and takes her hand.
the primary roses are drooping, and it is quiet even though the window is open; rarely any human beings in the park thus far, only the quiet clatter of plates and cutlery from the youngsters’s clinic opposite, and a cat stalks slowly throughoutthe meadow thru the thick clover.
Raul studies the napping female, her light brow, the freckles under the reddish gold line of her hair. The higher a part ofher nostril is slightly arched, a bicycle accident when she became a child, the swell of her lips has always regardedFlorentine to him, and he thinks of the time when he too had immersed himself in that face, that is substantially more youthful than he is – but a lot greater experienced in love. A love whose unswerving, natural truth has usually startled and often shamed him; which accepted almost the whole thing, each act of self-sacrifice, all of his moods, his injustices and brutalities; a love that became continually wiser than both of them and survived even the hardest trials. whilst, after a separation of almost eight months for the duration of which they'd neither spoken nor corresponded, he known as her, sheepish and now not quite sober – he was in a hotel bar in Swansea, and the pharmaceutical agency whose exhibition stand he become presupposed to be putting in had fired him – she simplest said: about time too! I couldn’t have stood it for lots longer.
And now the pain, the dry swallowing, the lines round her mouth deepen, and he cuts open the ampoule, injects the medicine into the drip tube. someplace in the back of the constructing the sun is going down, the windows contraryreplicate the light, there's a glint of it on Marie’s cheekbone, the dip between her collarbones, and here and there a fewnice hairs glisten, a delicate spiral beside her ear. Her breath is calm, nearly silent, and after a protracted check out her face, which she one way or the other feels as always because her eyelids twitch, Raul kisses her forehead, not that bloodless, hangs a brand new drip at the stand, and lightly closes the door,
there is nobody inside the partitioned location, and he steps into the workplace past it and asks the nurse, who issmoking as she flicks through papers, for the file at the operation. She nods however doesn’t look up. You’re neither her husband nor a relative, is that accurate? Then I’m afraid there’s now not a whole lot i can inform you. the whole thing’s satisfactory to this point. A technique that went precisely according to plot. except possibly… She puts the report at theshelf, and he is taking a step toward her. except what!
The cigarette smells of menthol. properly, light-skinned redheads continually bleed very heavily at some point ofoperations, as a result the extraction beforehand. however for your pal’s case it became one of a kind. there wasinfrequently something to faucet, to be sincere. It must have some thing to do with the time of the month… and i’ll permit her tell you the rest herself, she provides with a harsh laugh, and handiest now does he see the join up her coat and recognise that the woman he addressed as nurse is the ward health practitioner, on night time shift.
he's taking the bus again to Kreuzberg, to Bergmannstrasse, wherein he has a chew to consume at Milagro and liquidsglasses of red wine. even though it’s prettier, he doesn’t take the shorter stroll home, the one that leads past the graveyards. He lies on Marie’s mattress and watches television. however then he gets worn-out, all his limbs pain, and walks down the hall to his rental, brushes his tooth, and turns out the light. It’s got cooler, and the vintage floorboards creak. The gilt edges of the pages of his book have a dull sheen. Can’t you keep watch with me for an hour?
And just before midnight the ringing smartphone, a woman whom, in his half of-sleep he mistakes for Marie. He knocks over the analyzing lamp and receives tangled in the cord. Marie? Then he recognises the voice of the Polish nurse: I thought I’d just give you a short name. An update. No purpose for difficulty, not even urgent, but an update. 9 o’clock, the primary affected person. What am i able to tell her? Will you be there?
He looks at the clock above the entry pavilion and climbs onto the starting block. If he simply crawls for a good thousand metres and then takes a taxi he’ll just make it. the person in overalls pulls at the twine-reinforced hose and wraps it around the motor, and he places his goggles on. The floor of the water lies absolutely easy and untouched, neverthelesssufficient that it seems nearly convex, in order that for a moment Raul, already leaning into his dive, doesn’t realizewhether the sky with its continuously reappearing flocks of birds is above or underneath. And as quickly as he sees the vacuum cleaner, the gleam of its chrome cover, he pushes himself off the beginning block and, at the give up of his longshadow, dives into the water, which isn't always cold and now not heat, now not clear and no longer cloudy, which isn'twater in any respect at that moment, however something glittering, simply as the cry on the other facet is not anythingbut the silence in the heart, a sidereal area wherein a faint voice is fading away.
The surprising popularity of an fantastic girl. the intense formula of 1’s own obscurities, and the startling concord in things with that you’d concept you will have to continue to be by myself for a lifetime. The energy and warmth of being near someone who changed into continually dependable and ready for happiness, and the beautiful grief below his smile…
while Raul receives to the ward at approximately half past 8, the door to Marie’s room is open. The bed is empty, and a man in overalls is cleaning the window and nods to him. Strips of plaster are stuck to the threshold of the mattress, a fewrubber gloves and the plastic bag containing the rinsing fluid lie inside the bathtub. at the soap a unmarried purple hair, on the bedside desk the affected person’s notes and the shape that he didn’t deliver her to signal, a query mark at the back of the dotted line and for a second – the person hints the window, passers-by way of are pondered inside thewindow – he thinks he recognises her define on the dented pillow, the hint of a contour.
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