The blind side of the heart - By Julia Franck Page 0,108

direction. She heard him breathing heavily. But she couldn’t open the door. Helene shook the handle.

Just a moment, said a voice inside the room. It was a few seconds before the door was opened and Martha let Helene in.

Oh, it’s you. Martha was obviously relieved and asked Helene to come in quickly. She shut the door again behind her sister. Taking no more notice of Helene, she sat down on the narrow bed. Leontine was perched on the edge of it with the unknown woman who had been sitting with the others on the veranda just now. The unknown woman was wearing a feather boa, the object of Pina Giotto’s dreams. Dark violet feathers set off her striking cheekbones and shadowed eyes very well, and a fine permanent wave lay close to her shapely skull. Carl was sitting with his back to Helene at the washstand; now he stood up, surprised to see her. Helene noticed that he pushed the little silver box lying under his hand over to the unknown man who, Helene had thought before when she saw them on the veranda, must be the husband of the woman in the feather boa. But the woman with the boa was now sitting on the bed kissing Leontine. Violet feathers covered Leontine’s face. Helene took fright when she realized how wide her eyes were opening in her surprise, and tried to look casually in some other direction. Only where? She knew what the box was, and its secret transfer from Carl to the other man could mean only that Carl didn’t want to let Helene know what he was doing.

The others are leaving. Fanny wants us to go dancing with them.

She always wants to go to that Royal Club, said Martha, rather disappointed. Let’s go to the Silhouette, it’s nicer there. Martha opened the door.

Right, let’s go, said Carl in a formal tone. Barely audibly, he sniffed. Now he went over to Helene and took her arm. Let’s go dancing, my love.

Helene agreed; she didn’t want to let anything show in her face. Only later, when they were dancing in a dimly lit ballroom and Carl wouldn’t keep his hands off her hips, stroking her everywhere, in places that he never usually touched in company – he was laying siege to her as if they hadn’t seen each other for days, as if they hadn’t made love only that morning – only then did she find that she couldn’t set her mind at rest or hold back any more. So in defiance of the loud music she called in his ear: Do you sniff that stuff often?

Carl had understood; he must have guessed that she had seen the box. Now he held Helene away from him, stretching out his arms, lowered his forehead slightly and looked at her. He shook his head. It mattered to him; she had to believe him. She did, not only because there was nothing else she could do. Their bodies belonged together: when he held her as they danced, when they let go of one another and came together again, his eyes looking into hers, searching and uncertain, looking inside to what he knew there with his kiss on her lips, when she felt that the two of them belonged together, it was a sense of closeness that did not merely admit or allow little secrets and differences; it unconditionally celebrated those secrets.

Helene danced with him until morning. Once she called to him: Hamburg or Freiburg?

Helene, cried Carl back. He drew her to him and whispered into her ear: I want to be wherever you are. His tongue touched her earlobe. If my wife will come with me, let’s go to Paris.

On a February day, when the sun shone down out of a blue sky and the snow still lying in the streets was reddish-brown with the ashes scattered on it, Helene was standing in the pharmacy weighing out sage leaves on her scales for a customer. The customer wanted a whole pound. Helene dug the little shovel into the jar and tipped measure after measure into the scales. Perhaps the customer was going to put sage leaves in her bath. The bell rang as the door opened. Helene looked up. The small boy who had been standing in front of the jars of sweets for a long time left the pharmacy, hands in his pockets. The smell of burning coal and petrol drifted in from outside. It was midday, and apart from her