The blind side of the heart - By Julia Franck Page 0,109

present customer there was only another elderly lady waiting to be served. The telephone rang. The pharmacist appeared in the doorway of the back room. For you, Helene, he called and looked at her as if he were pleased. It was the first phone call that had come for her in all these years. I’ll take over; you go and answer it. The pharmacist took Helene’s place and she went to the telephone.

Yes? She had probably said it too quietly; now she called in a louder voice, against the rushing sound on the line: Yes?

This is Carl, Helene, I have to speak to you.

Has something happened?

I want to see you.

What?

Can you leave work early today?

It’s Wednesday. I leave at noon anyway. I’ll be coming out in quarter of an hour’s time.

Helene had to hold the phone close to her left ear to make out what he was saying.

Excellent, shouted Carl. We’ll meet at the Romanesque Café.

When?

Loud crackling interrupted them.

Darling, one o’clock at the Romanesque Café.

One o’clock at the Romanesque Café. Helene hung up. She had been pressing the receiver to her ear so hard that her temple hurt. When she came back into the front of the shop, the pharmacist was wrapping up a packet of Veronal and taking the elderly lady’s money.

You can put your coat on now, Helene, he said in kindly tones, smiling at her mischievously, as if it were in his power to fix a rendezvous for her with the man she loved.

Helene crossed the Steinplatz. A thaw had come, changeable weather. She wondered why Carl wanted to see her so urgently. Maybe the philosopher in Hamburg had sent an answer. The man from Freiburg had written just before Christmas rejecting Carl’s application. He was impressed, he wrote, by Carl’s summa cum laude, but not so impressed by Hegel, and the posts for assistant lecturers were all filled. Helene stopped in Fasanenstrasse. A bicycle rang its bell behind her. It suddenly occurred to her that the cyclist might be Carl, who rode his bicycle in all weathers. She turned, but it was only a baker’s boy who must have thought the road itself too slushy for him to ride on it. Helene stepped to one side, standing on a small mound of ice that was melting at the edges, and let the baker’s boy ride past on the pavement. The wheels of his bicycle splashed slush on her coat. They were just waiting for Cassirer’s answer now. In January, all doors were still open to Carl in Berlin. He could choose between those two professors who were vying for him here. But what he really wanted even more was to build up a reputation for research of his own, and for the last few weeks it hadn’t looked as if he still seriously expected a reply from the philosopher Cassirer in Hamburg. What else could seem to Carl so urgent; why didn’t he want to wait until this evening? Perhaps he wanted to see her to discuss the forthcoming visit to his parents that weekend? She was afraid to meet them. She and Carl had almost quarrelled the evening before. Helene had said she couldn’t go to see his parents empty-handed, she wanted to buy them a present. Carl didn’t think that was right. They needed the money badly for other things: food, books, and not least for their future life together when they moved to a proper apartment. Helene wanted to give his parents a little green vase that she had seen at Kronenberg’s, in a corner at the front of the display window. A green vase? Carl had said incredulously, and it had seemed to Helene that he was mocking her. Even this morning, when they said goodbye to each other, Carl had told her his parents really wouldn’t be expecting any present. They had wanted to meet Helene for years and, after all, his parents knew that they weren’t exactly rich. Carl had been putting together the books he would need this morning, standing with his back to her, and murmured something else. What did you say? Helene had to ask, and he had turned round and said, in a casual tone of voice: The fact is, they don’t know you’re living with me. Helene had to sit down. It was a good three years since she had begun sharing his room. Every month she tried to buy as much of the food for their housekeeping as possible with her own money, since