The blind side of the heart - By Julia Franck Page 0,145

was waiting.

What’s that behind me? Wilhelm craned his neck so that he could see his back view better.

What do you mean?

Well, that! See that funny kind of crease? And my coat’s all over bits of fuzz. Would you deal with it, please?

Of course, said Helene, and taking the clothes brush out of the console table she brushed Wilhelm’s coat.

The arms too. Not so hard, child, this is fine fabric.

At last they were able to set off. Helene’s knickers were wet. Wilhelm was flowing out of her even as he walked to the car about three metres ahead of her. Perhaps there was some blood too. Her periods had been back for the last three months and she was due again tomorrow, or maybe even today.

The opening of the Reich autobahn was an endless ceremony full of speeches and commendations, vows made in the name of the future, of Germany and its Führer. Heil. Helene thought everyone near her must be surprised by the reek of sperm clinging to her. Wilhelm’s sperm. There were days when she felt the smell of it was like a brand on her. Obviously Wilhelm didn’t notice anything. He stretched out his arm and stood motionless beside her for hours with his back very straight. On this day his greatest achievement so far was on show to the public. All the workers were thanked, including those who had risked or lost their lives. No one said exactly how they had lost them. One might have fallen off a bridge, another could have been run over by a steamroller. Helene imagined the different possible kinds of death. In any case, theirs had been heroic deaths, just as the building of the whole road was heroic. A reference to the drop in the unemployment figures was intended to emphasize the claim that, among other achievements, the building of this road and the other autobahns that were to follow was a triumphantly successful way of tackling unemployment in Germany. When Wilhelm stepped forward to be honoured, he did not glance back at Helene; presumably the many pats on the back he received from his colleagues prevented him. Wilhelm shook hands, stretched his arm towards the sky and looked around him with a certain pride. His excitement seemed so great that he forgot to smile. Or perhaps the place and the occasion seemed to him too sacred for anyone to venture a smile. He expressed his thanks in a firm voice, he thanked everyone, from the German Fatherland to the secretary of the first German Ladies’ Automobile Club. Heil, Heil, Heil. Everyone had earned a Heil. Unlike the six gentlemen who had been commended and honoured before him, he had not seen and then exploited the tiny loophole left available for him to thank his wife. Perhaps it was because they had no children. After all, the speakers before him could thank their whole families for providing special support in the recent past.

Before the guests invited to the lunch celebrating the occasion set off in a convoy, Helene left, like most of the other wives. After all, she had to prepare supper and do the laundry. As he said goodbye to her, Wilhelm said he hoped to be home by six, but if he didn’t get back in time for supper she wasn’t to wait for him. He might well be late on a day like this.

Helene waited all the same. She had made pearl barley soup with carrots and bacon, a favourite of Wilhelm’s, specially for today. The potatoes grew cold, fresh liver and onions lay beside the stove ready for frying. Helene herself hated pearl barley and liver, she simply could not get any of those dishes down, so there was no point, she thought, in eating any supper herself later in the evening. She wrote two letters to Berlin: one to Martha alias Elsa, one to Leontine asking why there was no word from Martha. Then she wrote a third letter, to Bautzen. It would bear the Stettin postmark, but as sender’s name she gave only her first name, Helene, written in a childish scrawl so that the postman might think it was just love and kisses from a little girl and suspect nothing. She had not yet told her mother and Mariechen that she was married and now had a new surname. Martha and Leontine had agreed with her that such news might agitate her mother unnecessarily. So Helene wrote to say she was well and