The blind side of the heart - By Julia Franck Page 0,5

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When the door finally opened last time the soldiers had stumbled out into the stairwell one by one. They went downstairs and knocked at Frau Kozinska’s door. The last of them had turned and called something up to Peter in German: I have a lad like you at home, keep an eye on your mother. And the soldier, smiling, had wagged one forefinger. When Peter went into the smoke-filled kitchen he had seen his mother bending over in a corner of the kitchen, smoothing out a sheet. You’re a big boy now, she had said without looking at Peter, you can’t sleep in my bed any more.

She hadn’t looked at him, unlike today. He had never seen such an expression in his mother’s eyes before. They were icy.

It was hard for Peter to wait outside the door. He stood there, he sat down on the stairs and stood up again. Peter tried to see something through the gap left by the lock when it was broken out. He stood on tiptoe on the last step and leaned forward. That way he could easily lose his balance. Peter felt impatient, his stomach was grumbling. Whenever his mother was on night shift she came home in the morning, woke him to get ready for school and had a meal waiting when he came home at midday. She made soup with water, salt and fish-heads. Later she took the fish-heads out and put some sorrel in the soup. She said it was healthy and nourishing. Very occasionally, when she had got hold of a little flour, she made it into small dumplings and simmered them in the soup. There’d been no potatoes since last winter. There was no meat, no lentils, no cabbage. Even in the hospital they had nothing but fish to feed to the children. Peter’s eyes were fixed, as they had been before, on the closed door and the hole left by the lock. He sat down on the top step. He remembered that after last time his mother had asked him to go and find a new lock. There were locks everywhere, in every building, in every godforsaken apartment. But Peter had forgotten.

Now Peter was chewing at the ragged skin round his thumbnail, where you could pull it off in long, thin strips. If he hadn’t forgotten about the lock, his mother could have locked the door. Peter’s eyes wandered over the charred door frame in the abandoned apartment next door. You could see the marks left by the fire everywhere; the walls, ceilings and floors were black. He and his mother had been lucky, only the apartment above them and their old neighbour’s apartment next door had burned out.

Suddenly the door opened and two soldiers came out. They were clapping each other on the back, in high good humour. Peter wondered if he could go into the apartment. He had counted three men before, so one of them must still be inside. Peter quietly got to his feet, went to the apartment door and opened it a crack. He heard sobbing. The kitchen seemed to be empty. This time none of the soldiers had been smoking; it all looked as clean and comfortable as it had in the morning. His mother’s cleaning rag lay on the kitchen dresser. Turning, Peter saw the naked soldier behind the door. Legs drawn up, head in his hands, the man sat on the floor sobbing. Peter thought it a strange sight, because the soldier was wearing a helmet, although otherwise he was entirely naked, and the war had been over for weeks.

Peter left the soldier sitting behind the door and went into the next room, where his mother was just closing the wardrobe. She was wearing her outdoor coat, she took the small case off the bed. Peter wanted to say he was sorry he’d forgotten the lock, sorry he hadn’t been able to help her, but he got out only a single word and that was: Mother. He reached for her hand. She shook his off and went ahead of him.

They passed the sobbing soldier sitting on the kitchen floor behind the front door of the apartment, they went downstairs, they walked straight along the street to the fish quay. Peter’s mother, with her long legs, walked so fast that he had trouble keeping up with her. He hopped and skipped along, and as he scurried after her, almost running, a great feeling of happiness came over him. He was