Taxi to Paris (32 page)

"She couldn't stand it anymore than you can for me to do my job. But I didn't want to be dependent on her. She begged me, pleaded with me, more than once. To live with her. She had enough money, she said, to last more than one lifetime." She shook her head. "But it wasn't enough for her life. All the money in the world couldn't stop the disease in her body." That was the cause of many of her reactions! She was completely buried in her own mind, as she had been once before.

"I didn't know anything about that. She kept it a secret from me."  She turned more toward the wall and stared at a picture. "By the end, she'd convinced me not to see any other women. She gave me money - more than enough to make up for my ‘lost wages.' Just so I wouldn't sleep with other women. She was my only client for two years. And I thought, if she didn't have a better use for her money, why shouldn't I take it?"

She threw her hands in front of her face. "And then she went away. To a spa, she said. She was supposed to return in two weeks. She didn't tell me where it was." She let her hands fall slowly. "I didn't hear anything from her the whole time. After two weeks, she didn't come back. I waited a few days. I thought she'd left me. I was angry and hurt. I slept with the very first woman who was ready to pay. I resumed the life I'd led before."

Slowly, she crossed the room, stopped in front of the kitchen counter, and sought consolation in the espresso machine. She spoke again. "Then - after six weeks - a letter came from an attorney in France. She had died in a special hospital in Switzerland. She'd left me the apartment in Paris." That must have been a horrible shock for her. She was still shaken by it.

She sighed in resignation. Her voice sounded almost uninterested as she continued. "I said I was her daughter and spoke with the doctor who'd treated her at the end. He said if she'd come sooner, he might have been able to do something for her. With long-term, intensive treatments and stays in a nursing home. But she had always refused that. There was a person whom she couldn't or wouldn't leave alone. She'd hinted at something like that."

Her head sank lower and lower toward her chest as she spoke. Now, she turned toward me and looked up with tearless, empty eyes. "She refused treatment because of me." She made the statement even harsher. "She died because of me."

I wanted to comfort her, but I knew she wouldn't allow that now. In a certain way, she was right, and she had to get rid of her guilt somehow. But on one issue, she was definitely wrong. "And although you believe that - which I do not - you still call her a client?"

"She paid me. She even set up a bank account for me. And it was always well-filled." She just didn't want to accept the truth!

"Yes, of course. Because she didn't want to lose you." I could easily understand that!

That word finally brought her to a boil. "Lose? Didn't want to lose me?" She looked at me with extreme aggression. "Do you all believe you can own me?" She turned away from me again with a jerk. "You pay me, and for that, you think you can treat me like an object. Buy and use. Own and lose." She laughed contemptuously.

I could not and would not allow myself to be drawn into that discussion. I knew that much of this could be attributed to pure anger. I stayed calm. "Who is ‘you'?" I asked.

She turned around so quickly, she almost tripped. "Well, you," she shouted. "My -" she stopped as quickly as she had begun.

"I'm not a client," I said. I tried to answer calmly. "I don't pay you, and I don't want to own you either. I love you." It was very hard for me to say that so calmly. I felt the fear climbing up my throat. She seemed to have lost all connection to and all feeling for me. Could I get through to her at all? She was still standing there, mute.

I had to say something, or else I would break into tears in desperation. "I'm convinced that she felt the same way." She didn't appear to hear me, or at least didn't comprehend what I was saying. "And I feel exactly as she did. I don't want to lose you." I didn't know how much of that was getting through to her. I hoped she would answer.

She didn't react right away. It seemed to me like an eternity before she spoke again, very quietly. "I don't want to lose you, either."

For the first moment, I felt like I'd been struck by lightning. I hadn't expected that. What was going on inside her? Was this just a temporary glitch, or did she really mean what she said? Did she even realize that this was the first time she had confessed her true feelings to me since we had met?

I went slowly to her and stood before her. I didn't touch her. She stood there, unmoving, staring blankly past me. She obviously no longer saw me or anything else that existed in the present. The images that played before her ghostly eyes had long since been burned into her consciousness. I waited.

"She was so good to me. And I needed her so much." If any voice could be called toneless, it was hers. "And then she left me."

I reached out my hand and touched her arm. Very softly, I began to speak. "She stayed with you as long as she could. She never would have left voluntarily, you know that."

"No, she went voluntarily!" She obviously heard my words, but they had a different meaning to her. "She just left me in the lurch!" Her rage seemed real, but it was still a bygone reality against which it was directed.

I held her arm tighter. "No, you know that that's not true. She thought of you right up to the end. She gave you the apartment, so you'd be taken care of." Actually, I knew that it was pointless to discuss anything with her in this condition, but I didn't want her to fall deeper into these absurd thoughts. That couldn't be good for her.

"Gave! She never gave me anything! She just left." Whoa, something didn't fit here. She had just told me something entirely different. And it had sounded very believable. What was the truth?

"Without a word. From one day to the next. Without a word." She sounded like a broken record. "I don't know what to do." The record went on, and she was obviously immersed completely in the past now. I could only guess what sort of horrible disappointment she was talking about now, but I began to suspect something. Could it be that she spoke of two different people? And two different times?

Maybe I could make a cautious attempt to find out what exactly she was talking about. I didn't move and spoke very softly. "What happened?"

It seemed to me that she wasn't even aware of my presence. She was talking to herself. "Gone. She's gone. How can she do something like this? I have no one but her. We've known each other since we were fifteen. I love her!" Her voice had a painful, almost whining, undertone, like a child who's been hurt and doesn't understand why.

She spoke of a woman she'd known since she was fifteen years old. That couldn't be the same woman who'd left her the apartment. But who was it then? In any case, she had left deep scars behind. Such deep scars that she did not appear today, so much later, to be over them.

"I love her so." She repeated what she had just said, this time with the most despair I'd ever imagined. It stung me. Desperation over one and then the other... Yes, I had to admit that I was jealous of them. I was ashamed to feel that way, but I knew I couldn't change it. Then she could still say it. She'd probably said it to her hundreds of times. And because of her, she could no longer say it. Vengeance filled me. Then I pulled myself together. That wasn't important now. What was important was to bring her back into the present, if possible, without falling apart completely. I smiled soothingly at her, even if she couldn't see me. "Love is so fragile," I explained, "but the memories remain. The bad ones with the good. Time makes the bad ones pale, and you remember the good ones your whole life. Don't you think?" I hoped to help her recall a more positive experience with this kind of gentle suggestion, but I had my doubts.

She laid her head to the side a bit and looked down at me, although I could've sworn she was talking to a ghost. "I was looking forward to this evening so much. And now...? What should I do now? The apartment is empty. She's gone. She can't have just left. Without saying anything to me." She sniffled, but I could see no tears. Then she repeated softly and disbelievingly, "Without saying anything..."

I felt so much sympathy for her that the tears almost came to me that wouldn't come to her, even though I didn't know exactly what was going on. Her voice had such a different sound from the one I knew, a sound that shook me at least as much as the whimpering in the clearing in Paris, when she'd told me the most frightful of stories. The recollection of that scene brought me back to reason. There was no sense in letting her languish in this state any longer. It didn't serve either one of us - her even less than me - and gentle coaxing from the outside seemed not to reach her, or worse seemed to make the journey into the past even worse. I looked at her. Her eyes were still blurred, not necessarily in the same kind of pain as back in the clearing, but she was obviously not there. I reached out a hand and touched her arm. Dazed, she looked down at me. Then a smile began to lighten her face. "You're here!" She came up to me and hugged me forcefully - not passionately, but more like a young, strong teenager who doesn't yet know her own strength and expresses her joy at seeing you again. I gasped for breath. It was clear to me now that she wasn't hugging me. And at that moment, jealousy caught me completely unprepared. I reacted automatically. I raised my hand and smacked her. I really got her. Totally shocked, I stared at my hand, which still hung in the air, and at her face, which was beginning to redden. I'd never done anything like that before, for as long as I could remember. I began to stutter. "I ... I'm sorry. I..."

She stared back, at least as shocked. Our gazes met in the air and didn't seem to be able to decide to whom they should return. We were both paralyzed for a second. Then - all of a sudden - she began to laugh. It was more than a hysterical giggle. It grew a little, then stopped as suddenly as it had begun. I was relieved. Completely irrationally, I'd gotten the idea that one had to give hysterical people a good slap in order to return them to their senses. And I was by no means capable of repeating that at the moment.

She stood there and looked at me seriously now. Her eyes appeared to be clear again. "You hit me," she stated calmly.

I squirmed. My God, what could I do to make up for that? "I don't know what to say." My stuttering returned. "I d-don't know how that c-could have h-h-happened. I'm - I'm so sorry." I could only repeat myself, so I remained silent. This was really a hopeless situation. It seemed that there were never two free minutes in which we could just be together calmly and happily. Every time, something unpredictable happened.

This time also. She laughed, as if I'd said something humorous. "Do you know what's funny about that?"

I shook my head. I couldn't imagine that in my wildest dreams!

"That I thought, in the first moment, that she was really here. She did that often."

The astonishment must have been written across my face. "Hit you?" I couldn't believe it.

"Yes," she said plainly, and turned around. She went to the sofa and sat down. Expectantly, she looked up at me. "I'm glad you did it," she remarked, very calmly again.

I was amazed. This calm, this sudden change in her behavior. It had only been a couple of minutes since... Nonetheless, I still couldn't agree with her. "I'm not," I replied sadly. "I hate violence. It's not me." I looked at her and awaited her reaction.

"I know that," she said. She smiled gently. "Come here."

I shook my head. I wanted to go to her, but I didn't want all of this to be swept back under the rug. If she just wanted to celebrate our reconciliation again...

She smiled again. "Come," she repeated. "You've brought me back to my senses; now let's talk about it. You want that, don't you?" Her expression took my answer for granted.

"Yes." I agreed, but although it was my wish to learn as much about her as possible, I hated the thought of being forced back into the role of the voyeur. Until now, that had always come to a very unhappy ending. I asked myself if it was worth it. To satisfy my curiosity. She was still looking calmly up at me. The danger did not seem too great, but still... "You don't have to tell me."

Her head moved slightly, as if she couldn't decide whether to accept the offer of freedom. Then she fixed her gaze on me again. "I've already told you so much..." She hesitated a little. Did she think it was too much? She sat up straight on the sofa. Her shoulders were even. "Would you like to hear it...?" She looked at me questioningly again, but she didn't look upset. Should I risk it?

I came to a decision. "Yes," I nodded briefly. "I'd like that." Was it just my curiosity taking over, or was it something else? I didn't know for sure. But shouldn't I also understand and be accountable for all of my actions? Everything I learned about her could help me to understand her better. And that was, in the end, what I wanted. I went slowly over to the sofa and sat next to her. This piece of furniture belonged in a museum. All the things that had happened here...

"You're dismayed at what I showed you, right?" She looked down at the floor in front of her, although I was sitting right next to her. For her, this was all probably quite normal, but in my world - I corrected myself: before I got to know her. Since then, a lot about the world I claimed as my own had changed - it certainly wasn't.

"Well, yeah." I tried to speak as carefully as possible. She recognized immediately what I was thinking about.

"You don't have to make such an effort at being tolerant." She turned her head and looked at me. "It is awful."

I sighed. "Yes, you're probably right." I didn't exactly think it was a question of tolerance. More of the capacity of my imagination. Mine was sometimes overloaded by what she offered. It was unimaginable. At least for me, who had so obviously led such a "harmless" life. Even if that had not been clear to me until recently.

I looked into her face, and a question forced its way out of me. "You were talking about two different people just now, weren't you? The woman from whom you inherited the apartment wasn't the same one who..."