The Sinner (20 page)

"Your hair is far too short," I said.

She shrugged. "Not if I rub hard enough. I've always wanted to
do that. Will you bring him upstairs, or are you scared Mother will
catch you?"

I wasn't scared of Mother, just reluctant for Magdalena to do
something she pinned such hopes on. "He can't help you," I told
her. "He's only made of wood, and Mary Magdalene wasn't sick.
She was a sinner."

"I can sin too," she said. "Shall I say a dirty word?" Before I
could reply she said: `Arsehole! Now will you fetch him?"

I went downstairs. All at once I felt terribly sorry for her. That,
I think, was when I realized for the first time that my sister was a
normal child. A very sick child who might die at any moment. She
would never be able to lead a life like mine, but she could speak like
me, think like me and feel like me.

I brought the crucifix over to the bed, and we started with the
handkerchief. I borrowed one of Father's, which was big enough. I
tied it around the figure's neck and Magdalena rubbed it between
her fingers. Then I fetched some water from the bathroom in a
tooth-mug, and Magdalena washed the feet. The figure was so
small, the legs got wet too. Magdalena didn't want me to dry them
on the handkerchief. "It may not work," she said.

After I'd taken our Saviour downstairs again I asked her where
she'd heard some dirty words.

`At the hospital," she said. "You wouldn't believe the dirty words
they know. They say them too, when they think you're asleep. Not
the doctors, the others. A lot of sick people get really mean. I'm
in with the grown-ups as a rule, and they're always cursing. They
don't want to die, that's why."

She fell silent for a moment. Then she went on slowly: "I don't
want to have to go back to Eppendorf any more. Although it's
nice sometimes - not as boring as here. They have board games
there. The nurse brings me one when I'm well enough to sit up in
bed. She also fetches some children, and we play together. Mother
doesn't like that, but she doesn't dare say anything. The nurse told
her off once, that's why. Mother said I couldn't play, I must rest,
and the nurse said: `There'll come a day when she can rest till she
turns black. Till then you should let her play for as long as she feels
like it.' The dead turn black, you see, and then they get eaten by
worms and rot away."

She didn't look at me as she said that. Drawing circles on the
bedclothes with a finger, she went on: `A girl of eighteen told me
that. She had leukaemia too, but the treatment didn't work. They
couldn't find a bone-marrow donor for her. She said she wasn't
afraid of death. I am, though, a bit."

Still drawing circles on the sheet, she raised her head and looked
me in the eye. "Not of death itself," she said. "Death doesn't worry
me. It may be better when you're dead and nothing hurts any
more. But if nothing works and you can't go to the bathroom on
your own, it really is better, I think. Except that ... I don't want to
turn black - I don't want to get eaten by worms and rot away. Can
you imagine how disgusting that must be? I told Mother to have
me cremated. A lot of people are - it isn't all that expensive - but
Mother said it wouldn't do. Earth to earth, she said. Our Saviour
wasn't cremated either."

She fell silent again and shut her eyes for a while. I thought she
must be tired after talking so much, and she was, but she insisted
on telling me something else. She was simply wondering if she
could trust me.

"For all I care," she began, "you can tell Mother what I'm going to
tell you: I hate him! I hope he rots away now his feet got wet. Wood
rots too when it gets wet. That's why I wanted to wash him - that
was the only reason. Don't get the idea I believe he'll make my heart
better. They only tell you that nonsense so you keep your mouth shut
and do what they want. But I'm sick of it. Will you tell Mother?"

I shook my head.

"Then we're friends now?" she asked.

"We're sisters," I said. "That's more than friends."

"No, it isn't," she retorted. "Friends like each other. Sometimes
sisters don't."

"But I like you," I said.

She pulled a face. It looked almost like a smile, but only almost.
I think she was well aware that I'd lied. But at that moment I really
did like her, and I'd told her so.

"Do you think we could play something sometime?" she asked.

"I don't know What?"

"Do you know `I Spy'? It isn't tiring. You can play it perfectly
well in bed."

She explained the game and we played it for a while, but there
wasn't much to see in the bedroom, and we soon got tired of it.
After three goes Magdalena said: "We could also play the wishing
game. I invented it myself. It's quite easy; you only have to say what
you wish for, but it must be something you can buy, not like `lots of
friends' or that sort of thing. And then you have to say what you
want to do with it. I'd better start, then you can see how it goes."

The first thing she wished for was a television set. She'd watched
TV at the hospital, where some of the patients had sets in their
rooms. She also wanted a radio and a record player and lots of
records. "But it must be a hi-fi!" she said. "I'm so fond of music.
Proper music, not the kind where one person sings."

"Shall I ask Father to buy you a radio?" I suggested. "There are
really small ones. You could easily keep it hidden."

She shook her head. "That's no good. If he really did buy me
one, where would I hide it? Mother would burn it in two minutes
flat. Besides, I don't think he would buy me one. You, maybe, but
not me. He wouldn't lift a finger for me. He wishes I was dead."

"That's not true!" I said.

"Yes, it is," she retorted. "When I'm dead he can sleep with
Mother. All men sleep with their wives, they enjoy it. I know that
from the hospital. A man asked the doctor when his wife was
coming home - she'd had a heart attack - and whether he could sleep with her right away. He was very disappointed when the
doctor told him it would be a while yet. Father's very disappointed
too, that's why he's always such a pain."

She wasn't altogether wrong. Father really could be a pain at
times. Not to me or to her, only to Mother. He'd shout at her when
she put the supper on the table. Once he even hurled a bowl of soup
at her. "You can take that pigswill into the living room. Our Lord
isn't picky, but I expect something decent to eat for my money."

Then he ran upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom. Later
on, when I knocked on the door because I needed a pee, he yelled:
"Go and do it in the garden! I'm busy wrenching my dick off, and
I could be some time. It's damned hard to shift."

But I liked him all the same. And I liked Magdalena too, certainly
that afternoon. I didn't want her to turn black and get eaten by
worms - I found the idea quite as revolting as she did. I remember
thinking it would be best for her if my dream came true. To be
gobbled up by a big black wolf would be quick, and it probably
wouldn't hurt much either.

That night I had the dream again. It was a bit different from
before. After devouring her the wolf came slowly towards me
instead of going back to the sand box, as it had the first time. It
stood in front of me, looking at me with Magdalena's blood still
dripping from its muzzle. And it thrust its muzzle into my stomach.
I thought it was going to eat me too, but it seemed more like
smooching.

And then something funny happened. The beast's muzzle
disappeared into my stomach, but it didn't hurt in the least, even
when the rest of it disappeared too: its legs, its paws and its whole
body, the bushy tail last of all. And my stomach was fine, not a hole
to be seen. That was when I knew

The thing is, in the playground a few weeks earlier I'd heard two
girls talking about a man who turned into a wolf at night and ate
people. By day he was an entirely normal person. He took a lot of
trouble to be nice and helpful to everyone, and everyone liked him,
so it distressed him terribly to turn into an evil beast every night.
But he couldn't help it. It simply happened to him.

It must be the same with me, I thought, and Father had known
it for ages. He was standing beside me - he'd seen the whole thing
and was looking very grave. "Don't worry," he told me, "I won't tell
anyone. Remember what I told you on your birthday? You must
be as hungry as a wolf,' I said. I already knew you'd turn into an
animal and kill her before she gobbled up your life."

I woke up on the spot, feeling as big and strong as the beast the
girls in the playground had been talking about. After a few minutes
it occurred to me that my bed felt cold. I'd wetted it, and I was
so ashamed I couldn't help crying. Father woke up, came over to
me and felt the sheet. "It's not a tragedy, Cora," he said. "It can
happen to anyone."

My nightie and pants were wet too. Father helped me take them
off. Then lie let me get into his bed because the room was so cold.

For some minutes Rudolf Grovian felt he'd been duped. He didn't
know what to make of Cora Bender's demeanour. Werner Hoss,
who seemed equally baffled, was listening to her spellbound.

With clouded gaze and trembling lips she rambled on about
the wall in her brain and the beasts inside Magdalena and herself,
the one being a crab with sharp claws, the other a wolf that ate
children and crawled into them. The wolf kept crawling into her
belly, but it didn't hurt - it couldn't because she herself was the
wolf. She was an awful child who wet her bed so as to get into her
father's. She had stabbed the Saviour because he wouldn't rot. Six
or seven times she'd thrust the fruit knife into him! And the Saviour
had looked at her and said: "This is my blood, which is shed for thy
sins." And the blood on the child's face had liberated her - freed
her from the curse laid upon her by the archangel.

With the Saviour's blood on her breast and belly, the child
realized that Johnny had never been an angel. His friend had
called him Billy-Goat. He was Satan, who had led the woman into
temptation by means of the serpent. And, when she was lying on
the ground, the tiger came. There was no room left for him in the woman's belly, so he stuffed his penis into her mouth, and, when
she bit it, lashed out at her.

The tiger had paws of crystal transfixed by slivers of coloured
light. Then came darkness, the great oblivion. And oblivion was
death, and death was the dream, and the dream lay behind the
wall in her brain. It was all quite simple as long as you knew.

Now she did know Now she could see it all in context. Now she
even knew why it had been so cruel of Gereon to smoke another
cigarette beforehand. It lay in the ashtray as he turned out the light
and conjured up the tune.

She was speaking too softly for the recording machine. Grovian,
who was closer to her, could understand her nonetheless. He was
feeling wretched - at a loss, uncertain and rather angry. He could
well believe she was putting on a show of insanity so as to gain her
objective and be left in peace, but he wasn't a hundred per cent
sure.

"This is my blood", lie thought, and "Father, forgive her!" He
felt like swearing aloud. The Saviour and the fruit knife, Satan in
the shape of a lover ... Religious mania! If what she had told them
about her childhood were true, allowances would have to be made
for that and one or two other things. In that case, no one should
be surprised if she went on to say that an angel of the Lord had
bidden her to kill any man who kissed his wife in public.

He raised his hand, intending it as a sign to Hoss that he was
terminating the interview Just then she shook herself and sat up
straight. "I'm sorry," she said calmly, in a normal tone of voice,
"I wasn't really with it. We were talking about Frankie just now,
weren't we? Frankie - that was the name! I couldn't recall where
I'd heard it, but I've just remembered. The man in Cologne called
him that."