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Автор Юдит Герман
Judith Hermann
Alice
I.
But Misha didn’t die. Not during the night from Monday to Tuesday, nor the night from Tuesday to Wednesday; perhaps he would die Wednesday evening or later that night. Alice thought she had heard it said that most people die at night. The doctors weren’t saying anything any more; they shrugged their shoulders and held out their empty, disinfected hands. There’s nothing more we can do. Sorry.
And so Alice, Maja, and Maja’s child had to look for another place to stay. Another holiday apartment, because Misha couldn’t die. Their present holiday apartment was too small. They really needed at least two bedrooms, one for Maja and the child and the other for Alice, as well as a living room with a TV for the evenings, a halfway decently equipped kitchen to take care of the child’s needs, a bath with a bathtub. A garden? Or a window with a view of something beautiful.
In the hospital, Misha was wearing a hospital gown printed all over with blue diamonds. He was reduced to skin and bones, a skeleton; but his hands were as they had always been — they were also soft and warm. On his bedside table there was nothing now except a bottle of mineral water and a sipper cup. Though by now he’d even stopped drinking water.
Alice packed her overnight bag. A nightgown, three T-shirts, three sweaters, a pair of slacks, underwear, a book. She sat down on the wicker sofa among the cushions and rolled a green plastic ball with a little bell tinkling inside it across the tiled tabletop towards the child. The child was already able to stand at the low living-room table, proudly, holding on to the tabletop with both hands. She didn’t react to the ball, but emphatically repeated the word ‘rabbit’ several times in a row. Very clearly.
Maja was on the phone with the owner of a holiday apartment at the other end of town. Cheaper. Three rooms. With a garden. A washing machine too, yes, of course. No further from the hospital than this one-room place with its fake forsythia in a vase on the built-in cupboard, the framed photo above the TV showing the sun setting into an empty lake, the folding bed on which Alice had slept in front of the built-in cupboard, the double bed in the corner, and the wicker sofa pushed to the window. The curtains were drawn aside and the view was of a supermarket car park, vehicles coming and going, and people pushing brimful shopping trolleys.… in the Catholic hospital, Maja was saying on the phone. My husband is in the Catholic hospital. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her head cradled in her hand, her face turned away. Alice gazed at her back. Now the child had decided to take the plastic ball after all, lifting it up and shaking it hard, listening to the little bell with a rapt expression on her face.
We’re moving, Alice said to the child. We’re moving to another place. It’s going to be really nice there, you’ll see. There’s a bathtub. A garden — we can go outside every morning. Trees. A lawn. Maybe rabbits, we’ll see, maybe we can catch one.
