Necessary Lies(86)
“He was alone. He was already ... gone when I came in,” Anna begins. “The doctor told me that to him it must have seemed like a stroke of lightning.”
This is her William she is talking about, now. The husband she lived with for ten years, the husband who died and whom she will never see again. The husband she misses so badly at times that she wants to bite her hands and howl. It is still January 26, and she is back in her Montreal kitchen, with its scent of a baked apple pie. The door to William’s study is still closed and she opens it slowly. She is so slow, so damn slow.
“But why? What did the doctor say?” Ursula has sat down in front of her. She has closed her eyes, but Anna can see that her eyelids are swelling with tears. For a moment, when Anna sees Ursula’s tears, for a brief but palpable moment, it seems to her that William might appear, that seeing the two of them, together, would be too much to keep him away.
“Heart failure. The doctor said it could be hereditary. Asked if I knew how his father died.”
On the floor of his study, Anna can see William’s body, his grey hair tousled, glued together with sweat. She can see herself, too, bending over him, dropping her purse, feeling if there is still any warmth left in his face. This other Anna still doesn’t register what has happened, cannot believe her own eyes. Why isn’t she calling the ambulance? What is she waiting for?
“So sudden? Without any warning?” Ursula asks.
“The doctor said it couldn’t have been the first one. There was scar tissue on his heart.”
“He never said anything? Never complained?”
“No,” Anna says, but here she hesitates. “Not to me.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Ursula says. They both know what they are talking about. He was not willing to admit that his body, this wonderful strong body he was so proud of would fail him. Not William.
Anna can feel the cold panic touching the soles of her feet, making its way up, to her heart. It is the same panic that paralysed her then when she was kneeling beside William, stroking his face, feeling the chill set in. She was always too eager to believe him, to let him dispel her fears. For this she has never forgiven herself.
“I should’ve known,” she tells Ursula, now. “He must have thought the pain would go away. He didn’t mention anything to his doctor. There was no record of chest pains in his file ... But I should’ve known.”
She can see herself talking to him in the morning, still groggy from sleep. William is sitting in bed massaging his left arm. Does it hurt? she asks him. It is a stupid question, he tells her. Of course it hurts. Have you talked to your doctor? she asks. What for? he asks in return. He is already impatient with her, tells her she is always coming up with these thoughts of impending doom. Your murky Polish soul, he laughs and tousles her hair. His left arm hurts and there is a perfectly good reason for it. He has been playing the violin for too long. The last thing he needs now is to have her panic.
“If only I hadn’t listened to him,” Anna’s voice is breaking when she says it. “If I only I insisted ...”
“NO!”
The bang of steel on the marble tiles startles them both. Ursula must have pushed a knife off the table, as she leaned forward. “No! Anna, don’t do that? Don’t go this way?”
Anna breathes hard. She mustn’t cry, she tells herself. She must stop the choking feeling in her throat.
“Anna, look at me,” Ursula says. “He loved you.” She takes Anna in her arms and rocks her gently. Her freckled hand is smoothing Anna’s hair, gently stroking her forehead, her cheeks.
For a split-second Anna is thinking of beach sand, flowing between her fingers. Ursula’s touch is surprisingly soothing, and Anna will remember it for a long time, the touch of her hot, dry hand, and the sound of her own voice, murmuring her consent.
On Saturday morning a telephone ring wakes Anna up. “I’m sorry,” Ursula says. “But I’ve just learned something. It’s rather urgent.”
It is Anna’s last day in Berlin. The day before Ursula promised to take her to Potsdam. Schloss Sanssouci, she said. Sounds exactly what we both need.
“My friend, Lothar,” Ursula says on the phone, “has been nosing about the Stasi archives. He has just called me. Said I should come right away. It has something to do with Willi’s grandfather. Can you be ready in half an hour?”
An hour later they are on Normannenstrasse in the Lichtenberg district, Ursula leading the way among the maze of brown concrete buildings. In the lobby of what used to be Stasi headquarters, still decorated with the statues of Lenin and Felix Dzerzhinski, Lothar is already waiting for them. He is a tall, thin man, with an ascetic face. “You’ll have to be quick,” he says, shaking Anna’s hand and giving Ursula a quick hug. “This is still not quite legal, but someone here owes me a big favour.”
Lothar takes them upstairs, into a small room with padded doors. The room is furnished with a shabby table and three hard wooden chairs. The file on the table is an old-fashioned one, with marble coloured cardboard flaps, tied with a grey ribbon. On the white label, in the old German script, a name. Claus Herzmann.
“Go ahead” Ursula says, when Anna hesitates. “You open it. I’ll translate.”
Anna’s hands tremble slightly when she unties the ribbon. William once said he was relieved to know his grandfather was executed by the Nazis. Not a bad thing to know, he said, if you were German. Inside, pinned to a long typewritten report there are prison shots of a man in his fifties, blank eyes staring into space, stubble on his cheeks.