I would not summon it, but I suspect that Edeltraud Finnish has allowed me a little fun on the day of her funeral at Wiltrup Cemetery. She was finally dead, and I just felt relieved that it all seemed over. Until she knocked.
Of course, the whole thing fit together, of course, it especially suited her to interfere even as a corpse in my mind. If it was one in the classical sense. She was probably not one. And it probably still is not.
In fact, I would never have seriously come up with the absurd idea of hearing them again, at least not so fast. But perhaps it just did not want to admit to myself that I had to continue to live with this fear that gets you icy cold just when you start sticking your old nightmares like a piece of paper at a match. It goes out too soon, and a second one is not at hand.
If so – and it did – I mean, so if Edeltraud Finnish knocked her knuckles down on the wooden coffin lid on that muggy summer’s day to remind me she knew more, much more than me, then I have a very real problem. None of the more innocent sort that an otherwise rational-thinking adult sometimes has when it’s dark and childhood memories peculiarly distorted as a personal slide show in the head.
When it is dark and you are still small and open to everything, the strict old woman next door very much and very quickly becomes a wicked witch, who can let one’s childish belief in her existence still many years later. Then she suddenly knocks again, someday, and although you’ve grown up pretty neatly in principle already, one believes in unprotected, lonely nights at this knocking, actually believes to hear it. And is sure that it is the death that announces itself.
In broad daylight that does not work normally, because everything runs more regulated. Mostly harmless, as far as things are concerned that are not allowed to be true, at least when viewed in the light. Since you go to the bakery, lets the dog pee in the lunch break, apes secretly after the boss, curses the phone and drinks espresso at the Italian around the corner. Otherwise you look forward to good sex on the weekend, which could be even fancier, on dry white wine at the French and their own children, at some point, if not, not too tragic. The main thing is that the bread does not get more expensive and it does not rain. And the dead are and remain dead and do not knock to get company. If they do it, something went wrong in paradise. Maybe in hell too. I’m not that optimistic.
Edeltraud Finnish, widowed and childless with a fat yellow cat, belonged to the house where my parents, Bolle and I lived. Brick, paved courtyard and unadorned garden, not beautiful, but quaint, as one says benevolently, without giving away too much of his taste. In the converted attic, two thick invisible sisters shared three and a half rooms. The two I almost never saw until the one, for me with my almost ten years surprisingly younger, was picked up by two strong guys.
Maria Johannssen was in a monstrous white sack with a zipper, not even a strand of hair or her little finger peeping out, and her fat sister howled at a sort of van until her round, big head was so red that I feared he was about to die burst. “The heart,” said Edeltraud Finisch to my mother, “in the weight,” and she nodded silently, as if she had been completely clear that it had to come. I clung to my mother’s hand, saw the bag on the stretcher disappear in the car, and shot Mrs. Finnish a dirty look.
My eyes were brief and probably not effective enough because they did not seem to register him. I only dared to do it because there was no wood within reach. Otherwise she might have knocked for me. As for Wilfried Kattmann and Grandpa Gustel.
Two days before the death of my younger sister Johanssen, my Bolle should have believed it too. Since the witch had probably strayed for the first time in time. Or out of boredom tried a game with me.
To Finnish’s apartment belonged a rather tiny balcony overlooking the apple tree behind the house. Red hanging geraniums in late spring, white ericas in autumn. And that ugly yellow tomcat staring at the courtyard through the wooden slats of the balcony paneling. Day in, day out, he stared. When I looked up, our eyes met, never ate or slept, as though he was saving it for the time I was out of sight. He crouched or lay on the stool in front of the wicker chair, in which Mrs. Finnisch was enthroned with her flowered cup, before she rose to take a look and watched me.
It made me nervous how this cat stared. The tapping of his mistress made me even more nervous, which I first noticed on that rainy autumn day, when the gray, soaking wet bird fell from the sky.
I’d only been in elementary school for a few weeks and was unsuccessfully deciphering the letters on the yellowed billboard for some long-extinct beer hung in a stoop on the tool shed under the apple tree. And suddenly I heard her knock. I put my head back and looked up at her, questioning and as indignant as little people can be if disturbed by something important. She leaned stiffly on the balcony railing, stared at me, and moved her lips briefly, long enough, of course, to be able to read a dumb Helena from them. She called my name, as I tell it. She tapped the knuckles of her left hand against the wood. In her right hand she held her cup, which was busy with the profane of life.
The bird fell with a dull sound from somewhere above right to my feet and lay there hastily stuffed. At first I thought he had accidentally fallen off the tree and fallen into a slight fainting. For a moment I forgot Mrs. Finnish, looked distraught on the small body on the ground and nudged him carefully with the caps of my rubber boots. Nothing. No doubt he was no longer alive. I looked up again to say something, probably to ask, whatever. But she was gone. Only the cat had not stirred and yawned, without taking my eyes off him.
Only a few days later, when Edeltraud Finnish knocked again and silently demanded that I look at the balcony and look at her so that she could shake her head and whisper my name, I found the rabbit under the bench in front of the tool shed. It had to be strayed from the nearby cemetery, a humpback, fringed by huge stinging nettle shrubbery separated from our fenced inner courtyard, directly under the bank and decided to die there. There was no other, more reasonable explanation. The rabbit seemed spontaneous, as if it had fallen from an unusual mood, it was not wounded and looked as if it would only sleep deeply. Too deep. It was not breathing anymore. Just because. Like the young cat with its tongue outstretched, all four paws straight up,
The cellar was right under the balcony, from which Ms. Finnish had been waiting for me to knock with her cup in her right hand, the yellow cat at her side, staring intently. He stared, not to be missed, as I first looked up, questioningly, already suspecting, looked at Frau Finnisch, looked at him, then looked to one side, to the other, on the concrete pedestal beside the tulips, at last on the stairs. I knew immediately that the cat was dead, and somehow I did not care how that happened. She reminded me of one of my sleep animals, so innocent, so beautiful and soft I did not cry. I was eight years old and knew a witch who just had to knock to kill.
Edeltraud Finnish was like Lillifee in the fairy tale, which only needs to clap her hands, and she is brought by invisible servants everything she wants: chocolate, ice cream, a horse, a handsome young man. Only Mrs. Finnish was not a gold-curled clapping princess, but a wicked old woman who often and gladly knocked. Also for insects, some so tiny that I probably would not have attached so much importance to many of the small dead bodies that I found among the withered flowers, on the stones, next to the shed in the courtyard. I suffered. And I was terrified of her. “I hate Finnish,” I said to my mother. That was busy, whatever, definitely not with me. All she said was, “Stop it, and it’s Ms. Finnish.”
Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, I pinched my eyes when I heard them knocking, as if I could blindly prevent what happened anyway.
It went so far that I felt like her involuntary helper, whom she had chosen cold-bloodedly forever. After the death of Wilfried Kattmann, I finally saw in myself the real ally of a man disguised as a monster, which was greeted by the neighbors friendly. Out there, where everyone casually gave away their smiles to everyone, Edeltraud Finnish was considered, though taciturn, at least courteous, decent, orderly. Just the nice woman next door.
Wilfried Kattmann was my teacher, a sporty tall man with freckles, middle, late thirties, as I would appreciate him today as a woman. As a kid, he was already quite old to me, like my father. But certainly not old enough to just fall over on the cinder track of the Wiltrup sports community like one of these battery-powered running dolls, out of the blue, the juice runs out. Nobody could explain that. So good, so young, really, really too young. “
Everyone was stunned. Not me. I knew better.
Kattmann’s death was resolved when, in my third year of elementary school, I fought off him on our yard with the clothesline that I had cut with the blessing of my mother for a rather passable skipping rope. My training for Kettmann’s gymnastics class the next day at school was ridiculous. My feet were not working properly and the rope tangled in my skirt hem and in my ponytail. I was furious with myself, and when I heard Edeltraud knock Finnish and mechanically look up to her balcony, where she knocked her head shaking and silently let my name over her lips, I became even more angry. On Mrs. Finnish, who showed her round little brown ugly teeth to laugh at me. On her staring yellow tomcat, watching me yawn from his stool yawning.
I never was. Not particularly popular either. It hurt me to always belong to the team selection to the miserable pile that waits until the end. Until you have to choose it, because the best, most beautiful, strongest already have their place. That should stay that way in my life.
Of course, Ms. Finnish did not really laugh when she knocked, probably indiscriminately, on the wooden balcony covering for an unknown person. For Wilfried Kettmann, who made his rounds this late afternoon at the Wiltruper Stadion, always on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It was a Wednesday when he grabbed his chest, where it beats neatly in the rhythm when you’re healthy. So healthy. So sympathetic. So much too young. He was it. And fell down, face forward into the red ashes, tongue outstretched like the young cat on the basement stairs, so I imagined it, fell down and died.
We learned of our teacher’s death on Thursday at school. The gym class was canceled.
Half a year after my grandfather’s second major and final stroke, Edeltraud Finnish tried to summon Bolle as well. Maybe, halfheartedly. That was two days before the fat sister Johannssen was carried out of our house. “The heart, the weight, tragic, tragic.”
I did not believe a word. Maria Johannssen was simply out of luck because Mrs. Finnish wanted a body. Bolle did not get her. But not wanted. Perhaps.
May the poor soul of Johannssen forgive me, but I was grateful that my dog got away. I loved him. I did not love her, as well. As simple as that.
That day in late autumn of 1988, when I was ten years old and had changed schools, I sat with a book on the bench in front of the tool shed, ignoring the stares of the cat on his stool, which made my eyes itch while reading, though I did even when turning the pages, avoided looking up, looking at him, seeing her. I sensed that Mrs. Finnish was very close. She would silently enter the balcony, drink a sip of coffee-it might be, there was something quite different in her cup-and then she would tap the wooden slats of the disguise with her knuckles of her left hand, stare, find my eyes, and Helena say, so quietly that, if anything, only the cat had a little whisper in his ears.
I sat there quite pleasantly on my cardigan, which I had taken off and put on the hard bench as a cushion – the summer was still loitering, it was too warm for the season -, held my book at chest level, the head low, read and was waiting. Listened. Sniffed.
I could not concentrate in this situation. The moment I decided it would be better to keep reading in my room, better for something, anyone, better for me anyway, there was a knock. I did not look up. She knocked again. I did not look. Just thought what she was going to say if she had not decided to keep quiet. “Look, very briefly, really very briefly, Helena, you’re a good girl.”
I jumped up, the book fell off, the jacket stayed where it was, I just wanted to get away. But instead of running into the house, which would have been more logical, I ran straight down the back door and past the gray rubbish bins in the driveway. And saw Bolle standing in the middle of the road like a disturbed child, about to commit suicide. It was rush hour traffic, the street was thick, someone honked, then another, a man yelled something like, “What’s the crazy mutt looking for?”
When Bolle saw me, the stupid old dear guy put down the dive of his life. He flew like a puppy without fear and lame right hind paw past the cars right in front of my feet and into my arms.
I imagined him dead, flattened, rolled over. Full of blood, his eyes and muzzle still half open, as if he wanted to tell me, stop, that’s not true. It was not synonymous. I hugged him tightly. He lived another beautiful five years. The fat sister Maria Johannssen was granted two miserable days. One always loses.
For my grandfather Gustel the time might actually have come, he was very old and sick and tired. “I think he wants to sleep, just sleep and dream,” my mother said. Then she cried and stroked my hair. “We have to let him go soon, Helena.” I understood, wiping her tears with her palm and nodding solemnly. “That’s the way it is.” I was, as I said that and smiled at her as if she were the child and I the mother, a little scared of my sober reaction. But I knew a witch, I knew death. And I knew that it was somebody’s turn sometime.
My grandfather did not survive his second stroke. Just before the call from the nursing home near where he had been staying for a few months – it was a nice, cozy home where many dear, tired people were still too awake to let go – I stood in our courtyard Rain and caught the drops with open mouth. It was a silly game that I would have finished even without the knock of Edeltraud Finnish. I looked up and waited for Helena. Then I spat and went into the house. When the phone rang only two or three minutes later and my mother looked at me before picking up the phone, I said, “Grandpa is dead.” It was like this.
Edeltraud Finnish died in the night of May 11 to 12, 1994. She died quietly, as she had lived, and if I had not asked my parents, with the spare key hidden under the nasty fleshy potted plant in the staircase just in case was to look after her with me, she would probably have remained lying on his back in the bathroom for a while, with his head on the mat in front of the sink, his legs neatly next to each other. As if she had put herself in position. The gray, thin curls seemed to have been straightened out just before, almost framing the small, stern head with just a toothpaste spike in the corner of her mouth. The water crane was still running, she wore slippers with floral embroidery and a crocheted nightgown, her eyes were closed, her hands, I hardly believed it, as if folded into a last pious prayer on the flat chest. “She looked so peaceful,” my mother said later, and my father said, “A clean death, somehow.”
On May 10, I had met Gerald and made an appointment with him for the evening of the next day, pizza, cinema, Irish pub, which was hip, just the classic program. In the late afternoon, in the backyard, I planted flowers in the window boxes of my mother, did it quickly, because I had to take a shower and change my clothes. I crouched on the flagstones beside the sack of soil rather uncomfortably, the weeds in the cracks only partially provided a cushion for my knees, but I was too lazy to get an old pillow, preferring Gerald and maybe two of us. And then I thought of her, felt that hard lump in my throat and was sure that she was already there. I could feel her eyes on my neck without looking up, I knew how she stood there on her balcony on the parapet, I knew why she stood there. She wanted to chat with me about the death, a short dumb conversation just as I was used to, and the cat would gawp and yawn as always when his mistress whispered her verdict.
She knocked. I turned around, looked up at her, it would not have changed anything, to do something else, she’d knocked, something would happen, anything, one way or the other. At that moment I forgot to be young and pretty and fresh in love. All I wished was to be able to rescue this boy, whom I only knew for a few hours, for the price of never kissing, touching, feeling, even for the price of having to die himself ,
I want to be honest. If I had actually been given the choice to decide on his or my life and sacrifice one of us, I would have pointed to him. But this Saturday afternoon, at the crucial moment, I was ready to let Edeltraud Finnish decide who it should meet.
She chose herself. On May 12, it was early morning, usually too early for a Sunday and for me, I asked my parents to accompany me to Edeltraud Finnish’s apartment to check on her. I lied, said I had already rung several times, for whatever reason, she would not open, and I could hear the hangover screaming. That was true. My parents were a little confused, but too sleepy to ask questions. What should I have said? That I sensed, felt, no, knew that she had knocked for herself?
With Gerald, who did not simply fall over and die on our first night, and who, I hope, is still alive – we have not had any contact for a long time – I was, after all, two decently beautiful years together. When I heard this knocking on the coffin lid on the day of the funeral of Edeltraud Finnish – probably the only one, because no one reacted in astonishment and no one could have reacted more horribly than I did – I was convinced that she had changed her mind and Gerald or I still wanted to get myself. It was not like that. Until now.
The last knock of the Edeltraud Finnish was the older fat sister Johannssen, who said to my mother before the funeral: “One should speak no bad thing, but strangely was the Finnish already.”
How right she was.
…