Something Strange About People
There was no feeling when she heard about Rene. No feeling except the fear and guilt at having no feeling. She didn’t care, she couldn’t care, and so she panicked.
She wrote a long email to her dad, but then didn’t send it. Instead, she copied it into a Word file and saved it onto her hard drive in a folder she called “letter to dad”. She would probably never send it. He would just call her a liar; a fantasist. But it was there now. The gun had been loaded, and one day she might take it out and pull the trigger.
Later she would come back to the folder and change the name to “River”. The other name was just asking for someone to snoop. And she felt something between them was exposed by the words “letter to dad”.
“River” was fine. She was safe with that.
Her mother called to tell her about Rene but struggled to speak. Only managed a mixture of sighs, gasps and half sentences which would get stuck in her mother’s throat. “Your father wants to say something,” she finally managed, before his reassuringly measured voice took over.
He delivered the news regarding Rene as a series of verbal bullet points. But she could tell it was a terrible effort for him. She always wondered how difficult it would be to announce such a family horror. For some years, she had suspected something like this might happen, but shut it away. If her father now had to shut away his emotions to get through this moment, then she could understand. She could forgive him that, at least.
When all the necessary details had been ticked off, her mother’s voice returned, having had enough time to compose a couple of broken sentences. “Will you go? It’s too much for us, now. That boy… that boy. You must go. We’ll pay for everything.”
She had to get outside and she took the dark grey, iron stairwell of her Berlin apartment block. Did things look and sound different now? She was sure her footsteps were louder, like hammers hitting living bone. Would they ever echo romantically again, like they had before?
Each floor had two imposing, gloss-black doors with a doormat. For keeping dirty feet out, or dirty thoughts in? She wondered. She wished the doors to open and a kindly neighbour to invite her in. They would silently understand, agree how terrible it all was and accommodate her every faked expression of sadness. Because when one creates a façade alone, one is a common liar. But when others share the façade, a social duty is performed.
Because everyone has a secret. And everyone knows this — it goes without saying. But if you speak yours, then you imply the other should speak theirs, in return, and cause them embarrassment (whether they speak it or not). The truth is a socially careless act.
She let herself out the old and huge wooden main doors, recently painted in dark green gloss. And as she shuffled along the busy Potsdamer Strase, Erika became aware her shoulders were tight around her neck. Her eyes were on the pavement, at a fixed distance ahead — determined. No, she wouldn’t go to London. Was this her responsibility? Always picking up the pieces of other people’s broken lives? Clearing up the mess others can’t stomach?
Nobody loves you for it. It’s just a dirty job someone needs to do so the streets don’t fill with the rotting dead and old mattresses; so the neglected don’t die lying in their own faeces, while their family try to forget.
No, nobody loves you for it. Actually, they look down on you. They pity you, even, and feel good about themselves. You’re not only dealing with their mess, but you’re making them feel grateful they don’t have to. But they don’t thank you for it. They only thank whatever kind of fate they believe in; thankful they haven’t fallen so low.
Yes, there’s something strange about people — they’d rather thank a god than another person. You, the one who (in reality) is fulfilling their needs, they treat with contempt.
Erika’s feet crunched the gritted pavement all the way to Kliestpark U-Bahn. At the top of the steps, she stamped away the grit embedded in her heels and descended into the sunless underworld. She didn’t hate Rene any less, she realised. That was the real shock. She could still feel the pain in her father’s voice, as he carefully erected a secure perimeter around his inability to understand what Rene had done to him.
There was nothing to understand. Rene was just made that way, she decided. And the trouble with me is, I never stand up for what I believe in.
When she got home, she deleted the folder named “River” and booked a cheap flight to London.
