Milk Teeth Page 3

  I stood up and closed the window. Outside, the darkness was now absolute. I leaned my forehead against the glass and closed my eyes.

  While I washed up, the child slept on the kitchen table, its head protectively buried in its arms.

  “Come on, I’ll take you up to bed,” I said, drying my hands on the washcloth. I still remember how I marveled at how naturally these words passed my lips. As if it weren’t the first time that I had said something like that. I lifted Meisis from the table and carried her upstairs to the attic. There I took off her sneakers and laid her on the mattress, where she immediately went back to sleep.

  I lay awake for a long time.

  Time and again I turned my head and looked at the child in order to make sure that I hadn’t just made the whole thing up.

  In the early hours I woke with a start. It was as if I hadn’t slept. Every muscle in my body hurt. I stretched, but it didn’t help much, I couldn’t find my way back into sleep, so I got up, sat in the gable window, and stared out it. Outside, nothing had changed.

  MAYBE I LOST MY BALANCE A LONG TIME AGO.

  11.

  I set up a room for the child on the second floor next to the landing. Edith had always discarded things there. Predominantly used crockery. I brought the gold-rimmed plates and cups back to the kitchen by the basketful. A small sofa bed with a blue cover was the only piece of furniture in the room. I brought in a dresser from the hallway. I rolled a swivel chair that had been sitting unused in the cellar up to the window.

  “Right,” I said to the child. “You can stay here.”

  She went to the window and looked out. I stood behind her. We could see the garden and the forest. I couldn’t find anything remarkable in the view, yet Meisis didn’t look away. It was only when I carefully touched her shoulder that she turned back to me.

  “This is a good room,” she said.

  I also showed Meisis the rest of the house. We went in all the rooms. Sometimes she touched the walls, as if she wanted to feel what was underneath the wallpaper.

  “Have you always lived here?” she asked me, pushing her hand inside mine.

  “Always,” I replied.

  “I like that, never changing place,” she said.

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  In the evening, I asked the child if she would like to have a bath. I showed her the bathroom, and she agreed. I heated water and filled the bathtub to the top. It was so hot that the windows steamed up. I helped Meisis out of her clothes, and she climbed in. From the window-sill I passed her a dish holding the soap I had made from ash and the fat from the rabbits. Meisis washed her arms and legs with it and removed the layer of dirt from her skin.

  “Hair too?” I asked. Meisis nodded. I picked up the porcelain beaker from the sink, filled it, instructed her to lean back her head, and emptied it over her. Then I took some of the soap and rubbed it into her hair. I told her that she should keep her eyes closed while I filled the beaker again and washed out the soap. I paused in motion, taken aback. I remembered that Edith had washed my hair the exact same way. I had intuitively taken on her hand movements. It hurt that I had almost forgotten the tranquil moments we’d had with each other.

  Meisis gave me a querying look.

  “Close your eyes again, I’m not quite finished yet,” I said quickly, and washed the remaining soap from her hair.

  After the bath I wrapped Meisis in a towel and carried her to her room. I tilted open a window. I could hear the insects outside. A moth bumped against the glass.

  “Sleep now,” I told Meisis, covering her. As I was leaving the room, she reached her hand out toward me.

  “Stay?”

  I accepted her request without hesitation.

  I still know now that in that moment I thought, So now a child. I didn’t question my decision. Nor did I think of the consequences my actions would lead to. All that I concentrated on was the situation I found myself in in that moment. To wake up next to the child and hold her hand, as if I had never done anything else.

  12.

  INNER TURMOIL. AS IF A HAND HAD DUG INTO ME AND SHIFTED MY GAZE. I STAND STILL, AND IT FEELS UNLEARNED, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS.

  I ran through the house the next day like a lunatic, establishing order. In some places the dust lay so thickly I could sink my hand into it. I went into the rooms I hadn’t been in for a long time and tried to make them accessible again. Meisis followed me and watched how I gathered clothes and washed them, piled up Edith’s books, cleaned the windows, mopped the floors, and removed the sheets from the furniture. The house suddenly regained its shape. My movements too were more precise.

  Edith didn’t comment.

  13.

  Our days gained a clear structure. I woke Meisis every morning and we ate a thin broth together.

  The heat outside was still bearable in the mornings, and we spent this time in the garden. Meisis played in the long grass, while I watered the potato patch, weeded or fertilized the soil. I often stopped to reassure myself that Meisis was still there. If I didn’t see her, I immediately called her name. Back then I already lived in the constant fear that something could happen to her.

  Time and again Meisis would interrupt her game, come running over to me, and urge me to put out my hand and close my eyes. When I opened them again, she had placed something in my palm for me. A stone that she had found, or a small bunch of flowering weeds. I took all these things up to the attic and saved them in a cardboard box that I’d found under the sofa. Nothing in it could be lost.

  So that Meisis wouldn’t get sunburned, I built an elaborate construction from sticks and sheets, which increased the shade in the garden. In spite of this, her skin in the first few weeks was often reddened. At night she complained of pain; I couldn’t do anything more than make her cold compresses and sit by her bed.

  After a while, Meisis’s skin got used to the sun, and a great weight fell from me.

  While tidying up, I found a box of building blocks I used to play with: cubes of wood painted different colors. I still clearly remembered how I had built walls in the hope that Edith wouldn’t be able to climb over them. But she was able to bring them down with a single kick.

  I carried the building blocks into the garden for Meisis, and she occupied herself for a time with nothing else. Instead of using them for building, like I’d shown her, she spent hours sorting them. I never figured out her ordering system.

  I still tied large cloths around her head to protect her against the sun. Even the dark blue one didn’t conceal the color of her hair. The red always shimmered through.

  When I did the washing, Meisis wanted to do it too. As soon as I put the silver-colored tin tub on the table in the garden and filled it with boiling water, she came bounding over like a puppy, almost tumbling, and would hang off my leg. I put a footstool next to me so that she could dunk her arms into the water too. She tried to copy my movements and helped me to wring everything out and hang it on the washing lines I had stretched between the plum tree and the cherry tree.

  I liked nothing more than the scent of the suds that hung in the air after doing the washing. Meisis was no different. Sometimes she lay between the sheets and stayed there until everything was dry.

  Just before the sun was at its peak, we went back into the house. I would often lie down for a nap, and Meisis would doze too. Most of the time she picked up her blanket and made herself comfortable between the dogs, who lay in the corridor on the cold flagstones. When she slept there, I didn’t worry, because the dogs protected Meisis as if she were one of their young.

  We would spend the afternoon in the house. I tried to keep the rooms in order, mopped the floorboards, piled the books, and folded the clothes. Meisis helped me or resumed her game that she had begun in the garden with the building blocks inside.

  Sometimes I put a glass of water next to the sofa for Edith. She didn’t thank me, but when I came back into the living room a few hours later, I saw that she had drunk from it. I hea
rd her sometimes walking through the house, only at night, restless, like in the years previous.

  In the evenings I cooked something from the provisions that we still had and ate with Meisis in the kitchen. We mostly ate in silence, yet I liked this hour of quiet. Even the dogs seemed to like it, because they always came and slept peacefully under the table.

  When the sun started to go down, we went back into the garden and I watered the potato patch and the mulberry bush, even though I couldn’t remember the last time it had carried fruit. The smell of the wet earth reminded me of the time of the fog. Sometimes I stood in the garden until it was dark, Meisis, all the while, never leaving my side.

  We took care of the rabbits together. Meisis gave every animal a name, but I could never memorize them.

  Meisis was present when I butchered one of the rabbits for the first time after her arrival. I showed her the individual steps. She didn’t look away and intently watched every hand movement. She understood that we relied on the animals’ meat.

  After she had watched a few times, she already knew how to do it and asked me to let her do it herself.

  Every evening I sat next to Meisis’s bed until she was asleep, all the while looking out the window at the tops of the pines, which I could make out in spite of the darkness.

  WITH THE CHILD IN THE HOUSE THE NIGHTS HAVE BECOME BRIGHTER. THE DARKNESS IS NOW SOFT LIKE A COAT MADE OF FUR. I LAY IT ABOUT MY SHOULDERS.

  14.

  IF YOU CROUCHED IN THE OPEN LANDSCAPE, YOU WOULD STILL NOT BE CONCEALED, FOR HERE THEY HAVE LEARNED TO NOTICE ANOMALIES EVEN WITH THEIR EYES CLOSED.

  I forbade Meisis from using the front door and only allowed her to play behind the house, because no one could see into the garden from the road.

  When she asked me why, I said, “It’s safer there.”

  15.

  I SLEEP AS IF SOMEONE HAD KNOCKED ME UNCONSCIOUS, THE DARKNESS MAKES WAVES, I SINK DOWN BETWEEN THEM.

  I can’t remember a single dream from these first few weeks. It was as if my body was completely focused on filling all energy reserves in order to steel itself for what was still to come.

  I awoke every morning even before the sun was in the room. In the hours that followed I moved aimlessly through the house. Sometimes I would open Meisis’s bedroom door. She always slept peacefully, her body relaxed. But once she was lying strangely curled up, and in her hair I found dried-out pine needles, as if she had just run through the forest.

  When I looked in her room again a short while later, she lay like she always did and the pine needles were gone. I thought I’d just imagined the whole thing.

  16.

  I barely saw Edith in those first few weeks. She didn’t seem to even notice that Meisis was living in the house with us. She continued to mostly sleep on the sofa. Or she withdrew into the bathroom, where she spent hours in the bath.

  But once, while I was sitting in the garden with Meisis, I had the strong feeling that she was watching us through one of the windows. I looked at the house, but all the curtains were closed and nothing confirmed my suspicions.

  “Has Edith ever been different?” Meisis asked me once during supper, while she mashed a potato with her fork. I told her that Edith had been behaving like that for a long time.

  Then Meisis wanted to know why Edith never ate with us. I explained to her that Edith preferred to do without food.

  “But how does she survive?”

  I said, “Not everything can be explained logically.” I didn’t want to talk about Edith anymore.

  17.

  I DREAMED THE SMELL OF GUNPOWDER. THE LAND HAS BEEN LEFT FULL OF HOLES. THESE VOIDS ARE MY DOWNFALL.

  The dogs wrenched me from my sleep. Their barking sounded hoarse. I peeled myself, dazed, from the sweaty sheet that I used for a cover and went downstairs.

  The dogs stood yapping in the corridor. I tried calming them, when I noticed that the front door was ajar. I slowly went over to it and put my hand on the doorknob. Through the narrow gap I could see a section of the path. Its reflection of the sunlight was dazzling. I pushed open the door and stepped outside.

  In the middle of the sand track that led to the road stood Meisis. The sunlight ignited her hair; she had turned away from the house so that I couldn’t see her face.

  I grabbed her and pulled her back into the house.

  “What were you doing in the front garden?” I shouted.

  Meisis said nothing. She looked at me frightened. Only now did I notice that she was holding a tin can pressed to her chest.

  “Have you forgotten that you’re not allowed to play in the front garden?” I asked. “Someone could have seen you. Only the house and the garden are safe, do you understand?”

  Meisis seemed not to have heard me; her eyes were fixed on the can.

  “The tin cans aren’t for playing with,” I explained to her.

  Meisis nodded.

  “It’s best if we stay in the house today,” I said, and pushed her into the kitchen.

  I closed the curtains, put the can back in the pantry, and took a jar of preserved cherry plums off the shelf. It gave a loud crack when I opened it. I put the jar in front of Meisis on the table. She grabbed it with both hands.

  “You can drink the juice,” I told her, and passed her a fork for the fruit. Meisis put the jar up to her mouth and took a sip.

  “Sweet,” she declared.

  I let her have the whole jar and ate only a rusk.

  18.

  The child and I were spending the morning in the garden when an incident occurred. Meisis was crouching in the long grass sorting building blocks, and I was sitting in the plum tree picking dry leaves from the branches, when there was a movement in the forest. I immediately climbed down and stood with my legs wide apart in the grass. Meisis noticed the change in atmosphere. From the corner of my eye I watched as she slowly lowered her hand holding the block and gradually directed her gaze between the trees too.

  I was going to shout something, but I couldn’t release my tongue from the roof of my mouth. Something was stuck in my throat, immobilizing me. Then I saw that it was Kurt standing in the forest. We looked at each other. He put his finger to his lips and the next moment he was gone. I swallowed.

  Meisis stood next to me and pushed her hand into mine.

  “Was someone in the forest?” she asked.

  “Go inside please,” I said.

  Meisis nodded and walked inside.

  I stayed in the garden and waited, but Kurt didn’t allow himself to be seen a second time.

  THE FOREST HAS BEEN REPLACED. MAYBE THE TREES HAVE BEEN SWAPPED OVERNIGHT, AND NOW THERE ARE FAKES STANDING IN THEIR STEAD, WHOSE ONLY FUNCTION IS TO BE HIDING PLACES TO OPTIMIZE THE AMBUSH.

  19.

  The books in the house used to belong to Kurt. He lived on the ground floor of the prefab high-rise next to the river. The other apartments were empty. There were marks on the carpets and the walls where the furniture used to be, bright spots that accented the absence of things. Even back then Kurt had barely owned anything. A thin foam mattress, a blanket, a folding stool, and a reading lamp. And the books. They were piled up in all four rooms and formed precarious towers, between which only small paths remained to go from one room to the other.

  Kurt spent his days reading on the mattress, or he spent hours in the forest without a concrete destination.

  One night there was a short circuit in one of the upper floors, and a fire broke out. Kurt brought his books to safety and watched from the riverbank how the fire blazed in the windows and burned up the rooms inside.

  No one noticed the fire, and by the morning it was too late. Only a sooty ruin remained.

  Kurt refused to move into another house and decided to live in the forest.

  “I had never met anyone as fearless as your mother,” Kurt told me, “and she was heavily pregnant.” The admiration he showed for her was real. It was as if he were talking about someone else.

  Kurt gave Edith all his book
s in exchange for a rabbit fur coat and the promise that he could come by at any time to read them.

  “I knew from Nuuel how much she loved to read. I wouldn’t have wanted to give my books to anyone else.”

  When I saw Kurt for the first time, the fog was still so thick that his range of vision was limited to only a few meters. Edith let him in the house and was about to take him straight to the books, but he stayed where he was, crouched down in front of me, and held out his hand. His gaze was frank.

  “I hope that you’re making it easier for her,” he said, so quietly that only I heard it. At the time I didn’t know what he meant by it. But I understood that it was something important, something significant.

  I found the high-rise years later. With its grayness and austerity, it seemed as unreal as the pool in our garden. All the windowpanes were broken. I found a stained mattress that someone had thrown in the elevator shaft. Birch trees were growing on the ground floor, and I imagined how they would soon bring down the building.

  20.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked Meisis one evening.

  We ate the leftover rabbit from the day before. Meisis had watched me for a long time, how to gnaw the bones so they would shine like they were polished.

  She wiped her mouth and put the bone she was holding in her hand in front of her on the plate and looked at me as if she hadn’t understood my question.

  I leaned over the table. “You can tell me,” I said, and gave her the last piece of rabbit.

  Meisis looked at the meat, hesitated, and shook her head.

  I sighed. “Will someone be missing you?” I asked. “Can you tell me that?”