Nine Lives

stood watching, noticing the lines around her eyes, the little bulges and rolls beneath her clothes. Her shoulders were hunched and there were nascent varicose veins on her calves. The years were creeping up on her, overwhelming and suffocating the spirit that had so attracted him to her in the spring of her life. How much of that asphyxia came from his own stifling hand? Now it was autumn for them both and he suddenly wanted to rush up to her, hold her, kiss her, beg her to forgive him for being such an unimaginative oaf through the best years of their marriage.

  But he couldn’t, he realised heavily; not now, not ever. Their life together was a standoff between what was and what could never be, the myth of middle-aged contentment repeated the length and breadth of the land. But while others lived in blissful ignorance, Christian and Samantha were threatened by the tacit acknowledgement of the pretence of their cohabitation.

  Oh, Sam, you’re so beautiful, he thought to himself; how could I make your life this ugly?

  ‘I thought you might like to see the plans for the back garden, love.’

  Sam twitched and looked around. ‘Sure. Let me just dry my hands.’

  Those fingers, wrinkled and podgy around the wedding ring, had once changed the boys’ nappies, stroked his back during love-making and scanned the contents of ten thousand weekend shopping baskets behind a supermarket check-out when they needed extra cash.

  Sam was still nervous of his new earnestness, cautious about saying or doing anything that might incite honesty. She seemed to have reconciled what had happened to her husband’s lump and boxed up the feelings it had provoked in the back of her mind. But every time he did something about the house, something spontaneous and uncharacteristic, she felt the thing in the box shift uneasily. That was why she could not talk to him about the things that he now understood really mattered: her feelings, hopes and regrets; all the components of a real relationship sacrificed for a comfy existence.

  ‘I thought about a pond,’ he said, staring at the fallen strand of hair. How he longed to take that strand in his fingers and tuck it carefully behind her ear. He must have touched every inch of her body, but never truly reached her.

  ‘That’s ambitious!’ she laughed too loudly, though careful not make eye contact for longer than a second.

  Her face was a mask, her mirth a parody; that icy formality freezing any hint of passion. She could keep up this pretence because she had been doing it already for most of their married life. But for him it was not so easy. She had lived the lie he had dictated, and he now saw it - and himself - for what they were, and knew that the sorrow would kill him as surely as any cancer.

  Hadn’t things actually been better whilst he was supposed to be ill? Hadn’t that threat to their barren existence inspired at least the semblance of emotional warmth? Now everything was buried again, he realised.

  Then he remembered the beetroot pink in the toilet bowl that morning, and a flicker of hope - an idea - danced amid the repetitive drubbing of his cheerless heart.

  ‘Chris?’ she asked, sabotaging his reverie. ‘I said, “I hope you’re not planning to keep ducks on it”.’

  To fake an illness for money was contemptible, but doing it for love was permissible, surely? At least this way there could be something between them. And who could say for certain that there weren’t rogue cells hiding in his body? He took the strand of hair and gently laid it behind Sam’s ear.

  ‘Listen, Sam, I don’t want you to worry.’ And steadying himself, he set free the white lie that longed to flutter between them. ‘But I think I need to go back to the doctor.’

  Chameleon in a Coal Mine

  ‘Do you know what I think?’

  It was the question he dreaded above all others. As a devotee of languages, the structural simplicity of the sentence was clear but he was baffled by the complexity of its veiled meaning.

  ‘Well, do you know,’ his interrogator smiled disarmingly, ‘what I think?’

  The paediatrician’s flustered thoughts screeched like hungry hatchlings. Hiding them as best he could behind a wooden smile, he gazed across the open country of the oak desk, praying that the circling hawk would fail to strike.

  ‘I think,’ the interrogator declared, suddenly animated, ‘that we should drink coffee and smoke! Real coffee and French cigarettes, no less! This interview is, after all, something of a formality. Basically, the job is yours.’

  ‘It is? Thank you.’

  ‘One moment, then,’ his tormentor said, opening his study door just wide enough to bellow an order down the hall.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Come, come. Relax. You should feel at home here. After all, your reputation precedes you, Herr Asperger.’

  He forced a smile across his lips. ‘Please, call me Hans.’

  ‘Good! Good! Let us get to know each other as men, not just as colleagues.’ He leaned forward histrionically. ‘You can start by calling me Ernst.’

  A knock at the door was a welcome interruption for Hans. A boy, barely in his twenties, brought them a large silver tray containing their promised luxuries. He exited quietly, keeping his eyes to the floor throughout. Hans wondered if there might still be something to fear in Doctor Falke, with his suddenly booming voice and mischievous nature.

  ‘You take sugar, Hans?’

  ‘Just one. But no cream. Thank you.’

  Falke looked up from under his eyebrows, tiny impish fires glinting in his eyes, his hand poised in the act of pouring. ‘But this is real cream, Hans, from a cousin’s farm near Baden.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ Hans smiled, suspecting this might be a test.

  Falke dutifully handed Hans an elegant white china cup with a swan’s neck for a handle.

  Ernst Falke was in his fifties, desperate to retire after the privations of war but dejected in the knowledge that there was more work to be done now than at any other time in his life. He wore wire framed glasses and his receding hairline starkly mapped a chaotic retreat.

  ‘The war has been a terrible tribulation for us,’ Falke sighed.

  ‘Did you see military service, Hans?’

  ‘Yes, as a medical officer in Croatia.’

  ‘You did your duty, then!’ Falke said a little too loudly. ‘I, on the hand, was too old to fight.’

  ‘There is more to honour and duty than just fighting,’ Hans declared bravely. ‘I’m sure you did your bit.’

  ‘Bravo!’ Falke snorted. ‘And the great battle against illness and disease heeds no armistice or capitulation. We must persevere to the death!’

  Hans sipped at his coffee. It was good, and yes the cream was not to be denied. He eyed the four cigarettes lying in a silver dish and knew what was coming next.

  Falke lifted the dish towards him: ‘Cigarette?’

  Hans took a deep breath. There was no way he could smoke without collapsing into a paroxysm of hawking coughs. ‘Thank you, but I don’t smoke… Ernst.’ Just the word brought a tickle to the back of his throat.

  Falke leaned closer, the tray containing the cigarettes nearing with him. ‘Can I tell you something, Hans?’ he whispered conspiratorially. ‘Neither do I!’ And with a bellow of laughter he dropped the cigarette tray noisily on to its larger cousin and picked up his coffee cup. ‘But sometimes it is enough to possess a luxury and not partake of it. If you understand me?’

  He didn’t, not really. But putting up with the Falke’s harmless quirks was a small price to pay for keeping his job. With so many disabled orphans flooding the hospitals and clinics his work held even greater importance. Indeed, his ‘little professors’, as he fondly called them, would always need someone to help steer their way through society’s dark, uncharted waterways. For them there would never be peace only momentary ceasefires. ‘They are as much my children as the ones you have given me,’ he confessed to his wife. She alone appreciated the depth of his commitment.

  ‘My condolences to you on the loss of your brother,’ Falke said suddenly. ‘It is the ultimate sacrifice.’

  And one th
at was totally in vain now that the war was lost and Red Army heroes were lounging in all the best cafés in the city.

  ‘You are most kind, Ernst. But I can assure you I have come to terms with his death. ‘We must look to the future. It is our only solace.’

  Falke put down his empty cup. ‘Stalingrad, wasn’t it?’

  Hans sighed inwardly. His brother sent him a letter, uncensored in the chaos, that described how patrols from both sides would pass each other in the night, exposed by a flare, and just keep on marching, eyes fixed ahead, pretending not to notice the enemy filing by, sometimes within spitting distance, so sick were they of the senseless killing that seemed to have no end or purpose. For his brother that end came on a night when the temperature dropped to minus thirty-five. So many had fought and died in the twisted wreckage of that strategic crematorium, his brother’s letter lamented: from snipers’ bullets, the cold, disease, even friendly fire. For months they had battled, surrounding and then becoming surrounded themselves, like some children’s game gone horribly wrong. ‘The Fuhrer has ordered us to fight to the death, though many suspect we are in hell already.’ Those were his brother’s last words.

  ‘As I said, I have come to terms with it.’ It was his boldest moment yet.

  ‘But of course you are right. We must look forward.’ Doctor Falke smiled and poured himself another coffee. ‘So tell me, Hans: what is it you look forward to in the future?’

  At least this sounded more like a conventional