The Berlin Crossing Read Online Free PDF Page A

knows where. I sensed her touching them with her eyes, measuring each item, discovering
     herself again in days that were gone.
    And in the day that was here.
    ‘Michael—’
    ‘It’s OK, Mutti, don’t try to talk.’ I looked at the red alarm clock on the dressing table. ‘The nurse will be here soon—’
    ‘I don’t want the nurse, Michi.’ A strength in the voice that surprised me, like the strength in her fingers clutching at
     mine. The pain, I thought, energized by the pain.
    ‘Rest,’ I told her. ‘Just rest, Mutti.’
    ‘It’s dark, Michi, light the lamp.’
    When I switched on the bedside light, the furrows in her face were deeper, the dark below the saucer eyes darker.
    ‘Is that better, Mutti?’
    ‘Leave it on.’ The eyes pleading with me. ‘Don’t turn the light off again, Michael.’
    ‘Hush, Mutti, I’m not going to turn the light off.’
    A small smile on the ravaged face as though she could read my mind: soon, now, the light will go out anyway.
    ‘Michael.’
    ‘I’m here, Mother.’
    ‘Promise me – go to see . . .’ A racking bout of coughing. I was afraid to raise her on the pillows. I waited for the spasm to
     end and wiped the cold sweat from her face.
    ‘Promise me . . .’
    ‘Please, Mutti, rest yourself.’
    ‘Promise me you’ll go to see him.’ The fingers tighter now, the faded blue eyes darkening.
    ‘Who, Mutti? See who?’
    ‘Pastor Bruck.’ I had to strain to catch her words. ‘Pastor Bruck in Bad Saarow. Promise me you’ll go . . .’
    ‘I promise, Mutti, now rest, just rest.’
    ‘He’ll tell you . . .’ Was that a smile or a grimace on her face? ‘He’ll tell you about your father . . .’ The words in a rush now,
     a race against the dying light. ‘I should have told you when it was safe – after the Wall – Pastor Bruck will tell you about
     your father . . . about Roland . . .’
    The rattle then, the rattle of death. I had read of it in novels but the long, shuddering roll of it frightened me. A long,
     gasping noise from her, a last gentler trembling of the cancer-ridden body. Her head turned slightly, her mouth dribbled on
     the pillows; the stain stared back at me like a question mark.
    My father was a name on my birth certificate: Johannes Vos, dead before I was born. I’d never suffered from any curiosity
     about my unknown father and my mother had always deflected or rebuffed the few half-hearted questions I had ventured about
     him. So who the hell was Roland – and who was Pastor Bruck?
    I don’t know how long it was before the nurse arrived: I stirred to feel her hand on mine, releasing my fingers from my mother’s
     frozen grasp. Frau Mertens came in then; I watched her blessherself, throw the window open wide and cover the dressing-table mirror with a towel.
    Go for a walk, Frau Mertens told me, or maybe I could make some tea. She was gentle about it, ushering me out of the bedroom.
     From behind the closed door I could hear the soft murmur of their voices, as they set about washing my mother’s body.

Three
    Nothing is written in the pages of my small pocket diary for the weeks after my mother’s death. Days, weeks, drifted by; a
     continuum without markers, undivided by the mundane, trivial appointments and outings that mark our lives. I slept, I ate,
     I walked. Life became existence. A beer, a coffee, a nap, a newspaper – nothing mattered, everything the same. Those pages
     of my diary are as blank as my mind: nothing happened, nothing recorded. As if it were I and not my mother who had exited
     life.
    I let Frau Mertens take charge of the funeral. My widowed neighbour seemed pleased to take on the business; I saw no reason
     to interfere.
    In the cemetery overlooking the River Havel, Steffi stood beside me at the graveside and whispered, ‘I never knew your mother
     was a Catholic.’
    I looked at the priest, sprinkling holy water from a brass urn on to the coffin. I shrugged. The service was Frau Mertens’
     idea; her