The Sinner Read Online Free PDF Page B

tidy side of the bed is a woman wearing an overcoat
and holding a baby in her arms. The baby is wrapped in a blanket.
I'm supposed to look at her. She's my sister Magdalena. I have a
new sister, I've been told, and we're going to look at her. But all I
see is the woman in the overcoat.
    The woman is a total stranger to me. She's my mother, whom I
haven't seen for ages. Six months - a long time to a small child. My
memory doesn't go back that far. And now I'm supposed to remain
with this woman, who only has eyes for the bundle in the blanket.
    Her face frightens me. It's hard, grey and forbidding. At last she
looks at me. Her voice sounds the way she looks. She says: "The
Lord has not forgiven our sins."

    Then she folds back the blanket, and I see a tiny, blue face. "He
has put us to the test," she goes on. "We must pass that test. We
shall do what He expects of us."
    I don't believe I could have registered those words at the time.
They were often told me later on, that's why I still remember them
so well.
    I want to go. The woman's odd voice, the tiny, blue face in the
blanket - I want no part of them. I tug again at the hand holding
mine and start crying. Somebody picks me up and hushes me. My
mother! I'm firmly convinced that the woman who takes me in her
arms is my real mother. I cling to her and feel relieved when she
takes me back into the warm.
    I was still very young - only eighteen months. It's easy to work
that out because I was one year old when Magdalena was born at
the hospital in Buchholz, like me. We were both born in the same
month: I on 9 May, and she on 16 May. My sister was a blue baby.
Immediately after her birth she was transferred to the big hospital
at Eppendorf and had an operation on her heart. The doctors
discovered that Magdalena had other things wrong with her. They
did their best for her, of course, but they couldn't put everything
right.
    It was thought at first that she had only a few days to live - a few
weeks at most. The doctors didn't want Mother to take her home,
but Mother refused to leave her on her own, so she stayed on at
Eppendorf. But my sister was still alive after six months, and the
doctors couldn't keep her there indefinitely, so they sent her home
to die.
    I spent those first six months living with the Adigars, our nextdoor neighbours. As a little child I firmly believed that they were my
family - that Grit Adigar was my real mother and had handed me
over to the woman in the overcoat because she wanted to get rid of
me. Grit took me back with her at first but not, alas, for long.
    Although I don't have any detailed recollections of this period,
I've often wished I could remember at least a little about the weeks
and months I spent with Grit and her daughters, Kerstin and
Melanie.

    Grit was still very young. She must then have been in her early
twenties, having had her first child at seventeen and her second at
nineteen. Her husband was seldom at home. Several years older
than her, lie earned a good living at sea. Grit always had plenty of
money and plenty of time for her daughters. She was a cheerful,
uncomplicated person, almost a child herself.
    In later years I often saw her pounce on her daughters and roll
around on the floor with them, tickling them until they squirmed
and giggled so much they could hardly breathe. I believe that she
must have done the same to me in the days when I was in her care;
that I played with Kerstin and Melanie; that Grit took me on her
lap in the evenings and cuddled me the way she cuddled her own
children; that she fed me cake in the afternoons or told me funny
stories. And that she said: "You're a good girl, Cora."
    But those six months are a blank, like the few more weeks I spent
with Grit after Mother returned from the hospital with Magdalena.
All that has lodged in my mind is a sense of having been shunted
aside - cast out and expelled from Paradise. For the only licensed
inmates of Paradise