Brother

54 Jane

It is sad to say this, but I do see my brother now, as never before, as an ageing man. His wife knows, even better than me. The change, in the past three months, since they returned from Berlin, has been so worrying. Finished the laughter, the jokes, the amiable flirtation: he’s now behaving like a much older man. 

What has changed him? Sarah says that his illness has progressed rapidly, overwhelming him at times, in a hopeless daytime melancholy. Perhaps I never realised how serious this illness was for him, as I always played his game, around this absurd story of his lost sweetheart. How I now regret all that nonsense, on the island of Chi and the lady in the cloak.  

Trance

In Berlin, he lived in a trance, in a fictional world of his own that followed vaguely his reality. He weaved the story of the “Coven”, even using poor Gabrielle as one of the main characters in the plot. When we visited the Bundestag, he pointed out to Sarah the special uniforms and badges the official staff wore. At the time she did not see the significance of it, and thought it was only her husband’s imagination at work, the writer in action, gathering odd facts and details, to use later in his story. Since then, he has become a character in his own novel. I find it frightening. Is he playing the part of the doomed lover?

Towards me, he is still the older, protective, loving, brother. His voice is deeper, his gestures slower. On the telephone, he sounds far away. Face to face, he is not quite present, almost fading. Sarah wants Helga, his therapist, to prescribe him a tougher treatment. Apparently Helga’s resisting this, saying that the risks of serious damage to Julian’s persona are real. She favours patience, a lot of rest, and no dramatic change.

Only Sarah

As his sister, I tend to agree with Helga. But who knows him best? I was a baby when he left the family home, and I never caught up with that period of his life, as a young man, until, many years later, he reappeared, so completely changed, our mother thought. Then, the young girl I was, saw him as her hero. The strong brother, the one who knew about all the things I was curious about, and not a little frightened of. The one who would protect me as I took my first timid steps into this wild world. I admired him, but I did not know him, and still don’t. Only Sarah knows her husband.

Alone

55 Julian

The room is very quiet, and I must be alone here, or at least, I cannot see anyone else within the view I have. There is a window, through it I can see colours of autumn: rusty and yellow leaves that belong to a birch standing alongside the wall of the building. But I cannot see the ground. Maybe this room is on a first or second floor.

I am lying flat on my back, and I appear to be wired to various instruments. I have no idea where I am, why I am there, or how and when I got in. After a few minutes of reflection I try to move my right hand: but it stays inert of the light sheet which seems to cover my body. Am I dreaming? The bit of sky I can see out of the window seems real enough: a pale blue canvas with small white clouds, and those appear to be moving with the wind. 

Something – someone? – is moving in the room. Then there is a voice: “How are you feeling, Julian?” I know this voice, but cannot name the person it belongs to. 

“You have been asleep for sometime,” the voice resumes, “it will take an hour or so for you to feel okay again, aware of what is going on. For now I expect you cannot do much talking…”

Where

The voice is correct: I cannot speak. I cannot even think of how to speak. I cannot see the person who’s speaking either. But then I don’t know how to move my head. “Everything is fine, please don’t worry, you must feel strange, and you probably don’t know what you’re doing here, but for now it does not matter.” So I think, I must wait, I cannot rush anything, I must take this, whatever “this” is, a step at a time. 

I close my eyes. Slowly the mist begins to lift. A name comes to my mind, associated with the voice: Helga. The name is there, floating in my mind, but it does not tell me who Helga is, or was, or will be. In the room there is a faint scent. A scent which has a name also: Sarah. Where is Sarah? I know who Sarah is: she’s my wife. Probably Sarah knows what I am doing here; and maybe that Helga – whoever she is – might know too, and furthermore knows where Sarah is?

Images invade my mind, as through clouds, images that say: Berlin. Am I in Berlin? I was, we were, but we have come back, Sarah and me, I am pretty sure of that. “Take your time, Julian,” says the Helga voice. “You are not in danger, and soon, your wife Sarah will be here.” So the connection is there: that Helga knows Sarah.

Corridor

I close my eyes again, and start drifting back, somewhere. In the dark corridor where I seem to be floating, I hear footsteps, light footsteps. Those footsteps are familiar, although I couldn’t say why, nor whom they might belong to. A lighter silhouette is moving towards me, imprecise, surrounded by a sort of halo. Am I dying? Or am I dead already?

All of a sudden, I know. I know what I am doing here, or, at least, along this corridor: I am due to meet Melissa, of course… But who is Melissa? I open my eyes, I am now in total darkness, and I am somehow convinced, on my own. Then, slowly, the room – if I am in a room at all – becomes lit by a feeble sparkle of day light. Is it morning?

A voice, that is not Helga’s, says: “Julian’s popped up again, are you sure this is okay?” I know it is Sarah speaking, but I cannot see her.

Smile

56 Sarah

I went to see Julian everyday, all the time he was an in-patient at Helga’s clinic. For a long time he was deep in his reverie, almost totally absent, other than physically, and, even then, I sometimes wondered if it was really him. 

One morning he recognised me, and tried to smile. Helga explained that the partial paralysis of his movements was a side-effect of the treatment, and that he would recover quickly. At the beginning I thought I’d made a terrible mistake by convincing him to follow this course, I feared he would not, ever, recover. 

Helga and Gabrielle were constantly reassuring me. They said there was nothing untested in the treatment Julian was following. It was state-of-the-art, not experimentation. I wanted to believe them. 

After several weeks my husband started talking again, reminiscing some pleasant holidays we had together, talking books, asking me about films I wished to go and see, being as his normal self as I had not seen him for a very long time. He was tiring quickly, and after a five or ten minutes conversation, he would suddenly turn silent again, and then fall asleep, eyes wide open. 

A month later we walked in the park together, he wanted to know about Jane, who was to visit him on her return from China, the week after. I was pleased to see him more animated, with colours on his cheeks, and we joked about pumping him up, and him resuming his normal exercising.

When Jane came he seemed to be back to his normal being, as I watched the two of them talking as only two closed siblings can, the private jokes, the little flirting, the memories. The three of us decided to arrange to go to Berlin again soon, as soon as Julian would feel the strength to travel. This time we would take the slow route, by road. Jane said she would take a break, and forget about modelling and fashion. Her brother suggested we set dates and get ready at the next opportunity.

Tremor

Two weeks later, after consultation with Helga, Julian was released to my care. Back to our home he seemed to be happy as a little boy who has found his toys again; he wanted me to take him to bed, straightaway, wanted to cook me a meal, open a bottle of champagne, sit near the fire with me. As Helga had instructed me, I asked him brutally, without waiting, as he was busying himself in the kitchen: “Tell me Julian, did you think of Melissa at all when you were at Helga’s?”

He turned to me, smiling an angel’s smile. “Darling, I know that Melissa was, will probably always be, a tremor of my imagination. Yes, she came to visit my mind a few times. But in truth, we should stop mentioning her, as I intend to forget.” 

My husband’s words filled me with happiness.

Tiergarten

57 Julian

I walk along the Grosse Stern Allee in the Tiergarten; the air is icy, the skies clear. In this city, it is already Christmas, with little markets springing up everywhere, selling Christmas cookies, tinsel, dolls and toys. 

From far away, I see you, walking towards me, tall, smiling, your long legs covered in wool, the high boots, the short leather skirt and jacket: passers-by notice you – how could they not? My heart has frozen, for I know this is not possible, that it must be a mirage. But how could I reject this vision, this vision of overwhelming beauty?

But this, here, is our city; I know I will die here, meeting you like this, lost in a crowd, perhaps you not even noticing me. Why should you? After all, like you, I am a ghost. The difference between us is merely that you are younger, very beautiful, and indifferent to the world; whereas I am older by the day, and ugly, of the ugliness of people who have overstretched their time, and I still hang on.

Near the lake you have stopped, looking at children playing with little boats. Soon the lake will be frozen, and people will come skating on Sundays. Sunlight is playing in your hair, as I look at your beloved face, trying to catch your eyes. But you don’t see me, you resume your walk, and as I follow the magic moves of your body, I know that I should not be here, and that, maybe I am not. Yet, you turn round, and looking straight at me, you smile.

Fleeing

“Julian, it is so nice to see you here, I thought you were fleeing me.” Your voice reaches me loud and clear, yet your lips are not moving, the smile undulating on your face.

And then you are gone. And then I am no longer in the Tiergarten.

“You’re still very hot my darling,” Sarah says to me, and I wonder how long my wife’s been here, watching over my dream. But I take the medication she hands over to me, admiring the perfect beauty of her hand.

Reality

58 Julian

Looking back at the past year I have to ask myself: where have I been, and who am I in reality? On this word, reality, hinges the whole question. As I look out of the window at the January rain falling on the already water-saturated garden, I try to make sense of my failing memories. What comes back to me, in small clouds of sights and sounds, is that what my reality was?

Sarah says “yes, and no”, and I am tempted to call my wife a sophist. But I don’t. I know she’s right, as some of those remembered instants were once real for me, for her husband, the man called Julian, then. Julian walked on Regent Street, he had a phone call, he visited “her” page on Facebook… He went to Brooklyn, to Paris, to Berlin.

He saw  the missiles on the compound, in the dark pine forest, he saw the blond guards on duty at the new Chancellery. He ran with his wife and his sister around the Tempelhof airfield. All that happened, but other fragments may have only existed in his mind – or did they? How do I tell the difference between what happened, and what could have happened? For me, now, I cannot tell.

So, the question who am I? – That question is legitimate. If part of my life is an imaginary story, am I the writer, or am I the story? And who writes that story? Am I a character in someone else’s book? And what’s her name? What is the writer’s name?

There is another question haunting me: was the writer, if that was the way it was, was she human? As she wrote those episodes in Julian’s life, was she looking on his past, or her future? Was she anticipating a life not yet in his, her – reality?

Sarah listens to me, from time to time asking me to retell a scene, a dialogue, as if she was analysing this work: “her” novel. But it is all disjointed, my memories are not contiguous, there are gaps, and many, many inconsistencies. Some characters appear in distorted roles, not their “real” functions, or professions. Take Helga, for example. In my memory she’s “Helga” – and she is not from this world, she’s from a far away galaxy. But Helga is our doctor, she is real, she exists not merely in my reality, but Sarah’s, and our friend Gabrielle’s too.

“It will all make sense finally,” says Sarah, with the smile of patience itself. 

“Yes, but even if it does not, does it matter?” I ask in reply. We hug.

End of Book 1 

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