Helena wakes once, before Joachim, from a vivid dream she forgets immediately, but feels sure contained one of her lost memories. She wakes again when he gets up for work, and then a last time after he’s left. In his absence, she feels a strange, heavy guilt that it takes her a moment to place.
Then she recalls Doro’s visit, and the fact that she’ll return today. What will she say when Doro asks what Joachim said? That she didn’t ask him? In a way, she did. She found out that either she wasn’t cheating on him, or he didn’t know she was. It must be the latter, since Doro set up that date. She still can’t think what would’ve prompted her to do something so against her nature. She must’ve been absolutely miserable, or else Joachim must’ve done something so horrible she felt driven to it. Or was that simply the person she’d become over the years, a change in her character she can no longer remember?
He said they’d separated over nothing. But how could that be? Of course, they fought a lot, and they’d been fighting for a long time. Some before they were married, and more after. But there must at least have been one last fight, one specific point in time when the decision was made. Why doesn’t he want to tell her about it? Is he protecting himself, or her?
While she brushes her teeth, she tries to imagine what her right leg looks like under the cast. Not much longer until she can walk without crutches. It’s strange that such an obvious physical injury could heal faster than whatever’s going on in her brain. She’s gotten so used to thinking of it all as one big package that it’s hard to believe it won’t all be over at once.
She rinses her mouth and washes her face. When it is over, whatever secrets Joachim is keeping from her, or whatever she kept from him, won’t matter anymore. At least, they won’t be secrets from her.
It’s late and Doro could be here soon, so she sits down on the bed to dress, the clothes catching in awkward bunches on her casts. Afterward, she goes back into the bathroom to wrench a comb through her tangled hair—she must’ve moved a lot in her sleep—and tries to trick her foggy mind into remembering either her last dream this morning, or the person she was just before she stepped in front of a truck.
So she had an affair. Or many. She had a double life. A second home Joachim knew nothing about. She can’t picture that now because she’s just thinking of the facts. What she needs is to remember how she felt at the time. Hurt, maybe. Or angry? She and Joachim were fighting. Maybe she felt like he didn’t love her anymore, that it was just a matter of time until he left her. She could’ve been looking for someone to comfort her. Or did she want to hurt him? But then she wouldn’t have kept the whole thing secret.
The doorbell interrupts her thoughts, and she puts her half-combed hair into a sloppy bun before buzzing Doro in. Because of course it’s Doro. Who else could it be?
“Are you all right?” Doro asks as soon as Helena opens the door. Her eyes move around the room, searching for other occupants.
“Same as yesterday. Come in.”
Doro pours two cups from the pot of coffee Joachim left, and they sit next to each other on the sofa again. Helena watches Doro and waits for a cue. She notices a dimple in the woman’s chin, a strange feature in the rather thin lower part of her face. Out of place somehow, until the theme is echoed by her round cheeks. Helena feels that she knows this dimple, but of course she might’ve noticed it yesterday. What’s a dimple in some woman’s chin, anyway? That’s not going to answer her questions.
Doro puts milk and sugar into her own coffee, a bit of milk and no sugar into Helena’s. Helena watches carefully, waiting for her to make a mistake, but the coffee is the exact shade of brown she makes for herself every day. She finds herself wondering whether Joachim knows her that well. But he’s usually at work, not there to prepare the individual cup. It’s strange to think of Joachim with Doro here, just as it was strange to think of Doro last night. They exist in two different realities. She might as well start demanding an explanation from Joachim for something someone said to her in a dream. But this is really happening.
“I was worried about you,” Doro says. “After I left, I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing, leaving you here by yourself.”
“But I was fine and I wasn’t by myself. Joachim came home a little while later.”
Doro blows on her coffee, puts down her cup and slicks back an invisible wisp of hair from the top of her ponytail. “That’s actually what I was worried about. I didn’t know what might happen once you confronted him.”
“Oh.” Helena lifts her cup with both hands to drink. She knows Doro’s words aren’t meant as an accusation, but still. She should’ve confronted him. Or been honest, whatever you want to call it. She should’ve said, Something funny’s going on here. Why do I have two apartments and why has my friend never heard of you? Why didn’t she? No one could blame her now, whatever she did before. No one could hold things against her that she can’t remember doing.
Doro waits another moment, then asks, “Well, what did he say? When you confronted him?”
“Not much really.” Helena knows what the next question will be before she hears it.
“You did confront him, didn’t you? You did ask for an explanation?”
“Not exactly. I asked whether he’d ever thought I was seeing other men. He said he never had. I didn’t mention this other apartment you were talking about.” The way Doro looks at her with her lips slightly parted makes her feel the need to justify herself. “What could I confront him about? I don’t even know what’s going on. Maybe I’m the villain, here. Did you think of that? This could be a case of me going behind his back and him not knowing a thing about it.”
“I thought of that, but I don’t think that’s it. You had a full social life and you were always having guests over, sometimes until late at night. You have a bed in your apartment; I assume you slept in it. You’ve never mentioned this neighborhood to me. And this business about a flood is a little too convenient. Ask your neighbors upstairs whether a pipe burst.”
Helena feels the blood draining out of her, leaving her cold and immobile. Everything Doro is saying makes sense. Hasn’t she had thoughts like these at the back of her mind? Not about the other apartment, of course, but the flood, the way it seems only to have affected her things… and now this story about her things being in the cellar. Are they both lies, or was the flood story meant to cover for moving her things because she was moving out? But why moving out? She already had another apartment. And if that’s not the revelation that led to their separation, then what is?
“Are you all right?” Doro asks again.
“Just a little dizzy. I haven’t eaten yet.”
She lets Doro make her toast and bring it to the table, lets herself be treated like more of an invalid than she really is. When she’s finished eating, Doro says, “I have an idea.”
Another shudder passes over Helena. She knows she isn’t going to like it. But she does her best to smile. Doro is helping her. You can tell a good medicine by its bad taste.
“Let’s go to the registry office,” Doro continues. “Your address must be on file there. We can find out how long you’ve had that other apartment.”
She’s calling a cab before Helena can refuse.
• • •
It’s easier than Helena expected to get down the stairs, now that Doro’s here to carry her crutches and take her by one arm.
She doesn’t quite see the point of this outing. Knowing how long she’s had this apartment won’t tell her anything. She wants to know why she rented it, not when. And they won’t have that kind of information on file. Maybe Doro just wants to prove that she’s been telling the truth. Not that Helena doesn’t believe her. Not that she’s quite able to.
The sight of the registry office, located in a sprawling complex of familiar brick buildings, reassures Helena. She’s been here a thousand times for some errand or other—replacing a lost driver’s license, doing the paperwork for her marriage, registering at Joachim’s address. It’s not the kind of place where strange revelations are made.
Doro helps Helena up the steps and leaves her in one of the chairs along the corridor while she draws a number. They’re lucky; the wait isn’t very long. Most people are at work by now.
“Tell me about yourself,” Helena says when Doro sits down next to her.
“What?”
“I don’t remember anything about you. Here you are, doing all these things for me, and I feel like you’re a stranger.”
“But Hel, that’ll pass—”
“Still.”
Doro puts her chin on one hand and considers. “Well, I’m from Schwerin originally. I studied some in Berlin, then later in London, then I worked in Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Berlin. I started at CuttingEdge Medien about a year and a half before you. I do mostly motion graphics and some 2D design with you. I have a husband, Georg, whom you’ve met, and we have three children and two rabbits. You wouldn’t have met the rabbits, I guess, because they’re always in the kids’ rooms.” She pauses and looks at Helena to see whether she’s given the right answer, or at least said enough.
“Okay,” Helena says. Is it enough? She still doesn’t remember any of it. Will that change when she sees the specialist, or will she never get back those years? She and Doro will have to become friends all over again. Maybe they won’t really be friends, but only feel obligated to pretend, because of the past. When, all the time, she won’t feel any closer to Doro than to any other random stranger. But that’s not fair. Doro’s being so nice to her. They’ll be real friends again, sooner or later. She tries to get a hold of the things Doro said, to picture her husband, children, and rabbits, to recall being seated at a crowded family dinner table. But she catches herself imagining it and trying to call that a memory.
She remembers other friends, Susi and Thomas, Magdalena, Sara, Sepp… These and many others are clear in her memory. When did she last see them? Are they still friends? Why hasn’t she heard from them? You’d think they’d come by and see how she was doing. But maybe they don’t know about the accident. Maybe they’ve fallen out of touch. That can happen with old friends. Just because they were close a few years ago doesn’t mean they are now.
And then Doro is pulling her to her feet and pointing at the screen where her number is flashing, helping her down the hall to desk number 23.
The bureaucrat has a sour look on his face as the door opens, which softens when he sees Helena’s crutches. He starts to get up, then settles into his chair again, rubbing his thick gray mustache as Doro helps Helena into one of the two seats across from his desk. How different this is, Helena thinks, from sitting in these two seats with Joachim, giddily telling that woman we wanted to get married.
“We’d like a copy of her registry record,” Doro says.
“ID?”
Helena fumbles in her wallet and hands the man her ID. It occurs to her that she still doesn’t have the keys to the apartment, that she won’t be able to get back in later. What will she tell Joachim? But what nonsense. He probably already knows more than she does.
“Bachlein, Bachlein…” The man searches for the file on his clunky computer.
Helena looks over at Doro, who gives her a reassuring smile. What is there to worry about here? Since there’s no outcome that will answer her questions, there’s neither anything to worry about, nor to hope for.
“Here we are,” the man says as the oversized printer next to his desk clatters into motion. He hands Helena a piece of paper and wishes them a good day. Then, remembering something, he asks to see her ID again.
Helena hands it to him without looking up from the piece of paper. There it is, her registered address for the past two-and-a-half years. She can’t believe it. But she has to. It’s printed in clear black ink, leaving nothing open to interpretation. What could’ve possessed her to register there? And how could she have kept it from Joachim?
“Excuse me,” she says, just as the man starts to say something to her. They both stop and then start talking at once again. Finally, he waits for her to continue. “Is this the only address I’m registered at?”
“It is. If you want I can also give you a list of your former addresses, but then, you already know those, don’t you?” Helena stares at him without responding. “While you’re here, I’m just going to put a new address sticker on your ID. It’s still got your old address for some reason.”
Helena watches, unable to move or speak, as he pastes a sticker with an unfamiliar address over her ID. When she doesn’t reach to take it from him, he sets it on the desk, and Doro tucks it into Helena’s wallet.
“Thank you,” she says for Helena, and takes her friend by one arm, not because Helena can’t walk on her own, but because she doesn’t seem to know it’s time to leave.
• • •
Outside the registry office, Helena leans against the railing of the staircase and tries to regain her balance. She looks down at the paper, up at the green and gray branches cutting across the hazy blue sky, and down at the paper again.
She knew that she had this apartment, that she’d had it for a while. So what’s the big deal? She already believed Doro or she wouldn’t have come here in the first place. Still, it’s somehow more than she expected. How could she have had the life this paper says she did for over two years, and have no idea about it? The strangest thing is that she’s only registered at this address. What would make her cancel her registration at her and Joachim’s apartment? Does he know? He hasn’t said a word about this apartment. And it’s not like the registry office would call him up and say: By the way, your wife just told us she doesn’t live with you anymore. But Doro said it would’ve been impossible for him not to know.
“Are you okay, Hel?”
What a question. “Sure,” she says. “I’m just a little bit confused.”
“Me, too.” Doro steps out of the way of a group of foreign students paging through photocopied documents, then offers Helena her arm to help her down the stairs.
“And now?” Helena asks when they’ve reached the bottom.
“I think we should take a look at your apartment.”