‘There are two types of mistakes. Those that make your life worse. And those that end it.’
Nele could hear the lunatic’s words.
Mumbled, muffled. Panting.
She couldn’t see his lips. The man was wearing a training mask over his face. A black, elastic neoprene skin with a white resistance valve over the mouth. Athletes used them to improve performance. And psychopaths to heighten pleasure.
‘I’m not really up for this right now,’ Nele said out loud as if that would change anything. And when the masked man opened up the bolt cutters, she changed the channel.
The Golden Autumn of Folk Music.
Out of the frying pan into the fire. Nothing but crap on the tube, which was hardly a surprise. Who actually chose to sit in front of the TV before the sun had even come up?
Clicking her tongue against her front teeth with impatience, Nele kept zapping until she came to a shopping channel.
Ronny’s Household Aids.
New kitchen gadgets, presented by a man made-up to the eyeballs: vermillion skin, cyan lips and titanium-white teeth. Right now he was screaming to his customers that there were only 223 of the super-duper water carbonators left. Nele really could have used one of those in the last few months. Then she wouldn’t have had to heave the deposit bottles up the stairs on her own. Fourth floor, rear courtyard, Hansastrasse Weissensee. Forty-eight shiny steps. She counted them every day.
Better than a water carbonator, of course, would have been a strong man. Especially now in her ‘condition’ – a full forty pounds heavier than nine months ago.
But she’d already kicked out the man responsible.
‘Whose is it?’ David had asked as soon as she brought up the test result. Not exactly the words you wanted to hear when you came back from the gynaecologist seeking refuge from your raging hormones.
‘I never touched you without a condom. You think I’m suicidal? Fuck, now I’ll have to go get tested too.’
A resounding slap finished off the relationship. Only it wasn’t her who’d struck out in anger, but him. Nele’s head had jerked to the side and she’d lost her balance, toppling to the floor along with her CD tower and giving her boyfriend an easy target.
‘Have you gone nuts?’ he’d asked as he kicked her.
Again and again, in the back, in the head and of course in the tummy, which she’d desperately tried to protect with her elbows, arms and hands.
Successfully. David hadn’t achieved his goal – the embryo wasn’t harmed.
‘You’re not foisting a sick child on me that I’ll have to support for the rest of my life,’ he’d screamed, but then he’d left her alone. ‘I’ll make sure of that.’
Nele felt the spot on her cheekbone where the tip of David’s shoe had narrowly missed her eye and which still throbbed whenever she thought back to the day they separated.
It wasn’t the first time her boyfriend had lost his temper, but it was the first time he’d laid a finger on her.
David was the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing, who in public radiated an irresistible charm. Even Nele’s best friend couldn’t imagine that this witty man acting like such a good catch had another, brutal side to him, which he was careful to display only when he was in private and felt sure of himself.
Nele railed at herself for always getting mixed up with these types. There had been violent outbursts in previous relationships too. Maybe her sassy yet childish ways made men think of her as a girl more than a woman, someone to be possessed rather than just desired. And no doubt her illness was also part of the reason that many regarded her as a victim.
Well, David Kupferfeld is history, Nele thought with satisfaction. And inside me the future’s growing.
Thankfully she’d never given that shithead a key.
After she’d given him the boot, David spent a long time stalking her. He bombarded her with calls and letters urging her to get an abortion, sometimes appealing to reason (‘You barely earn enough as a singer to support yourself!’), sometimes issuing threats (‘Wouldn’t it be a shame if you tripped on the escalator?’).
He kept at it for three months, finally breaking off contact when the legal time limit for abortion had expired. Apart from the wicker basket she’d found outside her front door on Easter Monday. Decorated like a crib. With a pink pillow, and a fluffy blanket covering the dead rat.
As she recalled the sight, Nele shuddered and stuck both hands between the seat cushions of her sofa even though it was anything but cold in the apartment.
Her best friend had advised her to call the police, but what could they do? They were already powerless against the nutjob who’d been slashing the tyres of every third car out on the street for weeks. They were hardly going to post an officer outside her building just because of a dead rat.
What Nele did do was ask building management to have new locks fitted at her own expense, in case David had got a duplicate key made.
Deep down she was grateful to him. Not for the beatings or the dead rodent, but for his horrific insults.
If he’d stayed quiet, she might have listened to the voice of reason. To the argument that it was far too dangerous to give birth to the baby. On the other hand, thanks to early treatment with antiviral drugs, HIV wasn’t even traceable in her blood any more and so the risk of infection was negligible. But it wasn’t zero.
Was it right to run the risk? Could she, at the age of twenty-two and with her illness, shoulder this responsibility? A baby? Without financial security? With a mother who’d died far too young and a father who’d fled abroad?
All good reasons to say no to the child and yes to her singing career. No to swollen feet, fat legs and a ballooning belly and yes to continuing a relationship with an artiste who was as good-looking as he was testy and who earned his living performing magic tricks at children’s birthday parties and corporate functions. (Of course, David Kupferfeld wasn’t his real name, but a pathetic, Germanised homage to his great role model, David Copperfield.)
She checked the time.
Twenty-five minutes till the taxi arrived.
At this time of the morning she’d be at the hospital in less than thirty minutes. One hour too early. Her admission time was seven o’clock, the operation scheduled for three hours later.
It’s not the sensible decision, Nele thought with a smile, stroking her round belly with both hands. But the right one.
She felt this not just because her family doctor, Dr Klopstock, had encouraged her to keep the child. Even without treatment, fewer than one in five foetuses would become infected by HIV. With her good blood levels and all the precautionary measures they’d taken with closely monitored treatment, there was a greater probability of the delivery room being struck by lightning during her caesarean section.
Though that’s probably happened before too.
Nele hadn’t yet come up with a name for the miracle growing inside her. She didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. But she couldn’t care less; she was just looking forward to a new person in her life, whatever sex it might be.
She switched to another channel, and suddenly felt hot again. Hot flashes: here was another thing she couldn’t wait to finally end once she got her body back after the birth. As she pulled her hands out from between the cushions, the fingers of her right hand felt something hard.
Huh?
Was it those earrings she hadn’t seen forever?
When she leaned to the side and felt for the object caught down there, a short, sharp pain hit her.
‘Ow!’
Pulling her index finger back out, Nele was astonished to see the tip bleeding. Her finger throbbed as if she’d been stung by an insect. Shocked, she put it in her mouth and licked off the blood before inspecting the wound. A fine cut, as if made by a sharp knife.
What the hell…?
She stood up to waddle over to the desk, where she kept a first aid box in the top drawer. As she opened it a brochure for vacation homes on Rügen fell out. David had wanted them to go there for Valentine’s Day. Back in another age.
The one thing for which Nele still gave her ex credit for was that, unlike most men, David hadn’t abandoned her on her first date when she told him that she took a cocktail of drugs three times a day to avoid developing AIDS. Nele was sure he’d believed she wasn’t a slut or a junkie. That she hadn’t become infected from a needle or indiscriminate sex with a stranger. But from a butterfly.
It looked beautiful and it was always with her. On the inside of her right upper arm.
The rainbow-coloured butterfly was supposed to be a lifelong souvenir of her wonderful holiday in Thailand. Now, whenever she showered, she couldn’t help thinking of the filthy, unsterilised needle her tattoo had been inked with, and how harshly God sometimes punished youthful recklessness. He was more displeased, apparently, with tipsy teenagers visiting sketchy tattoo parlours in the bar district of Phuket than with ISIS thugs tossing homosexuals from roofs.
Nele wrapped the bandage around her finger and went back to the sofa, where she lifted the cushion.
When she spotted the silvery, shiny object, she groaned in disbelief.
‘How the hell did that get there?’ she whispered. She cautiously pulled the razor blade away from the cushion, stuck there as if by chewing gum. In fact it had been fastened with double-sided tape, deliberately!
Horrified, Nele slumped back onto the sofa. The blade in her hand felt as if she’d just plucked it white-hot from a blazing fire. She trembled and the blade slipped out of her hand, falling onto the cushion.
Nele checked the time again, her heart now racing, and calculated how long till the taxi came.
Another fifteen minutes!
She didn’t want to spend another fifteen seconds alone in her apartment.
She stared at the razor blade, which changed colour as different images flickered across her TV screen.
How the fuck did that get down my sofa? Positioned with precision, as if somebody wanted her to cut her finger.
And what the hell was written on it?
The blade was smeared with her blood but had flipped onto the other side as it landed and now she could make out some very fine handwriting, as if scrawled on with the thinnest of marker pens.
Nele reluctantly picked up the blade again and stroked the letters with her throbbing index finger.
Your blood kills!
Her lips moved subconsciously and mechanically, like a schoolchild reading for the first time.
My blood kills?
She screamed.
Not because she’d realised that David must have got into her apartment somehow.
But because something tore inside her. She felt as if she’d been stung by a scorpion’s tail. In her most delicate spot. It felt like someone had ripped the fibres of thin and sensitive skin with their bare hands.
The brief, but intense pain stopped and she felt wet.
Then came the fear.
It spread like the stain between her legs. The dark sofa cover became darker and… it’s not stopping.
That was her first thought, which she repeated over and over again.
It’s not stopping.
My water broke and I’m leaking.
Her second thought was even worse, because there was every reason to believe it.
Too early.
The baby was coming too early.