All of a sudden this man was in the room. Tall, shaven head, with a large nose and a face that looked as exhausted as she felt. Julia had just popped to the bathroom to splash a handful of water in her face and she’d screamed at the mirror. When she returned to the sitting room in these ridiculous disposable slippers, which housekeeping always put beside your bed, and a white dressing gown that Daniel had helped her into, the stranger was waiting for her.
‘Who are you?’ Her heart beat faster, and the pressure of the tears welling behind her eyes grew greater. She automatically assumed the worst. That this man with the sad look was a messenger bringing her the news she wouldn’t be able to cope with.
‘My name is Martin Schwartz,’ he said in German with a slight Berlin accent. In normal circumstances she would have asked him which district he came from and whether they might be neighbours.
‘Do you work here? Are you looking for my child? What news have you got? You are looking for Lisa, aren’t you? Can you help me?’
She heard herself babble, without commas or full stops, probably because she wanted to prevent Martin Schwartz from speaking and telling her that they’d found something.
A video of her jumping, an item of clothing in the ocean.
She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dressing gown and noticed that the exhausted-looking man was wearing neither shoes nor socks. Curiously the sight of this came as some relief; they certainly wouldn’t send a barefooted messenger to announce that her daughter was no longer alive.
Or would they?
‘Who are you?’ she asked again, anxiously.
‘Someone who knows exactly how you’re feeling right now.’
He passed her a tissue.
‘I doubt that,’ she said feebly, with an introverted voice. Fresh tears filled her eyes and she turned to the terrace door, not because she was embarrassed of crying in front of a stranger, but because she couldn’t stand that damn sympathy in his eyes any more. In the reflection of the dark glass she saw his lips move.
‘You feel as if every single one of your thoughts has been dipped in syrup and candied with tiny pieces of broken glass,’ she heard him say. ‘And the more intensely you think of your child, the more these thoughts scour the open wound in your heart. At the same time there are at least two voices screaming inside your head. One is demanding to know why you weren’t there when your daughter needed help, why you failed to see the signs. The other is asking reproachfully what right you think you have to sit around here while the thing that gives your life meaning has vanished into thin air. But this cacophony inside your head together with my voice and everything around you – it sounds muffled and hazy as if you’re listening to it from behind a closed door. And as the worry for your daughter weighs more heavily, as heavy as all the weights in this world put together, plus an extra two thousand kilograms, a ring is circling your vital organs, throttling your lungs, squashing your stomach, thwarting your heart; and all you feel is that you’ll never be able to laugh, dance, live again, no, you’re certain that it will never be good again, and that everything which once mattered, such as a sunrise after a party, the last sentence of a good book, the smell of freshly mown grass just before a summer storm, that none of this will have the slightest meaning any more, which is why you’re already thinking what might be the best way to switch off the broken-glass thoughts and the tinnitus voices in your head should this suspicion ever become terrible certainty. Am I right? Does that in any way reflect your emotional state, Frau Stiller?’
She turned around, captivated by his monologue. And by the truth of his words.
‘How…?’
Seeing his tear-stained face, she didn’t need to formulate her question.
‘You’ve lost someone too,’ she stated.
‘Five years ago,’ he said bluntly, which she could have slapped him for, as he’d just spelled out that the unbearable situation she was in could last for years!
I couldn’t even bear it for a day, she thought, and the next thought that entered her mind was that Martin Schwartz hadn’t been able to bear it either. He was standing before her, talking, breathing, weeping, but no longer living.
She closed her eyes and sobbed. In a film this would have been the moment when she cried on the shoulder of the stranger. In real life it was the moment when the slightest contact would have made her thrash around like a rabid dog.
‘If only we hadn’t got on this ship,’ she groaned.
If only I’d taken Tom’s call five minutes earlier.
‘It’s the perfect place for a suicide. Daniel said that himself.’
‘Daniel? Do you know the captain personally?’ Martin looked at her sceptically.
‘Yes, he’s Lisa’s godfather. He invited her.’
‘Who did I invite?’
They both turned to the door, which must have opened silently. Daniel took a raincoat from the wardrobe in the corridor.
‘You invited Lisa. On this trip.’
The captain shook his head in confusion. ‘What gives you that idea?’
Julia stared at him as if he were an alien. ‘Just stop this now – you gave her the bloody trip as a birthday present.’
‘No, Julia. You’re mistaken.’
‘I’m mistaken? What’s got into you, Daniel? We telephoned on her birthday. I even thanked you.’
In her turmoil she could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. Daniel was still shaking his head, but he looked thoughtful.
‘For the upgrade, I thought, yes. I moved you up from an inner cabin to two balcony cabins when I saw the booking. But that wasn’t made by me; it was done normally, over the internet. In fact I recall being surprised you hadn’t got in touch earlier.’
‘Does that mean…’
She bit her lower lip.
‘That Lisa lied to you,’ Bonhoeffer said.
‘Worse,’ Martin chipped in from the side. He first looked Daniel in the eye, then at her, before saying. ‘It means your daughter planned all this long ago.’