Her eyes are quite without expression as I pick up the towel and begin to dry her.
She is seated on the chair in a bathrobe, hands between her knees, her hair wrapped in the towel. I open the door where the professor kept his chemicals. I find the peroxide amongst a profusion of vessels.
It is more than half full. A simple formula.
H2O2.
_ _ _
Eline’s unruly flaxen plait.
The Kennkarte shows her with what looks like short hair, her head slightly turned. It must be in a bun.
This woman has thin, dark hair. It lies in tufts on the floor. I am unable to cut it straight.
I make some adjustments, the tip of my tongue between my lips as I cut round her ears.
The fringe is a nightmare.
Our eyes are centimetres apart.
There is something egg-like about the whites of her eyes, drawn over into the brown of the iris.
Eline’s eyes: blue with flecks of orange, but eye colour is not a category of the Kennkarte.
Distinguishing features: Slight deformity of right wrist due to Colles fracture, little finger stiff, crooked.
I lift her chin with two fingers.
‘Say after me: My name is Eline Schlosser.’
‘My name is Eline Schlosser.’
French.
‘Schlosser,’ I repeat.
‘Schlosser … My name is Eline Schlosser.’
‘This is my house.’
‘This is my house.’
‘I played in the garden when I was a child.’
‘I played in the garden when I was a child.’
‘I am a refugee from Hamburg.’
‘I am a refugee from Hamburg.’
‘There is no one else left in my family.’
‘There is no one else left in my family.’
‘I am on my own.’
‘I am on my own.’
The strands of her hair react at once to the peroxide that devours all colour.
I pour it onto her scalp, my gloved hands working the pungent chemical into her hair.
When I have finished it is white.
Like fake snow.
Vivid.
I crouch down and look into her eyes.
‘Good girl.’
_ _ _
I am in the basement again. Bottles, jars and tins. The professor’s neat hand on the labels. Letters and small figures. I have forgotten the formula.
Back in the time we strolled at Kronprinzenkoog, the professor with his hands behind his back, in his long coat in the balmy air of summer, nodding his head at the sandy fields: Lime is a catastrophe, I’ve always said so. They use lime, but lime is no good here. And why?
Eline, intentionally, vanished in the dunes.
My first encounter with the professor.
‘Because … it’s …’
He paused, as if he had only just noticed me.
Peering over the top of his spectacles, the bushy eyebrows.
‘You’ve no idea, have you?’
‘No. But I would very much like to know, Herr Professor.’
‘Would you indeed? I’m not sure I believe you.’
‘No, really …’
‘Lime acidifies, kills any soil that is rich in salt. So what would it need instead?’
The formula, I can’t remember the formula. Something with a C in it. I go through the jars and bottles, the combinations mean nothing to me, they could be number plates, anagrams. Or was it an L? P to the power of 4? Come on …
Eline, who had come up behind me and squeezed my hand, patted my palm with her perfect little finger, then fluttered away again.
‘Don’t be so tiresome, Daddy …’
‘Tell your young friend the answer …’
‘CaSO4.2H2O …’
‘And that’s German?’
‘Gypsum …’
‘Gypsum, of course! The farmers should be using gipsum here. Gypsum gives off sulphur …’
And there it is! A big tub of the stuff, CaSO4.2H2O. Enough to put an elephant in plaster.
_ _ _
In the basement corridor is a lime-spattered sledgehammer, propped up against a painter’s bucket, from the lip of which hang two grubby, stiffened cotton gloves. I pick up the hammer, and test it in my hand. It is too heavy, too unwieldy. I take the gloves with me.
The toolbox under the lathe is a mess. It surprises me. I would have thought he would have been tidier, a board on the wall with nails to hold each tool in place, their outlines perhaps traced in pen.
There is a knife, some rusty screws and nails, a screwdriver, a fretsaw, a hammer.
It will have to be the hammer, though the head is loose.
_ _ _
Back in the kitchen.
The dressing case in the cupboard is all but empty.
A bottle of iodine, a rusty pair of scissors. A thin roll of sticking plaster. No hypodermic.
The professor’s old underpants, torn into strips.
‘Put some music on!’ I shout into the living room.
I hear the scratch of the needle, followed by Beethoven, the Diabelli Variations, while I boil the right glove and cut a couple of centimetres from each steaming finger.
‘Who’s the pianist?’
‘… Kempff.’
I place the strips of material from the dressing case next to the gloves, mix the plaster in a tub and slowly turn the glove in the solution.
‘Come out here,’ I shout.
_ _ _
Her wrist trembles as I press her arm down on the kitchen table.
I mark the spot with a drop of iodine between the uppermost joints.
I pick up the hammer.
The trembling, moist, purple spot.
The joint capsule shatters with an audible crunch, her ring and little fingers part.
She stands and stares at her hand, as if she has never seen it before.
Then she screams.
_ _ _
Her wide-open eyes as I manipulate the joint and fix the fracture, winding the strips around her fingers, drawing the cotton glove over her hand. I apply the bandage, smoothing plaster into the material.
‘That’s it …’ I say when it is done.
She takes the glass of apple schnapps I offer.
‘It’s what they call a Colles fracture …’
_ _ _
‘Choose …’ I say with a nod towards the dining table on which I have laid out Eline’s dresses.
I found them upstairs, removed the mothballs, brushed the dust from them. Old, faded summer frocks. I turn round as she steps into a white one with little red dots.
I wind the handle of the professor’s gramophone and pour two apple schnapps into the fat glasses from the cellarette.
She looks nothing like Eline. She is a sallow, emaciated woman with shocking
