TE22 Potpourri

You’re Not Dying

Kathrin Schmidt

* * * No, she doesn’t like the blondewoman. And the blondewoman doesn’t likeher. She likes theyoung girl whonever stops talking. She has dark hair. When she comes, the fear goes away. With the blonde woman, it comes back. Coming and probably. Or thereabouts. going. Between the blonde woman and the dark- haired girl there’s also a man. A moment ago he was wiping up her poo. That was embarrassing. She has no idea what’s going on down there. What exactly is going down there? Ah, here comes the man again. He pulls the bedcovers to one side and her legs apart. Stop, you can’t do that! Stop! But he smiles, like they all smile here, these criminals. Is he washing her? He’s washing her. It’s pleasant actually, she should stop resisting. He hasn’t noticed her resistance anyway, has he? So she lets herself be washed. Why they don’t let her do it herself, she’d rather not know in too much detail. No doubt they want clean corpses for the coming night. Not shitty blood dolls like her. She’s bleeding, you see. Her nappieswere full of blood. Nothing hurts, though. It can’t be that bad. What’s the date anyway? No idea. Her daughter has recently gone off on her language trip, though. That was the tenth of July. And yet she was back again on the same day! When she thinks it over, she can’t understand it. Are we on the fifteenth or sixteenth of July? Yes. Could it be her period? She’s going round in circles. When was her last period? She can remember how her father looked thirty-five years ago, but not when she had her last period.

Now the man’s putting a new nappy on her.

She wants to sleep.

* * * More hustle and bustle in the night, above and below: beds creaking, trolleys trolleying – they must really have been struggling to deal with the removal of all the bodies. She now knowsjustwhattheydowithpeople: theyextractall themoisture from them with unimaginable heat while simultaneously driving an electric current through their bodies, so they’re left with a dry, wrinkled little block. She’s seen blocks like that before, someone had built a wall out of them somewhere. Maybe they even build houses out of them! Has she resigned herself to her fate? She was tense when she herself was lying in the dryer. The man operating it said she seemed to be too fat, it wouldn’t work, so he turned it off and brought her back. * * * She’sdefinitelyscared, but it isn’tmakinghersad. Thatsurprises her. It’s just the way of things, that you become aware of almost everything when you’re nearing the end. Something still wells up inside her but it’s getting less and less. Last night she’d been hopeful of clearing off out of here. The young bum-wiper had sat next to her. Somehow he’d understood that she doesn’t want to die. He gave her to believe that during the night he’d hide her in a store cupboard, and in the morning, when he’d 51

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