TE22 Potpourri

You’re Not Dying

Kathrin Schmidt

finished his shift, he’d take her out with him. She was happy.

‘A-fa-sia.’

Of course, nothing came of it. Instead he came in the morning and said goodbye. Only with a slight wink did he let her know the attempt had failed. To hell with it. He can hardly risk his job and his life to get her out of here. * * * When the blonde woman approaches, she gets agitated. The blonde woman’s always fiddling about with the monitors and is definitely one of the ones controlling her. She falls asleep whenever the blonde hangs those bags on the hook above her head. She doesn’t want to sleep, but that’s what happens. The blonde hangs so many of them above her, one after the other. * * * Sometimes, whenshe’sawake, the troopof mencomes by. Every time, at least one of them asks whether she can hear him. And each time she’s too stubborn to answer. After all, she wasn’t born in 1972 and doesn’t live in Hückelhoven. If they hadn’t mixed her up with someone else then she might’ve had the chance to get out of here sooner. There’s no point opening her mouth and making the effort: they wouldn’t believe it anyway. * * * 52

She knows the word, of course. But what does it mean? Why won’t it come to her? She knows it from somewhere. When the man in the blue coat said it, she recognised it straight away. After 6pm, she wants to say out loud. Yes, afasia could be their way of saying after 6pm! Night-time starts here around six. No doubt they’ll all be herded together and arranged in a spiral, once they’ve been knocked unconscious by the bag full of liquid. They watch from outside through a glass screen to see who dies. She’s become so calm about it. If she’s to die tonight, then fine, she won’t resist it. Why would she? She’s already discovered their secret plan anyway: they make little blocks out of people and stick them in the landscape.

After six o’clock, then.

She says her goodbyes. Her time has come. * * *

Hang on – is she still alive, then? It’s dark. In summer it’s only dark during the night, not in the morning or evening. So it’s night-time. Why is she not lying in the big spiral with the others? Maybe she’s unexpectedly been the only one to survive again? If the campaign started at six it could have been over around nine, and now they’ve brought her back. Something is itching like mad on her head and she wants to 53