TE22 Potpourri

You’re Not Dying

Kathrin Schmidt

Or rather kleine Häwelfrau . It’s nice. She could do it forever.

‘Can you hear me?’

She’s not going to tell himwhether she can hear himor not. He can bellow away as much he wants.

The topof her skull is being takenoff. A robot carefully removes a blood-red piece of flesh. Something needs to replace it. So the robot is going to insert a wonderful, light-blue piece of stone. What was the stone called again? It won’t come to her. Her daughter has a bit of stone like it, and has declared it a fake because of the colour. Aha, this must be something different, then: the robot won’t be wanting to stuff anything fake into her head! When the piece of stone is in, everything that’s been unpleasantly bright up to now gets darker again. A brief moment of twilight. She can just see a long, thin, flexible plastic tube above her. Where’s it going, and where does it come from? Shame she can’t move her head and follow it along. Dark browny-red liquid is moving along inside it like rolling teardrops. * * * For some time now, a noisy young woman has been busying herself around her, talking incessantly. Who’s she got so much to say to? Is there someone else there? She can’t turn her head, but yes, there is…Nowshe really needs toopen her eyes because something is changing, she’s being brought upright, lifted, sat down. She starts to feel sick. It must be something funny she’s eaten.

Eyes tight shut.

* * * She knows that voice. It’s Inga. She seems to have brought someone with her. ‘Come on in!’ says a deep voice, but then there’s the sound of falling over, followed by a gloating laugh. Why can’t she just open her eyes! She has to work out what just happened. Her friend Inga wanted to visit her and was encouraged tocome in, but theremust beadeeppiton theother side of the door. They’ve fallen into it. She becomes agitated. Is she in fact lying down? Why? She tries in vain to lift her arms, legs or head. That’s making her even more agitated now, she realises. What’s happened to her friend, whose voice she heard so clearly? Ah, there she is again, unsurprisingly upset. It can’t have been easy getting out of the pit, then? ‘Come on in!’ says the deep voice. After a while, though, she starts to wonder: where has Inga got to? Surely she can’t have fallen into the pit again? * * * She’s moving! She’s going forward like the kleine Häwelmann . 44

The torrent of words from the woman comes closer and closer.

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