TE22 Potpourri

You’re Not Dying

Kathrin Schmidt

* * *

voice! Now she really does want to open her eyes. What’s she doing in her parents’ kitchen, where they’re clattering cutlery and checking the temperature of their hands and feet, and she can’t open her eyes? * * * She said that to her daughter in English. Didn’t she? She’s able to open one eye, and does so. Her girl is fourteen, and set off on a language exchange to England today. Why is she back already? She’s crying. For some reason she’s crying. That must be why she’d wanted to speak English, to cheer her daughter up. It doesn’t seem to be working. Something’s upsetting the girl. But what? Who can she ask? Her gaze wanders. There! Next to her daughter is her husband. ‘ My husband ,’ she says in English. Hopefully that’ll make them all laugh... ‘Oh, where do you come from? From London?’

‘…date of birth is 3/12/1972, lives in Hückelhoven…’

Stop! That’s not her! Why can’t she shout it out loud like she wants to? She has to, damn it! ‘All right, don’t get yourself in a tizzy, we’ll be with you in a minute!’ Who said that? That young man there? She thinks she might be able toopen both eyes at the same time. It’s a bit of a struggle – there seems to be something on her eyelids. The young man smiles, but that’s hardly reassuring. That’s not her, though! She’s fourteen years older, and doesn’t live in Hückelhoven! Why can’t she get any further with the sentence? Now the young man is telling theothermen in blue coats that since she’s been waking up again on and off, it’s almost as if she’s trying to speak English. The men laugh. She looks for a woman. There’s one standing behind the men, but she seems to be busy with something. ‘ I don’t… I don’t… ’

Nothing.

At least the man is smiling. The more she looks at him, the stranger his smile looks, hanging there as if tethered between his cheekbones like a Salzgurke.

‘ Salt cucumber ,’ she says.

Does that even exist in English?

One of the men leans over her.

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