When I came in, her eyes did not light up as usual.
She tried to fake it, a little, but her smile was all wrong.
I wasn’t in good form either. I was cranky from spending too much time indoors wedding-planning, while the sun shone tauntingly outside.
As so often happens, small frustrations had given birth to a greater sadness.
Earlier that week, Frau B’s telephone had stopped working. The man who came to fix it asked her to dial a number she knew by heart. The only one that came to mind was that of an acquaintance she’d lost touch with. She got through to the answering machine and didn’t know what to say.
It was humiliating.
She couldn’t call me. My mobile number is too long for her to remember, let alone to dial.
We’ve tried before.
Frau B keys in the digits too slowly and gets cut off mid-way through by a dial tone.
We’ve resigned ourselves to this fact, and she knows she can rely on me to get in touch instead.
But there aren’t many others she can call.
“Everyone I knew is dead,” Frau B said, as if she had to justify it. “If I didn’t have you….”
She trailed off.
We both needed escapism, I decided, and reached to the shelf for a book.
It’s another one full of stories about early twentieth century Berlin.
Usually, the descriptions of the streets, cafes and institutions that defined the era prompt delighted interruptions from Frau B.
“My father would take me to that funfair!” she will say. Or, “Oh yes, that café! Full of artists! We’d only ever pass by and look through the window.”
Today though, I got through several pages uninterrupted.
A bad sign.
She was listening though, so I continued.
Finally, I got to a passage about death masks.
“Totenmasken!” she said suddenly. “I remember seeing some in Vienna!”
“You did?” I asked, a little startled. “When were you there?”
A long time ago. But she remembers everything. The city’s main museum is home to the death masks of Beethoven, Mahler and Klimt.
Frau B can still see them all. And as she began to speak, a cloud began to lift.
She has a cartographic mind, with a remarkable ability to mentally navigate the places she used to know.
One of the best presents I ever got her was a laminated map of the world.
She looks at it through her magnifying glass, while I hover over her.
“That’s Ireland,” I’ll say. “It’s shaped like a teddy bear.” Then, drawing my finger all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, I’ll land somewhere in America and say: “And that’s where my sister lives.”
Frau B’s life now takes place within a room of 20 square meters. Day-to-day, her greatest sojourn is down the corridor to the dining hall. Sometimes, if she is feeling energised, she will wheel herself all the way to the terrace.
She is meticulous in her use of space. Order, for her, has become synonymous with control.
In the last year or two, she has begun hiding things.
She squeezes bars of chocolate into the bottom of her sock drawer and tucks brooches into a box that slides behind the books lining her shelf. She slips banknotes beneath the insoles of her shoes.
She says she is scared of things being stolen.
They never are. Sometimes I think her fear is more about losing herself.
Institutionalised and immobile, the world is ever closing in.
But deep inside her, preserved with care: a rich tapestry woven from the people she once knew and loved, the places she explored, the personal tragedies she endured and the triumphs she savours.
A wealth of memories a death mask can bring back to life.
Kate Ferguson 