The Blind Side of the Heart by Julia Franck Read Free Book Online Page A

fine lace edging of her sister’s nightdress.
    Please, just one word – please.
    No begging.
    Please. Just one word.
    Go on doing that first. Up there, yes, further up.
    Helene followed her sister’s instructions and ran her hand over the skin, up the nightdress and Martha’s shoulders, circling there, then down her arm, over its bare skin, once again over her back under the linen nightdress, then down along Martha’s backbone, vertebra by vertebra, she could clearly feel every one of them under the fabric. Then she stopped.
    One word.
    Star.
    Helene moved her hand very slightly, tracking the points of a star, stopped and demanded: More.
    Though the star of my fate hath declined.
    Helene rewarded Martha. She tickled the back of her neck. Line by line, stanza by stanza, Helene’s hands lured Byron’s words out of her sister’s mouth.
    A horse and cart passed by under their window, and as the cart jolted over the cobblestones something jingled and clinked as if it were loaded with glasses. It must be carrying a delivery from the Three Ravens inn, which had moved into its new premises in Tuchmacherstrasse in the spring. The opening had enlivened their street a good deal. The drayman had cluttered up the pavement with his barrels, ladies of the middle class went to the Three Ravens in the middle of the day to drink coffee, while their cooks and housekeepers went shopping up in the Kornmarkt, and in the evening there were hussars bawling at the top of their voices in the street itself, which suddenly seemed too narrow and too small.
    At weekends, the town south of the Kornmarkt was now all activity on a Saturday night. Men and women sang and stamped until the small hours to familiar tunes played on a piano. If the piano-player tired and his keyboard fell silent, someone else would bring out an accordion. People came from the little mountain villages at weekends, from Singwitz and Obergurig, even from Cunewalde and Löbau. They went to market in the morning, sold their ladders and ropes, their baskets and jugs, their onions and cabbages, and bought what wasn’t to be had at home, oranges and coffee, fine pipes and coarse tobacco. Then they danced the night away at the Three Ravens, before harnessing the horses to their carts early in the morning and climbing in, or some of them simply pushed handcarts back to their villages in the mountains. But Bautzen was a quiet place during the week.
    Helene stroked her sister’s back, she ran the ball of her thumb down Martha’s backbone.
    Harder, said Martha, with your nails.
    Helene crooked her fingers so that her nails, which were short, could at least touch her sister’s skin. Perhaps she’d let her fingernails grow long for Martha’s sake, file them to points, the way she’d seen a girlfriend file hers.
    Like that? Helene traced a star map on Martha’s shoulder blade, drawing lines from freckle to freckle, joining them up to make the constellations she knew. The first was Orion the hunter, wearing Martha’s birthmark on his breast like a shield; the central star of the three on his belt was slightly raised. Helene knew the moments when Martha would stretch, and when she would arch, luxuriating, go rigid and then double up. Cassiopeia merged directly with the Serpent in the star map, a snake with a large head. Ophiuchus the Serpent-Bearer rose in the middle of it. Helene knew that one from a book she had found on Father’s shelves. There were many days when Martha writhed under the touch of Helene’s hands, and if Helene listened carefully she thought Martha’s breathing sounded like a hiss. Helene imagined what it would be like to lift Martha up in the air, carry her, wondered how heavy she would be. Martha’s sighs were unpredictable, Helene teased them out; she thought she knew every nerve and fibre under her sister’s skin, stroked her as if she were playing an instrument that would make music only if the strings were touched in a particular way. In Helene’s