The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck Read Free Book Online

brought into the examination room and told to
undress completely. He doesn’t understand the instructions in English, but even
after an interpreter translates them for him, he doesn’t move. Have the Americans
lost their minds? Or do they really think of it as a second birth when you set foot
in their country? In any case, his examinations at the Technical University in
Vienna — which certainly weren’t easy — had gone differently.
    Come on, they say, meaning: Hurry up.
    There’s no help for it: More naked than he ever stood before his wife,
he must now, like it or not, stand here in the light and present himself to an
entire group of doctors. If only you could know in advance where the path you choose
freely will lead. His coat and clothing are meanwhile being disinfected, when he
gets them back after the examination they are crumpled. Shame, then, is the price
one pays for this life of freedom, or is this itself the freedom: that shame no
longer matters? Then America really must be Paradise.
    16
    Her husband has known for a year and a half what comes after
death, and soon she will, too. Her daughter, on the other hand — although
she’s been a widow longer — has a good part of her path still before her.
Keeping the shop is a struggle. What will become of her granddaughter when she is
all alone in the world someday?
    Two ships lie in the harbor.
She holds her ears with their
sagging lobes close to her husband’s mouth — his whisper is so soft, she can
scarcely hear the rest of the story, but she herself has read it often.
One of
the two ships has just returned from a long voyage, the other is just preparing
for a long voyage.
She tries to give her husband — for whom speaking
is an exertion — something to drink, but he refuses to swallow, and so the
water runs down his stubbly chin onto the pillow.
    Jubilation and blessings accompany the ship as it sails off —
while the arriving ship goes unremarked. But is it not this ship that deserves
jubilation?
    What a shame that she was able to raise only the one daughter with him.
Two other children died shortly after birth. When on some evenings she wept over the
ones that had died, he would sit down beside her with a nod.
    The newly arrived ship lies safely in the harbor. But nothing is
known of the one just setting sail. What will be its fate? Who knows whether it
will successfully withstand the storms awaiting it?
    Her daughter recently remarked that perhaps it would make more sense to
close the store and rent out part of the apartment instead.
    Or would you rather have some soup? she asks him.
    The pillow is still damp with the water she tried to give him when he
stops being able to breathe.
    17
    The shopkeeper can still clearly remember the day the goy first
came into the shop and saw her daughter, who had just turned sixteen. Since he
displayed serious interest, she summoned him not long afterward to have tea with her
in their apartment while the girl was at school. She showed him the living room and
the bookcase with Goethe’s
Collected Works
, spoke of the dowry, and finally
even brought him into her daughter’s room, where the dress the girl had worn the day
before was still draped over the back of the big armchair, one of the shoes beside
it had fallen over, and the housecat lay curled up on the bed, asleep.
    I’m sure you realize we are of Jewish descent.
    Yes, I know.
    There’s still time for you to turn back.
    She had sold many a bit of merchandise in her life. She knew when it was
too late for a customer to walk away from the deal. The more freedom you gave him to
choose, the more likely he was to choose exactly what he was supposed to.
    What are you saying?
    For a while both of them remained standing beside the bed of the absent
girl, looking at the cat, which, from time to time, extended its claws in a dream
and then pulled them back in again beneath the fur.
    That morning, for the sake of her daughter’s happiness, she
had sold her