Marrow and Bone by Walter Kempowski

Author:Walter Kempowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2020-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

Again and again the woman urged Jonathan to drink coffee and eat. ‘Eat,’ she said, ‘eat! Eat some more . . .’ Jonathan had crossed his legs and was holding the cup politely with both hands.

Then she held up the little medicine bottle – O come down, thou precious phial – which had contained the elixir that had, apparently, helped. Jonathan took it from her and saw that the label was already completely worn away. This medicine would help soothe the disordered, swirling stream of thoughts in this young woman’s brain provided it was taken regularly and in the correct doses. It presumably had an effect that was somehow both sedative and stimulating.

Jonathan took a sharpened pencil stub from his jacket pocket and wrote down the name of the medicine in his notebook, promising that he would get hold of some soon in Hamburg. He wondered whether he could somehow work this visit into his article. The pencil had been with him since Vienna; he’d written an article about Viennese coffee-houses with it. Under his window that day they’d been tearing up the road, its entrails on display, pipes and cables of every diameter, and he’d kept on writing amid all the hammering and crashing. The road in Maria’s head was being torn up too; a hot syrupy soup was welling up inside her, forming bubbles, and she put her hands over her ears and stamped her feet to soothe her soul again.

The practical Frau Kuschinski decided it was better if Jonathan took the bottle with him in case he wrote anything down wrong, and Jonathan put it in his pocket.

•

A boy came in. He was Maria’s little brother, and he was happy that they were having cake and chocolate.

‘Who’s to blame?’

He wasn’t the least bit surprised that a strange man called Jonathan was sitting there. Perhaps he mistook him for a doctor, deciphering the writing on the little brown ribbed bottle with the white cork.

This is a motoring journalist, he was told, who drives around in a splendid car. Perhaps, if the boy was very, very good, he could go with them sometime? Instead of Maria, who can’t, of course, because she’s sick.

Jonathan confirmed what the woman had said and described what a wonderful car it was, eight cylinders, goodness knows what horsepower. Perhaps the boy could come to the hotel tomorrow, it wouldn’t be a problem for him just to sit in the thing for a while. The boy talked about how someone had jostled him or chased him away and what he’d said to them. This was a bad idea, because Maria propped herself up and cross-examined him closely about whether the man been wearing a checked cap with a peak.

Jonathan listened, although he didn’t understand anything, and Maria lay down again under the blanket, wrestling with her dark thoughts, and the mother stood silhouetted darkly against the window. He sensed that the magical moment had passed. He let the young woman lie on the sofa, her

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