Felix holds my feet between his. It feels good.
“Her husband was a rotten man,” I continue. “The woman kept wanting to leave him. But he always hemmed and hawed about how she couldn’t leave him. She probably thought he’d have a complete breakdown at some point. Or perhaps she wanted to have a breakdown herself instead. The man was short-tempered and jealous, and he shouted at her a lot and sometimes hit her.
“One day the whole family moved to another kingdom. The spell was broken. She managed to kick the asshole out. He was absolutely irate, hit rock bottom, and so forth. But she left him anyway.
“He settled down a little. He regularly visited his old family, as he called them, especially his two sweet kids. He didn’t get along well with the older daughter, who wasn’t his. She had always hated him and he knew it. He was also afraid of her. He knew that if he so much as laid a hand on her, on either of his kids, or on the woman, the older daughter would go straight to the cops.
“One day the woman met a prince. But he was disguised and nobody realized he was a prince. She was happy for a while, and so were her children. He really was a prince. When he was around, everything was good.
“But the ex-husband wasn’t happy about this. He saw how well his old family was doing without him. And he saw that his former children loved the prince, too. He was worried they would realize what an asshole their father really was. He wanted to stop this from happening. He wanted to do something about it and came up with a plan.
“He bought candy for the kids. He went to see his old family and none of them realized that on this day he had a pistol beneath his jacket. He gave the kids the chocolate. The woman was home, too. Along with her prince. And the man began to curse them out — until they asked him to leave.
“And he left. But he didn’t go far. Instead he turned around. He rang the doorbell. The woman let him back in. The older daughter arrived home just then, too.
“‘What do you want now?’ she asked. ‘Come back when you’ve calmed down.’
“That’s when he lifted the pistol and fired it. Once, twice, three times, four.
“The older daughter began to scream. She screamed so loud that one of the windowpanes shattered. She tried to prop up her mother, but she weighed too much and was limp and lying in a pool of blood. Then the daughter jumped on the man with the pistol in his hand. She punched him and even managed to break his nose.
“She still doesn’t know to this day why he didn’t shoot her.
“He threw her to the floor and snarled, ‘Where is he?’ He meant the prince, who was sitting in the kitchen with the children. The prince came running out, shaking with fear and horror. The children came running, too, and saw their mother and began to scream. The man lifted the pistol again and the prince attempted to save himself, running into the bedroom. He closed the door behind him but the man shot through the door.
“The older daughter ran out of the apartment with the other two children and rang the neighbor’s doorbell. From the hall they heard two more shots. The neighbor jerked the children inside and slammed the door shut again.
“Soon the man with the pistol came out of the apartment and also rang the neighbors’ doorbell. But they wouldn’t let him in. The man said to call the police. Which was exactly what they were already thinking.
“The man waited on the stairs until he was arrested. He gave up the pistol without any protest and confessed. In court he said his wife had annoyed him forever.
“Felix, are you asleep?”
I run my hand along the goosebumps on his forearms. He doesn’t say a word. His breathing is silent. Maybe he’s holding his breath.
“Were you even listening?”
“Where’s your father?” he asks suddenly, startling me.
“Don’t know. Maybe here somewhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know anything about him. I don’t want to know. My mother tried to talk about him a few times, but I always stopped her.”
“I don’t understand,” he whispers in my ear.
“Little Felix,” I say, “how could you possibly understand? He didn’t want me to be born. That’s the only thing my mother ever got out before I shut her up once and for all. He wanted my mother to have an abortion. And he gave her quite a bit of money so she could have it done privately at a doctor’s office instead of at one of those clinics where women were practically put on an assembly line and not given any anesthesia. My mother always said he was a respectable man who was able to set up a respectable abortion for his girlfriend — she said that again and again, only half-joking. She went to the doctor’s office and was told to undress. Then she thought — or at least she says she did—‘But I want to have a little girl, and I want to call her Sascha, and I’m not going to end this life, this thing’s alive no matter what this man says. I want to have it.’ So she got dressed again, took the envelope of money back, and walked out. The doctor thought she’d gone crazy. My mother ran the whole way home because she thought the doctor would come after her. She never wanted to see the man who had impregnated her again because she was afraid he might try to induce an abortion by violent means. There had been a few recent cases like that. At first she was going to give him back the money, but then she bought baby things with it instead.
“That’s why I don’t want to know his name. He’s not even on my birth certificate. There’s nobody to ask, either, now that my mother is dead. He could have won the Nobel Prize for all I know.
“But I don’t care. What do you think, Felix?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s very quiet. There’s just a soft whistling sound in my ear. I’m not sure what it is. Could be from a mobile phone somewhere, I think.
Then I fall asleep.
I wake up in the middle of the night.
I can’t understand what’s happening. Felix is lying next to me on his back, trying to say something. He feels funny and looks strange. I hold his hand. It’s cold and shaking.
“What is it?” I say. “What’s wrong?”
He opens his mouth and wheezes.
I get nervous. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Say something!”
His hands fall to his chest and start to feel weakly around. His fingertips hop up and down on his T-shirt as if he’s typing on an invisible keyboard. His lips move. I lean down to him and he breathes in my ear.
“Volker,” he gasps. “Get Volker.”
I sit up, jump over Felix onto the floor and run out into the hall. I race to the door I think is the one to Volker’s room. I yank it open but there’s no bed in the room, just a table and several armoires.
“Volker!” I cry. “Where are you? Volker!”
I run through the house, pulling open doors and yelling. It seems to go on forever. Behind all the doors is darkness and a musty smell. An ironing board falls out of one doorway and hits me hard on the head. I barely notice. I feel like I’m lost in a labyrinth. Everything starts to spin. I brace myself against a wall but it seems to recede from my hand.
“Volker, god damn it! Something’s wrong with Felix. Where are you?”
I begin to weep loudly.
Volker appears at the end of the hall. He’s barefoot. His upper body is naked. He’s buttoning his pants. He runs by without looking at me.
“Not in there!” I yell. “He’s in my room.”
Volker stops, turns around, and bounds down the stairs. I follow him. He’s faster than I am. I lurch down the stairs and nearly fall over.
In the guest room, he tries to sit Felix up. I turn on the light. Felix’s face is white and his lips are blue. There’s panic in his eyes. Volker braces him by his shoulders.