Jakob’s mother called the following morning. His father was in intensive care. A stroke. Jakob dropped his head into his hands and nodded.
12 x autumn could be an equation for our relationship because it’s true that something always happened in the fall. In our third autumn I realized that I really was pregnant. Actually, Jakob realized it. He bought a kit and made me do the urine test. For days I’d felt dizzy and had headaches. I went straight back to bed while Jakob hung the test strip in the cup. Look at this, he said, oh shit. He held the damp strip under my nose.
Leave me alone.
Look at it!
I couldn’t see anything. But the headache wouldn’t go away. I went to the doctor a week later. Look at this, he also said and pointed at the screen of the ultrasound machine, there’s a little heart beating quite clearly. I couldn’t see anything there either. But I made an appointment in a private clinic in Vienna. We split the cost. I respect whatever choice you make, Jakob had said, but for me, at this point, it’s unthinkable, completely beyond the realm of the possible. It was an outpatient procedure with local anesthetic. Jakob held my hand and sang in my ear because the noises from the suction were too horrible for him to bear. He sang a few Brecht songs, each dodgier than the last, until I asked him to stop and go outside. We were staying on the Donau canal with an acquaintance of our acting teacher. She said: Damn, yes, I know the clinic, I’ve been there three, no, four times.
The doctor had told me I should lie down, for a few days if possible. Two days after, it was Jakob’s birthday. We went to the Prater. I rode on the Ferris wheel, went through the tunnel of horror, ate cotton candy, and threw up.
Love is not something you choose, dear heart, my grandmother always said and stroked my cheek. Even today, when I hear the word heart, I touch my cheek, my left cheek. Afterward I got pimples, no that’s not it exactly, I broke out all over my neck, chest, and stomach, everywhere and for months. My skin was bright red and as bumpy as a turkey in breeding season, and it itched so badly that I scratched myself bloody. I became stricter. You just have to work harder, Jakob, I said, a lot of people have talent. I cast him in my next production, Genet’s The Maids. As the playwright recommends, I had men play the two maids. Jakob was one, Jonas Liebig the other. I still have to think about who should play Madame, who is off-stage the entire first part, I said. But it was clear to everyone that I was the one for the part. Once, after I criticized Jakob too harshly in rehearsal, Jonas wanted out of the show. I’m sorry, but this is horrible, no one wants to have to watch, he said. So I became gentler. I could only humiliate Jakob to a degree Jonas could stand. As a result, from my point of view, I was working against the material and against the play, which, finally—and exclusively—was about power games and debasement in all conceivable variations, beyond all mercy. Naturally, it all escalated the moment Madame walked on stage. I stood there and gave the two men commands on all levels, as employer, as director, and as a woman, and Jonas Liebig was not the only one for whom it was too much. Jakob tore off his apron. The project fell apart, but our relationship was saved.
One autumn later, I’d finished my studies and begun my first theater job in Zurich. From that point on and for the rest of our time together, we led a long-distance relationship. Jakob bought a car. When he drove me, my mattress, a few books, and a trunk of my clothes to Zurich in his green, 1980 Ford, he said he was happy. Then he looked through the windshield at the sky. Autumn’s coming, he said. Look where you’re going, I yelled. Jakob yanked the steering wheel around.
We bought our first mobile phones. The first call Jakob received was from me. I stood next to him and asked if he could hear me. The second was from his mother. His father had had another stroke. A semi-serious one this time, but his father wouldn’t be able to come home. Jakob cried until his battery was dead and the connection lost.
Jakob’s father recovered before Christmas and was able to celebrate Christmas Eve at home. In spring they hired him a Czech nurse, who claimed he tried to be intimate with her. When Jakob heard about it, he became exuberant with relief and asked me if I’d like “get intimate with him, intimate like the Czechs,” and this was our code, which we eventually shortened to get Czech. Jakob had gotten an offer from the Salzburg Landestheater in spring, but he turned it down contemptuously. He couldn’t stand the blinkered, narrow-minded, hostile provincial city for two more years, he announced, that hick theater can stage its ham-fisted burlesques without him in the future.
It was autumn again. Jakob drove from theater to theater and auditioned, but against all predictions and bets made in the theater academy, he was not overwhelmed with offers. In fact, he was turned down over and over again. His father died at the end of November. I don’t get it, Jakob said, I just don’t get it. He looked at me, seeking my help. Something’s finally got to work out, he said. In the end, it was almost Christmas when he signed up with the Salzburg Landestheater. I moved to Frankfurt, which didn’t bring us any closer. When we weren’t working, we were commuting. He by car, me by train. When I didn’t have any weekend rehearsals or performances, I took the night train, drank a bottle of red wine in the dining car, and collapsed onto the bunk. In the morning, my head was pounding. I got out in the Upper Austrian no-man’s land, changed to the regional express, and craved a coffee. I was sure I would die if the man with the cart—who never came—didn’t pass by right away. Or Jakob would get in his car right after rehearsals, sometimes even after performances, and drive to my place. He drove until he arrived, in one go. It took a few hours before his legs and tongue could move easily again. By then I had usually fallen asleep.
If you’re tired, go to sleep, my grandmother always said. Sleep heals, Goethe even said this, though I couldn’t find it anywhere when I systematically combed through the fourteen volumes of Goethe’s collected works. I had planned on working the adage about sleep into my eulogy. The family had decided unanimously, although with a few abstentions, that I should deliver the eulogy at my grandmother’s graveside, me, the favorite grandchild, me, who had been trained in this kind of thing, after all. I was too sad to write and Goethe, again, was no help. So I had no choice but to tell the mourners what Grandmother would have said in this situation: there’s no reason to be sad, sweetheart, everything ends the way it begins and if you’re tired, go to sleep. At this, everyone started crying and said I had put it so well.
Jakob, who always had trouble falling asleep in autumn, wasn’t able to stay awake one November night somewhere between Nürnberg and Würzberg. It was our sixth autumn. He was at the wheel of his old Escort, driving to my place for the hundredth time. I calculated that it must have been about the one-hundred-and-forty-fourth time. He had often described the accidents he’d seen on the way, scenes of accidents he passed. Again and again, when I sat next to him in the car, we’d driven by the misfortunes of others. At Christmas time once, when the road ahead of us suddenly turned white, I called out:
Snow!
Snow?
Snow!
A Hungarian truck had crashed into the guardrail and overturned. Most of its load was strewn over the road. The cars following it had run over the packages and crushed them. What I took for snow was laundry detergent. I don’t know which alarmed us more: the colorful shreds of plastic flung against the windshield or the sight of the lifeless body two firemen were pulling out of the driver’s cab. We saw similar sights in every season on expressways, rural highways, and avenues: demolished or burning sports cars, motorcycles, and minivans. We saw severely injured men, women, and children. In every season except the fall. It could be there were fewer accidents in autumn; it could be that we were too preoccupied with our own unhappiness to notice them. This time it was Jakob in his Escort who lost control and flipped over. Afterward, he was completely alert. He couldn’t move. He called me. I was the director, I should tell him what to do.
Where are you?
In the middle of the road.
Have you called the police?
No.
Start the car.
Doesn’t work.
Do you know your location?
No. Yes, wait, no. No, I don’t.
What do you see around you?
Nothing.
I called the police. In the light of dawn, they delivered him to my door. Somehow he had managed to get to the shoulder. That saved his life, one of the officers explained, take good care of him. Jakob sat there absently. I’ve been thinking things over, he said when they left, you need to work on new roles with me. I can’t stand this two-bit company any longer. I’m the one who determines reality, remember? I’m the one! Me!
So it all started again. I directed him. I challenged him. I harried him. I treated him like a child, the child I didn’t have. My first demand was that he find suitable roles himself, my second was that, from now on, as soon as he got behind the wheel, he start talking. I told him he had to name every single thing he saw while driving, absolutely everything. He had to read aloud every sign he laid eyes on. That was the only way, I said with complete conviction, to avoid the danger of nodding off. It took Jakob an effort to get over his self-consciousness, especially when I was sitting next to him. He said he felt like an idiot, but he got used to it after a few months.
He couldn’t find any roles he liked, so after making a few derisive comments, I looked for some. Shakespeare, Kleist, Büchner, I said, Malvolio, Achilles, Woyzeck: hit, hit, miss. It would be ridiculous if we couldn’t land you a first-class offer with these. Jakob hugged me. I was determined to get the best, or at least the best possible from him. I was not squeamish in choosing my means. When we rehearsed Woyzeck, I’d watch him for a while, then shout at him as if I weren’t the director, but an opponent in the play, the doctor experimenting with him as with a lab rat. I’ve seen Woyzeck; he pissed on the street, pissed against a wall, like a dog. When we rehearsed Malvolio, I immediately treated him like the character. I addressed him as Jakob and asked how he could seriously think his mistress had written him a love letter. When we rehearsed Achilles, I was merciless: Excuse me, but your love, not convincing, I don’t buy it. And he tried again and again, he pleaded, he ranted, he raved, he roared, and when he finally lost hope, I said: very good so far, OK, tomorrow we’ll do more.
In the spring, he suddenly announced he had fallen in love. He told me he’d overestimated me, my instincts weren’t great or I’d have noticed signs long ago. I couldn’t tell if I felt shocked or relieved. I felt weightless. It has to stop, I said. He left. The following weekend, he was back. It’s over, he said.
This or that?
That. He raised his chin and gestured vaguely into the distance. Before he drove off, he said: the entire time, I was dying to tell you how great I felt. To talk about how wonderful it is to be in love. To share the feeling with you. Can you understand that?
No.
I love you. He gave me a kiss and got in his new car, a used VW Passat. He rolled down the window. There’s too much distance between us, he said. We both nodded. Safe drive! I waved as he drove away. He turned at the corner and I saw that his lips were moving, as always. One-way street. Two-way bicycle traffic. Speed limit thirty. And as always, I found it both touching and embarrassing.
I looked for a job near him. The theater in Graz was hiring under new management. I’d heard that Graz was a beautiful city, a little off the beaten path in a far southeastern corner of the German-speaking world, why on earth would I want to go there, but it was beautiful, I’d been told. As soon as I signed the contract in Graz, he revealed he had just quit in Salzburg and was moving to Berlin, where he wanted to give it a try as a freelance. Somehow, I have the feeling we’re always missing each other, I said.
When autumn came and his birthday was approaching, he showed up twice unannounced and rang the doorbell, even though he had a key, and asked me if I was alone.
He became clingy. He visited me much more often than before. The nine hundred kilometers didn’t bother him, he said, not at all, eight hours, what’s the problem? He could spend his time how he liked, now that he was freelance. He might just as well have said unemployed. He spent his days on the expressway and nights, the vast majority of them, in my bed. He ran out of money, stayed for weeks at a time, cooked for me, went grocery shopping, managed the household. He was interested only in current political events. He skipped through the news channels around the clock. The world was unbearable, he said, and the new millennium hasn’t changed a thing, on the contrary, I should take a look at all the injustice, it was beyond all measure, enough to make you crazy. He turned off the television. He told me he had a few meetings in Berlin early in the new year. He was preparing his film career. His visits gradually tapered off and when spring arrived, he asked me one evening to come as soon as possible. I called in sick, missed the night train, and took the earliest train, changing three times. He picked me up at the station and told me he had fallen in love. I replied that first I needed some sleep, would that be possible?
I lay on his mattress and thought of the phrase I hadn’t said at my grandmother’s funeral, the only one I didn’t drop into her grave. It stuck to me like polyester resin or gecko feet on a sheer rock face. I just couldn’t get rid of it: Love is not something you choose, dear heart. She stroked my cheek. I smiled at her and said: this has to stop.
The knocking has stopped. It’s quiet. But my eyes are burning. I see the many black letters on the screen before me, dancing up and down. I touch my cheek. Oh, Grandmother. What exactly is love? How can it come and go? Where does it go, when it’s gone?
4
A stranger I will leave
I have a fever. My neck hurts and my ears are ringing. At first I thought it was just the Morse Code in my skull—which I’ve almost gotten used to—always hammering out the same words in dots and dashes: Smoke. Time. Child. But for a few days now, it hurts whenever I move and I’m barely able to walk the dog and pick the children up from kindergarten, to play with them, pamper them, cook for them, take care of them, and crawl into bed. My husband has the late shift almost every day. During the day, while I’m working, when I’m in my office writing, he lies in bed or watches television. He can’t seem to get any rest and is permanently exhausted; very rarely there’s an invisible flash inside him. He perks up and types wildly on his laptop keyboard before sinking back onto his pillow and jabbing at the remote with his thumbs.
Come on, keep going! One after the other, I murmur as I make myself a cup of coffee in the kitchen, one leads to the next, one love into the next. Or does love always stay the same, always true to itself? Is it only the vessels that change? Does love simply present itself in one man after another, does it reveal itself as the one and only true love, just in several guises? Does love not have several faces then, but only the beloved’s? One after the other, man for man ... Johannes ... I think back as I fill the water tank of the coffee machine, yes, there was a Johannes.
Did you say something? My husband is standing behind me.
No, I was talking to the dog. That we’d go out later. My husband looks at me, watches me put the pod in the machine.
I nod, put my cup on the tray and push the button.
You look unwell, he says.
So do you, I reply.
He gives me a concerned look. I’ll get the thermometer.
That instrument is a weapon. You press it against someone’s forehead and press the button. A blue laser beam shoots out. After a few seconds, it beeps and a number appears on the display. 103 degrees. The warning light blinks.
One hundred and three? Crazy!
Give it to me, I say, and turn the laser on him. 99.3. No blinking.
Go lie down, he says.
I have to get back to my desk, I’m right in the middle of my story, I reply.
No, you have to go to bed, my husband says. He takes me by the hand and leads me to bed. Sleep, he says. Somehow, he seems sad.
The pillow feels like c
ement. Although I sink into it, it’s as hard as stone. When I close my eyes I see a dark tunnel. Two round headlights shine in my eyes. I turn my head to the other side and suddenly there’s a train coming from that direction, too. What’s going on here? I recognize the sight. I’m in Berlin and twelve years younger. I’ve just been left. I’m in my own story. My head is pounding. Could you bring me an aspirin? I want to call out, but realize I don’t even know my husband yet.
The subways are coming from the right and the left. Both trains look like giant toys, bright yellow and lightweight. Ruhleben it says on the train heading out of the city. Ruhleben, peaceful living, that sounds good, I knock on the corrugated aluminum and board. After ten minutes the train reaches the final stop. I stay in my seat. The power is turned off, a brief humming noise, silence. I go to the door. It won’t open. I sit back down. A man on the platform looks at me and signals at me to get out of the car. I turn my head away and stare at the gravel on the adjacent track, then at my hands, then at the sky.