Instead of using the pedestrian underpass, I run across a heavily trafficked bridge and stop on the other side. Still standing where I left him, he waves at me.
It is not a light-hearted wedding, he says once he has crossed the bridge. Julia, the bride, is the most pleased and carefree. She makes herself beautiful for the wedding night. She’s unable to cover up the pitch-black spots she dislikes so much. After some hesitation, she has the well uncovered. There’s no one left to prevent her. It’s surprisingly easy. The stone almost rolls itself to the side, as if it were being pushed from underneath.
He crosses his arms and says: it’s downright chilly here on the water. Let’s walk faster. Trotting, he barely has enough breath to tell his story. The well is barely opened, he pants, when Undine climbs out, dripping wet and weeping bitterly, her hands shielding her face anxiously. Julia freezes. She sees Undine walk hesitantly, as if compelled, with heavy steps toward Julius’s chamber.
He hurries on. I’m at his heels. I’d like to grab him by the shoulder and tell him to go on with his story, but I don’t. He picks up his pace and the riverbank promenade, lit with lanterns and lined with weeping willows, seems endless. I pick up a stick from the side of the path and hit it against the hip-high wall with every step. He stops and gasps for breath, then continues his story, stopping regularly to catch his breath: When there’s a knock on his door, Julius calls out sorrowfully, I’m coming, dearest. The door opens and there is Undine. Here I am, she says. She is divinely beautiful. Julius leans toward her and they kiss. He takes a deep breath. She won’t let him go until the last breath has slipped out of him and he sinks from her lovely arms to the floor. He stretches his hand out to me. I kissed him to death, Undine says when the door opens and Julia appears. I shrink back. I can’t any more, I say, I can’t go another step.
I sit next to him in a taxi. First he had taken me to a nearby subway station and watched me as I slowly realized that no trains were running. He’d smiled at me and called a taxi on his mobile phone. Back to the beginning? he’d asked. I had nodded and got in one side of the taxi, he got in the other and now we’re sitting next to each other. The driver turns the radio off. We don’t speak.
Regine is sitting at the bar. I recognize her right away. When I poke her from behind, she turns in the wrong direction and sees him first. Hello, Johannes, she says. Hello Regine, he answers. Regine seems happy, but not at all surprised to see me. To see me at his side. Johannes, I say, so your name is Johannes. His eyes are back. His unbelievably piercing, light blue husky eyes. Look at this, he says, pointing at his stubble without taking his eyes from mine, isn’t this crazy? He goes to the men’s room. Regine smiles at me. Great to see you.
I smile back.
How long have you been in the city?
Since yesterday.
I’ve already had a bit to drink, she says. I just finished a play this evening.
Fantastic, congratulations, I say. For which theater?
I can’t remember the rest of the conversation, even after thinking hard. I do remember how he came back from the men’s room, the one who suddenly has a name. He is freshly shaven. Too little light in this hole, he says and pats his cheeks. Will this do? It’s like a foreign occupying power. I don’t know what he means. I look at Regine. She’s talking to the bartender.
Why did you tell me the story? I ask him, the one now called Johannes.
He looks at me, surprised.
Is Julius buried in the cemetery where we were?
Julius is a fictional character, he answers. Julius doesn’t have a grave.
I look at him and wonder how long it would take to count his stubble and if it would even be possible.
Julius’ spiritual father is in the cemetery, he says, de la Motte Fouqué. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. Hello...?
Yes, I say.
Yes, I say.
I forget to say goodbye to Regine. As soon as we’re outside, our conversation ends. We cross the street, turn onto a rising, sparsely tree-lined avenue with a planted median strip and come upon a small, triangular park, without saying a single word. In one corner of the park stands an art nouveau pavilion, painted green, made of metal and, no, not round, but octagonal as becomes clear when we get closer. We circle it and stand in front of the entrance. He knocks on the partition and slips around it into the pavilion. I follow him. The interior is lit by a dim ceiling fixture and the light of the streetlamps shining through the skylights. It takes my breath away. The smell of urine is no less caustic when I breathe through my mouth. I gasp for air and stumble toward him, the one I’ve known as Johannes for an hour now, and he moves toward me. We meet in the center, open our mouths, and go at each other.
This urinal has seven walls, a circle of seven men could relieve themselves standing shoulder to shoulder. On each wall there are two sensor-activated nozzles that spray the wall after each use. It becomes clear that they are infrared sensors, set off whenever a body stands before them for a while and then steps away. Because we are moving around a lot, there’s always at least one section being sprayed, even when we’re leaning against the wall.
I’m pretty sure no one comes into the pavilion while we’re there, but if so, they witness a struggle. Let stray dogs howl. I don’t know if he, the one I’ve known as Johannes for an hour, is as inexperienced as I am. If he is, he doesn’t let it show. His stranger’s hands tear at my blouse and shove my skirt up. We push and shove each other from one wall to another as if we were wedged together. Love loves to wander. We don’t let go of each other, don’t let go at all, until we’re completely drenched, until the birds start screaming in the breaking dawn, all together, all at once, not pleasantly, violently. Dawn light penetrates the skylights, My dearest, good night. And I can’t get this melody, this song out of my head.
The melody has chased away the knocking. My headache is finally gone. My husband stands in the doorway with a cup of tea. I fall asleep.
5
What he sees
This was not the plan. The sentence I’d wanted to write here, to write down now, was: And then there was Philipp. Actually, my husband should be next—the name Philipp, by the way, suits him very well. After Johannes comes Philipp. But this fine series of emissaries, my entire chronology of men, is muddled. There’s a problem.
Life is not cooperating. It intrudes into my book and grabs at the plot. It’s your own fault if you think you can tame, order, channel life by writing, your own fault if you think you can take hold of love, examine, and—above all—understand it!
Oh, Petrus. Now that you’re on my mind again, everything is getting out of hand. Philipp, in fact, should come next. And now it’s a fruit salad.
Salad? Petrus is still repeating every question.
Let’s just say it’s a mess.
A mess? It’s been one for a long time.
For me, it came out of nowhere!
Just be glad you’ve noticed, now you can start fighting it.
Shadowboxing at best! It’s almost time to pick up the kids. Leave me in peace, Petrus, I have to get ready for this evening.
And he’s gone.
Anyone who finds herself, like me, in the unusual position of learning, just moments before giving a reading, that her own husband has gambled away a sum of other people’s money equal to an entire year’s salary, may very well choose the wrong passage to read.
s. There are a few rules for a successful reading. The first is “read what is on the page.” If you follow this rule, there will be almost no opportunity for your thoughts to wander. This also applies to texts you know well: your own or those you’ve rehearsed or already delivered more than once. The rule does not say “read what you think is written,” but “read what is on the page.” And this kind of reading—remember those happy moments in the first years of school when reading still meant deciphering one word at a time—blocks out everything else.
But on this evening, I manage while reading, I don’t quite know how, to let certain thoughts that are not on the page float into my mind. Not only that, I’m watching television, that is, I see a kind of test image that wobbles slightly but otherwise doesn’t move: a host of creditors, crowded together, standing tall and badly lit. The picture persists, stubborn and static, but all my attempts to zoom in on and identify faces I presume are familiar fail. Whoever believes it’s impossible to read and watch television at the same time is wrong. The test image flickers over my text—even when I turn the page. I don’t even need to raise my head to stare at it. And I don’t, which leads me to break the second rule: “Every few sentences give the audience an attentive glance and count how many are sleeping.” Why? you ask. Anyone who has done it knows this simple procedure creates a silent but intensive dialogue with your listeners, a dialogue that draws in every last one. Even the most talented sleepers personally thank you afterward for the wonderful reading and buy a copy of your book. Amazing, yet true.
But I don’t dare look up, afraid that the host of creditors has spread out, not only over my text but also throughout the room, and are looking at me reproachfully, calling out: Where’s our money?
I don’t know.
She doesn’t know! the creditors jeer.
He gambled it away, I say or rather my inner voice says, or maybe even someone else. In any case, I hear it loud and clear.
Gambled away! While she watched, cool as you please.
No, I didn’t know anything about it.
Give our best to your husband. You have twelve hours to pay us or ... The host of creditors falls silent, and the picture of them disappears. An unknown photograph of my two children takes its place. What are they playing at? What are my two little boys doing here? Who took this picture, when, and why? I could easily have lost my place or misspoken or both, almost. Astonished, I realize I’ve kept reading the entire time, maybe a little too fast, maybe with the wrong emphasis here and there, but without missing a beat or stumbling, that much is certain. Because on top of it all, I’ve also been listening to myself as I read. Someone laughs once, ha!—a truncated joke but still, it seems to work. Isolated, on its own.
But why is “As fast as a person walks” the wrong passage?
Because this is a love story. Because it’s about a first love, which even those who don’t spend much time thinking about matters of the heart recall with glowing eyes and a brimming heart. Because it’s clear from this section, even in its mangled, seventeen-minute version, that this love doesn’t end happily. Because the public tends to take a first-person narrator for the author and that tendency is even stronger when the author reads her own first-person narrative. Because this winter’s tale, in which four people go for a walk in the snow fits the present season so well. It’s a cold March night. Winter is taking one last frigid and pitiless stand. The fields are covered with snow, the sidewalks and side streets are icy, the heavily trafficked roads are full of slush, and the Alster River has been frozen over for a few days. My introverted, unhappy delivery may be hardening the audience’s inclination to believe the narrator is me into the certainty that here and now, one and only one person is standing before them: the narrator, unhappy in love. And that the entire event is one drawn out wail for love, a cry for help to the men in the room. Where do I get this idea? Just a moment.
Even after I’ve finished reading, I don’t look up. I nod curtly, staring at my feet, then step off the podium and head straight for the bar. I drink red wine, it’s free and I’m thirsty. I don’t speak with anyone, I drink. When the place closes, I’m driven home and helped up the stairs to my apartment by a gentlemanly acquaintance who takes pity on me. I can’t open the front door because the damn key no longer fits. Uncle Günter opens the door and looks at me, astonished. Uncle Günter was watching the boys. You don’t look good, he says, you’re pale. Lie down, if you can. Or go to the bathroom. Uncle Günter sends my acquaintance away, asks me if it’s all right to leave me alone, and drives away, home to Aunt Sigrid.
The next day, there’s an email in my inbox. Forwarded from my author’s page. A stupid address: yourlook@freenet.de. Remarkably, I open the email. I, who am more afraid of Trojan viruses than a terror attack. With good reason: I back up my work only every few years onto an external hard drive Philipp gave me for Christmas a few months after our wedding. A virus had made my computer self-destruct, taking all my unpublished writing down with it. Philipp doesn’t understand why, after that experience, I don’t back up my data at least once a week, and I can’t explain this either. I forget, there’s no time, it makes me nervous, distracts me from what’s essential: I have no idea. I reassure Philipp by reminding him how careful I am with outside data, files, and emails. You know I’d rather miss out on something than end up with a problem. And yet, I open the email from yourlook@freenet.de:
It’s me. You know who. I think your story is very good. Unfortunately we didn’t speak, but our eyes kept meeting. Intense looks. Write me if you want. I’d like that.
He signed a common German name, which I fittingly change to Thomas. I read his email several times and have to laugh. I have a splitting headache from the wine. My eyes. Intense looks. Really? When? Nut-job. I click reply and write: You must be confusing me with someone else.
The phone rings. Uncle Günter. He wants to know how I’m doing, if I’ve heard any news from Philipp. I don’t know if it’s because of my hangover, but I get pedantic. What do you mean by any news? Are you asking if any creditors have called yet this morning? Are you asking if the mountain of debt has gotten even higher? If something else has come out that Philipp was keeping from me?
Günter stays calm. He just wants to know if Philipp called.
Why?
I’m worried about him.
Don’t be.
He’s not answering his phone.
Maybe he’s in treatment, at a medical appointment, in a meeting, in therapy, what do I know. You should be worried about me.
I am.
Günter, that was a joke! I’m doing fine!
Are the boys at nursery school?
Yes. Of course. I’m sorry, I’m having a bad day. I’ll call you later. I hang up and delete You must be confusing me with someone else and then type it out again and click send. I go shopping. I’m amazed at the prices. Potatoes, which I always buy, cost 2.99 euros. How is it that I never noticed before? Aren’t potatoes supposed to be cheap? Poor man’s food? Oatmeal, on the other hand, 39 cents! It’s a good thing the boys love breakfast porridge, that’s what they’ll be getting for the next ten to twenty years. I open the mailbox. Five envelopes. They’re all addressed to Philipp. I open the first one halfway, then put them all unread into my bag. I don’t even want to know. I climb the stairs. The key to the front door fits again. Lucky thing.
yourlook@freenet.de has written. Confused you with someone else? Not a chance! You know which one I am: blond with glasses. Would you like to meet for a cup of coffee?
Reply: I have no idea who you are, dear blond-with-glasses. Send.
yourlook@freenet.de: coffee?
Reply: I’ve got the kids, sorry. Send.
I try to work, but the book I’m writing, this book right here, is in a crisis, outcome uncertain. I’m afraid to touch it. So I decide to start something new.
Beginning. Beginning again with you. Every book with you. In the beginning was the word. At my beginning, there’s you.
I save the
twenty words and close the file.
I open it again and read it one more time. Beginning. Beginning again with you. Every book with you. In the beginning was the word. At my beginning, there’s you.
I delete the five sentences, go to the kitchen, make a cup of coffee, and regret pushing delete. I try to reconstruct the sentences. I looked at him—where did he get that idea? No idea what he saw. Blond with glasses. Who could that be? I take the mail out of the shopping bag and toss it onto the pile in Philipp’s room.
Wait until it’s clear! I say to my older son. I pull the younger one out of the way. He starts to cry. I pick him up. The older one comes speeding down the slide on his stomach and lands face-first in the frozen sand. He screams and starts to cry. I put the younger one down and pick up the older one, who is still little. The little little one doesn’t want to sit in the sand. He starts to bawl. The big little one has scraped his chin. He’s almost inconsolable. A bicyclist rides up to the playground. I recognize him right away. Strange. I really have seen this tall, thin, blond man with large amber-colored, horn-rimmed glasses before. But it could have been anywhere. I have no recollection of the circumstances, the place, time, or occasion. The children are crying. Blondwithglasses gets off his bike and tries to open the gate. Child safety lock, I call, turn and pull at the same time, but he can’t figure it out. Calm down now, I say, and the children just scream louder. Somehow he manages to open the gate and pushes his bike through it toward us. The children fall silent. They look at him. They look at me. Do you know him, Mama? the older one asks.