You Should Have Left Read online

  Also by Daniel Kehlmann

  F

  Fame

  Me and Kaminski

  Measuring the World

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Translation copyright © 2017 by Ross Benjamin

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in Germany as Du hättest gehen sollen by Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Reinbeck bei Hamburg, in 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Reinbeck bei Hamburg.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kehlmann, Daniel, [date] author. Benjamin, Ross, translator.

  Title: You should have left / Daniel Kehlmann ; translated from the German by Ross Benjamin.

  Other titles: Du hattest gehen sollen. English.

  Description: First American edition. New York : Pantheon, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016043779 (print). LCCN 2016048424 (ebook). ISBN 9781101871928 (hardcover). ISBN 9781101871980 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Authors—Germany—Fiction. Psychological fiction. BISAC: FICTION / Literary. FICTION / Ghost. FICTION / Visionary & Metaphysical.

  Classification: LCC PT2671.E32 D813 2017 (print). LCC PT2671.E32 (ebook). DDC 833/.914—dc23

  LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2016043779

  Ebook ISBN 9781101871980

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  Cover design by Peter Mendelsund

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Daniel Kehlmann

  Title Page

  Copyright

  December 2

  December 3

  December 4

  December 5

  December 6

  December 7

  A Note About the Author

  A Note About the Translator

  December 2

  Jana and Ella are riding a tandem bike along a country road. The sun is shining, the stalks are swaying, cheerful music. Ella at the helm, Jana spreads her arms. Close-up: She blinks happily into the sun. Then the bike runs over a rock, goes off the road, and falls over. Cries of pain. The music breaks off, fade to black, opening credits.

  Immediately sets the right tone.

  —

  It’s fitting that I’m beginning a new notebook up here. New surroundings, new ideas, a new beginning. Fresh air.

  Last week Esther turned four. Everything’s getting easier now. It’s already noticeable that there’s no longer constant arguing over who’s getting up with her, who’s putting her to bed, who’s playing blocks or trains or Legos. She can do a lot more by herself.

  The cold blue-white of the two glaciers, under them sheer granite, then the woods, which the haze turns into a smooth dark-green surface. The sky is lightly clouded, a cloud has drifted in front of the sun, its frayed white edges are outlined in fire.

  Outside the house that we’ve rented, the meadow slopes gently for about a hundred yards to the edge of the woods: spruces, pines, and, at the edge, a huge, pale willow. When I open the window I hear the wind whispering. Apart from that I hear nothing. Far below lies the valley with its dice-sized houses, cut through by three ribbons: road, river, railroad. Branching off, like a thin pencil stroke, is the road on which we came up.

  A terrible drive, by the way. That road is steep, with many hairpin bends and no side barriers, and Susanna is a horrendous driver. It was hard for me not to say anything. Well, and then, unfortunately, I did say something, and so we yelled at each other the rest of the way.

  The sun has just pushed its way out from behind the cloud, so that the sky is now melting in painful, blazing, magnificent brilliance.

  Or is that too many metaphors? The sun doesn’t push its way anywhere, the wind pushes the cloud away, and of course the sky by no means melts. But in painful, blazing, magnificent brilliance, not bad.

  For once it’s a house that looks even better in reality than in the pictures on the Internet. Not a musty little Alpine hut, but two stories, new, and minimalist, with a narrow upper balcony and a large living-room window, clearly an architect-designed house.

  piercing brilliance

  fiery cloud

  the sun rolling through the firmament

  mountains, engraved in the blue

  Firmament—antiquated. Better just to go with the plain word sky. Have a minor character use the word firmament twice. That’s all you need, you’ve established that character.

  —

  Fade-in, Jana is walking down the street, carrying a shopping

  —

  Just as I was about to keep writing, they came in. And when they’re in the room, I can’t focus. Now they’re playing on the carpet and being loud, and I keep scribbling so that they think I’m working, because if Susanna doesn’t think that I’m working, she’ll just say once again: Stop complaining, you’re not working anyway, so I write and write and write and act as if I were busy, and I actually am busy, because ultimately the whole production is waiting for me.

  —

  I love her, and I don’t want any other life. Why do we fight all the time?

  Again just now. She stood up reproachfully from the carpet, and I thought: Here we go. And she really said exactly what I had known she was going to say: We just got here, do you really immediately have to, couldn’t you first spend a little time with, etc.

  Then nothing will get done, I said. That’s not how art is created!

  You mean your screenplay?

  It was the emphasis she put on the word. She knows exactly what most makes me angry. And of course I walked into the trap. A screenplay not art? I cried. La Strada, Barry Lyndon—not art?

  Her completely calm reply: A screenplay is art, but not art. Not the way you say it. And Besties 2, well…

  Someday I’ll write a movie about all this. Long dialogues, lots of flashbacks, no music. It will be called Marriage. The title hasn’t been used yet; astonishingly, it’s available.

  I shouldn’t have responded. If I’d just kept my mouth shut, the fight could have been avoided.

  But I couldn’t resist reminding her that the royalties for those screenplays that she might have considered art but not art, and indeed especially the Besties screenplay, are paying the mortgage for our house, a town house with a backyard, which she considers so important because a child has to have a backyard, after all, and now we have the town house, and the mortgage is far from paid off, and Esther actually never plays in the backyard, and if I don’t write the sequel to my most successful movie, what about the mortgage then?

  To which she replied that she had nothing against my comedies, as long as I please wouldn’t act as if they were Twelfth Night or The Importance of Being Earnest—she always has to bring up classics to remind me that she has a degree in comp lit and classical studies, whereas I’ve never attended a university—and by the way, my affectation of writing by hand as if I were a poet was insufferable. Then she took a step back and laughed as cuttingly as only actors can, when they’re having an off day. It sounded so artificial that I shuddered, and at that very moment we were interrupted, because Esther had broken the arm off her doll and was bawling and demanding glue, and where are we supposed to get glue up here?

  Now they’re bending down over the parts of the doll and pushing them aroun
d and waiting for a miracle, and I keep writing and don’t look up, so that it’s clear that I’m too busy to help with that nonsense.

  —

  Marriage. The secret is that you love each other anyway. I wouldn’t want to be without her—I’d even miss her actor’s laugh. And she wouldn’t want to be without me. If only we didn’t get on each other’s nerves so much.

  Get away, while

  December 3

  Before everything could get better yesterday, the kid had to be put to bed. Reconciliation is never conceivable as long as the kid is awake.

  Then we stood side by side at the living-room window and looked out into the night: thousands upon thousands of crystal-clear points in the black velvet, below them the contours of the two glaciers faintly glowing, and behind our house there must have been an especially full moon, because the slope in front of us was almost as bright as day from the white light.

  On the way to the bedroom we briefly got lost, because we didn’t know the house yet, and we ended up in a storeroom with a washing machine and dryer. A vacuum cleaner leaning against the wall crashed down. We listened with bated breath, but Esther hadn’t woken up.

  Slapstick, said Susanna. Things have a life of their own.

  I don’t like slapstick, I said.

  A little bit of slapstick isn’t bad, she said. Would you like me to show you?

  Then we went upstairs and found our bedroom.

  —

  The main characters are well established by the first movie, but now the sequel has to add backstory.

  Flashback to childhood? Old trick, conventional, reliable, but the truth is, I know nothing about Jana’s or Ella’s childhood. I told the students at the film academy last year that you should know everything about your characters, especially where and how they grew up, but I only said it because it’s in the textbooks. I don’t have the slightest idea what happened in Jana’s or Ella’s childhood, and it doesn’t interest me either. Which is why I also don’t know how Jana reacts when Ella asks her to move out of her apartment, where Jana was living in the previous movie, so that Ella’s new boyfriend can move in—who is none other than Jana’s ex-boyfriend Martin, with whom she broke up only because he’s a senior tax official. He’s good-looking, sensitive, and well-read, he speaks several languages, but, as Jana explained so eloquently at the time, who wants to be in a relationship with a tax official?

  —

  Something strange just happened.

  —

  So how does Jana react? We know how impulsive she is. Everyone remembers her fit of rage in the first movie when, out of the blue, she told the gym teacher that people like him lend the word stupidity new majesty. Something like that has to happen again, but differently, because everyone’s waiting for it. What happens when she, whose biggest problem is her lack of self-control, is suddenly thrown out—in the nicest possible way—of her best friend’s apartment?

  —

  Must have been mistaken.

  Don’t think about it.

  It’s completely quiet now; so quiet that the silence itself seems to be faintly rushing. Probably the blood in my ears.

  The living room looks like most living rooms that have been done in recent years by interior designers: parquet floor, white walls, flat ceiling lamps, large kitchen with stainless steel surfaces and center island. In the middle is the wooden table from which I’m looking out the huge glass window into the darkening afternoon, watching Susanna and Esther build stone heaps in the meadow while their breath turns into little vapor clouds. They should be able to see me too, I’m sitting as if on a stage. In front of me, translucent, my reflection: glasses, hair, and collar, the notebook on the table, the pen in my hand. All there again. It was my imagination. What else.

  —

  This time Jana remains calm. That’s it! Everyone’s expecting the fit of rage, but it doesn’t come!

  Ella tells Jana to move out. Jana’s composure is so surprising that Ella feels provoked by it.

  E: You didn’t even want to live here anymore!

  J: Where did you get that idea?

  E: It’s obvious. Because you’re smiling like that. Why are you smiling?

  J: Because you’ve found Mr. Right.

  E: What are you implying?

  J: What do you mean?

  E: Is it because he works for the tax office?

  J: It’s a job like any other job.

  E: Exactly.

  J: The state can’t function without tax officials.

  E: That’s just the tone I mean!

  J: There wouldn’t be any streets, and in the streets, which wouldn’t exist, there would be anarchy. We broke up because he wasn’t right for me. But he’s clearly right for you.

  And at that very moment Martin comes in, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase under his arm, and Ella, who doesn’t know where to direct her rage, begins to scream at him under some pretext, and Jana stands there—

  not smiling

  sadly

  no, expressionlessly

  —yes, much better: She stands there expressionlessly, her face doesn’t betray whether she intentionally started a fight between the two of them or whether she really meant everything.

  Although, if he comes in just at that moment, it looks too much like a sitcom, that’s totally cheap. Get away. But if not him, then who? Someone should come in.

  —

  Now they’re walking back to the house. Susanna is texting: The bright screen of the phone casts its glow on her face. The little one has something in her hand. Apparently she found something on the ground. She always finds something.

  —

  I have to tell Schmidt the idea of Jana remaining calm, he’ll like that. He’s definitely going to call soon. He knows that I’m here to work and is waiting for the screenplay. Just recently he hinted that if necessary, the production company, which owns the rights to the material, will have to avail themselves of the help of another writer, of course you’re the best, who else could do it, our first choice of course, completely irreplaceable, but the sequel has to be shot, the success of Besties demands it, and if you don’t deliver, what else can we do! Then he added that it’s not up to him, he would wait for me forever. But the producers! He said this so convincingly, so warmheartedly and full of friendship, that the objection that he himself was the producer didn’t even occur to me until after we had hung up.

  —

  Esther showed me what she found outside. It was a rock that looked like any other rock, and I exclaimed Oh! and Ah! and Wonderful! Then I gave her a kiss, her skin was still cold from the evening air.

  Looks like a diamond, she said.

  That’s true, I replied, that’s really true! Like a diamond.

  Now I’m going to the kitchen to make dinner.

  December 4

  Yesterday was the best evening in a very long time. Except for that dream.

  I had volunteered to put Esther to bed, read her a picture book about a mouse that finds out that the moon is made of cheese. The mouse eats the moon, but afterward it’s still there, and then the mouse falls asleep, and that’s the end of the book. My daughter liked the nonsense, and I liked that she liked it, and she snuggled up to me, and the night snuggled up to the window, and when I turned out the light, I saw the glaciers in the distance, and a few minutes later I heard her regular breathing.

  —

  After the fight a scene in which Martin goes to the office and is somehow dissatisfied with himself. He looks around, he suddenly recognizes in his colleagues what others see in him: tax officials. And he is one of them. How could it have happened that he became a tax official? On the computer he looks at pictures from his school days. Back then he wasn’t a tax official yet. Then pictures from his university days, which show him wearing a tie, show him solving crossword puzzles with an expression that’s serious, even devoted: The transformation has begun. He looks down at himself. He loosens his tie, immediately feels insecure, tightens it agai
n. Distractedly he flips through a magazine, stops at a picture of a pop singer who is standing in a particularly casual manner, his hair tousled, his shirt open to his belly button, metal rings on his fingers. He hesitates for a few seconds, then he reaches for the telephone, orders a tax audit of the singer, and slowly and deliberately loosens his tie.

  —

  After Esther had fallen asleep, I walked on tiptoe out of the room. Oddly, I got lost again, the corridor suddenly seemed longer to me, and yet I’d had only one glass of wine. I discovered that there are a further three bedrooms; the house is much too big for the three of us. I’m surprised that it’s not more expensive.

  Then we sat until two o’clock in the morning at the table and drank wine and talked. Just like in the old days. Like nine years ago, when we first met on Schmidt’s set. I had never seen such an exciting woman before. Susanna, in case you’re reading this, which I suspect you aren’t, because my work doesn’t particularly interest you, then you should know, it’s true: never in my life! I wanted to touch you and kiss you and know everything about you, wanted to spend my life with you.

  And I, she said last night at the table, couldn’t have imagined the day when I’d be yelling at you about diapers or arguing with you about how much to pay babysitters.

  But that’s probably as it should be, I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  The natural course of things, she said, and then she added something in Latin that began with Nihil toto or something like that, which annoyed me, but I didn’t let it show.

  Ovid, she said. Actually Heraclitus’s words, but Ovid puts them in Pythagoras’s mouth: There’s nothing in the world that stays the way it is.

  I tried to think about Heraclitus’s wise words, but I found it hard, because the quote mainly reminded me that she has a university education and I don’t. But at that moment it almost didn’t matter.

  And so we thought together back to what it had been like when we had first met: everything as always, everything as if for the first time, candlelight and narrow glasses and this and that bar, the movies, the theater, finally your apartment and then my apartment and then yours again; everything as usual, everything as never.