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“I have to see you.”
“But I wrote you that you can come right now.”
“But right now I can’t!”
I think she’s already disconnected, but she’s still there. “Eric, it’s unendurable. First the thing in the movie house, and now—”
“Don’t say any more! Not on the phone.”
“But—”
“Do you know how many people could hear us?”
“You called me!”
“Because I have to see you.”
“And I said come.”
“But I can’t right now.”
“Then don’t come.”
I feel dizzy. Did she really say I shouldn’t come? “Are you at home?”
She says nothing.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
I listen, and only after a while do I realize she’s disconnected.
I have to sit down. Next to the street there’s an asphalt playground, surrounded by a wire fence, with a bench at its edge.
I sit there for some time with closed eyes. I hear the noise of the traffic: honking, engine sounds, a jackhammer. The sun is burning. My heartbeat steadies.
When I open my eyes, two children are sitting next to me. A boy with a baseball cap and a girl with long black hair that has a blue bow in it. She’s about six years old, he’s about ten.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“I’m sitting,” I say. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sitting too.”
We look at the girl.
“Me too,” she says.
“Do you live around here?” I ask.
“A long way away,” she says. “And you?”
“Also a long way away,” I say.
“How old are you?” asks the boy.
“Thirty-seven.”
“That’s old,” says the girl.
“Yes,” I say. “That’s old.”
“Are you going to die soon?”
“No.”
“But you’ll die sometime.”
“No!”
We say nothing for a bit.
“Are you here to play?”
“Yes, but it’s too hot,” says the boy.
“You can’t do anything when it’s this hot,” says the girl.
“Do you have children?” he asks.
“A daughter. She’s about the same age as you.”
“Is she here too?”
“In school. She’s in school. Why aren’t you in school?”
“We’re playing hooky.”
“You shouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
I think. Absolutely no good reason presents itself to me. “Because it’s not okay,” I say hesitantly. “You have to learn.”
“You don’t learn much,” she says.
“If you don’t go for a day, you don’t miss anything at all,” he says.
“So you’re going back tomorrow?”
“Perhaps,” he says.
“Yes,” she says.
“Perhaps,” he says again.
“So what are your names?”
The girl shakes her head. “We’re not allowed to tell strangers our names.”
“I think you’re not supposed to talk to strangers at all.”
“Yes we can. Talking’s okay. But not telling anyone our names.”
“That’s strange,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “It’s strange.”
“Is she your sister?” I ask.
“He’s my brother,” she says.
“Do you go to the same school?”
The two of them look questioningly at each other. He shrugs.
I absolutely know that I’m in a hurry, that I should be moving on, that I have to get to Sibylle’s and then the conference. But instead of getting to my feet, I close my eyes again.
“Were you ever in a plane?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Why can it fly?”
“Because it has wings.”
“But a plane’s so heavy. Why can it fly?”
“The lift.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
“But why does it fly?”
“The lift.”
“What is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“But you went to school.”
“Yes.”
“But why does it fly?”
The darkness behind my eyelids is lit by sunlight. Glowing orange with yellow circles in it that wander and rise and fall. Even the noise of the jackhammer suddenly sounds peaceful.
“Leave the three of them,” says the boy. “Don’t butt in, just keep going.”
“What?” I blink in the sun. “What did you say?”
“I said we have to go now.”
I stand up quickly. “Me too.”
“Josi,” says the boy. “My name’s Josi. That’s Ella.”
“And what is your name?” asks the girl.
“Hans.” I’m touched by the fact that they’ve given away their names, but that’s no reason to be careless.
“Bye, Hans!”
I leave and feel so light that I could just float up off the ground. Perhaps it’s the sun, perhaps it’s hunger. I should have eaten my pasta with mussels. In order not to faint, I stop at a fast-food stand.
There’s a long line. Three teenagers are standing ahead of me, arguing with the vendor. One of them is wearing a T-shirt that says Morning Tower, the second has one that says Bubbletea is not a drink I like, the third sports a huge bright red Y. Dumb, says one of them to the vendor, absolute bullshit, to which the vendor says they should go the hell away, to which one of them replies that the vendor is the one who should go the hell away, to which the vendor says no, he’d rather they went the hell away, to which another of them says no, you do it, and it goes on like that for a while. I’m about to give up and move on, but then they run off, cursing, and disappear down the next subway entrance and I can buy my hot dog. It tastes quite good. My phone rings. It’s Ivan. Reluctantly I press Receive.
“I thought I should give you a call,” he says.
“Why?”
“Just a feeling. Everything okay?”
“Of course.”
“So why do I have this feeling?”
“Maybe because today I hoped you and I … Ah!” Now I get it. I stand still in surprise. Cars hoot, a policeman yells at me, once again I’ve gotten myself into the street without even noticing.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I told my secretary to call you, but she … just think: she called Martin!”
“Martin!”
“We went to lunch. The whole time I was wondering why.”
“How’s business?”
“Good. Like always. How’s art?”
“I have to keep an eye on the auction houses. You can’t lose control over prices. Besides …”
“Have you spoken to Mother recently?”
“Yes, right, I have to give her a call soon. She left me three messages. But something’s up with you. I can tell. You can deny it, but—”
“Have to go now!”
“Eric, you can tell me every—”
“Everything’s fine, honestly, got to go now.”
“But how—”
I press the Disconnect button. It’s a strange experience talking to Ivan, almost like talking to myself, and suddenly I’m clear again about why I’ve been avoiding him for some time. It’s hard to keep secrets from him, he sees through me, just as I see through him, and he cannot find out just yet how bad things are with me and with business, it would be too painful, a great defeat, and besides I couldn’t be sure he’d keep it to himself. The old rule: a secret only stays a secret if absolutely nobody knows about it. If you stick to that, it’s not as hard to keep them as people think. You can know someone almost as well as you know yourself and still not read their th
oughts. I cannot ask Ivan for money. I cannot ask him to help me disappear. He is too upright a person, and he wouldn’t understand.
I wish he weren’t homosexual. When I found out, it made me totally crazy for weeks. Someone who’s so like me—what does that say about me, what does it mean? Nothing, I know that, nothing, nothing, it means absolutely nothing, but I’ve never been able to forgive him.
I send a message to Knut—the address, and instructions to set off at once. Then I open Sibylle’s front door, run up three flights of stairs, want to wait outside her apartment door to get my breath back, but am too impatient for that, and knock. I could also ring the bell, but after she snubbed me like that, I need to make a more impressive entrance.
She opens the door. I’m immediately struck by how good she looks. She isn’t as beautiful as Laura, but she’s more exciting: the long hair, the delicate neck, the bare arms with their colorful bangles. She was my therapist, but she stopped treating me six months ago because, she said, it would be a breach of professional ethics. It doesn’t matter anyway, the therapy was totally pointless, I told her nothing but lies.
“Is the bell broken?”
I walk across the hall and into the living room. There I catch my breath, search for words, and fail to find any.
“Poor guy. Come here.”
I clench my fists, inhale, open my mouth, but can’t say a word.
“Poor guy,” she says again, and already we’re on the carpet. I want to protest and get the two of us to pull ourselves together, for that’s what matters most, knowing how to pull yourself together, but it doesn’t help, because I suddenly realize that I don’t want us to pull ourselves together, what I want is what is going on right here, in her and over her and on her, and why not, because without this, what else is there in the world?
“But—”
“It’s all right,” she whispers in my ear. “It’s all right.”
It’s hot, she has no air-conditioning, she thinks it makes you sick. It seems to me as if I were on my feet and taking a step back so as to watch the two of us: a trifle strange, the whole thing, more foolish than awkward, and I wonder if people who love to discourse on human dignity have ever actually observed this with a sober eye. But at the same time I’m still the man on the carpet and I feel that the moment is about to arrive when I am no longer divided but a single entity, and only for a few fractions of a second do I form the thought that I’m setting myself up for blackmail if there’s a camera in this room, and then I have an image of Laura, whom I’m deceiving again and to whom I’m doing an injustice with my continual lies, but a moment later the image is gone again and all I know is that every person must do what will save him, and everything is finally what it is, and nothing else, and everything is good.
We lie on our backs, her head on my chest. I don’t want to be anywhere else, nothing is bothering me. It won’t last very long.
“How is she?” asks Sibylle.
I have to think to figure out who she means. I cradle her head, and stroke her silky hair. Very soon everything that is bearing down on me will become real again.
“Perhaps I could help her.”
I pull my hand away.
“I mean, I could recommend a colleague. Ancillary talk therapy. When she’s recovered, we can all get on with our lives. She with hers. And the two of us with ours. Together.”
At the beginning I didn’t have any specific plan, it was one of many tales that I spun, but later it turned out to be helpful: no one leaves a wife who has cancer, no one can demand it of anyone else. And sometimes I feel this version is actually true, as if it were playing out in a parallel universe exactly as I’ve told it to Sibylle. I could talk about it with a therapist, but Sibylle doesn’t want to treat me anymore and I wouldn’t want to try it with anyone else, I’ve got enough problems already.
“I have to leave right away,” I say.
How peculiar that I spend all day thinking about her and yet want only to disappear as soon as I’m with her. Gently I push her head to one side, stand up, and start gathering my clothes together.
“You’re always in a hurry.” She laughs sadly. “You leave me sitting in the cinema and then you write such messages! My therapist asked why I do it to myself. Because you’re good-looking? I said he’s not that good-looking, but then she wanted to see a photo and I couldn’t lie about it. Or is it because of this?” She points at the carpet. “Yes, it’s good, it’s really good, but it’s also a kind of transference. My therapist thinks I show reactions that are triggered quite automatically by the collision of regression and aggression. What can I do?”
I clear my throat in an empathetic sort of way, climb into my trousers, button my shirt, tie my tie without using a mirror, and manage to look as though I knew what she’s talking about.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “You’ll make it. You’re stronger than you think.”
“I know.”
She smiles, as if she’d made some enigmatic joke. I smile too and go out of the room. I rush down the stairs and run along the street. There’s an office building on the other side, I take the back entrance, ride up to the second floor, go into Starbucks, and get a soy milk cappuccino with extra froth, so that Knut will see I really have been in the building. Then I ride down again and leave by the other exit. I see Knut immediately.
He’s having an argument with a street sweeper and it looks serious. The man has lifted his broom to use as a weapon, Knut is making fists, and both are emitting an uninterrupted torrent of curses. It’s the heat, everyone is on edge today. Interested, I listen.
“Pig!” roars Knut.
“Son of a bitch!” roars the street sweeper.
“Shithead!”
“Son of a pig!”
“Pig, pig, pig!”
I’m enjoying this, but I don’t have time. So I swallow a mouthful of coffee, put the container on the ground, and approach Knut.
“Lousy, old, greasy, fat pig!” screams Knut. “Baldy! Pig shit!”
I push him at the driver’s door, then get into the backseat.
It’s blissfully cool in the car. As Knut starts to drive, still cursing quietly, my phone vibrates. I see the number and take the call, apprehensively.
“Mother?”
“Be quiet and listen. I—”
“How’s the practice?”
“Far too successful. The whole country wants to have me as their doctor. All because of the broadcast. I—”
“It’s a very interesting program.” I’ve only seen it once. “We never miss a follow-up.”
“I’m an eye doctor. I understand absolutely nothing about all these illnesses. All I do is tell people they should go and see their doctor.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“I wanted to propose an investment to you.”
“A … aha.”
“It’s about some property. My—below our house. Someone wants to buy it, to build on. We have to beat them to it. It would ruin the view.”
“Ah.”
“It would be a good investment.”
“I don’t know.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
I try to think about the previous minutes on the carpet. About Sibylle’s breath next to my ear, about her body in my arms, her hair, her smell. But none of it helps. I have to be back with her again immediately, naked on the carpet again immediately, and probably not even that would suffice.
“Why don’t you say something?” Mother asks. “Why is it impossible to have a normal conversation with you?”
“I can’t hear you anymore!” I call. “Bad connection!”
“I hear you perfectly well.”
“What are you saying?” I hit the Disconnect button.
“Bad connection,” I say to Knut. “It’s become impossible to have a telephone call these days.”
“They should all be locked up!”
“Why?”
“They’re all nuts!”
“Who?”
The phone vibrates. I put my thumb on the Disconnect button, but then I answer anyway.
“Do you hear me better now?” she asks. “It’s become impossible to have a telephone call these days.”
“The connection was fine. I hung up.”
“You didn’t.”
“Yes I did.”
“You wouldn’t just simply hang up if you were talking to your mother. You wouldn’t do it.”
“Buy the property yourself. You’re making enough money with the program.”
“But it’s a good investment.”
“How can it be a good investment? You say I’m not allowed to build anything.”
“Do you want to ruin my view? What do you want to build?”
“I don’t want to build. I don’t want to have it at all!”
“Don’t you scream at me! When your mother asks you—”
I hit the Disconnect button. A few seconds later the phone vibrates again. I ignore it. Then I think for a while, stare at the phone, rub my eyes, and call back.
“You hung up!” she said. “I know. Don’t lie!”
“I have no intention of lying.”
“I wouldn’t believe that either.”
“So.”
“Don’t ever do that again!”
“I’ll do what I want. I’m an adult.”
She gives a mocking laugh, and I hit the Disconnect button with a shaking hand.
I wait, but she doesn’t call again. To be on the safe side, I switch the gadget off. I remember that Sibylle recently said something astonishingly astute about my mother, which was all the more surprising because she knows nothing about my mother; it was so obviously accurate that I must have had to suppress it immediately, for all I remember about it is that it was so to the point.
Knut begins to tell a story about a Marine, an ancient monkey, and a gardener from Thailand, and it also features a watering can, a plane, and, if I’m getting it right, a professor of numismatics. I nod from time to time and become convinced the whole thing would make no sense whatever even if I were paying attention. When we get there, it’s ten past four. The conference has already begun.
I get out of the car, walk through the heat into the cool of the lobby, and enter the elevator. Perhaps they’ve actually been waiting for me.
The elevator is already starting its ascent. It stops at the fourth floor, no one gets in. It’s just going up again when my knees give way and my head slams against the wall.