He must have sensed the rapid, irregular pounding of my heart, he may have seen the drops of sweat breaking out on my brow, and he was surely astonished to see me remove the pipe from my mouth, hold the bowl in my hand, and sigh deeply. Then he drew nearer and said softly, but more coldly than anything he had said thus far: “Don’t worry, she’s here.”
“Thanks,” I said, sticking the pipe back in my mouth. I knew now that I had plenty of time, all the time in the world, and I was surprised myself at the depth of the sigh that emerged from me, without my knowledge or will.
Now I felt the old man scrutinizing my worn and tattered uniform; I sensed him drawing a bit closer and closed my eyes, because I knew what he would ask me now.
“Maybe you know him,” he said.
I said nothing.
“He was a corporal. Grittner. Hubert. My son. Western front like you. Maybe you know him.”
“Where?” I asked hoarsely.
“Falaise,” he said, and I felt him waiting …
“I was there too,” I said, and now I looked at him. He had removed his pipe from his mouth, wrapping his right hand around the warm bowl, and in his compressed lips and narrowed eyes stood the certainty that he would learn nothing from me. “No,” I said with a sigh, and shook my head. Then I put the pipe back in my mouth and looked toward the house.
“Funny,” he said, “so many have come back, and not a single one has known him.” I started to say something, but he raised his pipe and cut me off. “Oh, I know,” he said. “A name means nothing. At Verdun you seldom knew the person lying a foot away from you, I know all about it.”
He interrupted himself, looking up as a young, cheerful voice called from the house: “Dad!”
“Yes,” he called out softly, “I’m coming,” and he touched the rim of his cap with his pipe stem, said goodbye, and left. I called him back and asked: “Which room is she in?”
He understood me at once and pointed with his pipe toward the room next to the room next to the dangling gutter.
“Thanks,” I said, and watched as he headed for the house. He walked, as always, no doubt, slowly and calmly, with a slight stoop. He knocked his pipe on the stone lion, which stood halfway along the row of poplars, then turned and nodded to me once again, and in those few seconds it took him to reach the dark entrance and disappear within it, in those few seconds, I suddenly realized that we all are guilty of everything. Nothing touches us, for when we’re asked about someone, we say no. We always have to say no, and when we say it, our hearts refuse to break, when, in fact, what we are saying is: Am I my brother’s keeper?
I knew she wasn’t there, but I suddenly stood and followed the old man into the house. I entered without taking a close look, but even in passing through I saw, sensed, and smelled that the house looked as if a company of soldiers had spent three weeks there. The staircase was almost undamaged, missing only a lath here and there, and the upper story was dark. I saw at once that the side windows had been boarded up, the light stood in stiff, silver-gray stripes along the edges of the boards, and the hall gave the impression of a cold, rainy, gray winter day outside, with a leaden sky by evening, followed by a sad and starless night.
And although I knew that she wasn’t there, I walked quickly to the end of the hall, knocked, waited, knocked again, and rattled the door handle. Naturally nothing stirred, nor did anything stir within me, and in the half minute I stood there, I kept asking myself why that was. The fact that she had kept this same room said a great deal, said everything. But I felt nothing. Finally I noticed a note attached to the door. I tore it off and read it in the light seeping into the hall through the cracks of the old, musty boards.
It was her handwriting: Be back at eight. Key next door. M. I stuck the note in my pocket and knocked at the neighboring door. I had heard nothing before I knocked, but now an oppressive silence weighed upon my heart, as if someone were pumping air into me, pressing tighter and tighter against it. I knocked again, then I heard whispering, someone rose from a bed, a key turned in the lock, and in the flat dimness I saw the head of a pretty blond woman, her hair hanging in her eyes. Although I saw only a small strip of her throat, I knew that she was naked. I could smell it as well.
“Fräulein X,” I said, “the key for Fräulein X …”
“Oh,” she cried out. “You’re the one whose picture is hanging over the bed.”
“Yes,” I said, “probably so.”
She closed the door quickly, I heard more whispers, and then a round, naked, and very pretty arm held out a key to me.
I went back, and during the three steps to the door, in the musty hall, which still looked like winter, I realized that there was no point in holding back the memories any longer, once I was in the room. I stuck the key in the lock, paused for a moment, and crumpled the note in my pocket into a tight, small mass, so that I could feel it between my fingers like a tiny, hard paper ball.
Back then it seemed I could see nothing but the part in her hair. It was below me, straight and neat, white and steep like a very narrow, wonderfully bright pathway between soft, gently rising and falling waves of light brown hair. My gaze fell down that part and was lost forever. That narrow pathway had no end, and I felt the sorrow in my heart for that part in her hair.
He could feel her heart beating against his right side, softly and steadily, and knew it was a good heart, with more love in it for him than he would ever find elsewhere. He knew all these things back then, knew he was so close to her he could never, ever be closer. The window stood half open as the dewy, sweet fragrance of the park, filled with enchanting decay, drifted into the room. The greenish curtain colored the light, dyeing her scattered clothes on the floor a similar green. The carpet and chest of drawers, the chair where his sword belt lay, everything was dusky green, tender and beautiful; even the cheap silver buckle of his belt was tinged with green, and he could read the raised inscription surrounding the national insignia and the laurel-wreath clearly: GOD IS WITH US. At the sight of her linen, the brown skirt and red sweater, an infinite tenderness swept over him. He suddenly understood why men promise to fetch the stars from heaven for a woman. His service jacket lay spread out so that only the inner lining was visible, and part of the shoulder straps, bordered in white, and he saw that the collar-band was soiled. But his happily wandering gaze continued to return to the relentlessly clear and neat part in her hair lying below him, and he knew that this pathway had no end, that he would never come as near to any other human as he had to her. Yet she was as infinitely distant as the pathway of the part in her hair was long.
He felt her warm nose against his chin and her breath on his throat, and he sensed that she would never, ever stir again, if he himself did not stir.
Still holding the key, which was already in the lock, he felt the tiny, wadded note in his hand. He chewed his lower lip as he recalled the voice of the woman next door saying: “Oh, you’re the one whose picture is hanging over the bed.” She started singing, and he could hear her pause in her song to take a deep breath, and then a man’s voice could be heard.
He too wished never to stir again back then, to gaze repeatedly down the ravine of that pathway, at times to strip off his clothes, which lay like the flayed green skins of strange beings on the floor, to hear her heart beating against his right side, softly and steadily, a good heart, a happy heart, a better heart than he could ever hope to find, and to feel her warm nose on his chin and her gentle breath flowing at regular intervals against his throat like the breath of a child.
At times he rested his head upon her forehead, and then he could see, on the dark walls, the large, heavy, beautiful painting attributed to Rubens, the shimmering, bright pink flesh of a woman, overly alive against the dark green walls. But this woman had silver-gray hair, which now looked green as well, and her gracious, slight smile passed over both of them, far into the distance. And when he gazed upward while resting on her forehead, he saw the tops of the poplars, silver-gray and near, smelled
their cool, astringent fragrance, and through the gaps he saw in the far, far distance the edge of town, red roofs, the trees’ bright foliage, the pale towers of the new churches, the black ones of the old, and recalled that it was autumn, in wartime.
He saw everything and nothing. The pattern in the carpet, an eternally self-renewing meander of colors, crossing, overlapping, recrossing, overlapping again, and at the points of intersection large, brightly colored flowers, the tiny spots of damage on the light brown dressing table, and a small, alluringly bright hole in her stocking, which lay in the middle of the room, a tiny green hole. While he saw everything, he saw nothing but the boundless distance at the end of the part in her hair, inaccessible.
It was so quiet, war seemed impossible. In the halls outside, beyond the pale yellow door, the same warm friendliness reigned that they found in the face of the reclining Rubens. Their gaze passed beyond her to the park outside. The sublime, expansive, luxurious fragrance of autumn gathered at the half-open window, a splendid, total silence hovered in the air, enveloping a room that no one would ever enter or leave again, if such was their wish.
Yet he knew it was not only autumn, but wartime. From the moment reason returned, as his gaze followed the lovely, bright, narrow pathway of the part in her hair, he knew that he would have to rise, leave, and return again, and he feared returning most of all. He knew that the soiled collar-band of his uniform would soon be around his neck, that he would face their snarls, his face impassive, and he had a momentary vision of the distant outline of the city, shaved bare, tower-less, flat like the sterile silhouette of a churchless village.
Suddenly he felt the soft touch of her lashes on his cheek, knew that she had opened her eyes, and realized that he was naked. Then he saw her hair close up, the short part in her hair, and beyond it the white pillow. As if he were recovering consciousness, everything drew closer, like a field glass coming into focus. He smelled the garden, redolent and cloud-covered, smelled her skin and heard the soft murmur of voices on the terrace below, heard the clinking of glasses and the full, baroque laughter of a woman. And he realized that all those sitting below knew about them, and that no one would say anything.
He saw in detail what he would be doing in a few minutes. Saw himself dressing, kissing her forehead, quietly leaving the room, disappearing through the rear gate, never to return again.
And in the same instant he realized that he was naked, he pictured her rising that next morning and going downstairs, without a question raised, until one day someone would mention with a smile that the postwoman was certainly bringing a lot of letters, and later he’d seen her a thousand times, running up the stairs with his letters, jerking open the door, leaning back against it, and tearing them open, her hands trembling.
And as he passed through the back entrance, through that rusty, creaking, iron gate, he knew that he would never fear death, but only life.
He released the crumpled note, felt his hands sweating, then turned the key and entered the room.
He walked quickly across the carpet, past the bed, which still stood on the right near the window, and looked toward the window, which opened onto the park: The light entered the room only through the narrow slits of the closed shutters, slicing the space into individual, closely layered planes. The room was saturated with bands of light, separated from each other by thin strata of shadow. Everything he could see was striped light and dark, and there could be no doubt that it was all real. The painting was still on the wall, still too bright and too alive for the dark green wallpaper, the stripes crossing the face, the dresser and bed, and he caught a glimpse of a large glass case overflowing with odds and ends, and a desk between the bed and door. All was dark below the level of the window ledge, illuminated only faintly by the reflection of those stripes of light and shadow, and he gathered from a burning smell the presence of a stove. But he noted all this merely in passing. He had intended to walk over, throw open the window, and take possession of the room, but after the first step he’d sensed something strange, immaterial, insubstantial, ineffable, that reminded him the room was not his. And that it would be equally difficult for him to take possession of either her or the room. Something foreign, unknown, filled him with a jealousy he’d not felt before. The moment he was touched by that shadowy, transitory, but unspeakably real presence, a savage, raging jealousy stabbed deep into his heart, and he knew that far from fearing to have her, he would instead have to fight for her.
He paused for a moment just beyond the threshold, wondering whether to turn on the light, to seek some clue, some concrete object that might possibly explain this sense of strangeness and fright, but he knew at once that it would be nothing tangible or visible, or even connected to tangible, visible objects, and that he had no right to seek such things, even if they existed.
He walked out slowly and relocked the door.
The dialogue of male and female voices next door was louder and clearer now. He even understood a few words, but they rained down like shells falling short.
A door was abruptly opened somewhere in the rear of the house, and for a moment the dimly lit hall filled partially with gray light; other doors opened and shut again, steps faded down a wooden stairway, and now he smelled the distinct odor of fish and sliced onions. He leaned against the door frame. Now he understood what it meant: Her heart had been beating for twenty-five years, but he’d only felt it beat for half a minute, her brain had been thinking for twenty-five years, millions of thoughts, and he’d only known a fraction of them. He’d thought he possessed her, possessed her so thoroughly he could never lose her, so much so, so strongly, that he was afraid to return. Now he understood how senseless and silly he had been to believe that. He knew nothing about her, nothing he could call his own. He might just as well dip a pail in the ocean and claim he owned the sea. He didn’t even know what she liked to eat, where she lived or how. He tried to imagine her riding the tram, looking out at passersby, stores, animals, buildings, piles of rubble, flowers and trees, tried to imagine each thought that connected her to all these things, to flowers, trees, animals, people, and stores. Her every thought, dozens every minute, was a world in itself, and there were a million such worlds in her, memories, dreams. He knew so infinitely little of it all that he felt totally miserable, leaning back against the door frame in this dark hall, which smelled increasingly of fish and onions, and now began to reek of vinegar, too.
Jealousy raged like a savage beast that had crept inside him and was now tearing him apart. How he wanted to possess her as he had back then, totally, yet knowing that the smooth pathway of the part in her hair was endless and that he could never travel to its end. How he hated her shoelace; he tried to imagine it: a brown, slightly frayed shoelace, on the end of which some dirt had perhaps dried. She had always been slightly unkempt, in a charming way.
All of it, the terrible intangible strangeness of objects and the thoughts they awakened, struck him the moment he entered the room, and he had recoiled as a thin black wall rose before him, steep and solid, impenetrable, reaching heavenward to the rim of eternity.
He sighed deeply, inhaled as well the reek of vapors now filling the hall with smoke, and felt a quick, strong wave of nausea, suddenly aware of how tired and hungry he was.
He felt his face collapse; his eyes were aching: a gnawing suction deep in the hollows of his eyes, a tormenting, piercing pain he often experienced at the end of a sleepless night. He reinserted the key cautiously in the lock, stumbled into the room, pulled the door closed behind him, and slowly removed the knapsack he carried on his back with a long strap. Then he bent over, felt along the carpet to the left of the door, and slowly slid to the floor. It was wonderful to lie down and stretch out his legs, the knapsack, as so often, under his head.
It must be almost seven. Although he knew her heart beat for him, lovingly and calmly, more lovingly than any other heart ever could, he felt somewhere deep inside that she would not be his, that he would have to relinquish her to
something he’d never felt before, something ineffable, stretching from her frayed shoelace to the clouds she sometimes gazed at with thoughts he knew nothing about. He would lose her to the world, that world where it was always so easy to contemplate death, so hard to think of life.
The striped light from the window fell in enlarged form upon the door and wall, a dissolving rectangle, soft and blurred, the white stripes glimmering, the black ones hazy, and he saw that the large black crucifix from the vestibule was now hanging here.
He was oppressed once more by the room’s foreignness, a room that wasn’t his, by the strange, clean smell of soft soap, clothes, and a hint of cigarette smoke. He rose quickly, picked up his knapsack, and opened the door. As he turned the key in the lock, he wondered for whom the note on the door had been intended. But the thought aroused no hint of jealousy. No, he wasn’t jealous of other men. They were all the same, they were all lonely; it was the world he envied so, and the thoughts that filled it.
One of the doors leading into the hall was now standing open, and he could tell by the odor that this was where the fish, onions, and vinegar were being prepared. The vapors filled the room to overflowing and were now seeping into the hall in lukewarm, overpowering waves. He could hear what were apparently raw potatoes being tossed into a pan of sizzling grease; then the bubbling grease gradually subsided to a low, steady crackle as dark gray clouds of vapor billowed from the room, trailing toward the stairwell in soft, slender tendrils. The noise increased, and now and then a door opened. He walked slowly toward the open door and stood for a moment along the opposite wall, watching a short, fat older woman with her left hand stuck in the top of her blouse, slowly turning potatoes in a pan. On an unsanitary-looking table stood a huge porcelain bowl in which gleaming blue fish swam in vinegar, and he could make out the now yellowed sliced onions surrounding them. The entire room was illuminated through a single small pane of glass set in a wooden frame within roughly cemented blocks, which apparently could not be opened. On the kitchen counter—worn, faded, covered with reddish lacquer—stood a bread canister and a scale. He spotted an alarm clock and saw that it was twenty minutes to seven.