We went twirling through the crowd. This was nothing like dancing; we could do no more than sway with the bodies pressing in on us from all sides. But neither of us complained. Maria had her eyes fixed on me. Now and again something glimmered in her dark and absent eyes, something I couldn’t understand, and this, along with the faint but intoxicating scent of her warm body, threw me off guard. I could not help but believe that it meant something to her, to be this close.
‘Maria,’ I whispered, ‘how can one person make another person so happy? What amazing powers we must have, hidden deep inside us.’
Once again, I saw that light flicker in her eyes. But then, after a long stare, she bit her lip. Her eyes now looked empty and fogged: ‘Come on, let’s sit down. What a crowd! They’re starting to get to me.’
Back at the table, she downed one glass of wine after the other. Then she got up, saying: ‘I’ll be right back.’ And she staggered off.
I waited some time for her. Despite all of my protests I had ended up drinking too much. But I didn’t feel drunk so much as dazed. My head was throbbing. A quarter of an hour had passed but still she’d not come back. I started to worry. I got up and went to the washrooms, thinking that perhaps she had fallen somewhere. Women were freshening up their make-up in front of mirrors or trying to pin up parts of their dresses that had come loose. I couldn’t find Maria anywhere. I looked at all the women in the corners of the room and the ones who had curled up and fallen asleep on the sofas. I couldn’t see her anywhere. Seized by a great anguish, I ran from one room to the next, knocking into tables, pushing my way through the crowds. Leaping down three steps at a time, I made it to the ground floor and looked for her there. Still no sign of her.
Then I caught sight of her through the misty glass of the revolving front doors. There she was, an effigy in white. Rushing outside, I let out a cry. For here was Maria Puder, leaning against a tree, cradling her head in her hands, face pressed into the bark. She was wearing nothing but a thin woollen dress. Heavy snowflakes were falling on her hair and the back of her neck. When she heard my voice, she turned and smiled and asked: ‘Where have you been?’
‘Where have you been?’ I cried. ‘What are you doing? Have you lost your senses?’
Bringing her finger to her lips, she said: ‘Shush. I came out to get some air and cool off. Come on, let’s go.’
Straight away I pushed her back inside and sat her down on a stool; then I went upstairs to pay the bill and get my coat and her fur coat from the cloakroom. With that we headed off, our feet pressing deep into the snow.
Clinging to my arm, she struggled to keep pace. There were drunken couples here and there along the side streets. In the avenues there were milling crowds – scantily clad women, laughing and singing as if they had decided, two or three hours after midnight, to set off on a springtime jaunt.
Maria was pulling me along faster and faster through this drunken crowd. To those who called out to her, or attempted an embrace, she offered a cursory smile, skilfully extracting herself to pull me along. While I, for my part, realized how wrong I’d been, to think she was too drunk to stand on her own two feet.
After a time, we came to streets that were quieter, and we slowed down. But she had still not caught her breath. Letting out a deep sigh, she turned to me and said: ‘So? Are you happy with how things went tonight? Did you have a good time? Oh, I had a wonderful time, such a wonderful, wonderful time …’
Her smile gave way to a giggle, and then a coughing fit. Soon her chest was rattling as if she were about to choke, but still she was clinging to my arm. When she had recovered herself, I said: ‘What’s all this, then? Didn’t I warn you? You’ve caught a chill.’
She replied with a broad smile: ‘Oh, but I had so much fun!’
Now it was me, fearing she might cry. I wanted to get her home and tucked into bed as soon as possible.
As we neared her building, she began to sway. It seemed as if she had lost her strength, and with it her will. But the cold air had revived me. I was holding her by the waist now and trying not to step on her feet. Crossing one street, we nearly tumbled into the snow. Now she was murmuring something I could not quite hear. At first I thought she was humming a song, but when I realized she was speaking to me I pricked up my ears: ‘Yes … so that’s the way I am,’ she said. ‘Raif … oh dear Raif … that’s just the way I am … Haven’t I told you? One day I’m like this and the other like that … but there is no need to be sad about it. You are such a good boy … I have no doubt about that.’
At this point, she succumbed to hiccups, but soon she was mumbling again: ‘No, no, there is no need to be sad about it …’
Half an hour later, we were at her front door. Leaning back against the stairwell wall, she waited.
‘Where are your keys?’ I asked.
‘Don’t be angry with me, Raif … don’t be angry … Here! Right in my pocket!’
Stuffing her hand into the pocket of her fur coat, she pulled out a key ring, on which I could see three keys.
I opened the door. When I turned to help her up the stairs, she shot past me to race up the stairs.
‘Be careful!’ I shouted.
Breathless, she replied: ‘No. I can go up by myself.’
As I had her keys I went up after her. After going up a few floors, I heard her calling to me through the darkness: ‘I’m here … open this door.’
Groping for the door, I opened it. Together we stepped inside. She switched on the lights. The furnishings were old but relatively well preserved. And there, on the side, was a beautiful oak bed.
I was standing in the middle of the room. Tossing off her fur coat, she gestured at a chair: ‘Sit down.’
Perching on the edge of the bed, she kicked off her shoes and her stockings. In no time at all, she had pulled her dress over her head, thrown it on a chair and slipped under the quilt.
Rising to my feet, I wordlessly held out my hand. She let her eyes pass over me, as if seeing me for the first time, as a drunken smile spread across her face. I lowered my eyes. When I next looked up, she was sitting up and staring at me, open-eyed and curious, blinking now and again as if she had just woken up. The white coverlet had slipped, to reveal her right arm and shoulder. They were as pale as her face. She had her left elbow propped up on the pillow.
‘You’ll get cold.’
Tugging at my arm, she sat me down on the bed. Then she snuggled up to me, opening my hands, so that she could rest her face in them.
‘Oh, Raif. So you can be like this, too? You have every right … But what can I do? If only you knew … if only … But we had such a wonderful time, didn’t we? Oh, didn’t we ever … No, no, I know that! Don’t pull your hands away … I have never seen you like this. How wonderfully serious you can be! But why?’
I looked up. She was kneeling next to me on the bed now, cupping my face with her hands: ‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘It’s not what you think … I can prove it to you … I can prove myself to you … Why are you just sitting there? You still don’t believe me? You don’t trust me?’
She closed her eyes. She seemed to be struggling to capture an elusive thought. Her brows were furrowed, her forehead creased. When I saw those bare shoulders trembling, I pulled up the quilt and held it there, to keep it from slipping down again.
She opened her eyes. She smiled in surprise. ‘So that’s the way it is … You’re smiling too, aren’t you?’ Unable to say anymore, she gazed off into a corner.
Her hair had fallen down over her face. The light illuminating one side of her face also lit up her eyelashes, casting a shadow over the bridge of her nose. Her lower lip was trembling ever so slightly. In that moment she was more beautiful than her painting, more beautiful than the Madonna of the Harpies. With the arm holding the quilt, I pulled her closer.
I felt her body shaking. Her breathing was shallow.
‘Of course … of course,’ she said. ‘Of course I love you. And so much … Could it be any other way?
I must love you … I certainly do. But why are you so surprised? Did you think it could be any other way? I know how much you love me … and there is no doubt that I love you just as much …’
She pulled me towards her, to cover my face with fiery kisses.
I woke up the next morning to deep and measured breathing. Her head was resting on her arm. Her back was turned. Her hair fanned out over the white pillow. Her lips were slightly parted, and above them was the finest down, which rose and fell with every trembling breath she took.
Falling back onto the pillow, I looked up at the ceiling and waited. I was full of impatience. I longed to know how she would look at me when she woke up and what she would say, but for whatever reason I feared that same moment. From the moment I’d opened my eyes, my peace of mind had gone. And I had absolutely no idea why. Why was I trembling like a convict awaiting a verdict? What more could I ask from her? What more did I expect? Hadn’t I been granted all my heart desired?
How empty my heart felt now! But also, how heavy! Something was missing, but what? I felt bereft, like a man who stops on the street, remembering that he has forgotten something at home, but cannot for the life of him remember what it is, and after rummaging through his mind and his pocket, finally gives up, and continues reluctantly on his way, while the doubt still gnaws at him.
Some time later, I noticed that I could no longer hear Maria’s rhythmic breathing. Lifting my head, I stole a glance. She was staring into the distance. She hadn’t moved at all; her hair was still falling over her face. Though she knew I was watching her, she continued to stare unblinking at that fixed but unknown point in the distance. She must have been awake for some time, I realized, as an invisible clamp tightened around my chest and the fear in my heart grew.
The more I dwelt on my absurd anxieties and needless, groundless apprehensions, the more I castigated myself for letting my paranoia and wretched intuition darken what should have been the brightest days of my life, and the more I despaired.
‘Are you awake?’ she asked, without turning her head.
‘Yes … Have you been awake for long?’
‘I just woke up.’
I took courage from her voice, which had, for so long now, been the sweetest sound I knew. I welcomed it like an old friend. Just to hear it was to be suffused in happy memory. But the peace it brought me was short-lived. She had used the formal ‘you’, whereas we had recently begun to shift back and forth between formal and informal. What was I to make of her use of the formal ‘you’ on the morning after this night we had just shared?
Perhaps it was because she was only half awake.
She turned around to face me. She was smiling. But this was not the warm, sincere smile I’d come to know so well. It was more the sort of smile she flashed at customers at the Atlantic.
‘Are you getting up?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I am!’ I said. ‘And you?’
‘I’m not sure … I don’t feel terribly well. I’m feeling a bit fragile … probably from all that drink … My back is hurting too …’
‘Chances are you caught a chill last night! What did you think you were doing, going outside like that, with almost nothing on?’
She shrugged and turned away.
I got up, washed my face and quickly got dressed. I could feel her eyes on me.
There was tension in the room. I felt the need to make light of it: ‘We’ve both run out of things to say, you and I … what’s happening to us? Have we already grown bored with each other, like an old married couple?’
She looked up with uncomprehending eyes. This made me even more upset, so I said no more. But then I went over to the bed: I wanted to caress her, shatter the wall of ice between us before it had a chance to grow. Whereupon she sat up, to let her legs swing down off the bed, draping a thin cardigan over her shoulders. And, all the while, studying my face. Something was bothering her, and holding her back. Finally, she began to speak. In a very calm voice, she asked: ‘Why are you upset?’
And then, for the first time, I saw her pale face go pink. Her chest heaving, she continued: ‘What more do you want? Can there be anything more you could want? … But let me tell you. I do want more than this, much more, and yet it’s still beyond my grasp. I’ve tried everything, but to no avail. From now on, you can be happy. But what about me?’
Her head fell to her chest. Her arms dangled lifelessly at her sides. Her toes were just touching the rug. Her big toe was turned up and the others were curled downwards.
I pulled up a chair to sit across from her. I took her hands in mine. My voice was trembling, as befits a man who is about to lose his most precious belonging and the very meaning of his life.
‘Maria,’ I said, ‘Maria. My Madonna in a Fur Coat. What’s happened all of a sudden? What have I done to you? I promised that I would ask nothing of you. Haven’t I kept my promise? Why you are saying this, at a time when we should be closer to each other than ever.’
Shaking her head, she said: ‘No, my friend, no! We are further from each other than ever before. Because I have lost all hope. This is the end … I told myself that I would only experience this once. I thought maybe only this was missing. But no … I still feel the same emptiness inside … only it’s greater … What can be done? It’s not your fault. I’m just not in love with you. But I know only too well what this world of ours requires: that after decreeing that I fall in love with you, I must, having failed to fall in love with you, nevertheless abandon all hope and never love another, ever again … But it is not in my control. So that is just the way I am. I have no choice but to accept the way things are … Oh, how I wish … how I wish it were otherwise … Raif … my good-hearted friend … please believe that I wish as much as you – and perhaps even more than you – that it were otherwise. What can I do? Right now I don’t feel anything but the sour taste of the drink in my mouth and an ache in my back that is getting steadily worse.’
She was quiet for a while. She shut her eyes, and her lovely face softened. In a voice so sweet she might have been telling a fairy tale from childhood, she said: ‘Last night, especially after we came here – oh, the things I hoped for … I dreamed of a magic wand that would change me utterly, give me a new heart, one that combined the innocence of a little girl with the power to embrace all creation, so that when I woke up in the morning I would wake up to a new world. But the truth is another country … the skies here are cloudy … my room is cold … I feel so estranged from everything around me. Despite the intimacy between us, you are still so far away, another person in another body … my muscles are so tired and my head aches …’
She fell back onto the bed and lay down on her back. She put her hands over her eyes and went on: ‘So I suppose this means that people can only get so close to each other and then they must drift apart, each time they try to take one step closer. I can’t tell you how much I did not want our intimacy to have a limit, or an end. What truly saddens me is seeing how empty my hopes have turned out to be … Now there is no point in deceiving one another … we can no longer speak openly as we did before. We sacrificed it all and for what, why? Nothing at all! In attempting to possess something that was never there we lost something we already had … Is it all over? I don’t think so. I know that neither of us are children. But we do need to spend some time away from each other, some time to rest. Until we feel the overwhelming desire to see each other again. Enough, enough! Raif, I shall call you when that time comes. Perhaps we will be friends again and all the wiser for it. We won’t expect so much from each other, or think that we can give so much … But now it’s time for you to go … I really do need to be alone …’
She drew her hand away from her eyes. Looking at me, almost pleadingly, she held out her hand. I took the tips of her fingers and said, ‘Adieu.’
‘No, no, not like that … You are angry with me … What have I done to you?’ she cried.
Mustering all my strength to remain calm, I said: ‘I am not angry, only sad.’
>
‘Can’t you see that I am too? Can’t you see? Let’s not part like this. Come here.’
Placing my head on her chest, she caressed my hair. She placed her cheek on mine.
‘Smile once for me and then go,’ she said.
I smiled and then hurried out of the room, my face hidden in my hands.
Out on the street I began walking aimlessly. There was no one outside and most of the shops were still closed. I was heading north. Trams and omnibuses with steamed-up windows passed me by. I walked … along the cobblestone pavement and past houses with darkened façades … I kept walking … I opened my jacket because I was sweating. I came to the end of the city. And I kept walking … I walked under the railway bridges and over the frozen canals … still walking. Always walking. I walked for hours. Without thinking. My eyes blinking away the cold, I picked up my pace, until I was almost running. On either side of me were well-kept pine forests. Now and then a clump of snow tumbled off a branch. Cyclists passed me by, and in the distance I heard a train shaking the ground. I walked … then on my right I saw a good-sized lake full of skaters. Turning into the woods, I walked towards it. Among the trees were long, criss-crossed tracks left by skis. In a grove protected by a wire fence, little snow-covered pine saplings trembled like children in white capes. In the distance I made out a two-storey wooden country inn. Turning to the lake, I watched girls in short skirts and young men with clipped trousers skating side by side. They would lift up one foot to spin around, before speeding off hand in hand, to disappear behind a headland. The girls’ coloured scarves fluttered in the wind and so too did the boys’ blond hair, as together they swayed first to one side and then to the other, and with every step they seemed to change in height, rising and falling as one.
And I was all eyes, all ears. Sinking ankle-deep into the snow, I trudged towards the lake, taking in every detail. Passing behind the country inn, I headed for the trees across the lake. I remembered having been here before, but I could not remember when, nor could I figure out exactly where I was. A few hundred metres behind the lodge were a few old trees on a hill. I stopped. Again I gazed out at the skaters on the ice.