I said nothing. I only smiled and took another sip of my wine.
“I’m going to tell you something else, Marc. Last year, as you probably remember, we shot Augustus. I gave Emmanuelle a minor role, too. As one of the emperor’s illegitimate daughters. But one day Emmanuelle comes to me and says she doesn’t want to be in the series anymore. She couldn’t stand it anymore, she said, the way Ralph behaved toward her. The way he looked at her. On the set and off. So I went and had a talk with Ralph. I warned him, in no uncertain terms, to stop what he was doing. He acted as though it was all a big joke, as though Emmanuelle was exaggerating, but he stopped. I had to promise Emmanuelle that she would never have to see him again, once the series was finished.”
It was tempting. It was tempting to tell Stanley, if not everything, then at least something. I’d had almost a whole bottle of white wine. A good story, I thought. I could make a good story out of it.
“That Ralph was completely mental,” Stanley said. “The way he acted with women. But both of us were there, we saw it. I don’t really mind that much that he’s not around anymore. I’m just curious. Purely from a technical point of view. Technically speaking, by the way, it seems to me pretty improbable that he got to Julia … He could barely walk after you kicked him in the knee like that, remember? But that’s not the point. The point is that you thought he was a possible culprit. So you did something. Maybe that very same evening …”
Close, but no cigar, I felt like saying. But I said something else instead.
“Come up with something yourself,” I said.
For one whole second, Stanley stared at me. Then his eyes began to twinkle. The next moment he burst out laughing.
“Very good, Marc! No, really, very good. Say no more. I think you’ve answered my question sufficiently. More than sufficiently.”
That afternoon we looked at the photos Stanley had taken last year, during the vacation at the summer house. I had asked about them as casually as I could. Whether he had other photos besides the ones I’d already seen on his website.
We sat around Stanley’s desk. He had closed the venetian blinds to keep out the bright sunlight as he clicked through the pictures on his monitor.
Caroline and Emmanuelle were out beside the pool. Lisa and Julia were standing to Stanley’s right, leaning against his desk. I was sitting on a stool to his left.
There weren’t all that many new ones, in fact. I looked at Julia out of the corner of my eye as the pictures of the repairman came by. There was one new photo: Julia and the repairman standing across from each other, with Julia holding out her arm, palm down, to indicate the difference in height between them. They were both laughing.
I was waiting for the moment when Julia would look over. At me. Weeks ago already I had decided to wait for the right moment. But as time went by, I began having more and more doubts about that right moment.
If she had looked over right then, we would both have known what the other knew. As far as I was concerned, that would have been enough.
But she didn’t look over. She only giggled and urged Stanley to click on through to the next photo.
“Look!” Lisa shouted suddenly. “It’s that donkey!”
All three of us looked at her.
“That donkey from the campground!” Lisa said. “That poor little donkey, Dad!”
I leaned over a little closer to the screen. Indeed, you could see a donkey, sticking its head over a wooden fence.
“Do you recognize that donkey, Lisa?” Stanley laughed. “Maybe you saw it at the zoo. That’s where I took the picture. They have a kind of zoo there, you know, just a normal-animal sort of zoo. By the time I went there, you guys had already been gone for a while … Wait, what am I saying? Of course you knew about it! That’s where you took that little bird. You and your dad.”
“But that donkey wasn’t there then,” Lisa said.
“How can you be so sure it’s that donkey?” I said quickly.
“I can just tell,” Lisa said. “There was a llama, too. Did you take pictures of the llama, too, Stanley?”
Stanley sank back in his chair and put one arm around my younger daughter.
“I didn’t photograph a llama there, sweetheart,” he said. “But I believe you one hundred percent. I think there was a llama there, too.”
“Hey, Dad, are you coming in?”
I’d had my eyes closed, now I opened them again. There stood Julia, with one foot up on the diving board. The sun was so bright it made me squint; I couldn’t see her face clearly.
“Okay,” I said.
Stanley had already taken a whole series of photos of her. Here in the yard. On the beach. Tomorrow there was going to be an official shoot. With a dressing assistant and a cosmetician. Nothing was certain yet, Stanley had said, but there really was a lot of interest. He mentioned the name of a few big fashion and style magazines. He took a few photos of Lisa, too.
“How old are you now?” he asked her. “Twelve? That’s great. Maybe you’ll have to wait a little while, but you never know, there could always be some magazine. You might be exactly what they’re looking for.”
I hadn’t thought about the repairman again, not since our arrival in America. At most, I’d thought of him as an organism. An organism that breathed. A heart that beat. I looked at Julia, who was halfway along the diving board by now. I tried again not to think about him. And I succeeded. I smiled at my daughter.
“Dad, come on …”
I started to get up but then sank back in my chair. I waited until she got to the end of the board.
She turned her face toward me. The right moment had passed forever, I’d decided by then. The right moment belonged to the past. My daughter on the diving board was the future.
We looked at each other. First I looked at her as a girl. Then I looked at her as a woman. Then she took off.
About the Author
HERMAN KOCH is the author of eight novels and three collections of short stories. The Dinner, his sixth novel, has been published in twenty-five countries and was an international bestseller. He currently lives in Amsterdam.
Herman Koch, Summer House with Swimming Pool: A Novel
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