I’ve written everything down. Maybe someone will find it. Otherwise they’ll consider it a clear case: Marriage broken, screenplay failed, so he looked for an abyss for himself and his poor kid.
And if they find it?
Well, they’ll still think that.
Esther isn’t moving. She’s lying there completely relaxed. As if freed. Breathing deeply and evenly. There’s absolutely nothing I can do.
—
I understand the thing with the angle better now too. It’s not easy to put into words. At least not these words. With new words it would be possible. But why bother? If I say that in addition to the three dimensions you have to imagine another three from the other side, or actually from within…But to whom am I supposed to explain this? To the others who are here forever too? They’ve known it for a long time, they already know far more.
—
But maybe I can warn him, that is, me, that is, the man I just a short while ago was, in this way; maybe call to him through undulating time: Get away. Shout at him: Get away, before it’s too late, whisper it, yell it, that he should stop worrying about his movie and open his eyes and see where he is. Somehow get through to him, keep trying until he hears me, until he reads it, until he sees it, until he understands.
—
It didn’t work. I tried it. I’m still here. So he didn’t get away when he still could, so I stayed.
—
Footsteps on the second floor. But that no longer frightens me. Now I’m afraid of completely different things. Someone was walking down the corridor upstairs, something fell on the floor and shattered with a tinkling sound, then the stairs creaked, then the front door closed. Now it’s quiet again.
It’s getting light out. How am I going to explain it to her when she wakes up, how am I going to explain it? We have food for another two days, but something tells me that food soon won’t be important anymore.
I think I hear
—
She’s gone. I’m alone, my God, she’s gone. Now it’s time to wait.
I have no watch, my phone battery is dead, and the cable that was on the table just a short while ago is now no longer there. It must have been half an hour already, whatever that means, because time is
Now forty-five minutes. If they don’t appear again soon, then they
I think they
—
They made it.
—
When it got light and Esther was beginning to move in her sleep, on the verge of waking up, I suddenly heard the noise of an engine. I knew immediately what it was, and I knew that I had to be fast. I yanked Esther into the air, pushed open the door, and carried her down the hall, which now, however, was not the one from the living room, but the one on the second floor and, on top of that, much longer than it should have been. I ran past the door to Esther’s room, which fortunately was closed, and past the other bedrooms and ran and ran, while she began to stir in my arms and looked around in confusion. The hall expanded, and I ran, stumbled, caught myself, kept running toward the stairs, then I heard a honk outside. Esther stretched drowsily and let out a cry of pain as she banged into a picture on the wall, I heard glass shattering on the floor. I ran and ran and couldn’t believe that I was still running, Esther began to whine, suddenly I realized that it could conceivably go on like this without end, but then I reached the stairs after all and hurried down. I flung open the door and lurched outside.
There was my car. The headlights were still on, the windshield wipers jerked, a fine drizzle filled the air. Behind the steering wheel sat Susanna.
She got out without turning off the engine. She was pale, her face was furrowed, and she immediately began talking: She had been really worried, she had called a hundred times, I couldn’t do that, just stop answering the phone, you didn’t do that when you had a child together!
I opened the rear door and put Esther on the backseat. She looked at me wide-eyed. I leaned forward and gave her a kiss. Her cheek was hot. She had a fever. I opened my mouth to say something to her, but nothing occurred to me. There was nothing that was appropriate. So I closed the car door.
He’s not important, said Susanna. I don’t care about him. He means nothing to me, I never want to see him again.
It took me a moment to understand whom she was talking about.
It was a mistake, she said, a horrible mistake.
Start driving, I said.
But—
I need some time to myself now, I said. I can’t talk. I have to think. Yeah, I have to think. About everything.
But not here!
It’s good here, I said. I like it here, it’s a good place to think. About everything. Please drive now. Drive fast! I’ll get in touch. Drive.
She opened her mouth to speak.
No, I said. Trust me. Start driving!
She nodded.
When we looked at each other, I felt split into two beings. The knowledge that I would never see her and Esther again was unbearable. But at the same time they were both so far away from me that I didn’t know whether I would have even wanted to return to the place to which I could not return. I put my arms around my wife, and I felt as if someone else were doing it, someone with whom I shared only a name. What was the name again? I tried to remember. We held each other for several seconds. Already too long. I let go, pushed her away from me, stepped back, and said in a trembling voice: Go!
She nodded and got in the car. It started to move, went around me, and drove away. For a moment I saw Esther’s face, pale in the rear window, then they had disappeared around the bend. For a while I still heard the engine noise.
The rain ran down my head. I looked up at the house. How different it looked now. Slowly I went in.
—
That’s all there is to report. The water is drawing its rain lines on the window. The clouds are so dense that I can see the room very clearly in the reflection again—the long table, the cabinet, the kitchen, the door. There’s no one in the room reflected there. But there’s a notebook on the table.
—
And yet I’m only at the very
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and lives in Berlin and New York. His works have won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Welt Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. His novel Measuring the World was translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in postwar German literature. He is currently a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Ross Benjamin is a literary translator living in Nyack, New York. He received a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on Franz Kafka’s Diaries. His previous translations include Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion, Kevin Vennemann’s Close to Jedenew, Joseph Roth’s Job, Thomas Pletzinger’s Funeral for a Dog, and Clemens J. Setz’s Indigo. He was awarded the 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar’s Speak, Nabokov and a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He was a 2003–2004 Fulbright Scholar.
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Daniel Kehlmann, You Should Have Left
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