He pulled a chair up to the bed. “Congratulations on the prize.”
“You knew. You were in town almost every day, and when you’re in town, you read the New York Times. Why didn’t you tell me? Because you’re not a successful writer, I’m not allowed to be one either?”
“No, Kate, I just wanted to keep our world here in one piece. I’m not jealous. You can write as many best sellers …”
“I don’t think I’m better than you. You deserve the same success, and I’m sorry the world is unjust and doesn’t give you that same success. But I can’t stop writing just because of that. I can’t diminish myself.”
“Down to my size?” He shook his head. “I didn’t want the whole circus to start up again, the interviews and talk shows and parties and all the rest of it. To have it all become the way it was before. Our six months here have been so good for us.”
“I can’t stand it if all that’s left of me is a shadow that disappears to its desk every morning and sits by the fire with you every evening and plays families once a week.”
“We don’t sit by the fire, we talk, and we’re not playing families, we are one.”
“You know what I mean—what I’ve been for you these past six months is what any woman could have been who’s preoccupied and doesn’t say much and likes to snuggle up at night. I can’t live with a man whose jealousy won’t allow me to be anything more than that. Or doesn’t love anything about me but that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’re leaving you. We’re moving …”
“You? You and Rita? Rita, whom I’ve washed and dressed and cooked for and taught to read and write? Whom I’ve taken care of when she was ill? No judge will give you custody.”
“After that attack of yours today?”
“My attack …” He shook his head again. “That wasn’t an attack. I only tried to block things off, the phone and the Internet and even the road.”
“It was an attack, and the driver who brought me here is going to notify the sheriff.”
He had been sitting on the chair with his back hunched and his head low. Now he straightened up. “I sorted out the car, I drove it here, and the roadblock has gone. All the sheriff is going to find out is that you drove our daughter without a car seat or a seat belt.” He looked at his wife. “No judge will give you Rita. You have to stay with me.”
What was in her eyes as she looked back at him? Hatred? Not possible. A refusal to understand. It wasn’t her broken arm and broken ribs that were hurting her. What was hurting her was that he’d torpedoed her plan. She didn’t want to recognize that she couldn’t make plans without him. It was time she finally learned. He stood up. “I love you, Kate.”
What right did she have to look at him in horror? What right did she have to say: “You’ve gone mad.”
13
He drove through town along the main street. He would have liked to put the barricades and sawhorses unobtrusively back on the pile, but the town fair was over and the piles had been cleared away.
He called the phone company from the general store and reported the damaged lines. They promised to send a repair crew the same afternoon.
In the house he went from room to room. In the bedroom he opened the curtains and the window, made the bed, and folded the nightshirt and pajamas. In Kate’s study he remained standing in the doorway. She had tidied up; the desk was clear except for the computer and the printer and a printed stack of paper, and the books and papers that had been lying on the floor were back on the shelves. It looked as if she’d closed not just the book but a part of her life, and it made him sad. Rita’s room smelled of little girl; he shut his eyes, sniffed, and smelled her bear, which he wasn’t allowed to wash, her shampoo, her sweat. In the kitchen he loaded dishes and pots into the dishwasher and left everything else where it was: the sweater, as if Kate could walk in at any moment and pull it on, the paints, as if Rita were about to sit down at the table and keep painting. He felt cold, and turned up the heat.
He stepped outside. No judge was going to take Rita away from him. In the worst case, the right lady lawyer would get him generous alimony. And then he would live here in the mountains on his own with Rita. And Rita would grow up with a mother who lived a five-hour drive away. Kate wants to push things to the limit? Let her find out what she gets out of that.
He looked out at the forest, the meadow with the apple trees and lilacs, and the pond with the weeping willows. No skating all together on the frozen pond? No sledding all together on the slope beyond the far bank? Even if Rita managed emotionally without her mother, and he managed financially—he didn’t want to lose this world that sometimes had felt in summer as though it had always been his and always would be.
He would work out a plan for keeping his world together. It would be a joke if he couldn’t, given the good cards in his hand. Tomorrow he could collect Rita. In a few days Rita and he would be in front of the hospital waiting for Kate. With flowers. And a sign saying “Welcome home.” And their love.
He went to the car, unloaded the barricades and sawhorses, and carried them to the spot behind the kitchen where he chopped and sawed up the wood for the fire. He worked until darkness, pulling the nails out of the sawhorses and chopping and sawing the barricades and braces into pieces. In the light that fell there from the kitchen window he stacked the wood into the pile, removing some of the logs he’d already stored for the winter and packing the new pieces between them.
He filled the basket with new and old wood and carried it inside to the fireplace. The phone rang; the phone company was calling to let him know the line was working again. He checked with the hospital and was told that Kate and Rita were asleep and there was nothing to worry about.
Then the fire was burning. He sat in front of it and watched as the pieces of wood caught alight, burned, glowed, and fell apart. On one of the blue ones he could read “Line” in white letters, part of the inscription “Police Line Do Not Cross.” The fire melted the paint, wiping out the inscription and consuming it. This is how he wanted to be sitting in front of the fire with Kate and Rita in a few weeks. Kate would read “Not” or “Do” on one of the pieces of wood and remember today. She would understand how much he loved her and slide over to him and cuddle up.
Stranger in the Night
1
“You recognized me, didn’t you?” No sooner had he sat down next to me than he started talking. He was the last passenger; the stewardesses closed the doors behind him.
“We …” We had stood with other passengers at the bar in the lounge. Rain beat against the windows, the New York-Frankfurt flight had been postponed several times, and we passed the time overcoming our irritation with champagne and tales of delayed flights and missed opportunities.
He didn’t give me time to reply. “I saw it in your eyes. I know that look: first it’s a question, then it’s recognition, then it’s disgust. Where did you—Stupid question, at the end my story was in all the papers and on every TV channel.”
I looked over at him. He was roughly fifty, tall and lean, with a pleasant, intelligent face, and black hair going rapidly gray. He hadn’t told any stories at the bar; the only thing I’d noticed was his loose-hanging, softly creased suit.
“I’m sorry”—why was I saying I was sorry?—“I don’t recognize you.” The plane took off and climbed steeply. I like the minutes when your back is pressed against your seat and you feel it in your stomach and your body senses that it’s flying. Through the window I looked down at the city’s sea of lights. Then the plane banked in a wide curve, all I saw was sky, until eventually the sea was below me with the moonlight glowing off it.
My neighbor laughed softly. “People keep recognizing me and I keep denying it. And now I wanted to take the bull by the horns, but there’s no bull.” He laughed again and introduced himself. “Werner Menzel. I hope we have a good flight!”
Over drinks we exchanged empty pleasantries, over dinner we watched diffe
rent movies. Nothing prepared me for him to turn to me as the cabin lights were dimmed: “Are you very tired? I know I have no right to burden you, but if I may tell you my story—it won’t take long.” He stopped, laughed again softly. “No, it will actually take long, but I’d really appreciate it. You know, up to now it’s been the media telling my story. But that wasn’t my story, it was theirs. My story doesn’t exist yet. I have to learn how to tell it. What better way could there be than to tell it to someone who hasn’t heard any part of it, a stranger in the night.”
I’m not one of those people who find it impossible to sleep in planes. But I didn’t want to be unfriendly. Besides which there was something in the way he said “stranger in the night,” some ironic tenderness, that moved and seduced me.
2
“The story starts back before the Iraq War. I had a job in the Ministry of Trade and was invited to join a circle of young colleagues from the Ministry of the Interior, the Foreign Ministry, and the university. A reading and discussion group—the salon was back in fashion in Berlin at the time. We met every four weeks at eight in the evening, had discussions, emptied several bottles of wine, and at eleven we were often joined by our girlfriends on their way back from work, a concert, or the theater, to make fun of our bookishness and enjoy the last moments of our conversations. It was often the most lively right at the end.
“Sometimes our diplomats invited us to their receptions, not the important ones, but the one with foreign poets or artists. To begin with my girlfriend and I stuck with the people we already knew. Then we realized that other people were glad if we started talking to them. Naturally there were some who were too important for us to be interesting to them, and others who just behaved that way. But they were exceptions. I would never have thought it—you can really have fun at a reception.
“I should have noticed—I noticed that the attaché from the Kuwaiti Embassy was flirting with my girlfriend. Should I have taken that as a reason to avoid contact? He was a playful flirt, he was more admiring of her beauty than seriously courting her. That’s the way I flirt too if a woman attracts me—letting her know she’s attractive rather than trying to get her. My girlfriend flirted back; she was not really encouraging him, just showing that she enjoyed his compliments.”
While he was talking he had propped his elbow on the armrest, but now he leaned back.
“She was incredibly beautiful. I was in love with her blond hair! Its pale and dark streaks, the way it fell onto her shoulders in waves, the way it lit her face with its own glow. ‘My angel,’ I kept wanting to say, ‘my angel.’ And her figure!” I heard him laugh again softly. “You know how self-hating women can be about their own bodies. Perhaps her calves were a little plump, but I liked them. They anchored her blond beauty. They went with the fact that her grandfather was a farmer and her father was a railroad guy and she was a very hands-on doctor. I also liked it that by a quirk of nature the space between her nose and her upper lip was a little short, which often made her mouth open just a fraction. It gave her this bewitchingly charming expression, like a child dazzled by the world. But when she was concentrating and her lips were closed, her face showed the strength of her determination. Oh, and the way she walked—do you know the song ‘Elle ne marche pas, elle danse’?” He hummed the melody quietly.
“We shouldn’t have accepted the attaché’s invitation. But my girlfriend loved foreign travel, and I, who don’t like traveling … Crazy, isn’t it? I don’t like to travel, would have preferred not to travel back then, and because I did travel, now I have to travel to save my life. So I thought I owed it to her to make the trip, and was pleased that at least we weren’t going to be stupid tourists, but would have a local partner and a place to stay. No one had given us any warnings, and why should they? We accepted the invitation and flew at Easter.
“We stayed in a hotel, not in the grounds where the attaché and his clan had their houses and courtyards and gardens. I thought it was already enough that he was looking after us. We were always going somewhere with him, and often his brothers and his friends. We drove into the desert, to the oil fields, and went out to sea with fishermen, we visited the university and the parliament and gambled and won at the camel races. It wasn’t an adventure, it was a rich people’s holiday; the infrastructure is like Florida’s, the restaurants have French cooks, picnics are served at picnic tables with tablecloths, porcelain, and silver, and we were driven around in large chauffeured cars. It was impressive. But I was glad when we were back in the evenings in our suite. Or when we sat out on the balcony in the mornings and watched the sunrise. Whether on the Mediterranean or the North Sea, we had often watched the sun sink into the water, but we had never seen it come rising out of it.”
3
He put his hand on my arm. “You’re very patient. Shall we have a glass of red wine? You had the Bordeaux, but the Russian River Valley Pinot Noir is better.” He didn’t wait for my answer but pressed the call button and persuaded the stewardess to leave us with the whole bottle. He sounded cheerful, as if the memories and the story had animated him.
“One morning they couldn’t collect us, and we wanted to take a taxi. At the entrance to the driveway we were hailed by two men who had been having breakfast at the next table and with whom we had exchanged newspapers. Could they give us a lift into the city? We got in, my girlfriend in front, me behind, and set off; at a red light the driver asked me please to jump out and drop a letter in the mailbox. Why me, you will ask, why didn’t he ask the other man or get out himself? The other man limped, as I’d immediately noticed, and the driver was on the left and the mailbox on the right; I could almost have reached out the window and dropped the letter in. So I got out, and the light turned green, and the car drove off. There was a lot of traffic; I thought, the driver doesn’t want to hold things up, he’ll drive around the block and come right back.”
He stopped, and switched off the little lights in the ceiling that shone down on his seat and mine. Did he want me not to see his pain? I said nothing, gripped his hand, and squeezed it briefly.
“Yes, he didn’t come back. I stood there and after half an hour I called the attaché. He phoned the minister and the minister immediately called out the police and blocked off the roads and increased security at the airport and alerted the coast guard. I was taken to police headquarters and shown hundreds of photographs. I didn’t recognize either of the men. The German ambassador and his wife picked me up and took me to their official residence; they didn’t want me to be alone in the circumstances. Everyone was alert and friendly and protective.
“The first night I didn’t sleep. But a new day brings new courage, and I was full of hope as I got out of bed. I got out of bed full of hope on the next days, too. Until I had to admit to myself how bad things looked. The ambassador told me what he knew about the white slave trade in the Near East. When I was back in Germany I read everything on it I could find. In earlier times there were trading centers or markets, if you will, where the abducted women were sold and where you could try to buy yours back at auction. Today the women are secretly videoed, interested parties look at these on the Internet and make offers and order the women online, and only then are the women abducted. If her husband or boyfriend or the police notice, all traces are erased.
“What happens to the women, you’ll ask. We’re talking about top-grade women and top prices. If the women go along, they’re treated well. If they don’t go along, they change hands several times and end up in a whorehouse in Mombasa.”
I tried to put myself in his place. How does one mourn a beloved woman for whom one can only hope that she feels fine in someone else’s arms? Whom one can get back only when even a drunken sailor in Mombasa no longer wants her? How long does one mourn? How long does one wait?
4
“A year later the Iraq War started. I didn’t think it had anything to do with me or vice versa. But in Kuwait the rich families panicked and moved out, to Los Angeles or Cannes or Geneva or whe
rever they had houses.
“She got away from him in Geneva. She climbed out a window, clambered over a fence, stopped a car on the street, and called me immediately, using the driver’s phone. I caught the next plane. Because she was afraid they could search for her and find her, she didn’t want to be alone, and the driver, a student, took her to the reading room at the university library. She sat there till I came.
“Do you know the University Library in Geneva? A magnificent building with a reading room that looks like something out of a turn-of-the-century picture book. She was sitting in the middle of the first row, conspicuously dressed, made up, perfumed. As I arrived at her table, she held her head down. I touched her arm and she looked up and screamed. Then she recognized me.”
The pilot announced from the cockpit that there was turbulence ahead and told us to fasten our seat belts and pull them tight. The stewardesses went down the rows, checking to see that the pilot’s instructions were being followed, waking sleeping passengers whose blankets were covering their seat belts and collecting glasses.
My seatmate stopped talking and watched what was going on. “They’re serious. I’ve never seen the stewardesses wake passengers in first class.” He looked at me. “Do you feel afraid when things get dangerous on a flight? Or do you believe in God? Who will not let you fall without catching you? I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in God and I don’t know if I still believe in justice and truth. I used to think that people who don’t have long to live tell the truth. But perhaps people who don’t have long to live are the worst liars. If they don’t play to the gallery now, then when? Truth … what is truth without a judge to sign and seal it? And what is a lie when he does? What is truth if it’s just wandering through people’s heads and authoritative corroboration?” Again he laughed his quick, soft laugh. “Forgive me, I’m a bit addled. I get afraid when flying turns dangerous, and what’s happening right now spells danger. But I must stop talking like Pontius Pilate or Raskolnikov, otherwise you’ll be asking yourself why you have to listen to me.”