I thought about visiting my seatmate in prison. But I find visits to people in the hospital hard enough. If I feel sorry for the patient, I can’t find the right words to say, and if I don’t feel sorry for the patient, I can’t find any words at all. Get better soon—that’s never misplaced. But what do you say to a prisoner?
15
Five years later he was at my front door. It was summer again, a warm late afternoon. I took his bag, led him into the garden, opened two deck chairs, and fetched two glasses of lemonade.
“When did you get out?”
He stretched. “It’s so beautiful here! The trees, the flowers, the smell of new-mown grass, the birdsong. Do you mow the grass yourself? And were you the one who planted the hydrangeas? I’ve heard the color of hydrangeas changes according to the minerals in the soil. Isn’t it amazing that your blue and pink hydrangeas are growing so close to each other? When did I get out? Yesterday. My last years got commuted to probation under certain conditions, but none of them prevents me from flying to America for a few days to draw on my cash.” He smiled. “You’re sort of on my way to America.”
I looked at him. I could see no traces of the last years on his face. His hair was gray, but didn’t make him look older, just better. He talked as pleasantly, moved as easily, and sat as comfortably as he had back then.
“Was it bad?”
He smiled again, and his smile was also as quiet and gentle as it had been before. “I brought the library up to date and read all the things I’d always wanted to read and did a lot of sport. I did some deals with people I would rather not have done deals with, but don’t we always have to do that in society?”
“What about the man in the pale suit?”
“He wasn’t outside the prison yesterday. I hope enough is enough.” He took a deep breath. “You know that when I borrow something, I return it. Can you help me? It’s hard to save money in prison, and I don’t know who else to ask for the money for the flight. My mother died right after the trial.”
“The old lady who saw you …” The words came out just like that. Then I didn’t know how to go on.
He laughed. “Would she lend me the money? I doubt it. And didn’t she disappear back then?”
“Did you …” Again, I didn’t know how to go on.
“Did I kill the incriminating witness?” He looked at me with friendly, forbearing mockery. “Why do you think so badly of me? Why is your first thought murder, and not that I used my money to buy the old lady off? That she didn’t disappear into the grave with it, but to the Balearics or the Canaries?” He shook his head. “Do you think you could have prevented the murder? That you should have prevented it? You’re right, once a murder has happened, questions arise.” He was still looking mocking. “But if one did happen, I can’t tell you. I have to tell you that it didn’t. You see—we’re at an impasse.”
We were indeed at an impasse. “How much money do you need?”
“Five thousand euros.”
I must have looked astonished, because he laughed and explained: “You will understand, I’m too old to fly toilet class and sleep in youth hostels.”
“I can write you a check.” I stood up.
“Could you give it to me in cash? I don’t know if anyone will pay out that amount of money to me without further ado.”
It was almost six o’clock and the banks were closed. But I could get the money together by using my debit card and my credit cards. “Then let’s go.”
“There’s no hurry. I was actually wondering if perhaps I could impose on your hospitality for a few days …”
He was hoping I wouldn’t let him finish the sentence. That I would be delighted to invite him to be my guest for a few days. And why not? It’s true that I dislike any kind of disorder in my house. But I have a guest room and a guest bathroom, and whatever disorder my guests introduce is rectified by the cleaning lady and I don’t notice it. I like it when I have someone I can share a glass with in the evenings and talk; it’s better than sitting on my own. But I didn’t respond right away.
“We would have a couple of nice days together. But unfortunately it won’t work. I have to leave, the sooner the better. Do you think you could take me to the airport?”
I drove him to the airport, withdrew five thousand euros from various cash machines, and gave them to him. We said goodbye, but with a handshake this time, not a hug. Should I invite him to visit me again? I couldn’t make up my mind in time. “Hope all goes well!”
He smiled, nodded, and went.
16
I looked after him until he disappeared into the hurly-burly. Then I left the airport and crossed the road to the parking garage, where I took the elevator up to the roof. I didn’t find my car right away, and when I did find it, I couldn’t feel the key in my pocket. The sky had clouded over and a cold wind was blowing. I stopped hunting and stood looking at the other parking garages, the hotels, the airport, and the planes taking off and landing. My seatmate would soon be sitting in one of the planes as it rose from the runway.
That was the end of our encounter. When we said goodbye the first time, I hadn’t given any thought to whether we would see each other again. This time, I knew we wouldn’t. Would I find a letter with a check in my mail one day?
I was freezing. What had seemed so good when he was with me suddenly felt not good; what had felt so close and warm suddenly felt strange and cold. That I had listened to his story, sharing his hopes and fears. That I would have given him my passport if he hadn’t taken it, and my guest room if he hadn’t decided to fly. That I had been glad he had tricked the police when he arrived, and was able to visit his mother and consult with his defense attorney. That I had believed against all reason that the death of his girlfriend was an accident and the disappearance of the old lady a riddle.
What had I done? Why had I got involved with him? Allowed myself to be used by him? Just because he had a quiet, gentle smile, a pleasant manner, and a softly cut, softly creased suit? What was the matter with me? Where did I leave my rational self, that makes me an alert observer and a clear thinker and a good scientist and that I’m proud of? Normally, I’m a good judge of people. I admit I had illusions about my wife at first. But I soon realized there was nothing behind her pretty face and her nice manner, no thought, no strength, no character. And sweet as I found my daughter and much as I loved her, I still realized immediately, as she grew up, that all she wanted was to have things, and showed no commitment to anything and achieved nothing.
No, letting myself get caught up with this person was incomprehensible.
And that it took me so long till I finally—Had I finally only regained my senses because a cold wind was blowing? If it had stayed warm, would I still be …?
I watched a plane climb, a jumbo jet from Lufthansa. En route to America? Perhaps he’d gotten his ticket quickly and already caught this plane. Was he irritated to be sitting not in first class but in business?
The setting sun broke through the clouds for a moment, making the plane glisten, as if it were trying to turn into a fireball and blow itself apart. Nothing would remain of Werner Menzel or of my folly.
Then the sun disappeared behind the clouds, and the plane rose higher and higher in a curve, and then set its route. I found the key, got into the car, and drove home.
The Last Summer
1
He was remembering his first semester as a professor in New York. The pleasure it gave him when the invitation came, when the visa was stamped into his passport, when he boarded the plane in Frankfurt and reached JFK with his luggage in the warmth of the evening and took a taxi into the city. He had even enjoyed the flight, although the rows were tight together and the seats were narrow; as they crossed the Atlantic he saw another plane in the distance, and he felt as if he were sitting on the deck of a ship that encounters another ship in mid-ocean.
He had been in New York before as a tourist or visiting friends or as a guest at conferences. Now he lived accordin
g to the rhythms of the city. He belonged. He had his own apartment, like everyone; it was quite central, not far from the park and the river. Like everyone, he took the subway in the mornings, slid the card through the slot, went through the turnstile and down the steps to the platform, pushed his way into a car, couldn’t move or turn the pages of his newspaper, and pushed his way out again twenty minutes later. In the evenings he managed to get a seat in the car, read the newspaper to the end, and did his shopping in the neighborhood. He could walk to the cinema and the opera.
He wasn’t bothered by the fact that he wasn’t an integral part of the university. His colleagues didn’t have the same conversations with him they had with one another, and the students, who had him for only one semester, didn’t take him as seriously as their professors whom they had to deal with from year to year. But his colleagues were friendly and the students alert, his class was a success, and from the window of his office he looked out onto a Gothic church built of red sandstone.
Yes, he had looked forward to the semester and later looked back on it with pleasure. But while he was actually there he was unhappy. His first semester in New York was the first semester in which he hadn’t had to teach at his German university—and he would have liked to enjoy his freedom instead of teaching again. His apartment in New York was dark, and in the courtyard the sound of air conditioners was so loud that he had to use earplugs to be able to sleep. On the many evenings when he ate alone in cheap restaurants or watched bad movies, he felt lonely. In his office the air conditioning blew dry air into his face until his sinuses became infected and he had to have an operation. The operation was dreadful, and when he woke up from the anesthetic he found that he wasn’t in a bed but on a gurney with other patients on gurneys and was sent home shortly afterward with a pounding head and a bleeding nose.
He hadn’t admitted his unhappiness even to himself. He wanted to be happy, because he had made it from a little German university town to great New York and belonged there. He wanted to be happy because he had wanted this happiness so much and now it was here—or at least everything was here that he had always imagined it to consist of. Sometimes an inner voice raised itself to cast doubt on his happiness, but he silenced it. Even as a child, a schoolboy, and a student, he had struggled when he had to go on a trip and leave his world and his friends behind. How much he would have missed if he’d always stayed at home back then! So he told himself in New York it was his fate to have to overcome doubts in order to find happiness where it didn’t seem at first to exist.
2
That summer an invitation to New York arrived again. He took the envelope out of the mailbox and opened it on the way to the bench where he always read his mail. The university in New York, which he’d been connected with for a quarter of a century now, was inviting him to organize a seminar next spring.
The bench was by the lake, on a part of the property that was separated from the rest and from the house by a small road. When they bought the house, his wife and children had been bothered by the road. They had got used to it. From the beginning he had liked it that there was a tiny kingdom to which he could open and close a door. When he came into his inheritance, he got the old boathouse fixed up and the roof built out. He had worked up there during many summers. But this summer he preferred to sit on the bench. It was his hiding place, invisible from the boathouse and the dock where his grandchildren liked to tumble around. If they swam out far enough, they saw him and he saw them, and they waved at one another.
He wouldn’t teach next spring in New York. He would never teach in New York again. His life in New York, which over the years had become such a self-evident part of him that he had long since ceased asking himself whether he was happy there or not, was over. And because it was over, his thoughts went back to the first semester he’d spent there.
To admit to himself that he’d been unhappy in New York back then would not be so bad if it didn’t lead to the next admission. When he came back from New York, he was in an accident and got to know a woman; their bicycles collided when both of them were riding where they were not supposed to—he thought it was a charming way to meet someone. They dated for two years, going to the opera and the theater and to dinner, a few times they took trips together for a couple of days, and she regularly spent the night at his place or he at hers. He found her adequately beautiful and adequately clever, he liked holding her and being held by her, and he thought he’d finally arrived. But when she moved away because of her job, the relationship soon became labored and then died. Only now could he admit he’d been relieved. That he’d found the two years an effort. That he would often have been happier if he’d stayed home and read and listened to music instead of meeting her. He had met her because once again he thought all the components of happiness were there and he had to be happy.
How was it with the other women in his life? With his first love? He was happy when Barbara, the prettiest girl in the class, went to the movies with him, accepted his invitation to eat an ice cream, then let him take her home and kiss her at the door. He was fifteen; it was his first kiss. A few years later Helena took him to bed, and everything went fine the very first time, he didn’t come too soon, and she came too, and all through the night he gave her what a man can give a woman, he the nineteen-year-old, she thirty-two. They were together until at thirty-five she married a lawyer in London to whom, as he eventually discovered, she’d been engaged for years. He took his exams, did better than he had expected, became an assistant professor, wrote essays and books, and became a full professor. He was happy—or did he just want to be happy because everything was going well? Because all the components of happiness were there. He had sometimes wondered if life were not elsewhere and then pushed the question away. Just as he had pushed away the fact that it was vanity that allowed him to court Barbara and serve Helena, and that he often found the effort in service of that vanity exhausting.
He shied away from any thoughts about happiness in his marriage and with his family.
He wanted to enjoy the blue sky and the blue lake and the green meadows and woods. He didn’t love the landscape for the distant view of the Alps, he loved it for the gentle curve of the nearby mountains as they rose upward and the lake found its place among them. A girl and a boy were out there in the boat; he was rowing and she was dangling her legs in the water. The drops falling from the oars glittered in the sun, and the little waves set up by the boat and the girl’s feet spread wide over the smooth surface of the water. The two children, it must be Meike, his son’s eldest daughter, and David, his daughter’s eldest son, weren’t talking. Since the mailman’s car had gone by, there had been nothing further to disturb the morning quiet. His wife was making breakfast in the house; a grandchild would come soon to fetch him inside.
Then he thought that he should take the insight about how deceptive his happiness had been not as negative, but as positive.
For someone who wants to take leave of life, what better insight could there be? He wanted to take his leave, because the last months that were ahead of him were going to be terrible. Not that he couldn’t tolerate pain. But when the pain became unbearable, he would go.
But he didn’t manage to take the insight as positive. The idea of summer together, his last summer, was the idea of a last shared happiness. It hadn’t taken much persuasion for his two children and their families to come to the house on the lake for four weeks, but it had taken a little. He had also had to use a little persuasion on his wife; she would rather have gone to Norway with him, because that’s where her grandmother came from and they’d never been. Now he had his family together, and his old friend was also coming to visit for a few days. He had thought he’d prepared their last shared happiness. Now he wondered if once again he had only collected the components of happiness.
3
“Grandfather!” He heard a child’s voice and quick child’s feet running across the road and the meadow to the lake. It was Matthias, his daughter’s youngest
son and the youngest of his five grandchildren, a sturdy five-year-old with a mop of blond hair and blue eyes. “Breakfast’s ready!” When Matthias saw the boat with his brother and his cousin, he called out to them again and again and hopped to and fro on the deck till they tied up. “Shall we race?” The children broke into a run and he followed them slowly. A year ago he would have run with them, and a couple of years ago he would have won. But watching them race up the hill ahead of him and then seeing the older children hang back to let the little one win was better than doing it with them. Yes, this was how he had pictured their last summer together.
He had also pictured how he would go. A doctor who was a friend and colleague had obtained the cocktail that organizations for assisted suicide give their members. Cocktail—he liked the description. He had never had a taste for cocktails or ever tried one; his first would also be his last. He also liked the description “angel of death” for the member of the organization who brings the cocktail to the fellow member who is ready to die; he would be his own angel of death. When things were that far along, he would stand up without any fuss from the evening gathering in the living room, go out, drink the cocktail, wash out the bottle and put it away, and go back to join the others in the living room. He would listen, fall asleep, and die, they would leave him to sleep and find him dead the next morning, and the doctor would pronounce it to have been heart failure. A painless, peaceful death for him; a painless, peaceful farewell for the others.
Things weren’t that far along yet. The table was laid in the dining room. At the beginning of the summer he had extended the table and imagined that he and his wife would sit at the head. Next to him their daughter and her husband, next to his wife their son and his wife, with the five grandsons and granddaughters around the end. But the others didn’t see anything appealing in this order and sat wherever it suited them. Today the only free seat was between his daughter-in-law and her six-year-old son, Ferdinand, who was clearly in a sulk and had pulled away from his mother. “What’s the matter?” But Ferdinand shook his head wordlessly.