“We met already when we were children; our parents were friends.”
“Doesn’t sound very exciting. I like exciting. I broke up with Felix because I didn’t want to drag any school stuff on to university. The next thing should be the next thing. Felix was okay, but now I want more than okay. I’ve read that it can work when parents arrange their children’s marriages. Not for me. I …”
“That’s not how it was. Our parents didn’t arrange our marriage, they were just friends. We saw each other a couple of times as children, that’s all.”
“I don’t know. Parents give children messages the children aren’t even aware of. That the parents aren’t necessarily aware of, either. The parents just think their children suit each other because they come from similar families with similar status and similar incomes and it would be great if they got married. They think it every time they see the children together. They make little comments, little insinuations, little encouragements, that attach themselves like little barbs.”
And so it went. Emilia had read that girls in the fifties still believed a kiss could make them pregnant. That men filed for divorce the day after the wedding night if they discovered their wives were no longer virgins. That sports were popular with girls, because they could say their hymens had torn during exercise. That young women rinsed their vaginas with vinegar after sex so as not to get pregnant, and stuck themselves with knitting needles to abort. “Am I glad none of it’s like that these days. When you got married and you were a virgin, weren’t you terrified on your wedding night? Was Gran’fa actually the only man you ever slept with in your life? Don’t you feel you missed something?”
While her granddaughter was talking, she looked at her smooth, pretty face, with its bright eyes, its strong chin, its mouth opening and closing busily as it poured out one idiocy after another. She didn’t know whether to laugh or tell her off. Was her whole generation like that? Did they all live so exclusively in the present that they only had the most warped concept of the past? She tried to describe the war and the years after the war, the dreams of girls and women back then, the boys and men they met, the relations between the sexes. But her descriptions were faded and dull; she thought so herself. So she started to talk about herself. When she came to the kiss after the ball, she wished she had left out the story with the one-armed student. But it was already too late.
“What was his name?”
“Adalbert.”
That was Emilia’s last interruption. She listened raptly and when it came to the farewell on the platform, she took her grandmother’s hand. She already sensed that the story was not going to end well.
“What would your parents say if they saw you taking your hand off the wheel?” She slipped her own out of Emilia’s grip.
“Did you never hear from him again?”
“He surfaced in Hamburg a few weeks later. But I didn’t speak to him. I didn’t want to see him.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
“I once saw a book of his in a bookstore. No idea whether he became a journalist or a professor or whatever. I didn’t look at the book.”
“What was his last name?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Don’t make such a fuss, Grandmother. I only want to check out what the man has written who loved my grandmother and whom she loved too. I’m sure he loved you as much as you loved him. Do you know the saying: Now, if not forever, is sometimes better than never? It’s true. The way you tell it, you don’t have bitter memories. They’re sweet, too. Bittersweet.”
She hesitated. “Paulsen.”
“Adalbert Paulsen.” Emilia was memorizing it.
They had left the Autobahn and were on a little road that followed a winding river. Had they walked along that river back then? On the other bank, where there was no road and no train? Had they stopped to rest at the guesthouse that was reached by a ferry? She wasn’t sure if she recognized the guesthouse and then the castle and then the village again. Perhaps it was only the atmosphere created by river and woods and mountains and old buildings that hadn’t ever changed. They had had a wonderful walk, with wine and bread and sausage in their backpacks, had swum in the river, and then had lain in the sun.
They would soon be there. It made no sense to go to sleep now. But she dropped off to sleep all the same, and woke up only when Emilia was parking in front of the hotel she’d located that morning on her computer.
7
What had she expected? The houses were no longer gray, they were white and yellow and ocher, even green and blue. The shops were branches of large chains, and where she remembered little hotels and restaurants and bars, there were fast-food joints. Even the bookstore she had loved was part of a chain and was offering nothing but best sellers and magazines. Nonetheless, the river flowed through the city just as it had before, and the little streets were as narrow, and the path up to the castle as steep and the view from the castle as wide as they always had been. She sat down on the terrace with Emilia and looked out on the city and the countryside.
“So? Is it the way you pictured it?”
“Oh, child, just let me sit for a bit and look around. Luckily I didn’t picture much.”
She was tired, and after they’d eaten dinner on the terrace and found their hotel again, she went to bed even though it was barely eight o’clock. Emilia had asked permission to go wandering a little through the city, and the request had both astonished and moved her. Was Emilia not independent?
Tired though she was, she didn’t fall asleep. Outside it was still light, and she could see everything quite clearly: the wardrobe with its three doors, the table against the wall with the mirror over it, to serve as dressing table or desk as required, the two armchairs next to the bookshelf, which had a bottle of water and a glass and a basket of fruit on it, the TV, and the door to the bathroom. The room reminded her of the rooms she had shared with her husband when she was still accompanying him to conferences; it was a room in a decent hotel, indeed even the best hotel, in some small place, and so functional as to be totally without character.
She thought of the room in which she and Adalbert had spent their first night together. There was a bed in it, a chair, a table with an ewer and basin, a mirror above the table, and a hook on the door. It was functional. And yet it had its secrets and magic. Under the severe gaze of the innkeeper’s wife, Adalbert and she had taken two single rooms in the country guesthouse. After dinner they went up to their rooms, and although they’d made no arrangement she knew he would come. She had known it that morning already and had packed her finest nightgown. Now she put it on.
With Adalbert here, would this room have character too? Would she have traveled a lot with him too, would she have spent many nights with him in hotels? What would life have become with him? Also a life by the side of a man with many responsibilities, who traveled a great deal and was rarely at home, and had affairs? She couldn’t imagine life with Adalbert that way, but she also couldn’t imagine it any other way. Thinking about a life with Adalbert made her feel afraid, with a strange sensation of having absolutely nothing under her feet. Because he’d just left her standing?
She had closed the window, and the street noises were muffled: the bright laughter of young women, the loud voices of young men, a car driving slowly through the pedestrians, music from an open window, the tinkling crash as a bottle broke. Had it been dropped by a drunk? She was afraid of drunks, though she was capable of making clear to them immediately in a firm voice that she wouldn’t tolerate any trouble. It’s strange, she thought, that knowing how to make other people afraid doesn’t protect you from feeling afraid yourself.
She got up and went to the bathroom, where she took off her nightgown and looked at herself. The thin arms and legs, the slack breasts and stomach, the thick waist, the wrinkles in her face and neck—no, she didn’t like herself. Not the way she looked, not the way she felt, not the way she was living. She put the nightgown on again, lay d
own in bed, and turned on the television. How easy: all the men and all the women and all the parents and all the children loved one another! Or were they all just playing a game in which each one pretends to the other one so that the other one will allow them their own illusions? Had she simply lost her taste for the game? Or was the investment no longer worth it, because she needed no more illusions in the years that were left to her?
She also needed no more trips. Trips were another illusion, even more short-lived than love. She would go home the next day.
8
But when she knocked on Emilia’s door at nine o’clock the following morning, there was no answer, and when she went out onto the terrace where breakfast was being served, Emilia wasn’t at any of the tables. She went to Reception and was told that the young lady had gone out half an hour before.
“Did she leave any message?”
No, she hadn’t. But after a while the friendly girl from the Reception desk came to the breakfast table to announce that the young lady had telephoned to say she would be back at noon to pick up her grandmother for lunch.
She wasn’t happy to be sitting here, trapped. She had wanted to leave at ten, be on the Autobahn by eleven, and home by four. But then she made herself settle down to wait. The sun was shining in the inner courtyard and on the breakfast terrace, and the waiters didn’t bother her and make her go to the buffet, but brought her what she asked for. Tomatoes with mozzarella, smoked trout with horseradish cream, fruit salad with yoghurt and honey—even after the loss of her sense of taste, different foods were different in her mouth when she chewed or bit into them. The way her different children and grandchildren still felt different even after she’d stopped loving them, she thought. If I still enjoy the soft, solid flesh of the trout against the cottony horseradish cream, even just a bit, I should be able to stick it out with my children and grandchildren too. Had Emilia met some boy in the city last night to whom she was now paying attention with the same energy she applied to her grandmother and to her parents’ wishes? Yes, she was energetic, strong, diligent. And she also was bighearted. She would make a good doctor.
She stayed in her seat until the tables were being set for lunch. Her face was glowing; she had been sitting in the full sun and had got a little sunburned. She was also a little dazed as she stood up to go into the foyer and settle in an armchair. She fell asleep and woke up to find Emilia sitting on the chair arm wiping the corner of her mouth with a handkerchief.
“Did I dribble in my sleep?”
“You did, Grandmother, but it doesn’t matter. I found him.”
“You …”
“I found Adalbert Paulsen. It was simple—he’s in the phone book. I also know he was a professor of philosophy here at the university, and he’s a widower and has a daughter who lives in America. The librarian in the philosophy seminar showed me the books he’s written—a whole shelf full.”
“Let’s go home.”
“Don’t you want to see him? You have to see him! That’s why we came here!”
“No, we …”
“Perhaps you didn’t do it consciously. But trust me, your subconscious brought you here so that you can see him again and forgive each other.”
“We’re supposed to forgive …”
“Yes, you should forgive each other. You need to forgive him for what he did to you. If not, you’ll never have peace and nor will he. I’m sure he longs for it and just doesn’t trust it’ll happen, because you gave him the brush-off in Hamburg back then.”
“Leave it be, Emilia. Pack your things. We’ll eat lunch on the way.”
“I said you’d be there at four.”
“You what?”
“I was there, I wanted to know how he lives, and as I was there anyway, I thought I could arrange for you to come and see him. He was a bit hesitant, like you, but then he agreed. I think he’s happy you’re coming. He’s all curious.”
“Those are two different things. No, child, this wasn’t a good idea of yours. You can call him and cancel, or I simply won’t go. I don’t want to see him.”
But Emilia wouldn’t give up. What did she have to lose, it would all be a big win, didn’t she feel she was still bitter and mustn’t stay that way, didn’t she understand that when you can do some good and forgive someone, you have to do it, wasn’t she at least curious, and this was the last adventure she’d have in her life. Emilia talked and talked until her grandmother was exhausted. She could not bear this child with all her belief in herself and her psychological platitudes and her psychotherapeutic mission for one minute longer. So she gave in.
9
Emilia offered to drive her, but she preferred to take a taxi. She didn’t want any last instructions. As she got out and walked to the modest one-family house from the sixties, she became quite calm. For this he had left her? He may have made it to professor—but he’d become a petit bourgeois. Or had he always been one?
He opened the door. She recognized his face, the dark eyes, the bushy eyebrows, the thick hair, now white, the sharp nose and wide mouth. He was taller than she remembered, thin, and the suit with the left sleeve tucked into the left pocket hung on his body as if on a rack. He gave a faint smile. “Nina!”
“It wasn’t my idea. My granddaughter Emilia thought I …”
“Come in. And then you can explain to me why you don’t want to be here.” He went ahead and she followed him down a hall and through a room full of books out onto the terrace. There was a view over fruit trees and meadows to the wooded slope of a mountain. He saw her astonishment. “I didn’t like the house either till I was standing on the terrace.” He straightened a chair for her, poured tea for them both, and sat down opposite her. “Why don’t you want to be here?”
She couldn’t interpret his smile. Mocking? Embarrassed? Pitying? “I don’t know. The idea of ever seeing you again was unendurable. But finally perhaps the idea itself was only a habit. But I had it.”
“How come your granddaughter decided you ought to see me again?”
“Oh”—she made a dismissive gesture—“I told her about our summer. She had such idiotic ideas about life and love back then that I let myself be pulled in.”
“What did you tell her about our summer?” He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“What are you asking? You were there, at the doctors’ ball and the kiss at the door and in the room in the guesthouse.” She was getting angry. “And on the platform and it was you who got on the train and you who left and were never heard from again.”
He nodded. “How long did you wait in vain?”
“I don’t remember how many days and weeks. But it was an eternity, I do know that.”
He looked at her sadly. “It wasn’t even ten days, Nina. After ten days I came back and was told by your landlady that you’d moved out. A young man had come to get you, he’d loaded your things into a car, and driven off with you.”
“You’re lying!” She flew at him.
“No, Nina, I’m not lying.”
“Are you trying to knock the ground out from under me? Make me lose faith in my mind and my memory? Make me crazy? How can you say such things?”
He leaned back and ran a hand over his face and head. “Do you remember where I was going when I left?”
“No, I don’t remember. But I do remember you never wrote and never called and …”
“I went to a philosophical congress in Budapest and couldn’t phone you from there or write to you, either. It was the Cold War and because I wasn’t supposed to be there, I couldn’t get in touch from there, either. I told you all that.”
“I remember you took a trip you didn’t have to take. But that’s how you were, first came your philosophy, then there was a long gap, then came your colleagues and your friends, and then came me.”
“That’s not true, either, Nina. I was working like a maniac on my dissertation back then because I wanted to finish, find a job, and marry you. You wanted to be married, that much was clear, and the boy from Ha
mburg was always ahead by a nose. Didn’t you know each other from your childhood? Weren’t your families friends and he was your father’s assistant?”
“That’s as false as everything else you’re saying. My father gave him advice about his studies and practical training, because he liked him, but his assistant—no, my husband was never my father’s assistant.”
He looked at her wearily. “Were you afraid you would fall out of your bourgeois world and land in my poor one? That with me you wouldn’t have the things you were used to and needed? I stood outside your parents’ house in Hamburg—was that it?”
“What are you trying to do: turn me into some spoiled bourgeois brat? I loved you and you destroyed it all and now you don’t want to know anymore.”
He said nothing, turned his head away, and looked across the meadows to the mountains. Her eyes followed his, and she saw sheep grazing in the meadow. “Sheep!”
“I was just counting them. Do you remember how angry I could get? I probably managed to frighten you that way too. I can still get really angry, and counting sheep helps.”
She tried unsuccessfully to recall any of his outbursts. Her husband, yes, her husband could turn her to ice with his cold rage. If he kept it up for days on end, he drove her to complete despair. “Did you yell at me?”
He didn’t reply. Instead he asked, “Will you tell me about your life? I know that you’re divorced; I saw your husband’s picture in the newspaper on his eightieth birthday with another woman. His children were in the picture too—are they yours?”
“Do you want me to say my life went wrong, and I should have waited for you back then?”
He laughed. She remembered how she’d loved his uninhibited peals of laughter and how they’d also startled her. She realized he wasn’t just laughing at her question, he was laughing to dissipate the tension. But what was so funny about her question?
“I’ve written things about that, about how life’s really big decisions aren’t right or wrong, it’s just that one lives different lives. No, I don’t think your life went wrong.”