“Susan!”
But she’d hung up, and when he called again, he was connected to her mailbox.
13
It got dark. The neighbor came to sit with him. “Problems?”
Richard nodded.
“Women?”
Richard laughed and nodded again.
“Understand.” The neighbor stood up and left. Shortly afterward he came back, set a bottle of beer down next to Richard, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Drink!”
Richard drank and watched the bustle on the street. The kids a few buildings along, smoking and drinking and blasting their music. The dealer in the shadow of the steps, silently handing out little folded pieces of paper and pocketing dollar bills. The lovers in the doorway of the building. The old man, the last one left, who hadn’t yet folded up his chair to carry it upstairs and got himself a can of beer out of his cooler from time to time. It was still warm; there was none of the sharpness in the air that can signal the nearness of fall on a late-summer evening; rather, it held the promise of a long, gentle end to the summer.
Richard was tired. He still had the feeling that he must choose between his old life and the new one, that he had to have the right idea or the necessary courage and then he would stand up as if involuntarily and either go upstairs or drive away. But the feeling was tired, just as he was.
Why should he take a taxi to a hotel on the East Side today? Why not tomorrow? Why should he not stay in his old life until he devoted himself to the new one? It would be laughable if in a few weeks he couldn’t manage to switch out of his old life and into the new one. Could do it now. If he had to. But he didn’t have to. Besides, nothing was to stop him going there now and coming back tomorrow. If he went later, he would never come back. The new life with Susan would hold him there.
What was important was to decide. And he had decided. He would give up his old life and start a new one with Susan. As soon as he could begin it properly. He couldn’t do that yet. He would do it as soon as things were that far along. He would do it because he’d decided to. He would do it. Just not yet.
When he stood up, his arms and legs hurt. He stretched and looked around. The kids were at home, watching TV or playing with their computers or asleep. The street was empty.
Richard took his suitcase, unlocked the front door, collected the mail from the mailbox, climbed the stairs, and unlocked the door to his apartment. The bucket that collected the drips from the broken pipe was almost empty, and there was a bunch of asters on the table. Maria. The oboist was asking on the answering machine if they were going to see each other this evening. His Spanish teacher said hello on a postcard from his yoga vacation in Mexico. Richard switched on his computer, then switched it off again; the e-mails could wait. He unpacked, undressed, and threw his dirty clothes in the laundry basket.
He stood in the room naked, listening to the noises in the building. It was quiet next door; upstairs a TV murmured gently. From somewhere way below him in the building came the sounds of an argument, till a door slammed with a crash. Air conditioners hummed in several windows. The building was asleep.
Richard switched off the light and went to bed. Before he went to sleep he thought of Susan standing on the steps up to the plane, laughing and crying.
The Night in Baden-Baden
1
He took Therese with him, because that’s what she’d been hoping. Because she was so happy about it. Because when she was happy she was a wonderful companion. Because there was no good reason not to take her.
It was the premiere of his first play. He was to sit in the box and walk onstage at the end and allow himself to be applauded or booed with the actors and the director. It was true that he didn’t feel he deserved to be booed for a production he hadn’t overseen himself. But he did want to stand onstage and be applauded.
He had booked a double room in Brenners Park-Hotel, where he had never been before. He looked forward to the luxuriousness of the room and the bathroom and to being able to wander through the park before the performance and take a seat on the veranda to enjoy a cup of Earl Grey and a club sandwich. They left in the early afternoon, made it onto the Autobahn in good time despite the Friday-afternoon traffic, and by four p.m. were already in Baden-Baden. First she took a bath in the tub with the gold fixtures, then he did. Afterward they wandered through the park and after the Earl Grey and the club sandwiches on the veranda, they drank champagne. Being together was pleasantly relaxing.
But she wanted more from him than he wanted from her or could give her. That’s why for a whole year she hadn’t wanted to see him, but then she missed their evenings together going to the movies or the theater or out to dinner, and accepted that all they ended with was a fleeting good-night kiss at her front door. Sometimes she snuggled up against him in the movie house, and sometimes he put his arm around her shoulders. Sometimes she took his hand when they were walking, and then sometimes he would hold hers tightly in his. Did she see in this a promise of greater possibilities between them? He wanted to keep things vague.
They went to the theater and were greeted by the director, introduced to the actors, and taken to their box. Then the curtain went up. He didn’t recognize his play. The night during which a terrorist on the run takes refuge with his parents, his sister, and his brother was a travesty onstage, in which everyone made themselves ridiculous, the terrorist with his jargon, the parents with their nervous legalisms, the business-oriented brother and his moralizing sister. But it worked, and after a brief hesitation he allowed himself to go onstage and be applauded with the actors and the director.
Therese hadn’t read the play and was uninhibited in her delight at his success. This did him good. At dinner after the premiere she kept smiling at him so warmly that despite his normal awkwardness at social events he felt his own inhibitions slip away. He realized that the director hadn’t twisted his play toward travesty, but that that was how the man had understood it. Should he accept the fact that without his own knowledge or intent, he’d written a travesty?
They went back to the hotel elated. The room had been made up for the night, the curtains closed, and the bed turned down. He ordered a half bottle of champagne, they sat on the sofa in their pajamas, and he popped the cork. There was nothing more to say, but it didn’t matter. There was a CD player on the chest of drawers, along with some CDs, including one with French accordion music. She snuggled up to him, and he put his arm around her shoulders. Then the CD and the champagne both came to an end. They went to bed, where after a fleeting kiss they turned with their backs to each other.
The next day they took their time on the homeward journey; they visited the art museum in Baden-Baden, stopped at a wine grower’s, and went to the castle in Heidelberg. Once again it was easy to spend time together. Although the sensation of the phone in the pocket of his trousers made him feel queasy. He’d switched it off—what pile of messages might there be waiting?
2
None, as he discovered back home that evening. Anne, his girlfriend, hadn’t left any word. He couldn’t tell whether any calls from her were among the ones that had come in; maybe the blocked number was hers, maybe not.
He called her. He was sorry he hadn’t been able to call from the hotel last night, it had been too late. He’d left early this morning, he hadn’t wanted to disturb her so early. Yes, and he had forgotten his cell phone at home. “Did you try to reach me?”
“It was the first evening for weeks that we haven’t talked to each other. I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
It was true. Last night had felt wrong. The closeness in the shared bed had been too much. It hadn’t corresponded to any inner closeness born of love or desire or even a longing for warmth or fear of loneliness. With Anne, the shared bed would have felt right, as would the night.
“When are you coming?” Her question was both tender and urgent.
“I thought you were coming.” Hadn’t she promised to come for a few weeks after t
he course she was giving at Oxford—weeks that made him both nervous and full of anticipation.
“Yes, but it’s another month till then.”
“I’ll try to come the weekend after next.”
She said nothing. When he was about to ask if there was a problem about the weekend after next, she said, “You sound different.”
“Different?”
“Different from before. What’s wrong?”
“Everything’s fine. Maybe I partied too long after the premiere and got to bed too late and got up too early.”
“What did you do all day today?”
“I did research in Heidelberg. I want to set a scene there.” Nothing else occurred to him on the spur of the moment. So now he’d have to write a scene in Heidelberg in his next play.
She was silent again, before saying, “This isn’t good for us. You there and me here. Why don’t you write here while I’m still teaching?”
“I can’t, Anne, I can’t. I’m meeting the head of the Konstanz Theater and the editor of the theater publishing house, and I promised Steffen I’d help in the election. You think that unlike you, I can set things up any way I want. But I can’t stop and just leave everything lying around.” He was getting irritated at her.
“Election …”
“Nobody forced you …” He wanted to say that nobody had forced her to accept the teaching post in Oxford. But her field happened to be the rather narrow one of feminist legal theory, which meant that she didn’t get tenure anyway, just teaching contracts. She could have broadened her field. But it was all she wanted to do, and the requests for her courses showed him that she was good at what she did. No, he didn’t want to get mean. “We have to plan things better if anyone wants something from either of us. We have to work out what we’re going to take on and what we’re going to say no to.”
“Can you come Wednesday already?”
“I’ll try.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
3
He had a bad conscience. He had lied to Anne, he had got angry with her, he had almost been mean to her, and he was glad the phone conversation with her was over. When he stepped out onto the balcony and noticed the summer warmth and the peace of the city, he sat down. Sometimes a car came down the street below the balcony, sometimes the sound of footsteps echoed up to him. He also had a bad conscience because he didn’t call Therese to ask if she’d survived it all and enjoyed it.
Then he was tired of having a bad conscience. He didn’t owe Therese anything. What he was concealing from Anne, he had to conceal from her, because she would react with such excessive jealousy. Earlier girlfriends hadn’t been troubled when they heard that he’d shared a bed with another woman while he was off on a trip or visiting someone, so long as it was only the bed. Anne would be beside herself. Why must she make such a fuss about another woman? And that she should think he wrote the rules for his own life himself and was available anytime, while she had to obey the laws of her career—how could this not make him angry? She had chosen her path just as he had chosen his.
He was glad the phone conversation was over and yet he was already living in anticipation of the next. They had known and loved each other for seven years and had still not been able to give their life together a reliable form. Anne had an apartment and a teaching contract in Amsterdam that wasn’t enough to live on but that she could set aside at any time to go teach in England or America or Canada or Australia or New Zealand. He would go visit her there and stay for sometimes longer, sometimes shorter periods. Between times she was with him for days or weeks in Frankfurt, and he was with her for days or weeks in Amsterdam. In Frankfurt he found her too demanding and she found him too petty, and in Amsterdam there was less tension, either because she was more generous than he or because he was more modest in his expectations. They spent a good third of each year together. For the rest of the time Anne’s life was unsettled, a life of suitcases and hotels, while his followed a peaceful track—with events and appointments, the authors’ union, and the political party, with friends and, yes, Therese.
Not that any of it was so important to him. He rejoiced over every event that fell through, every appointment that got canceled, every political invitation and demand that failed to make its way to his mailbox or his e-mail. But to drag himself away from it all and move to Anne in Amsterdam or with her into the wide world—no, it was not possible.
It was not possible, although he often suffered her absence like a physical pain. When he was happy and would have liked to share that happiness with her, when he was unhappy and could have used her comfort, when he was unable to talk to her about his thoughts and his projects, when he was lying alone in bed. For all that, when they were together they didn’t talk much about his thoughts and his projects, and she wasn’t so sensitive when he wanted comfort nor as effusive as he would have liked when he was happy. She was a determinedly purposeful woman, and the first time he saw her, he saw this purposeful determination in her beautiful peasant face, with its many freckles and her red-blond hair, and he liked her immediately. He also liked her heavy, powerful, dependable body. Going to sleep with that body, waking up with it, finding it in bed at night—when they were together it was as wonderful as he fantasized it was when they were apart.
No matter how they longed for each other, no matter how good things were when they were together—they had destructive fights. Because he had come to terms with a life that was more separate than together and she had not. Because he wasn’t as flexible and available to her as she felt he could be. Because she didn’t make the compromises in her career that he felt she could. Because she spied around in his things. Because he lied, when small lies promised to bypass large conflicts. Because he could do nothing right. Because she often felt unrespected and unloved. When she got really angry she screamed at him, and he retreated into his shell. Sometimes when she was screaming he got an awkward, helpless grin on his face that only made her angrier.
But the wounds from their fights healed faster than the pains of longing. After a time all that remained of the fights was the memory that there was something there, a hot wellspring that bubbled up again and again, hissing and steaming, and that could even scald and burn them to death if they fell in. But they could avoid falling in. Perhaps one day it would even turn out that the boiling wellspring was only an apparition. One day? Perhaps even the next time they came together, with such longing and such joy!
4
He didn’t fly on Wednesday, not till Friday. As he was eating dinner on Monday at the Italian restaurant around the corner, a man sat down next to him who had ordered a pizza and was waiting to pick it up. They fell into conversation, the man introduced himself as a producer, and they talked about material and plays and films. As they left, the man invited him to come have coffee in his office on Thursday. It was his first encounter with a film producer; he had been dreaming of movies for a long time, but had no one to offer his dreams to. So he changed his reservation from Wednesday to Friday.
He didn’t fly to England with a contract for a treatment or a screenplay in his pocket as he’d hoped. Nonetheless the producer had invited him to write an outline for one or another of the pieces of material they’d discussed. Was that already a success? He didn’t know, he was totally ignorant of the world of film. But he was in a good mood as he sat in the plane and in a good mood when he arrived.
He didn’t see Anne and called her. An hour from Oxford to Heathrow, an hour at the airport, an hour to get back—she had to finish an essay and had stayed at her desk. Surely he didn’t want her to have to spend the whole evening working. No, that’s not what he wanted. But he thought she could have started the essay sooner. He didn’t say so.
The college had provided her with a small duplex apartment. He had a key, opened the door, and went in. “Anne!” He climbed the stairs and found her at her desk. She stayed seated, wrapped her arms around his stomach, and leaned her head against his ches
t. “Give me another half hour. Then we go for a walk? I haven’t been out of the house for the last two days.”
He knew it wouldn’t be a half hour, unpacked, settled in, and made notes on his conversation with the producer. When they were finally walking through the park by the Thames, the sun was already low, the sky was glowing a deep blue, the trees were throwing long shadows on the shorn grass, and the birds had stopped singing. A mysterious stillness lay over the park, as if it had fallen out of the bustle of the everyday world.
For a long time neither of them spoke. Then Anne asked, “Who were you with in Baden-Baden?”
What was she asking? The night in Baden-Baden, the phone conversation the next evening, the little lie, his bad conscience—he’d thought all that was behind him.
“With who?”
“What makes you think I …”
“I called Brenners Park-Hotel. I called a lot of hotels, but in Brenners they asked if they should wake their honored guests.”
Which side of the bed had the telephone been on? At the thought that she might have told them to put her through, he panicked. But she hadn’t told them to put her through. How did they speak in Brenners Park-Hotel? Should we wake our honored guests? “Our honored guests—they say that whether it’s a question of more than one person or just one. It’s an old-world form of expression that high-class hotels consider distinguished. Why didn’t you ask to be put through to my room?”
“I’d had enough.”
He put an arm around her. “Our verbal misunderstandings! Do you remember when I wrote to you that I wished we could smoosh up together and you thought I wanted to schmooze with you and talk all sorts of stupid gossip? Or when you said to me that in principle you’d come to our family reunion, and I thought you were saying ‘basically, yes,’ when all you meant was that you’d think about it?”