I have a plane ticket in my bag, a little money, and my key ring. I left my telephone on Jakob’s kitchen table. I must have lost consciousness in my sleep, fifteen hours, it is possible I slept that long. It was three in the afternoon when I woke up with an aching, burning head. Jakob was gone. I even checked the pantry. He was gone. I called him and flinched. His cell phone rang shrilly on the kitchen table. I put mine next to it.
I left his apartment. There was a travel agency catty-corner across the street. I crossed the four-lane avenue on a diagonal. A taxi honked, a Rollerblader yelled: Hey, be sure you make it to shore. The woman in the travel agency was on the phone. She was whispering. I waited. From time to time I gave her a look, she gestured with her hand, then covered her mouth and the receiver. I wouldn’t have understood anything anyway. In the middle of the week, at short notice, and one way: expensive, she said once she’d finished her conversation. Sandra Bolle-Reichelt was written on the sign at her desk. Are you married? I asked as she typed on her keyboard with incredible speed. Why? she asked in return. Because of your name. I was wondering if you used to be called Reichelt or Bolle and why you didn’t just go with Reichelt and above all why you didn’t drop the Bolle. No—I only thought that part. All I said was: Because of your name. I inherited it, she said.
Aha, I replied, although I didn’t understand.
Should we get back to your booking? I nodded. She pointed out that as a rule a train ticket is cheaper, but I explained that I had to go as quickly as possible and as soon as possible. I can’t spend another sixteen hours sitting in a train, there was no way, I’d only arrived the day before. Up to you, she said. Thank you. I booked a flight to Vienna. I would decide there how I’d continue.
And what if he calls me now? If he tries, again and again, to reach me? At some point it will occur to him to check his apartment, it’s not impossible that I might have died of sorrow. Hopefully he’s already on his way, right this minute, and hopefully he’s scared of what he’ll find. And then? He’ll find our two cell phones next to each other on the table, nothing more.
After a brief thrumming, there’s a jolt. The subway starts moving again. Now I’m facing away from the direction of travel. The hands on the station clock are pointing straight up and down. Sixteen more hours until my flight leaves. A clear evening. After ten minutes, I stand up without thinking and go to the door, but when the train stops, I don’t push the button. I sit back down. If I had my phone, I could call Regine. I haven’t seen her for a long time. I count the stations passing. Sixteen. I easily find the way to the pub she once showed me, Regine, my friend from university. My living room, she called it, I suddenly remember as I open the door. I look around but she’s not there.
When he walks in, he looks me directly in the eye. Piercing light blue eyes that seem familiar. He sits at the bar. I think about his eyes and where I could have seen them before. I draw the shape of his eyes on the beer coaster, almond-shaped and slightly slanted and when he turns and gives me another look, I know: they’re dog eyes, the eyes of a Siberian husky. I stipple countless dots on the beer coaster, little pricks, actually. I finally stop and recognize the shape of a five o’clock shadow under the husky eyes, just like his.
When I pay, he slides off the barstool, bends down and ties his shoelaces. I stand right in front of him. I look at his part. He briefly raises his head and looks at me with his husky eyes. Then he ties the laces of his other shoe.
I wait for him outside. He comes out after only a few seconds. It looks to me like he nods slightly. I turn away and start walking.
Evening is falling. I walk into the twilight, it envelops me, and with every step I enter more deeply into the darkness. My footsteps are soundless in the traffic noise. Between the car lanes, in the middle of the road, a tramcar screeches around the curve and comes toward me. Left and right, two lanes of cars pass by. At the first opportunity, I’ll turn onto a quiet side street. The first opportunity takes a while to come. I suppress the urge to turn around, and pick up my pace.
As soon as I’m on the side street, I hear a bird singing. I stop and listen. It sounds like it’s carrying the heavy weight of disappointed love, long and fluted, melodious and piquant, touching and insistent at the same time, but mostly very, very loud. A blackbird, says a clear, slightly metallic voice close to my ear. I flinch. I find the voice unpleasant. I want to keep going, but he stops me. City blackbirds have to sing louder to be heard, he says and starts walking. He overtakes me and turns his face toward mine. Unfortunately they’ve forgotten how to adjust the volume, he continues, they tend to scream. In the late twilight, his eyes look almost brown, but his gaze is just as penetrating as before. He continues up the street, I follow hesitantly. He holds his back unusually straight, almost stiffly, but his arms swing as if they weren’t properly attached to his torso. I don’t like running after him, so I decide to turn right at the next intersection. We reach the intersection and he turns right. I follow him, as if I’d been found out, along a brick wall, behind which there is a park with tall trees. A light wind sways the branches, which have just sprouted, some have buds, a few are already blooming. He stops at an iron gate. He pushes on the handle. It doesn’t give. He takes a running start and leaps onto the wall. When he jumps, he seems to fling his arms out wide and he manages to anchor himself on top of the wall. He stands up straight and in the next moment, he has disappeared on the other side. My heart is hammering in my throat. A few minutes pass and I neither hear nor see a thing: I feel ridiculous, standing there, waiting, for what I don’t know, led down the garden path and left behind. I wonder where I could go. With a groan, he throws himself at the wall again, this time from the other side, and grunting, pulls himself up. He stands, looking down at me. I want to show you something, he says and drops to the ground, landing very close to me. He springs back up immediately, leans his back against the wall, clasps his hands and holds them out to me at crotch-height. How are his loose, wobbly arms supposed to lift me? I approach without a word and without looking at him, steady myself on his shoulders, and use his hands as a step to climb effortlessly over the wall.
We’re in an old cemetery. The graves and paths are overgrown with grass, only the gravestones assert themselves.
I’ve already looked for him on this side, he’s not there, so let’s take a look over there, he says.
I have no idea who he’s talking about. Where on earth is my lighter? I must have lost it. Do you have a light? I ask. I don’t smoke, he says and kneels down very close to the gravestones. It looks like he’s hugging them.
No, not here. Not here either. No. How is this possible? Where can he be?
It doesn’t matter to me that I don’t know who or what he’s talking about. Right now I feel like I’m in such good hands, this could go on forever as far as I’m concerned.
A lovely young woman, he says out of nowhere in a voice suddenly much darker, is being courted by a handsome young knight. A proper love story. Maybe we should give the two of them names, what do you think? Unfortunately, I can’t remember. Let’s call them Julia and Julius.
He leans against the tombstone. I can feel his piercing gaze on me and bring my hand to my neck, to my collarbone, as if to fend him off.
Before Julia gives Julius an answer, he continues, he must prove himself. She sends him into the sinister forest. This deep, dark forest is infamous. Come, he says and stands up. He walks one step behind me, as if he were driving me forward. We reach the wall and climb over it like an experienced team of thieves.
After several tricky encounters in the forest, he says when we’re back on the street, Knight Julius reaches a stretch of land along the river that belongs to a fisherman and his wife. Let’s call them Karl and Karla.
We follow the cemetery wall around one street corner and come to a tall entrance gate. I turn away and cross the street, I zig and zag, and decide on a cobbled side street. He follows me.
It’s late, he says, and the fisherman and his wife, Karl and K
arla, take Julius in for the night. It’s raining and the river rises. Finally, the couple’s daughter comes home completely drenched. Julius is amazed that Karl doesn’t scold his daughter for being out so late and he learns that this young woman—Undine, hers is the only name I can remember—was a foundling and has always been deaf to their advice and commands. She does what she wants, Karl tells him, but we still love her in a strange way. She came to us when our own child was taken by the river. In the morning our daughter fell out of the boat and that evening Undine stood at our door, dripping wet, like she is now. She has lived with us ever since.
Undine? My grandmother had told me many stories about her. You should read that book sometime, she would say, but I never did. Why is this man with husky eyes telling me her story? Am I dreaming? I stop and look at him. He smiles at me. Undine, he says, goes straight to Knight Julius and kisses him on the mouth. I recoil but the stranger continues his story: Julius is breathless for a moment, then seems to have lost his senses. Every thought of Julia is erased. Tell me about the sinister forest, Undine asks and pulls Julius down next to her on the bench, but Karl, who has just fetched a bottle of wine, smacks the table: not in my house! Julius is taken aback. Undine jumps up and runs out the door into the rain.... Should we get a drink? he asks, pausing. We’re standing in front of a bar, decorated with strings of colored lights. I could use a glass of wine now, too. I run off.
At the crossroads, I’m out of breath. I brace myself, my hands on my knees, as if breathing were easier that way. Bakery Pastry Shop is written in strangely ornate, fecal brown letters on a corner store. Through the plate glass window I see cakes in a display case and then, having raised my eyes only slightly, I see him reflected in the glass, and it looks like he’s in the shop, bending over the cakes. Who forgot those there? he asks, that’s a proper ghost feast. He begins whistling a jaunty tune that seems familiar, but I can’t place it. His gaze meets mine, piercing despite the detour of the display window reflection, keen, stopping at nothing, penetrating every substance. I close my eyes and rest my forehead against the glass.
Look at that, he says when I open my eyes again. It’s sprouting again. He rubs his hand over his chin. I shaved only this afternoon. Horrible. I don’t want to see you, you hear? Stay out of sight. You upset me. Even if you’ve grown out of me, I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. Go away, get lost, crawl back to where you came from, get it? He turns to face me. It won’t answer, just like you, it refuses to speak to me. Before a smile can flit across my face, I turn around and walk away.
Undine, he calls after me, Undine, come back! Why do you want to go out in the storm? He catches up with me. The river has overflowed its banks, he says breathlessly. Knight Julius finds Undine on a patch of land in the middle of the flood. He promises to tell her all his adventures in the sinister forest and brings her home to Karl and Karla. We reach a square with a playground at its center, circle it once and return to the street. It’s not clear which of us is leading the other.
Karl shows Julius the way back to the city, he says, but he can’t cross the river, which has swollen to a powerful torrent. Julius settles in at Undine’s side in Karl and Karla’s house. He soon feels at home. They live together peacefully, bound in love, but when the store of wine runs out, they argue. Julius remembers Julia and although he doesn’t speak nicely about her—she was domineering and it’s her fault he went into the sinister forest in the first place—Undine bites his hand when she hears Julia’s name. She later stops the bleeding with repeated kisses, then goes off to get more wine. ... I’m thirsty, I really am, he says. We pass a large brick building, erected in 1846, a hospital if the sign on the entrance is correct. Built the year he died, he murmurs.
The year he died?
I have such a bad memory, he smacks his forehead. Let’s stop in here. He heads toward a bar on the corner. The owner says she’s closed. I’m closed, he repeats after her and we smile at each other.
He walks next to me, holding a bottle of wine. The owner was willing to uncork it. Fine, she said, but then disappear, bye, see you.
This is the most expensive wine I’ve ever drunk, he says, and the most sour. His arm swings, the wine sloshes inside the bottle. The flood, he says, washes an itinerant monk up on Karl’s doorstep. After a brief reflection on his resources and the urgency of the situation—as well as a long, silent prayer—the monk decides to marry Julius and Undine. Undine seems very solemn. From a small chest, she takes out magnificent mother of pearl rings that belonged to her parents. I hope it fits, she says and slips the larger one onto Julius’ finger. It does indeed, Julius exclaims in amazement. After they’re married, Undine is exuberant. The monk advises Julius, despite his love for her, to always treat his wife with caution. He advises Undine to bring her soul into line. I don’t have one, she says and bursts into tears.
We cross a dark, nearly empty boulevard on which only the streetcar tracks gleam and walk straight toward an imposing Neo-Baroque building, doubtless once a ministry or government building. Its left wing extends along a smaller road, which we follow until we come to a dead-end sign. We keep going, regardless. (We? Yes, we.) Suddenly we’re standing on the bank of the Spree. Before us is the tip of Museum Island with an enormous round building, covered in green, apparently undergoing renovation. A bridge leads to the island. We continue walking until we reach the barrier midway across—Construction zone. Do not enter. Parents are responsible for their children—and look down into the dark water. After a short silence he picks up his story: The next morning, the flood has receded. Julius decides to leave for the city with Undine. Julia can hardly believe her luck: he’s here, Julius is back! The three of them live together in Julius’s castle. Julia believes, like everyone else in the city, that Undine is a freed princess. The two women feel bound to each other, without knowing where the feeling comes from.
We stand next to each other at the railing, leaning over it and looking straight down for a while. Then I return to the riverbank and walk along the water, his steps crunch behind me. I feel weightless. The nightlights on the numberless construction cranes shine, isolated but constant; a train viaduct crosses our path, and I wish in vain that a train would thunder across overhead, and when I reach the next bridge, which is flanked to the left and right by two columns that look like candlesticks, I want to ask for another leg up so I could climb onto one of the columns and talk to him, who would be standing on the other, as loud as necessary and as softly as possible. But I remain silent. Are you coming? he asks and I have to pick up my pace to hear the next part of the story.
One day Undine reveals that Julia is actually Karl and Karla’s daughter. Julia doesn’t want to hear anything about it. Enraged, she rants that she wants nothing to do with these fishermen. Now listen: as proof, Julia’s thick hair is lifted. Her ear, her throat, and her shoulders are covered with little dark spots—just like my stubble and just as dense. He interrupts his story and stops for a moment. I have the impression that he’s waiting for my response, which remains secret, hidden. I really need to shave soon, he says. Karla, incidentally, recognizes the spots right away, she recognizes her daughter, but she doesn’t want Julia anymore and doesn’t let her reaction show.... What was that?
I threw my ring in the water.
Did you really just say something to me? Was that you? Did you just say you threw your ring in the water?
I don’t say anything.
You have a—your voice is really—yes, it’s just ... beautiful.
I don’t say anything.
He starts whistling the song he had whistled a few ... minutes? hours? ago at the bakery storefront. Again, I think I’m just about to recognize it when he alternates between singing and whistling. I realize that I don’t know the song at all. I’ve never heard these lyrics before. Let stray dogs howl ... he whistles ... Love loves to wander ... he whistles ... from one to another—he stops. He goes up to the river’s edge hesitantly and peers into the water, as if hoping to see m
y ring and then he says: Julia washes herself every day at the castle well, hoping that the well water would wash the spots away. But when Undine has the well sealed with boulders, Julia feels so thwarted, she runs away. Julius follows her and brings her back. Undine does not miss the fact that Julius takes Julia’s side more and more often. We reach the landing pier for sightseeing boats. Behind it, the cathedral looms heavy and dark. Since there are no ships anchored here, I wonder where the fleet is docked at night. He sits on the stone steps next to the ticket kiosk and I stand next to him as little waves lap at the quay wall.
The three of them take a trip down the river, he continues his story, and the current grows stronger by the minute, the water wilder, torrential. The ship lists. Julius orders Undine to do something, but she can’t calm the waves. Julius lets slip a curse. With a sob Undine falls overboard and sinks under the waves. He starts whistling again, then singing: from one to another, and then my dearest, good night. I feel a chill in my heart. A quick, icy blast of wind blows through me. I want to climb the steps back onto the promenade, but he grabs my wrist and puts a finger to his lips. I freeze. A bird whistles a long, extended, wistful melody, faster and faster until the song gets muddled and ends in a kind of sob. I think of the blackbird in the twilight. Oh please, it’s a nightingale, he says. He can read minds.
I scale the stairs and keep going. Since I don’t hear any footsteps, I turn my head. Nice that you’re wondering where I am, he says a few steps behind me and after a short silence, he continues his story: In the beginning Undine would come to the knight in dreams, then less and less often. At first, his dreams are varied and colorful and they leave him filled with longing. With time, there is only the same lackluster dream, which he dreads. Undine appears, throws back her wet hair, gives him a piercing look and says: if you marry again, I will have to kill you. That is exactly what Julius plans to do. He wants to marry Julia once the year of mourning has ended. Karla dies and Karl orders his daughter to come to him. She must live with him by the side of the river. That is his wish. Karl objects to the marriage until Julius offers a sum large enough to break his resistance.
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