Yes, I answer because I can’t really say no, I don’t know him even though I arranged to meet him here.
Blondwithglasses looks at me. Yes, we know each other, he says. His voice is husky. He clears his throat. I have a band-aid. He pulls his wallet from his bag and finds the band-aid after a lot of rustling. Do you have a children’s band-aid? the big little one asks.
What’s that?
For children, a children’s band-aid. My son looks at me as if I were forcing him to speak to an idiot. I take the band-aid. Thanks so much, I say and stick it on the big little one’s chin. At home I’ll draw some dots on it, ok?
No! Flowers!
OK, fine, flowers.
And little stars.
It’s a deal.
And Gummi Bears.
I sigh.
I’m Thomas, he barges in and offers his hand to the big little one.
What do you have in your hand? my son asks.
Thomas looks at me helplessly.
Do you have any Gummi Bears?
No, I’m afraid not, Thomas says.
But I saw some, my son contradicts him.
Thomas looks at me. What do I do now? he asks.
Thomas went shopping for me. He carried a case of bottled water up to the third floor. He took out the garbage and put the newspapers in the recycling bin. Swept the gravel from the stairs. Brought up the mail. Patched the bicycle tires. Walked the dog. Mailed letters. Returned books. And all this after only one meeting, during which he asked several times if I weren’t too nice to my children. It was obvious that he wished they weren’t there. That they weren’t constantly interrupting, constantly wanting to be picked up or to get my attention. When they’re finally asleep, he pokes me with his finger. I raise my head and smile. He takes off his glasses. Now I can’t see you anymore, he says. Then I don’t need to smile at you anymore, I answer. He puts his glasses back on, looks at me, and says: Now that, I don’t get.
The next morning he’s at the door with fresh rolls and the newspaper. He takes care of everything that needs taking care of while I close my office door and unplug the telephone and start work on the Beginning text. After Thomas has said goodbye, I take a break. I drink an entire bottle of water. I look through the mail. I put the letters to Philipp on the pile in his room. One is addressed to the big little one, that one I can open, how could it be bad news? An account withdrawal. There are only 1.70 euros left in his savings account. I yell. I dial the number. I scream at Philipp over the phone. I scream when I tell Günter about it. I call my friend Nathanael and scream until I weep. I lie down next to the dog on the floor and press my face into her fur. The telephone rings. It’s Thomas. I can’t speak I’m so angry.
He comes over when the children are asleep. He hugs me without a word and I bite his thin upper arm until I have no strength left in my jaws. He nods. Let it all out, he says and groans with pain.
That was good, he says later, I thought it was good. I’m not sure what he means: that I bit him? Good from the point of view of psychological hygiene? Or because he thinks I’ve gotten over my rage that way? I haven’t. But I have to admit, I also found it good, although I can’t explain why I did it. I never bite, otherwise.
I’d like to see you naked, he says.
Why? I ask and, as I’m saying it, think: stupid question.
Because I think you’re beautiful, but I only believe what I see.
I shake my head.
Good, he says and starts in. He takes off his clothes in my kitchen. He does it very quickly. His clothes lie behind him like a blurry shadow on the laminated kitchen floor. All Thomas has on are his horn-rimmed glasses. He is standing up straight. He’s thin, very pale-skinned, completely hairless, and covered with blue, purple, green, and yellow spots. My teeth marks on his upper arm are dark red.
Where did you get all those bruises?
I’ll tell you later. Are you going to take off your clothes?
No. I stay seated. I look at him. Because of their different colors, it’s not possible that the bruises all came from one incident or accident or assault. It looks bad, I say. My dog trots into the kitchen, stops behind Thomas, stretches her neck, and sniffs at him. Thomas leaps around, startled. Stop it, you repulsive creature! I have to laugh and pull the dog away. What did she do?
Sniffed. Why “she”?
She’s female.
He sits down quickly and crosses his legs. I find his smooth, white legs, his child’s chest, his bare groin, unpleasant. His grayish member is tucked between his legs. It almost hurts to think about it.
I’d rather get dressed again, he says, the dog scares me.
He leaves a few minutes later. He says he can’t come help tomorrow, he has an important appointment. When I tell him I don’t need any help, he strokes my hair and smiles.
On the way to the nursery school, the big little one wants to hold the dog’s leash. Nice and slow and watch out for the ice, I say. And wait at the intersection, right? The dog lunges forward. The boy lets himself be pulled along, and I run behind with the little little one in the stroller, which makes the dog run faster and, dragging behind her, the child. Stop! I yell, but they’re still running, running across the street, faster and faster. The child is laughing, the child slips and falls flat. I sit on the cold asphalt, scold the dog, and comfort the child. Tears stream down my face. They’re strangely warm.
Philipp calls. The answering machine picks up after four rings. I push the speaker button. I’m afraid I’m going to lose you, I hear Philipp say. Please call me when you get home.
I erase the message.
I can’t think straight. I’m sitting at my desk, working on the Beginning text, again. I’m hardly making any progress. I, You, Dialogue, it says.
I: I don’t believe it.
You: I believe you do.
I: Do you?
You: I do.
Period, I write. End of dialogue. I only believe what I see. I think of Thomas.
Why are we here? the big little one asks. We’re going ice-skating, I tell him.
For ice cream? He looks at me incredulously.
Ice-skating.
Where’s the ice? he asks. Right here! We’re standing on it. I stamp my foot.
I’m cold.
I’m cold, too. It’s a greedy cold that spreads within minutes up from the ground and numbs the feet, calves and legs up to the knees, then creeps relentlessly and purposefully up the thighs to the rear end and insides.
I want to go home, Mama.
So do I, sweetheart. My phone rings. Thomas wants to cook us dinner. He already went shopping and is on his way to our house. Actually, he’s already on the doorstep. It’s downright chilly, he says. We’ll hurry, I say and hang up.
Are they asleep?
I nod.
Today it’s your turn, he says when he has finished washing up and sat down next to me.
No, you were going to give me some answers first.
Like what?
Like how you were abused.
Abused?
Got those bruises.
Other questions?
I think it over.
Do you not have any hair on your body or did you shave it off? I ask.
Shaved it.
Everywhere?
He nods.
What for?
He smiles and suggests we play a game: I ask questions and he’ll give answers. After each question, I have to take off a piece of clothing.
But I can ask whatever I want, I demand, and you have to answer.
It’s a deal, he says. And so I end up doing the first striptease of my life. I stand in front of him.
Thomas, how old are you?
Almost thirty.
(I take off a sock.)
Marital status?
Single.
(Second sock.)
Children?
None.
(Cardigan.)
Why not?
Because I’ve never slept with a woman
without using a condom.
You’ve never—?
Never. That was two answers.
(Protesting, I take off my scarf and my pants. I count how many pieces of clothing I still have on. I have to get to the essential questions.)
No beating around the bush: Who do you have sex with?
He gives a laugh. All right then, fine, why not get straight to the point. I have profiles on two dating sites. I request meetings with women. But that rarely works, it’s not—he smiles—reliable. And so, when I’m in the mood, I go to a hookup bar, you know what that is?
Now you’ve asked me a question. No, I don’t.
All sorts of people go, couples, men, women, to live it up sexually. Unfortunately, women are usually in the minority, so for men, there’s no guarantee we’ll be admitted.
I’m beginning to like this game. When have I ever gotten such candid answers, especially from a man? He’s telling me how he goes to some places where he gets as close, physically, to complete strangers as two people possibly can. Wow! I pull my T-shirt off over my head.
Do your bruises have something to do with your visits to these bars?
More with meetings through the dating sites.
I try to hide my astonishment. I unhook my bra quickly and without fuss.
It doesn’t seem all that unreliable. Judging by the number of bruises, you can’t be doing all that badly on the dating sites. That wasn’t a question!
I only have my panties on. I don’t have any more questions, I say.
Don’t you want to know how I got the bruises?
Yes. No. That is, yes, but I’m not going to ask, I say.
After a short pause he asks, Do you not like taking your panties off?
No.
He comes up to me and puts his arms around me.
Go ahead and bite if you want, he says.
No, I answer and pick my clothes up off the floor.
But I really like what I see, he says.
I have no idea what you see with your funny-looking glasses, I say and pull my T-shirt on, over my head. Can I look through them?
He takes off his glasses, wipes the lenses with his sleeve, and hands them to me.
They hurt my eyes. Everything is distorted. I take them off.
Thomas, at the reading ...
Yes?
I didn’t look at you once the entire evening.
I thought you did.
No.
That’s what it felt like to me.
I didn’t. Do you set up a new email address to fit every woman you meet? Like [email protected]?
No, I’ve had that one for a while, at least a few years.
So that means you write other women using that address?
Not at the moment.
He had planned a dessert that still needed some preparation: pears poached in red wine. I brew some coffee. He tells me he’s brought his portfolio, he has been wanting to show me some of his work for a while, so that I can get some idea of what he’s up to all day.
I leaf through his file of information graphics while he constantly stirs the red wine to dissolve the sugar. The public busing network in Schleswig Holstein. The structure and paths of swine flu contagion. A diagram of all the forces that set off the global bank crisis. Visual perception is the primary means of information intake in humans. That’s the source of infographics’ power and their advantage over other forms of journalism. He sums it up with the catchy saying: A picture says more than a thousand words. He turns down the flame, leaves the pot to simmer, and looks over my shoulder. To put it simply: his job is to make complicated connections visible in such a way that they can be grasped in a single glance.
He takes the pot off the burner. The pears are delicious.
Before leaving, he asks: Should I come back tomorrow to help?
Better not tomorrow, I answer.
He goes out the door without saying goodbye.
I get undressed, climb into bed, and think of Philipp, that is, I try to think of Philipp, but can picture only a pair of large, amber-colored, horn-rimmed glasses and when I take them off, Petrus’s face appears. He looks at the space between my eyebrows and asks the question I’d asked only in my thoughts. Glasses? No, I don’t wear glasses. Especially not to bed. I turn onto my stomach, close my eyes, and hold my breath.
6
Sham couple
Love, Nathanael says and then, after a long pause during which he doesn’t take a breath, enough already! We trudge through the sparse Buxtehude Forest in the rain, looking for his mother’s grave. Nathanael’s mother isn’t dead, she’s just suffering from dementia, but her husband, Achim, is already planning her burial. To be fair, he’s planning his own, too, and even his girlfriend Julika’s, because according to his plan, they will all be buried at the foot of the same tree in the Buxtehude Forest, where Julika’s husband, Fredi, already lies.
Fredi died suddenly five years ago at the age of seventy-five without any sign of illness, and for several thousand euros, Julika had rented space under the tree for thirty years as a companion grave, expandable for up to eight people. The corresponding contract with the firm that offers such forest interment is kept in Julika’s safe, the breadbox in the kitchen where she had stored documents and cash for years, instead of the crusty rolls Fredi so loved. “Expandable up to eight people.” Julika, and only Julika, will decide who can lie with Fredi. She, herself, of course. That leaves six more places. Since she and Achim became a loving couple—their relationship progressed in parallel with his wife’s dementia—Julika has decided that, as things stand, Achim should have one of the places, namely, the one right next to her. Achim thinks the idea is essentially a good one, though he doesn’t plan on dying any time soon. Furthermore, he thinks Julika should concentrate on earthly pleasures instead of eternity. However, because he is also keen on having all these unhappy final matters decided once and for all, he listened to her plan attentively. But, my dear Julika, he said after a moment’s thought, I can’t possibly plant poor Gisela somewhere all by herself. What do you think, could she be buried there, too? Then Fredi wouldn’t be so alone either. And then later, when we join them, the two of them wouldn’t need to feel so jealous. Seems to me like a good solution for everybody. Achim didn’t have the slightest doubt that his wife, Gisela, would die soon, and obviously long before him and Julika. In the end, Julika agreed. Nothing was said to Gisela. Why bother her with a decision like that, Achim said, since she doesn’t understand anything anymore?
Still, before Gisela’s name is given to the forest internment company, Achim wants to obtain his son’s consent. And so Nathanael and I are walking through the forest on this rainy April morning, the wet ground sagging beneath our feet, looking for an ash tree marked with a small cross on a map that Nathanael is constantly folding and unfolding. All the while, he explains the intricate relationships in his family’s older generation until my head starts to spin. There is a counter-couple to Achim and Julika, namely Wolf and Bärbel, Nathanael’s uncle and his girlfriend. But you don’t really want to know about them, he says after he’d explained everything in great detail, infatuated seniors, horrifying! But, anyway, love ... (long pause, no breath) enough already. I’m glad I’m done with it.
Nathanael is my closest friend. Originally he was Philipp’s closest friend. They’d met ten years ago on a train. Nathanael liked Philipp so much that he wanted to spend time with him, even though it was immediately clear that any erotic advances would be futile. They became friends, even though they had no interests in common, other than cooking. They gave each other books and music, even though their tastes were incompatible. For the most part, they disliked each other’s gifts and discussed their dislike openly, but did not get discouraged and kept offering gifts in the hope of finding at least one book or one song they agreed on.
I met Nathanael soon after Philipp and I married, after he had returned from an extended stay in Africa. Had he been around, Philipp would certainly have asked Nathana
el to be his best man. Nathanael was in a bad state and Africa couldn’t have helped him with that. Still, he beamed when he saw us and greeted us with the words: Verily, verily, I say unto you, you are a beautiful couple! His longtime lover, Angelo, had left him earlier. Angelo had forged Nathanael’s signature on some bungled financial transactions and caused enormous losses. He had still found time on the run to pack up all of Nathanael’s bank and credit cards, traveler’s checks, cash, and watch before he disappeared. Nathanael thought he was going to lose his mind. At least the well-digging project in Namibia spared him that. Nonetheless, when he returned six months later, his misery had not diminished.
What does an ash tree look like, actually? Nathanael asks after we’d walked in circles and crisscrossed the forest for an hour. The canopy isn’t very thick. He shakes his wet head and I jump away to avoid the fine spray. I’m sorry, he says, I can’t read this map. I don’t understand it.
Aren’t ash trees particularly tall? I ask.
Look up, Nathanael says, they’re all tall.
They have ridged bark, I think.
You think? Nathanael echoes. And probably green leaves as well, right? We look at each other. Imagine, if I let them bury my poor, old mother here, I’ll never find her again! He looks around. Ash tree, he hisses. Ash-sh-sh. He bares his teeth.
Nathanael and I liked each other at first sight. I liked the music he listened to, he liked the books I read. Cooking was the only thing we couldn’t do together. He refused to eat the foods I liked and vice versa. Philipp would leave us—his best friend and his wife—alone anywhere but in the kitchen. Let me man the stove, otherwise there won’t be anything to eat or one of you will get hurt, maybe even both of you.
When Nathanael heard that Philipp had gambled away all our money, even the children’s savings, he cried. And what do we do now? He blew his nose. Where is Philipp?
In the rehab clinic.
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