by Peter Stamm
THIRTY-FIVE
While we’d been in the library, the skies had cleared, and it was even colder than before. Where shall we go? I asked. You must have a copy of your manuscript at home, said Lena. I shook my head. No, I was writing it by hand. Then you must go back to the bar and find it, she said. I’m sure it’s still there. Who would steal a manuscript? What about you? I asked. She said she was going on, she hated to retrace her steps. So do I, I said, let’s go on together.
The lights inside the building went out, and it took a while for my eyes to get used to the illumination of the lamps along the paths. Look at the stars, said Lena, pointing. Do you know the constellations? Only the Big Dipper, I said, and I can’t see it anywhere. There’s Orion, she said, and right next to it are the twins Castor and Pollux. Do you know the story? One was divine, the other mortal, and yet they were inseparable.
After a short pause, she said she and Chris had had a fight this morning. The dinner yesterday made me think. I told him he should leave the workshop. I don’t like the people, and I don’t like what they do to him. She laughed. I said pretty much what you said to your Magdalena that time. I’d rather be a cashier in a supermarket than play a part in one of these series. He worked out how much he stood to earn if a project took off. He could still write other, serious things on the side, he reckoned. Only he wouldn’t earn much money for them. But we’re doing all right, I said, we’ve enough to live on, and we do what we want and what we enjoy. It’s not worth selling your soul for some extra cash. They don’t want my soul, he said, and it’s a pile of cash. He went back to doing his sums, worked out the royalties for a second and a third series, speculated on repeats and syndications with other stations. We could retire on it, he said. At that, I left. I was off in the city when I turned up your message, which the porter had given me the night before, and which I’d stuffed in my handbag. I don’t know if I’d have taken you up on your invitation if Chris and I hadn’t had a fight. And are you sorry you came? I asked. I don’t think so, she said.
We wandered around the park on winding paths, but we didn’t care, we weren’t going anywhere, we didn’t even have a direction to go in. I had suggested looking for the Professorn, the pub I had been in sixteen years before with Elsa, but Lena didn’t want to. He’d probably show up there, she said, and just at the moment he’s the last person I’d like to run into. She said in the past months she had often felt alone when she was with Chris, in fact ever since their wedding she had had the sense of living with a stranger. Maybe a good ending is even harder for me than a bad one.
She asked me how my story ended. In the book I was writing then, the woman leaves and doesn’t come back. The story ends shortly after her departure. After that, everything is possible. No, said Lena, not everything. I can’t go back to him. I’m not even angry with him, but he’s even stranger to me than he was before we met. Did you write something about him in your diary? I asked. Yes, she said, nothing earth-shattering. Only that I’d met a nice man and had gone hiking with him, and that he had tried something on. At that time, I was in love with the author of the play, who was with us in the mountains. Only he was married and much older than me, it would never have worked out. Who knows, I said. Lena shook her head. I think the only reason I went hiking with Chris was to make that guy jealous. Was he in love with you then, the playwright? I asked. Lena shrugged. That’s another story.
We had left the campus, and were now walking along the highway, past the dark premises of the Museum of Natural History. I was in there the day before yesterday, said Lena, they’ve got an exhibition of Swedish fauna, with adorable old-fashioned dioramas with stuffed elks and reindeer and wolves. You do like your dead animals, I said. Funny, I never thought about that, said Lena. Maybe you’re right. There’s something very dependable about them. Plus, they don’t bite.
Our way led through a rather unbuilt-up area, and I was thinking we had left the city behind, when we crossed a bridge and walked into a residential neighborhood. We followed the bank to a second, narrower bridge. Only once we had crossed it did we realize that we were on a small wooded island.
You could have found a good ending for your book, said Lena, don’t you think most stories end well? It’s not up to me, I said, writing is more to do with what you find than what you make. You never know what you’ll find in advance. When I was writing the book for the second time, I discovered something different than the first time, a different set of possibilities. I’m not sure if it’s improved the story, but that’s not the point.
At the far end of the island was a restaurant, a whitewashed wooden building with a terrace that looked like a simple family dwelling. There were lights on, and through the window we could see a group of people in formal dress. A man in a dark suit seemed to be giving a speech. Look, said Lena, pointing to a corner where there stood a three-tiered wedding cake with a little bridal couple on top. The beginning of a new story.
We walked down to the water, where there was a pier. We leaned against a railing and looked across to the lights on the opposite shore. We were silent for a while, then I asked, Do you recognize something of him in me? I didn’t know what answer would come or what I even hoped to hear. Lena thought for a long time, then she said: You’re both too similar and too different. If I knew for a fact, if I was certain that he would one day be like you, then I could probably go back to him. But maybe the only way he would become like you is if I leave him, if his life is wrecked, the way yours was.
She asked if I saw anything of my Magdalena in her. Everything, I said, you are just exactly what she was, your movements, your laugh, your lightness, your seriousness. Did you never try to find out what happened to her? asked Lena. No, I said. But then I found out by accident. It was that evening I saw you act for the first time. When I was playing Miss Julie? Yes, I said. During the intermission I ran into a former colleague of Magdalena’s. Ulrich? asked Lena. Yes, I said. The man who played keyboard at her wedding. He recognized me, and we talked about old times for a bit, and he said he had run into Magdalena recently, and she was married and living in Engadin. She seemed content, thought Ulrich, and she was just as good-looking as she was before.
There are variations, said Lena. Yes, I said, but in the end, everything happens the way it must. And that would be the happy end? she asked. I don’t know, I said. In reality there is no ending, only death. And that’s rarely happy. Once Magdalena and I thought about how we’d like to die. I argued for freezing to death, maybe because they say that’s a good way to go. But Magdalena didn’t agree with that, she said she hated feeling cold. She would rather die in the bath with a glass of wine and some music. And of course not before she was good and old. I tried to imagine her as an old woman and myself as an old man and was surprised that the idea didn’t scare me, on the contrary it seemed attractive, as though from the beginning that had been the destination for our love. A house, they say, is only finished when it’s turned into a ruin.
Your Magdalena seems like a very sensible woman, said Lena. I had followed her up to the restaurant. We’re on an island, she said, and if we’re not to freeze to death we’ve no option but to go back the same way. I’m going to call us a taxi.
We stepped into the restaurant. While Lena was talking to a waiter, I looked into the private room, where they were celebrating the wedding. There was a musician playing on a keyboard, and people were dancing. Lena came up alongside me. The taxi’ll be here in a couple of minutes, she said, it’ll wait for us on the bridge. Aren’t weddings depressing? I asked. That depends on who you’re marrying, said Lena.
In the taxi she asked the driver to take us to the Best Western. As we were driving there, she was typing on her phone. When we arrived, I got out with her and followed her into the hotel. Just before the reception desk, she turned to me and said: I’m not playing anymore now. It’s very simple. I’m going to take a room, and tomorrow I’ll see if I can rebook the return flight. She asked the ni
ght porter for a single room. I heard him quote her the price, and tell her how to get there, and ask her if she needed the code for the Internet. No, said Lena, laughing, all I need now is a warm bed. With the key card in her hand, she walked back to me. That was an instructive afternoon, she said, I’m not sure whether I should thank you for it or not. She said she wished me all the luck. I do too, I said. Shall we exchange phone numbers? I don’t think so, said Lena. No offense, but I think it’s better if we don’t have any more contact. Who knows, I said, maybe fate has other ideas. Who knows, said Lena, and let me kiss her on the cheek.
THIRTY-SIX
The taxi was still waiting in front of the hotel when I stepped outside. The driver looked at me expectantly. I shook my head and walked off in the direction of the city. I wondered if I should look for the bar where I’d forgotten my rucksack, but I doubted whether I’d be able to find the place, I didn’t even feel convinced that it actually existed.
I passed the city library and entered a park, a wooded hill. It was as though I was entering another world. On top of the hill was an old observatory that no longer seemed to be in use. I looked up at the sky, recognized Orion and the Twins, which Lena had shown me a while earlier. And now I could see the Big Dipper as well. The wind up here was stronger than down in the streets, and the roaring in my ears drowned the sounds of the city. I leaned against a tree and ran my ice-cold fingertips over its rough bark. I had to think of the night I’d seen Lena as Miss Julie. Ulrich, her colleague, had come up to me during the intermission as though expecting me. He asked me how I liked the production. I’m not really sure, I said, it does take a few liberties. He giggled and said, did you know, at the end it’s not Miss Julie who dies, but Jean. That’s what you get when you let a woman direct. But the girl’s good in the part. I asked him if he could remember the old production, sixteen years ago. The two actresses are just like each other, I said. Don’t you think? He thought about it briefly, and shook his head. He told me he had seen Magdalena again not long ago. She invited us all to her wedding, he said, all the old gang. It was great fun. And who did she marry? I asked. The young man she met when she was hiking in the mountains, do you remember? He went hiking with her, and later he would always pick her up after the show. They were together for a while, then they broke up, and years later met up again. Almost like a novel. And how have you been? I shrugged. That’s another story.
THIRTY-SEVEN
It’s odd, there are years in my life of which I remember practically nothing, they seemed to have passed without a trace. Even major events that changed my life, real turning points, I often don’t remember them, it’s as though they had taken place without any help from me, in my absence. And then again there are little scenes, on the face of it completely insignificant, and twenty or thirty years later they’re as vivid to me as though they had only just happened.
It’s a chilly Sunday morning between Christmas and New Year’s. I’m not yet twenty, and living with my parents. I’ve woken up early, and can’t get back to sleep. The house is perfectly quiet. A few days ago it snowed, and the snow is still lying there. I decide to take a walk.
Even though the sky is clouded over, the air is terribly clear. The snow muffles the sounds, and if thin ribbons of smoke weren’t issuing from the chimneys, you might think the world was utterly depopulated. I leave the village in the direction of the river, where a suspension bridge for pedestrians and cyclists leads to the next village. I have almost crossed the bridge when I notice a body lying there, on the other side, where the path starts to climb steeply. I run over and see that it’s an old man, who must have lost his footing on the icy path and then failed to get up. I help him to his feet, I can still feel the rough cloth of his coat and recollect the naphthalene smell it gives off. The man seems unhurt, but his face is blue with cold, his lips almost white. I ask him where he’s come from. He is hard to understand but I guess from his reply that he lives in the old folks’ home, a home for single elderly men, a Christian charitable institution. I tell him I will take him back there, but he doesn’t want to go back, he points to the other bank of the river, and says something I don’t understand. It takes some time before I’ve persuaded him. When he finally gives in, it’s as though he’s lost all his strength, and I need to take him under the arms and practically carry him so that he doesn’t collapse.
The old men’s home isn’t far, but it takes us a good half an hour to get there. The old man has pushed his arm through mine, his back is so crooked that it’s almost horizontal. All the time, he speaks barely two or three sentences. He seems confused, says something about a woman he went out walking with. As we’re walking, it seems to me there’s something linking us, something much deeper than language, as though we were a single being, a quadruped, both old and young, half-beginning, half-ending.
The men’s home is a big old building standing in a gully off to one side next to a railway viaduct. I have to think of all the biographies that have ended here over the years, all the solitary old men who lived there, waiting to die, nothing more. In summer, they sit outside the building, chew on cheap cigars, walk through the village as though they had some kind of objective. People know who they are, say hello to them even if they don’t say hello back, only when one of them dies, no one misses him.
The old man says nothing more. I wish him all the best and watch him as he struggles up the stairs and opens the battered wooden door. I picture him walking up the steps inside with still more difficulty, one step after the other, to the first floor, where his room is. It’s cold and grim in the corridors, and smells of coffee and bleach and old people. I picture his small bare room, his few possessions, no more than would fit in a single suitcase. When the old man dies, everything will go in the trash, because he has no next of kin, or no one is interested in his junk, not even a few black-and-white photographs he had of long-since-deceased individuals, his parents or grandparents, distant relatives, maybe a young woman he was once in love with.
And while I go home, I imagine ending up like him, slipping away freed of all obligations, leaving no traces. Falling down on an icy path, and, unable to get up, eventually giving in. The rhythm of my breathing settles, I no longer feel the cold. I think of my life which hasn’t happened yet, fuzzy scenes, dark cutout figures against the light, distant voices. The strange thing is that there was never anything mournful about this fantasy, not even then, it was something to be wished for, it had a clarity and correctness, like this long-ago winter morning itself.
PETER STAMM is the author of the novels To the Back of Beyond, All Days Are Night, Seven Years, On a Day Like This, Unformed Landscape, and Agnes and the short-story collections We’re Flying and In Strange Gardens and Other Stories. His award-winning books have been translated into more than thirty languages. For his entire body of work and his accomplishments in fiction, he was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, and in 2014 he won the prestigious Friedrich Hölderlin Prize. He lives in Switzerland.
MICHAEL HOFMANN has translated the work of Gottfried Benn, Hans Fallada, Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, and many others. In 2012 he was awarded the Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His Selected Poems was published in 2009, and Where Have You Been? Selected Essays in 2014. He lives in Florida and London.
You might also enjoy these titles from Peter Stamm:
TO THE BACK OF BEYOND
Unfailingly perceptive and precise, this novel gives form to doubts that disturb us all: Are we being true to ourselves? Are we loved for our true selves?
“Exceptionally moving writing.” —The Guardian
“[A] work about freedom and wanting. Stamm’s superb descriptions of alpine nature and internal human conflict are aided by Hofmann’s excellent translation.” —Publishers Weekly
AGNES
In this unforgettable and haunting novel, Stamm incisively examines the power of storytelling to influe
nce thought and behavior, reaching a chilling conclusion.
“A kind of parable…simple and haunting.”
—New York Review of Books
“Agnes is a moody, unsettled, and elusive little fable — and it’s always interesting.” —Wall Street Journal
SEVEN YEARS
Torn between his highbrow marriage and his lowbrow affair, Alex is stuck within a spiraling threesome. Seven Years is a bold, sobering novel about the quest for love.
“Seven Years is a novel to make you doubt your own dogma. What more can a novel do than that?”
—Zadie Smith, Harper’s Magazine
Also recommended:
ALL DAYS ARE NIGHT
In unadorned and haunting style, this novel forcefully tells the story of a woman who loses her life but must stay alive all the same.
“[A] complex, psychological tale…riveting…intensely moving.” —Wall Street Journal
“[An] engrossing story of recovery.” —New Yorker
“A postmodern riff on The Magic Mountain…a page-turner.” —The Atlantic