Every Seventh Wave

by Daniel Glattauer

  One day later

  Subject: Leo?

  Hello, my love, have you lost your tongue? Or are you waiting patiently for parts two and three of my family saga?

  Five minutes later

  Re:

  Do you talk to him about it, Emmi?

  Six minutes later

  Re:

  No, we make a point of not talking about it. It seems to work better that way. We both know only too well what it’s all about. We try to make the best of it. You must not think that I’m desperately unhappy, Leo. This corset I wear is a good friend; it supports and protects me. I just have to be careful that one day it doesn’t take my breath away altogether.

  Three minutes later

  Re:

  Emmi, you’re thirty-five!

  Five minutes later

  Re:

  Thirty-five and a half. And Bernhard is forty-nine. Fiona is seventeen. Jonas is fourteen. Leo Leike is thirty-seven. Mrs. Kramer’s bulldog Hector is nine. And what about Vasilyev, the Wiessenbachers’ little terrapin? Remind me to ask them, Leo! But what are you trying to say? At thirty-five am I not old enough to be logical? At thirty-five am I not old enough to take responsibility? Am I not old enough to know what I owe to myself and to my life, and what I have to be resigned to in order to remain true to myself?

  Four minutes later

  Re:

  Whatever, you’re far too young to start worrying that your corset might take your breath away altogether, my love.

  One minute later

  Re:

  As long as Leo Leike is around to worry about my air supply, via email or sometimes even in real life at a café table, I don’t think I’ll get into breathing difficulties.

  Two minutes later

  Re:

  Nice try at changing the subject, Emmi dear. May I remind you that many of my questions remain unanswered? Are they saved, or should I send them again?

  Three minutes later

  Re:

  I’ve saved everything you’ve ever written to me, my love. Enough for today. Have a nice evening. You’re a good listener, Leo. Thank you.

  The following day

  Subject: Questionnaire number three

  I’m saving your second questionnaire, the weird one, until last. I’d rather leap straight into the present.

  What is missing from my life, Leo?—You. (Even before I knew that you existed.)

  What can you do for me, Leo?—Just be there. Write to me. Read me. Think of me. Stroke your palm where I touched you.

  What do I want to do with you, Leo?—Depends on the time of day. Mostly I want to have you in my head. Sometimes below it.

  What should you be for me, Leo?—The question is superfluous. You already are.

  How will this go on, Leo?—The same as before.

  Should it go on?—Definitely

  But where will it go?—Nowhere. Just on. You live your life, I live mine. And the rest we’ll live together.

  Ten minutes later

  Re:

  That won’t leave very much for “us,” my love.

  Three minutes later

  Re:

  That depends on you, my love. My reserves are deep.

  Two minutes later

  Re:

  Un(ful)filled reserves. I won’t be able to fill them, my love.

  Fifty seconds later

  Re:

  You can have no idea what you can fill, my love, what you can fill and what you have already filled. Don’t forget that you have vast closets of feelings at your disposal. You just need to give them an airing once in a while.

  Fifteen minutes later

  Re:

  I just want to know one thing: have our two encounters changed anything for you?

  Forty seconds later

  Re:

  Have they for you?

  Thirty seconds later

  Re:

  Your turn first: for you?

  Twenty seconds later

  Re:

  No, you first: has anything changed for you?

  One minute later

  Re:

  O.K., I’ll go first. But before that you have to answer my outstanding questions. That’s only fair, my love.

  Four hours later

  Subject: Questionnaire number two

  O.K., let’s get this over with:

  1) Why did I get in contact with you again after Boston?

  Why indeed?—Because the nine months that were “Boston”were the worst nine months ever since years have been divided into months. Because the man of many words slipped wordlessly out of my life. Spinelessly through a back door in the out-box, which was bolted shut with one of the very worst messages in the history of modern communication.

  That sentence is still the stuff of my nightmares (and if technology is feeling malicious, it’s sometimes the stuff of my in-box too—Delivery Status Communication (Returned), blah blah blah.

  Our “story” was never concluded, Leo. Flight is never an ending in itself, it merely postpones the end. You know that very well. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have written back to me, nine and a half months later.

  2) What do I now think about the circumstances that led to the break in our correspondence?—What kind of question is that? The whole thing had got too much for you, too much or too little. Too little for all your emotional investment, your outlay on illusions. Too much for practical gains, for tangible revenue. Emmi plc was no longer profitable. You lost patience with me. Those, Leo dear, were the circumstances that led to the break in our correspondence.

  3) This is where it gets exciting. How could I forgive Bernhard? I’ve read this question at least twenty times, but I don’t understand it, I really don’t. WHAT could I possibly have had to forgive Bernhard for? The fact that he’s my husband? That he stood in the way of our email love affair? The fact that, in the end, his very existence was responsible for your flight? What are you trying to get at, Leo? You’ll have to explain it to me.

  4) In conclusion: how could I forgive you? Oh, Leo. I’m easily corruptible. A few nice emails from you and I can forgive you everything, even a dramatic pause that went on for nine and a half months. That’s it!!!

  Ten minutes later

  Subject: (no subject)

  So, my love, now you’re going to tell me whether anything has changed as a result of our meeting. (And if so, what, of course.)

  A kiss on the cheek and a stroke of the palm on the special point,

  Emmi

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The following evening

  Subject: Leo?

  Leo?

  The next morning

  Subject: Wake-up call

  Leo?

  Leeeooo?

  Leo eoeoeoeoeoeeeeeoooooooo??

  Le e eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooo??

  Eleven hours later

  Subject: Meeting

  Dear Emmi,

  Could we have another meeting? There’s something I’ve got to tell you. I think it’s important.

  Ten minutes later

  Re:

  “Pam”’s pregnant!

  Three minutes later

  Re:

  No, Pamela is not pregnant. It’s got nothing to do with Pamela. Can you spare a few minutes tomorrow or the day after?

  One minute later

  Re:

  Sounds very dramatic! If it’s good news that is so urgent all of a sudden and has to be relayed in person, then yes, I can “spare a few minutes”!

  Two minutes later

  Re:

  It’s not good news.

  Forty seconds later

  Re:

  Then give it to me in writing. Today, please! Tomorrow will be a tough day. I need at least a few hours’ sleep.

  Ten minutes later

  Re:

  Please, Emmi, let’s discuss this in peace sometime over the next few days! Now go to bed, and don’t lose sleep over it.

  O.K.?

  Forty seconds later


  Re:

  I’m always happy to be comforted, Leo, but I won’t be fobbed off. Not by you. Not like this. Not with the words “go to bed and don’t lose sleep over it.” So come on, tell me.

  Thirty seconds later

  Re:

  Believe me, Emmi, this subject has no place in your good night in-box. We need to talk about it face-to-face. A few days won’t make any difference.

  Fifty seconds later

  Re:

  LLL, TTT!!!!

  (Listen, Leo Leike, tell the truth!!!!)

  Ten minutes later

  Re:

  O.K., Emmi. Bernhard knows about us. Or at least he did know about us. That’s why I bowed out.

  One minute later

  Re:

  ??? What kind of absurd statement is that, Leo? What is it that Bernhard knows? What was there to know? And how do you know? If anyone was going to know, it would be me, don’t you think? You seem to have got carried away by some weird conspiracy theory. I demand an explanation!

  Three minutes later

  Re:

  Emmi, ask Bernhard, please! PLEASE TALK TO HIM! It’s up to him to explain all this, not me. How was I to know that he never told you? It’s unimaginable. I refused to believe it. I simply thought you didn’t want to talk to me about it. But it seems as if you really don’t know. He hasn’t told you, even to this day.

  Two minutes later

  Re:

  I’m beginning to worry about you. Have you got a fever? Where are your fantasies leading you? Why in God’s name should I talk to Bernhard about you? What do you imagine that I would tell him? “Bernhard, we’ve got to talk. Leo Leike says you know all about him, or rather about us. Who is Leo Leike? You don’t know him. He’s the man I’ve never set eyes on, and haven’t told you about either. So you can’t possibly know him. But now he insists that you do know about him, and about us …”

  Come on, Leo, get a grip. You’re making me nervous!

  One minute later

  Re:

  He read our emails. And afterward he sent me an email himself. He asked me to meet you once and then leave you in peace. After that I took the job in Boston. That’s it in a nutshell. I’d rather have told you this face-to-face.

  Three minutes later

  Re:

  No. I don’t believe that. That’s not Bernhard. He would never do that. Tell me it’s not true. It can’t be true. You have no idea of the harm you’re doing. You’re lying to me. You’re destroying everything. That’s a monstrous thing to say about anyone, and Bernhard does not deserve it. Why are you doing this? Why are you wrecking everything between us? Or are you bluffing? It that supposed to be a joke? What kind of a joke do you call that?

  Two minutes later

  Re:

  Dear Emmi,

  I can’t rewrite the past now. I hate myself for it, but there were only two options open to me. Either bow out and keep quiet about it forever. Or the truth. Much too late. Unforgivably late.

  Unforgivable, I know. I’m attaching the email Bernhard sent over a year ago, on June 17, immediately after his “collapse” on that hiking holiday with the children in the South Tyrol.

  Subject: To Mr. Leike

  Dear Mr. Leike,

  I have found it very hard to write you this message. I’ll admit I’m embarrassed, and the embarrassment I’m bringing upon myself increases with every line. My name is Bernhard Rothner—I believe I don’t need to give you more of an introduction. Mr. Leike, I have a huge favor to ask of you. When I tell you what this favor is you will be amazed, maybe even shocked. I will then try to explain my motives for asking this favor. I am no great writer, unfortunately, and I’m not really comfortable with email. But I will endeavor to say all those things that have been concerning me for months, things which have put my life out of joint, my life and that of my family, even my wife’s, and I believe I can judge this accurately after so many harmonious years of marriage.

  And so to the favor: Mr. Leike, meet my wife! Please do it, finally, and bring this nightmare to an end! We’re grown men, I can’t dictate what you do. I can only implore you: meet up with her! I’m feeling inferior and powerless, and suffering because of it. How humiliating do you think it is for me to write lines like these? You, on the other hand, haven’ t shown the slightest weakness, Mr. Leike. You’ve got nothing to reproach yourself for. And me, I don’t have anything to reproach you for either, unfortunately. I really don’t. You can’t reproach a mind. You’re not palpable, Mr. Leike, you’re not tangible. You’re not real. You’re just my wife’s fantasy, an illusion of unlimited emotional happiness, an other-worldly rapture, a utopia of love, but all built out of words. I’m impotent against this; all I can do is wait until fate is merciful and turns you at last into a being of flesh and blood, a man with contours, with strengths and weaknesses, something to aim at. Only when my wife can see you as she sees me, as someone vulnerable, an imperfect creation, an example of that flawed being which is man; only when you have met face-to-face will your superiority vanish. Only then can I compete with you on an equal footing, Mr. Leike. Only then can I fight for Emma.

  My wife once wrote to you, “Leo, please don’t force me to open my family album.” But now I find myself obliged to do it in her stead. When we met, Emma was twenty-three and I was her piano teacher at the Academy of Music, fourteen years her senior, happily married and the father of two delightful children. A car accident destroyed our family—our three-year-old was traumatized, the elder one badly injured. I suffered permanent injuries, and the children’s mother, my wife Johanna, died. Without the piano I would have fallen apart. But music when it’s played is life itself—nothing can remain dead forever. If you’re a musician and you play music, you live out memories as if they were happening now. Music helped me pull myself back together. And then there were my pupils, there was a distraction, there was a job to do, there was meaning. And then, out of the blue, there was Emma. This lively, sparkling, sassy, gorgeous young woman began—all by herself—to pick up the pieces of our life, without expecting anything in return. Extraordinary people like her are put onto this Earth to counter sadness. They are few and far between. I don’t know how I deserved it, but suddenly she was there by my side. The children ran straight to her, and I fell head over heels in love with her.

  What about her? Mr. Leike, I bet you’re wondering, “But what about Emma?” Did she, this 23-year-old student, fall equally in love with this sorrowful old knight, soon to be forty, who was being kept together by little more than keys and notes? I can’t answer this question, not to you, nor even to myself. How much was it down to her admiration for my music? (I was very successful at the time, an acclaimed pianist.) How much was pity, sympathy, a desire to help, the capacity to be there through the bad times? How much did I remind her of her father, who left her when she was so young? How much of it was her doting on my sweet Fiona and little, golden Jonas? To what extent was it my own euphoria reflected in her, to what extent did she love my boundless love for her, rather than love me? How much did she relish the certainty that I would never be unfaithful, a guaranteed lifetime of dependability, the assurance of my eternal loyalty? Please believe me, Mr. Leike, I would never have dared get close to her if I had not felt that her feelings for me were as strong as mine for her. It was obvious that she felt drawn to me and the children; she wanted to be part of our world, an influential part, a definitive part, the center. Two years later we got married. That was eight years ago. (I’m sorry, I’ve just ruined your game of hide-and-seek: the “Emmi” you know is thirty-four years young.) Not a day passed without my astonishment at having this vital young beauty at my side. And every day I waited in trepidation for “it” to happen, for a younger man to appear, one of the many who have admired and idolized her. And Emma would say, “Bernhard, I’ve fallen in love with somebody else. Where do we go from here?” This nightmare has failed to materialize. A far worse one has come to pass. You, Mr. Leike, the silent “other world.” Illusions of
love via email, feelings intensifying day by day, a growing yearning, unsated passion, everything directed toward one apparently real goal, an ultimate goal which is forever being postponed, the meeting of all meetings, but one which will never take place because it would dispel the artifice of ultimate happiness, total satisfaction, without end, with no expiry date, which can be lived only in the mind. Against that I’m impotent.

  Mr. Leike, since you “arrived,” it’s as though Emmi is transformed. She’s absentminded and distanced from me. She sits in her room for hours on end, staring at the computer screen, into the cosmos of her dreams. She lives in her “other world,” she lives with it. When there’s a beatific smile on her face, it’s no longer for me—it hasn’t been for a long time. She has to make a real effort to hide her distraction from the children. I can see just what a torture it is for her to sit next to me now. Do you know how much that hurts? I’ve tried to ride out this phase by being extremely tolerant. I’ve never wanted Emma to feel constrained by me. Neither of us has ever been jealous. But all of a sudden I no longer knew what to do. I mean, there was nothing and nobody there, no actual person, no obvious interloper—until I discovered the root of the problem. I could have died with shame that the whole thing had gone so far. I snooped around in Emma’s room. Eventually, in a secret drawer, I found a folder, a fat folder full of documents: her entire email correspondence with a certain Leo Leike, printed out nice and crisp, page by page, message by message. I copied these documents with a trembling hand, and for a few weeks I managed to put them out of my mind. We had a ghastly holiday in Portugal. The little one was ill, the older one fell madly in love with a sports instructor. My wife and I didn’t say a word to each other for a fortnight, but both of us tried to fool the other that everything was just fine, as it always was, as it always had to be, as custom dictated. After that I couldn’t hold out any longer. I took the folder with me on the walking holiday, and in a fit of self-destruction, out of some masochistic desire to make myself suffer, I read through all the emails in one night. Let me tell you, since the death of my first wife I have experienced no greater emotional torture. When I’d finished reading I couldn’t get out of bed. My daughter phoned the emergency services and I was taken to the hospital. My wife picked me up the day before yesterday. Now you know the whole story.