Every Seventh Wave

by Daniel Glattauer

  Mr. Leike, please meet up with Emma! And now I come to the wretched nadir of my self-humiliation. Meet her, spend a night with her, have sex with her! I know that you’ll want to. I’ll “allow” you to. I’m giving you carte blanche, I’m freeing you from all scruples, I won’t consider it cheating. I sense that Emma wants physical as well as mental intimacy with you, she wants to “know” it, thinks she needs it, something’s urging her to do it. That’s the thrill, the novelty, the variety I can’t offer her. So many men have worshipped and lusted after Emma, but it never struck me that she felt attracted to any of them. And then I saw the emails she has written to you. Suddenly I understood just how great her desire can be if aroused by the “right one.” You, Mr. Leike, are her chosen one. And I’m almost wishing you would sleep with her once. ONCE (like my wife I’m using emphatic block capitals). ONCE. JUST ONCE! Let that be the culmination of the passion you have built up in writing. Make that the conclusion. Crown your email correspondence, and put a stop to it. Give me back my wife, you unearthly, untouchable being! Release her. Bring her back down to Earth. Let our family continue to live. Don’t do it as a favor to me or my children. Do it for Emma, for her sake. I beg you!

  And now I come to the end of my embarrassing, distressing cry for help, my excruciating appeal for mercy. Just one final request, Mr. Leike. Don’t betray my confidence. Leave me outside your shared narrative. I’ve abused Emma’s trust, I’ve gone behind her back, I’ve read her private, intimate correspondence. I’ve atoned for this. I could never look her in the eye again if she knew I’d been spying. She could never look me in the eye again if she knew what I’d read. She’d hate both herself and me in equal measure. Please, Mr. Leike, spare us that. Don’t tell her about this letter. Once more, I beg you!

  So now I’m going to send the most excruciating letter I have ever written.

  Yours sincerely,

  Bernhard Rothner

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Three days later

  Subject: Emmi?

  Emmi?

  (I’m not expecting an answer. I just want you to know that I’m asking the question every single second.)

  Two days later

  Subject: (no subject)

  Maybe you despise me for every sentence I’ve ever written to you. Maybe you hate me for every word I’m sending now. But what else can I do? How are you, Emmi? I’d love to be there for you. I’d love to be able to do something meaningful for you. I’d love to know what you’re thinking and feeling. I’d love to think and feel with you. I’d love to shoulder half of your burdens, however unpleasant they may be.

  Two days later

  Subject: (no subject)

  Should I not write to you anymore?

  The following day

  Subject: (no subject)

  What does this mean, Emmi? Does it mean:

  You don’t even know yourself whether you want me to write to you.

  You don’t care whether I write to you or not.

  You’re absolutely sure you don’t want me to write to you.

  You’re not reading my emails anymore.

  Three days later

  Subject: The north wind

  O.K., Emmi. I get it, I won’t write anymore.

  If … the north wind … you know … always.

  Always, always, always, always, always!

  All my love,

  your Leo

  Five hours later

  Re:

  Hi Leo,

  Are you asleep?

  Three minutes later

  Re:

  EMMI!!! THANK YOU!!!

  How are you? Please tell me! I can’t think about anything else. I ought to be finishing off a research report, but I’ve been sitting in front of the screen for hours, staring at the toolbar with the envelope icon and waiting for a four-letter miracle. It’s here. I can’t believe it. EMMI. You’re back!

  Thirty seconds later

  Re:

  Can I come and see you?

  One minute later

  Re:

  I beg your pardon, Emmi? Did I read that right? You want to come to my place? To my home? Flat 15? Why? When?

  Twenty seconds later

  Re:

  Now.

  Fifty seconds later

  Re:

  Dear Emmi,

  Are you serious? Are you feeling O.K.? Do you need to talk? Of course you can come over. But it’s two o’clock in the morning. Wouldn’t it be better if we met up tomorrow? We’d have more time, and clearer heads. (I would, at least.)

  Twenty seconds later

  Re:

  Can I come over, yes or no?

  One minute later

  Re:

  It sounds a little threatening, but yes, of course you can, Emmi.

  Thirty seconds later

  Re:

  Do you have any whisky, or do I have to bring my own?

  Forty seconds later

  Re:

  I’ve got whisky. The bottle is three-quarters full. Is that enough for you? Emmi, you couldn’t by any chance let me know what mood you’re in, could you? Just so I can prepare myself.

  Twenty seconds later

  Re:

  You’ll find out soon enough. See you soon!

  Forty seconds later

  Re:

  See you soon!

  The following evening

  Subject: Nadir

  Dear Emmi,

  I don’t imagine you’re feeling any better today, neither better than yesterday, nor better than me. Furiously heaping some of the damage onto the person who might have caused it in the first place doesn’t automatically make you feel any less wounded. Paying someone back simply means that you’re poorer afterward. Your tempestuous entrance, the denial of your shyness, the abandonment of your fear, your “exhilarating demand,” which I would not—and you knew this very well—have wanted to or been able to turn down, your perfectly executed plan, taking things to their limit and then letting it all go, as if intimacy were the most worthless thing on Earth; your calculated departure, your skillful disappearance—none of this was retaliation, but an act of desperation. The looks you gave me afterward seemed to say, “Isn’t that what you wanted from the very start? Well, now you’ve had it.” No, it’s not what I wanted at all, and you know it! We have never been so close and yet so far apart. That was our nadir. You can’t fool me, Emmi. You’re not the cool, powerful, self-assured woman who can turn humiliation into victory like that.

  The only punishment I really felt was your silence. What has connected us and bound us together until now has been words. If you have any feelings left for me at all, then talk to me!

  Leo

  Three hours later

  Re:

  So you want words. Fine, my mouth is full of them and I’ll give them to you gladly, what else can I do with them.

  You’re right, Leo. I wanted to prove it to Bernhard. I wanted to prove it to you. And to myself. Now I know that I’m capable of cheating. What’s more, I can cheat on Bernhard. What’s more, I can cheat on Bernhard with you. What’s more—my greatest achievement—I can cheat on myself at the same time. Thanks for “playing along,” by the way. I know it had nothing to do with an inability to control your urges—it was pure compassion. You offered to deal with half my feelings. Considering the strained circumstances, you coped with this brilliantly yesterday morning. A bed shared means half a bed. Suffering shared means double the suffering.

  You’re right, Leo. I don’t feel any better today. In fact I feel shittier than ever.

  You cannot imagine, Leo, what “you two” have done to me. I feel betrayed, sold down the river. My husband and my virtual lover made a pact behind my back: if the one wants to feel me physically, just once, the other will make an exception, turn a blind eye. If the one then disappears, never to be seen again, the other can keep me forever.

  The one gives me back to my husband, the rightful owner, as if I had been a find. In return, the other allows me a “physi
cal encounter”—a sexual adventure with an otherwise virtual fantasy love figure, like some kind of finder’s reward. A scrupulous division, a perfect separation, a perfidious conspiracy. And dopey little Emmi, bound to her family and yet driven by a thirst for adventure, won’t ever hear a word about it. Oh yes.

  I cannot even begin to gauge what this might mean for Bernhard and myself, Leo. And you will probably never know. As for what it means for “us”? I can tell you that right now. But for you, the man who was supposed to be able to read my very soul like no one else, it must be obvious, isn’t it? Come on, Leo, don’t be naive. There’s no “four-letter miracle.” There is only a six-letter logical conclusion, and we’ve trembled in the face of it so many times before. We’ve put it off, suppressed it, written straight past it. But now it has caught up with us, and it’s down to me to spell it out: T-H-E E-N-D.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Three months later

  Subject: Yes, it’s me

  Hello Leo. The well-qualified lady who looks after my ragged psyche thinks I can afford to ask you how you are. So, how are you? What can I tell my attentive therapist? I can’t tell her: THIS EMAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED … !

  All best,

  Emmi

  Three days later

  Subject: Me again

  Hi Leo,

  I’ve just been speaking on the phone to my therapist and I read out the email I sent you on Tuesday. She says I shouldn’t be at all surprised not to have had a response. I said: “But I’m not surprised.” And then she said: “But you want to know how he is, don’t you?” Me: “Yes.” Her: “Then you have to ask him in a way that might give you a chance of finding out.” Me: “Oh, I see. So what’s the best way of doing that?” Her: “Try being friendly.” Me: “But I don’t feel like being friendly.” Her: “Yes you do, you’re feeling more like being friendly than you want to admit to yourself. You just don’t want him to think that you’re feeling like being friendly toward him.” Me: “I don’t care what he thinks.” Her: “You don’t really believe that!” Me: “You’re right. You’re good at seeing straight through people.” Her: “Thanks, it’s my job.” Me: “So what should I do, then?” Her: “First of all, do whatever you think is best for you. Second, ask him how he is, but nicely.”

  Five minutes later

  Subject: Me yet again

  Hello Leo,

  So I’m going to ask you nicely: “How are things?”

  I can be even more friendly and say: “Hello Leo, how are you?”

  I could even go one step higher on the friendliness scale with: “My dear Leo, how are you, how are you, how is everything with you, how was Christmas, I hope the New Year has got off to a good start, what are you up to these days, how is your love life, how’s “Pam,” sorry Pameeela?”

  Best possible wishes ever,

  Emmi

  Two hours later

  Subject: Me for a third time

  Hello Leo,

  It’s me again. Please forget the nonsense I sent you earlier. But let me tell you something. (That’s one of my favorite Leo quotes; I always imagine you blind drunk when you’re saying it.) Let me tell you something: writing does me a world of good!

  Tomorrow I’ll tell my therapist that I’ve written to him, and that writing does me good. She’ll say to me: “But that was only half the truth.” And I’ll say: “What was the whole truth, then?” She’ll say: “It would have been more accurate to write: Writing to YOU does me a world of good.” And I’ll say: “But I don’t write to anyone else. So if I write that writing does me good, I mean automatically that writing to HIM does me so much good.” She’ll say: “But he’s not to know that.” Me: “Yes he will—he knows me.” Her: “I’d be very surprised. You don’t even know yourself, that’s why you’ve ended up with me.” Me: “So what’s your hourly rate for insults like this one, then?”

  Everything around me is in a state of flux; only the letters that make up these words are the same. It does me good to hold (myself) onto them. It feels as though by doing so, I’m being true at least to myself. I’m not expecting you to reply. In fact I think it’s probably best if you don’t. The train we were both on has left the station, and “Boston” (and everything leading up to it) threw me off track with a yearlong delay. And now I’m sitting in a dingy compartment in a completely new carriage, trying to get my bearings. I have no idea where I’m heading; the stations have no names and even the direction we’re going in is rather unclear. When I look out through the small, frosted-glass window at the landscape racing by, I’d like to be able to tell you from time to time whether I see anything familiar, and what that might be. Would that be O.K.? I know you keep a good record of my impressions. And if you’d like to tell me about your own journey sometime—about your experiences aboard the “Pam Express”—I’m all ears. Well, bye then, and make sure you dress warmly. Winter seems to be on the way again. Cold, train air can give you a stiff neck and restrict your range of vision. You can only look straight ahead to your supposed destination, not to either side where those moments happen that make the journey worthwhile.

  Emmi

  Two days later

  Subject: Just tell me …

  … whether you

  a) Delete my emails without reading them

  b) Read my emails and then delete them

  c) Read them and save them

  d) Don’t get any emails from me at all

  Five hours later

  Re:

  c

  The following morning

  Subject: Good choice!

  That was the best choice you could have made, Leo! And how elaborately you’ve described, justified, and formulated it! Erm, has the effort of replying given you carpal tunnel syndrome, or is there something else on the way?

  Best wishes,

  Emmi

  Two days later

  Subject: Analysis of “c”

  Hi Leo,

  You must have known the extent to which your first and only offering from the alphabet in sixteen weeks would lend wings to my fantasies. What could Leo the Language Psychologist possibly have wanted to say with an answer like that? What did he expect to achieve by it?

  a) With that most minuscule written sign of life, was he hoping to gain a place in my personal book of Leo records?

  b) Is he captivated by the notion that the recipient of the “c” will spend at least an hour with her therapist pondering the difference between “c” followed by full stop, “c” with a full stop and parenthesis, and “c” stripped bare, au natur, as Leike created it?

  c) Was “dropping me a line” in this perfectionist, minimalist way an attempt to come across (yet again) as more interesting than the situation warranted?

  d) Or was it purely content-driven? Was he trying to say: Yes, I am reading Emmi’s emails, I’ll even keep saving them, but I’m definitely not going to go on writing to her? And I’m being polite and telling her so. I’m sending her a signal, a feeble signal, but at least it’s a signal, even if it’s the smallest signal possible, still, it’s a signal. I’m sending her a chicken’s toe ring with a bite taken out of it. Was that it?

  In joyful expectation of another “letter” from you,

  Emmi

  Three hours later

  Re:

  A question of my own, dear Emmi: When you say THE END so definitively (as you last did sixteen weeks ago, the day after … you might remember what it was the day after), what do you actually mean?

  a) THE END?

  b) THE END?

  c) THE END?

  d) THE END?

  And why can’t you stick with either a), b), c), or d)?

  Thirty minutes later

  Re:

  1) Because I like writing.

  2) O.K.: because I like writing to YOU.

  3) Because my therapist says it does me good, and she should know, she studied it.

  4) Because I was curious to know how long you would manage not to write to me.

  5)
Because I was even more curious what your answer would be. (I admit, I’d never have guessed it would be “c.”)

  6) Because I was and still am even more curious to find out how you were.

  7) Because these kinds of curiosities for external things improve the air around here, the atmosphere in my tiny, sterile, empty new flat with the silent piano and bare walls, which keep on flinging baffled question marks in my face. A flat that has set me back fifteen years in one fell swoop, but without making me fifteen years younger as a result. And now, at thirty-five, I’m at the bottom of a twenty-year-old’s stairwell. Which means I’ve got to climb all those stairs again.

  8) Where were we? Oh yes, at “The End,” and why I don’t mean “The End” when I say it: because there are certain things I see quite differently from how I saw them sixteen weeks ago, if perhaps less conclusively.

  9) Because the end doesn’t quite mean the end, doesn’t quite mean the end, doesn’t quite mean the end, Leo. Because in the end, each end is also a beginning.

  Have a nice evening. And thanks for writing!

  Emmi

  Ten minutes later

  Re:

  What? Have you moved out, Emmi? Have you and Bernhard separated?

  Two hours later

  Re:

  I’ve moved out, I’ve stepped back a little. I’ve put some distance between myself and Bernhard. The physical space that separates us now reflects the kind of relationship he and I have had for the past two years. I’m trying to ensure that the children don’t suffer as a result. I still want to be there for them whenever they need me. The new circumstances are awful for Jonas. You should see his face when he asks me why I never spend the night at home anymore. I say: “Papa and I aren’t getting along very well at the moment.” Jonas says: “But at night that shouldn’t make any difference.” And I say: “It does when all that separates you is a thin wall.” He says: “Then I’ll swap bedrooms with you. I don’t mind if there’s only a thin wall between me and Papa.” What is one supposed to say to that?

  Bernhard recognizes his failings and deficiencies. He’s ashamed. He’s contrite, defeated, completely wiped out. He’s trying to salvage what he can, while I try to identify if there is anything that can be salvaged. We’ve talked so much over the past few months, but unfortunately it’s come several years too late. We’ve peeped behind the facade of our relationship for the very first time, and it looks musty and desolate. It’s never been worked on, never cleaned, never aired, everything in a state of decay. Can we ever make amends?