Every Seventh Wave

by Daniel Glattauer

  One minute later

  Re:

  Because if only one thing had to remain just between you and me, it was my greatest and most beautiful secret.

  Two minutes later

  Re:

  That was nicely put, Leo, even if I had to read the sentence twice! Or as you might say in your shorthand: Thanks, Leo!!!

  Six days later

  Subject: Lost to me?

  Dear Emmi,

  Are you lost to me? I couldn’t blame you if you were.

  One day later

  Subject: When?

  You’re the silent one of the two of us, Leo! So tell me, when are you emigrating to Boston?

  Five minutes later

  Re:

  Please, Emmi, be patient with me for a few days more. In a week’s time I’ll tell you everything. EVERYTHING!

  Seven minutes later

  Re:

  Can you tell me EVERYTHING in a week’s time? Or do you have to tell me EVERYTHING in a week’s time? Can Pam know that you’re going to tell me EVERYTHING in a week’s time? Or is Pam in fact demanding that you tell me EVERYTHING in a week’s time? And why a week? What’s going to happen over the course of this week? O.K., I get it, I’m only going to find out in a week’s time.

  Bye-bye!

  Be in touch in a week, then.

  Four minutes later

  Subject: Istria

  Oh, by the way, Bernhard gets back from Japan in a week and two days. In a week and four days we’re going with the kids to Istria for our summer holidays. In case you’re thinking of meeting before then to tell me EVERYTHING, then let’s make a date as soon as possible!

  All the best for a successful week,

  Emmi

  Six days later

  Subject: Time’s nearly up

  Hi Leo,

  Tomorrow your week will be up. So how is EVERYTHING? Where is EVERYTHING? What is EVERYTHING?

  One day later

  Subject: Everything (is over)

  Dear Emmi,

  Pamela and I have split up. She’s flying to Boston on Monday, alone. That is EVERYTHING.

  Ten minutes later

  Re:

  Dear Leo,

  That’s quite a lot, I have to say. But it can’t be EVERYTHING. It can’t HAVE BEEN everything, just like that. I don’t believe you. Come on, Leo! Do you want to meet? Do you want to get it off your chest and have a good cry? I can be there for you right now, round the clock, so to speak, for the next two days. If you want to meet, then let’s meet! If you’re not sure whether we should meet, we should meet! If you don’t know whether you want to meet anyone at all, then meet me! But if you’re certain you don’t know whether it would be a good thing or not for you to meet me—because how could you know?—then don’t meet me. No, do actually, even then! So there. Full stop. I didn’t want to be discreet with my offer. I don’t think I could be any less discreet. And I won’t ever offer myself so indiscreetly again. And that’s a promise!

  Fifteen minutes later

  Re:

  Dear Emmi,

  In a few hours I’ll be on the train to Hamburg. I’m going to visit my sister Adrienne and I’ll stay with her until Tuesday. You’re off with your family to Croatia on Wednesday, aren’t you? So we probably won’t see each other until after that.

  Emmi, I know you’re dying to know what happened. You have every right to know. And I feel I need to tell you. Really I do! You’ll find out in all its facets, I guarantee it. Let’s just have our time in Hamburg and Croatia first. I need to see things more clearly. I need distance—from Pamela and from myself. Not from you, Emmi, believe me, not from you!

  Eight minutes later

  Re:

  You know, you couldn’t be more distant than you already are, my love. You’re driving me crazy with your endless delays, denials, empty promises, and almost monosyllabic about-turns! When I get back from Istria, I expect you’ll be announcing your engagement to “Pam.” But sadly you won’t be able to share any “facet” of your decision with me. Because you’ll have to “see things more clearly first.” I don’t want this anymore, Leo! You mustn’t be cross: whatever it is making you wait this time before telling me something profound about yourself, I’m waiting with you. I’ve been waiting ever since I’ve known you. Over the past two and a half years I’ve waited three times as much as I have in the preceding thirty-three. If only I’d known what I was waiting for! I’m sick to death of waiting. Basically I’m all waited out. Sorry! (And now you’re going to go all silent and sulky on me again.)

  One minute later

  Re:

  No, Emmi. I won’t go silent and I won’t go sulky. I’m going to Hamburg. And I’m coming back. And I’ll write to you. And I won’t announce any engagements.

  Lots of love,

  Leo

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Five days later

  Subject: Adieu Pamela

  Good morning, dear Emmi,

  Greetings to the Mediterranean from flat 15! I’m back. I’m myself again. I’m sitting on the terrace with my laptop. At my back is one of those men’s flats that looks pitifully bare after a woman has just left.

  I spoke to her on the phone yesterday. She arrived O.K. It’s raining in Boston. I find it astonishing that we can already talk to each other again; a bit awkward, maybe—dry mouths, difficulty swallowing, choking noises, grinding teeth—but we can do it. It was only a week ago that we managed to ditch each other at the same time, without any advance warning, without giving any reasons. I started it off: “Pamela, I think we should …” and Pamela completed it, “… end it, you’re right!”

  We’re both to blame, we failed together. It was smooth, elegant, perfectly choreographed with very high technical merit, “synchronized.” We gathered our disappointments, threw them into a heap and shared them out fairly. Each of us took our allocated half. That’s how we parted. When we said farewell we hugged, kissed, and gave each other a friendly punch on the shoulder. And that’s how, without saying a word, each of us extended our “warmest sympathy” to the other. We cried when we saw each other’s tears. It was like being at a funeral, as if we’d lost a relative we had in common. And in fact we have! It’s just that we knew them by different names. Pamela’s was Trust, mine Illusion. (To be continued—I’m going to send this now and make myself a coffee. Won’t be long!)

  Ten seconds later

  Subject: Out-of-office autoreply

  I am on vacation and will respond to my emails on July 23.

  With best wishes,

  Emmi Rothner

  Thirty minutes later

  Re:

  I had expected that, Emmi. And actually it’s a good thing! You see, I’ve no idea whether you want to listen to all this. Now the earliest I’ll find out is in a week and a half. So, I’ll just keep on shamelessly recapping, my love:

  Pamela was the first woman who did not remind me of you, who I didn’t compare to you, who had nothing of you—my virtual fantasy—and yet who I found attractive. When I saw her I knew instantly that I had to fall in love with her. This was the fallacy, the mistake: the “had to,” the plan, the intention, my insistent efforts. I was driven by the idea of loving her. I was consumed by it. Until the very end I did everything for it. Apart from one thing: I never questioned whether I was actually in love with her.

  There were three phases with Pamela. Four months in Boston—that was my best time with her, it was MY time with her; I wouldn’t have missed a single day of it. When I came home from America last summer, you were there, Emmi. Again, still: YOU! My feelings carefully closeted away. How naive I was to believe that they could disperse of their own accord. You were quick to remind me that there could be no end without a beginning. We met up. I saw you. SAW YOU! What should I have said on that occasion? What should I say about it now? I was in phase two with Pamela: a long-distance relationship, broken up by thrilling voyages of discovery and intense pangs of desire for a perfectly normal and more permanent stat
e of togetherness—going out to buy bread and milk, changing the vacuum bags. How did I while away the time waiting for my future? With you, Emmi. Who did I lie with virtually? You, Emmi. Who did I live with in my secret inner world? You, Emmi. Only ever with you. And now my most wonderful fantasies had a face too. Your face.

  Then Pamela came and moved in. Phase three. I flicked the master switch in my head: Emmi off, Pamela on. A brutal undertaking. Total focus on the “woman for life,” the chosen one, the one I had to love. “Everything-illusion” applied in practice. You gave me the cue; I thought I could do a better job of it than you and Bernhard with your “marriage of convenience.” Maybe I just wanted to prove to you that I could. I was determined to do everything to make Pamela happy. At the beginning she felt flattered and secure. I felt good too. It was a diversionary tactic, a helpful course of occupational therapy—all I had to do was to make sure I didn’t listen to my inner voice, didn’t have too much Emmi time. Every personal email, every intimate thought of you had to be immediately exonerated and compensated for with a confirmation of my bond to Pamela. That’s how I soothed my bad conscience. Well, she wasn’t impressed for very long by my excessive declarations of love. Soon she felt irritated, overwhelmed, cornered. She needed space, an outlet, a refuge where she had home advantage. There was only one place for that: Boston. I saw it as the only opportunity to realize my illusion.

  You’ve read my emails. Our taster vacation was good enough to persuade me that I wanted to make a go of it with her on the East Coast. We’d planned to “emigrate” at the beginning of next year, things had been put in place, the prospect of a job and a flat. But then, but then, but then … Yes, then I told her about you, Emmi.

  Happy beach time!

  Leo

  Eight hours later

  Re:

  But why did you tell her about me?

  Hi Leo, by the way. I hope you didn’t seriously believe that I’d let you reel off your melodramatic “Pam”-phase analyses for an entire week without putting my own gloss on it. I’m not going to have you run out of steam and then go silent again for months. Talking of hot air, right now I’m in a delightful, crypt-like, low-lit Internet café, about three meters square, with black walls. It must be the hangout of the pierced successors to Croatia’s No Future movement, the kind of place where in five minutes you inhale more as a passive smoker than your average chain-smoker would in an hour. From where I’m sitting in this nihilistic fug, your reflections on “Pam” seem all the more bizarre. So come on, tell me, don’t be shy! Why did you tell her about me? What happened then? And what will happen now? I’ll be back in this fine Internet establishment sometime over the next few days to collect your notes on the subject, if my lungs aren’t scorched in the meantime.

  Kiss-kiss,

  Emmi

  P.S. (how original!) I look forward to seeing you again!

  One day later

  Subject: Point of contact

  Dear Emmi,

  How lovely to get you on such ravishing form! The Croatian sea and crypt air is clearly doing your sensitive arteries a world of good.

  1) Why did I tell Pam, Pamela about you? I had to. I came to the point where I had no choice. It was YOUR point, Emmi! Once described and identified by me thus: “on the palm of my left hand, roughly in the middle, where the life line is crossed by deep creases and turns down toward the artery.” It’s the place where you accidentally touched me on our second meeting. It has remained my ultimate Emmi point of contact, preserved for all eternity.

  Months later, at our notorious five-minute meeting before Pamela got here, you gave me your “souvenir,” your “present.” Were you aware of the significance of this gesture? Did you have any idea what it would lead to? “Psst!” you whispered. “Don’t say anything, Leo! Not a word!” You took my left hand, brought it up to your mouth, and kissed our point of contact. And you gently stroked your thumb over it too. Your parting words: “Bye, Leo. All the best. Don’t forget me!” And then the door was closed. I’ve played this scene back hundreds of times, re-created your kiss on the point thousands of times. Given that I’m not exactly skilled in describing the various stages of sexual arousal, I’ll leave it to you to imagine how I felt.

  In any case, from then on I found it impossible to be intimate with Pamela without feeling your point and without thinking of you and feeling you, Emmi. And so that theory about cheating I’d so pompously elaborated was shot to pieces. Can you remember the words I wrote to you? “My feelings for you don’t detract from those I have for her. The two have nothing to do with each other. They aren’t in competition.” Rubbish! Inexcusable! Totally unrealistic. Disproved by a single, tiny point. For a long time I didn’t want to admit that my left hand was beginning to avoid Pamela’s body. I didn’t want to acknowledge the defensive position it adopted, how intent it was on protecting its secret, hiding it in a clenched fist.

  In the end Pamela must have noticed. That evening she made a forceful grab for my unwilling left hand, tried everything she could to prize open my clenched fist, turned it into a game, gave a strained laugh, increased the pressure, kneeled on my forearm. To start with I put up some serious resistance. But finally I realized I wasn’t going to be able to hide our “everything” within my five fingers forever. I jerked my hand out of her grasp, opened my fist, held my hand up to her face and said in exasperation (I felt terrible, totally at her mercy, humiliated, resentful, condemned), “Here you are! Have it! Happy now?” She was distraught, asked me what was wrong all of a sudden, whether it was something she’d said or done. I just apologized. Pamela had no idea why. But afterward I had no choice: I told her about you.

  Actually, all I wanted to do at first was to say your name and see how I got on. I used the story of the indomitable seventh wave as an opportunity to mention that I’d just recently been reminded of it—“by Emmi, a good friend.” Pamela immediately pricked up her ears and asked, “Emmi? Who’s she? Where do you know her from?” The floodgates were now open, and I spent a good hour spouting forth about us until every last drop had trickled out. In fact it was the perfect example of those soaring, foaming, tumbling seventh waves you described. A wave that broke free, changing everything, re-creating the landscape, leaving nothing the same as before.

  Enjoy a lovely morning in the sea!

  Leo

  Three hours later

  Subject: Adieu

  2) What happened after that? Not much. The tide ebbed. A lull. Silence. Embarrassment. A shaking of heads. Mistrust. Cold. Quivering. Shivering. Her first question: “Why are you telling me all this?” Me: “I thought it was about time you knew.” Her: “Why?” Me: “Because it was part of my life.” Her: “It?” Me: “Emmi.” Her: “Was?” Me: “We became friends, we send each other emails occasionally. She’s happily back together with her husband.” Her: “And if she weren’t?” Me: “She is.” Her: “Do you still love her?” Me: “Pamela, I love you! I’m moving to Boston with you. Isn’t that proof enough?” She smiled and gave the back of my head a fleeting stroke. I could work out what she was thinking.

  Then she stood up and went to the door. She turned again and said, “Just one more question: Am I here just because of her?” I hesitated, I thought about it, I said, “Pamela, there’s a background to everything. Nothing exists in a vacuum.” At this she left the room. For her the subject was closed. I made several attempts to talk to her about it. I longed for a discussion, I would have put up with a violent hailstorm just so that another clear day could finally dawn. To no avail. Pamela thwarted any talk. There was no argument, no reproach, no nasty words, not even a nasty look. No, there were no looks at all, only glancing blows. Her voice sounded like a recording. The softer her touches, the more painful they seemed. We continued as if nothing had happened. We tortured each other like this for some weeks, together, side by side, in concert, in sync. Until finally I understood: I hadn’t only told Pamela the history of you and me. I had also told her our whole story, hers and mine. And I
had told it all the way to the end. There was nothing left but for us to say adieu.

  The following morning

  Subject: So, so, so sad!

  Hi Leo,

  I’d love to be able to distract us both from the contents of your email with some kind of daft joke. But this time I can’t do it. I hate stories with unhappy endings, especially so early in the morning. Yours has brought tears to my eyes, and now I can’t stop crying. The man sitting next to me, forsaken by the night and looking as if he has a dental brace embedded in his forehead, he even stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette in sympathy. I find everything you’ve written so, so, so desperately sad, Leo, and the way in which you’ve written it is sad too! I feel so, so, so sorry for you! I would so, so, so much like to embrace you now and never let you go. You are so, so, so sweet! And so, so, so unbelievably lacking in any talent for affairs of the heart. You do everything at exactly the wrong moment, and if it were ever the right time to do something, you certainly wouldn’t do it, or you’d do it wrong. You and “Pam”—it could never have come to anything. I knew that the moment I set eyes on her. Playing golf together, fine. Visiting relatives in Boston, eating turkey at Christmas, sex once in a while (if you must), all that I can understand. But I couldn’t see you living together!

  Right, now I’ve got to calm myself down. Fiona’s waiting outside. She wants us to try and find a shopping mall in the local fishing village … Time for your next tragic chapter.

  Until soon, my love.

  Emmi

  Two days later

  Subject: Part three

  3) So where does the story go from here?—I don’t have a clue, Emmi dear. I’m still jotting down a few keywords to plan my next six months. If you have any useful tips, then please send them over. I might spend the remainder of the summer in Hamburg with my sister and wait by the North Sea for a groundbreaking seventh wave. Anyway, there’s no reason for you to feel sad or worry about me. Even if I feel a little worn down, I really am happy. I can’t see much, but what I can see, I see clearly. You, for example, in the Croatian crypt-café and on the beach, in a green bikini (please don’t disappoint me by saying it’s blue!).