by Peter Stamm
Angelika said she was sure Dominic’s parents weren’t short of money. His father was a relationship counselor.
What’s she look like? asked Benno.
Average, said Angelika.
Half an hour later the bell rang. Dominic had been sitting on the sofa in shoes and coat for the past ten minutes. Good-bye, little fellow, said Benno. Come and see us again, will you?
Dominic didn’t answer. Angelika took him by the hand.
When Dominic saw his mother through the glass door, he broke away and ran down the last couple of steps. The two of them faced each other, separated only by the glass. The mother had crouched down and was signaling to the boy. He pressed his hands and face against the cold glass, which misted over with his breath. Angelika unlocked the door. The mother stood up. Angelika saw she had a package in her hand. Is that for me? asked Dominic. That’s for dear Angelika, said the mother. As thanks for letting you come and visit her. She handed the present to Angelika, and repeated that she was terribly sorry it had happened, and she was thoroughly embarrassed. A misunderstanding. Angelika had thought of some reply, but then all she said was these things happened, and thank you for the present. I hope you’ll enjoy this, she said, and then to Dominic, Right, let’s hurry home and get to bed. Say bye-bye. Angelika watched them leave and walk over to a jeep that was parked diagonally to the other cars. She could just make out the silhouette of the father at the wheel. The mother bent down to Dominic and seemed to tell him something. Angelika waved, but they didn’t seem to notice. When the door closed behind her, she turned around once more. The car was gone. On the glass she saw the traces left by Dominic’s hands. She wiped them away with her sleeve.
Benno was in the shower, Angelika could hear the water. She sat down in the living room and opened the package. It was a bottle of perfume. She sniffed it and dabbed some behind her ears and between her breasts. Benno emerged from the shower. He was naked, with a towel slung around his hips. She saw the bulge of his erection. He sat down beside her and embraced her. She freed herself and said she would have a quick shower too. She locked the bathroom but didn’t undress. When Benno knocked on the door, she was still sitting on the toilet, with her face in her hands.
Videocity
“You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?
Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me?
Well I’m the only one here.”
—TRAVIS BICKLE in Taxi Driver
IT ALL BEGAN with the death of his mother. With their claim that his mother had died. He can hardly remember what came before. Just occasional images: exterior, day. A large garden, colors, fruit trees, a house with a steeply pitched roof. The image is distorted at the edges, as though seen through a wide-angle lens. In close-up the face of his mother. She is laughing and swinging him up in the air. She is holding him by the hands and swinging him around in a circle. His eye is the camera. The garden smudges in the accelerating movement, a green blur. Cut.
A long hallway, gray linoleum, white walls. Rainy light leaks in from outside, dim. He is sitting on a bench next to a woman he doesn’t know. They wait for a long time until a doctor emerges from one of the rooms, shakes his head, says something he doesn’t understand. The face of the doctor is gray. The woman stands up, takes the boy by the hand, and they leave down the hallway and down a wide flight of stone steps. They walk out of shot, which is held a moment longer. Cut.
A montage: dining rooms, dormitories, gym halls. He is standing there, in too short pants, in a gym outfit, clothes that others have worn before him. Always with other boys. The soundtrack is a babel of noise, an echoey confusion of scraps of words, yells, whistles, the singing of children. The loneliness of never-being-alone. The light goes out and goes on again immediately. The taste of toothpaste, porridge, white bread. Someone is banging around on an upright piano, the clatter of dishes and sounds of liquids being slopped out and scraping noises. He shuts his eyes, opens them again.
Twenty years later. The radio alarm plays “I Got You, Babe.” A hand slams on the button and the music stops. A man gets up, sits for a moment on the edge of the bed, his face buried in his hands. He stands up and leaves the room. We track him to the bathroom, then to the landing. The camera pans away from him, moves toward the window, then through it. Outside a street in a poor neighborhood. The asphalt is wet, but judging by the clothes of the passersby it is not cold. As if on command, the extras start to move. A man carrying a bouquet of flowers walks past, the same as every morning, then two women of thirty or so, presumably foreigners, with long black hair. Both are wearing jeans and white T-shirts, one of them is carrying a light blue shoulder bag. They are yards apart, but even so they seem to belong together, like clones, or sisters unaware of each other’s existence. The front door of a house opens. The man we saw a moment earlier steps out onto the pavement. His hair is wild, he looks like an unmade bed. At a corner bodega he buys a cup of coffee. Then he walks on in the same direction as the two women.
From street level, a couple of steps lead down to a low basement premises. VIDEOCITY it says on the glass door. On the inside of the glass is a red sign: CLOSED. The man unlocks the door, walks in, and turns the sign around. A smell of cold cigarette smoke. The room is dark, even after the man has switched on a light. On the walls are shelves stacked with hundreds of videocassettes, at the far end of the room is a counter with a cash register and a small TV set. Behind it a door leads into a tiny room with a toilet, an old fridge with a stained coffee machine on it, and a rickety cabinet that looks as if it’s been salvaged from a dumpster. The man plugs in the TV and the register and starts the coffee machine. Only then does he take off his coat.
All morning no one comes. A little before noon, a short woman of about fifty walks into the shop and looks around. She is wearing blue shoes and a 1950s hounds-tooth jacket. She has a vaguely stunned facial expression. She seems to have walked in by mistake. She turns and walks out again without saying a thing. It often happens, people walk in here and leave, for no apparent reason. Sometimes they just look in the window, sometimes they walk in under some pretext. They’re looking for some film he’s never heard of, or they want to buy the life-sized cardboard figure in the window. Sometimes they want change for the meter. He can’t do anything, he can’t prove anything. They’re too cunning for him. Once he saw that someone must have broken in during the night. Since then he’s careful to remember all the details of where he leaves everything when he goes. They must have noticed it, because they’ve stopped coming in at night. They are very cagey.
It’s not just the young men in dark suits with name tags. Sometimes there are children or old women, foreigners with some illegible piece of paper they hold in his face, some address they claim they’re trying to find. He’s remembered the addresses, marked them down on a map, and connected them up. It’s not yet clear to him what their significance is. He is unable to trust even his oldest customers. They’re sounding him out. They start a casual conversation, ask him if he’s seen some film or other, and what he thinks of it. He’s very careful with what he says. He doesn’t know how many of them are involved. It’s not impossible that they’re all in league with each other.
The sets are made of wood and stone. They are to very high specifications, you barely notice the difference, but you sense there’s something missing. Distant buildings seen against the light look transparent. The horizon retreats as you walk toward it, it seems two-dimensional, a painting. Sometimes he spots mistakes, trivial things, but they can’t be accidental. When he taps the wall, it makes a hollow sound. Some things are smaller than they should be in reality. He feels tempted to lift the manhole cover in the street to see what’s concealed underneath. But that would be too obvious. When he goes home at night, he thinks he could just keep on going, straight on, but he’s convinced they wouldn’t allow it. He would lose his way in the streets, he would wind up at a dead end. An accident could be organized.
Ever
y step he takes is watched. At night he can hear people walking about in the apartment above. He’s tried to spot the cameras and microphones, but they’re so small and so well concealed that he can’t find them. He can’t exclude the possibility that a computer chip has been implanted in him that records his whereabouts, controls his physical processes, pulse rate, blood pressure, metabolism. He pats himself down sometimes, but he can’t feel anything. The chip must be buried deep in his flesh. He doesn’t believe they can read his mind. The technology for that hasn’t been invented. But they’re working on it.
When he showers, he hangs a towel over the mirror. When he goes shopping, he often puts back the package he picks up first and chooses a different one from the back of the shelf. He’s noticed the salespeople looking at him. He is almost certain they are mixing things into his food, drugs that alter his consciousness. Hence his forgetfulness, his visual distortions, his racing pulse, his tendency to sweat. Hence the occasional panic attacks. Who knows whether the medications the doctor prescribes aren’t the real cause for his condition.
He’s stopped going to restaurants long ago. He’s not even sure of the coffee at the corner bodega. Sometimes he changes his order to tea at the last moment. Then he monitors his body’s reaction very carefully.
For security reasons, he’s detached the little TV from the antenna. There’s nothing easier than picking up data that travel through a wire. Now he only watches videos. They are his last connection to the world outside, to the real world. He sees the same films again and again, runs them in slow motion and attends to their tiniest details, to minute slips. A wristwatch in a film set in ancient Rome. The shadow of a boom falling across a scene.
He’s tried to get in touch with film people, written letters to Jodie Foster and Martin Scorsese. No reply of course. It was naive of him to suppose his letters would get through, but back then he saw no other way. Since then he’s learned to use dead letterboxes. He leaves his plans and protocols and samples behind mirrors in public toilets or in garbage cans at certain crossings. He gets the position of the garbage cans from films, and also whether the messages have been received. His progress can be charted from film to film. Each film answers the question put in the one before. The communications are encoded, but he’s learned to decipher them. Sometimes he laughs aloud when he gets their meaning. He often feels a great hilarity, the cool bliss of being undeceived. He won’t be misled by the voices in his head anymore: You can’t leave. This is where you belong. You belong to me.
The sudden clarity, after years of uncertainty. He walks through the city and laughs. He sees through things. He could knock over the buildings with one hand, uproot the trees that have been fixed in the ground like parasols. He has achieved mastery over his body. By pure mind he can control his physical functions.
He knows his contribution is vital. Otherwise they would have pulled him out long ago. A sacrifice will be required of him, but he is willing. The sacrifice will give shape and meaning to his life.
He has forgotten his sandwiches. He wonders whether he dares to buy a hamburger at the bodega. They can’t know that today of all days he will go there. If he’s quick enough, he can take them by surprise, not give them time to doctor his food. Some risks are unavoidable.
While he’s waiting for his hamburger, he sees a woman with a small child walking straight up to him. She is wearing a fawn leather jacket and carrying a black leather bag. They always carry bags, presumably for the technical equipment, the batteries. They may be armed. The child is beyond suspicion. Presumably it knows nothing, it’s just there as a decoy. He looks the woman straight in the eye. She should know that it’s impossible to trick him. And it works: she turns aside and walks past him. Suddenly she speeds up. When she is a few steps past him, she looks back. Her expression is full of fear. He smiles triumphantly.
He waits until the last possible moment before turning on the light in his store. The light makes it easier to see him from the street. That’s the most dangerous moment of the whole day. Sometimes he walks out of the store and watches it from the other side of the road. If a customer walks in, he hurries across the street to be there.
Between six and eight o’clock is the busiest time. After that the customers dwindle away. It used to be he stayed open until midnight, now he closes at ten or eleven. Ever since the big video chain opened two blocks away he’s been getting fewer customers. They are trying to drive him out of business, but he’s not about to give up. He mustn’t give up. He counts the earnings for the day and puts the money in his pocket. Ever since he’s suffered a break-in, he leaves the register open.
He has gotten used to the situation, he is calmer now. On his way to work in the morning, he says hello to the agents. That terrifies them. They never expected him to identify them, and they run away. Good morning, he calls out after them. And in case we don’t see each other again, good afternoon, and good evening as well. He wants to burst out laughing, but controls himself. When he goes home at night, there they are again. He hurries down the street and runs up the stairs to his apartment, taking the stairs two and three at a time. He is so boisterous he feels like ringing all the bells and yelling in his neighbors’ faces that he knows perfectly well what they’re up to. Once he’s locked the door after him, he stops for a moment, then opens it again, peeps out into the stairwell, and locks it again. He goes straight to his living room and switches on the radio, so that no one can hear what he’s doing. His neighbors have complained about the noise. No surprise there.
Only after he’s eaten and showered and has been to the bathroom does he turn off the radio and switch off the light. With heavy strides he goes to the bedroom. That’ll fool them into thinking he’s gone to bed. Their guard will drop. He waits perfectly still for minutes. He is so tired he thinks sometimes that he’ll fall asleep on his feet. His thoughts wander, he loses track of time.
When everything’s quiet, when he’s calmed down, he creeps back into the living room, switches on the video recorder and the TV. He’s rewound the tape to the correct place.
He’s playing in the garden. His mother comes, picks him up, spins him around. The garden blurs with the movement, becomes indistinct. The music reaches its climax. He can no longer keep back his tears. He stretches his arms out to his mother, his hands brush the screen. She looks at him and smiles sweetly.
Men and Boys
THE RIVER BATHS were closed, the entrance padlocked. There was a chill rain falling. The lifeguard was nowhere to be seen, perhaps he had gone home or was in the village somewhere. When Lucas clambered over the wire fence, he thought of the drunk who had got in here at night a few years ago and fallen into the pool. They had found him dead the following morning.
He went to the changing rooms, which were in a low whitewashed brick building. Next to the entrance was a sign, MEN AND BOYS. There was no light except what came through the gap between the walls and ceiling, and it was always a bit damp in the cabins, even when it was really hot outside. Lucas browsed along the row of lockers, to see if someone had forgotten a coin, but there wasn’t one. About halfway he stopped looking. He went down to the river. The water was high and pale brown. It flowed so fast that there were little eddies marking its surface. Twigs drifted past, they seemed to be going faster than the current. They must have opened the weir downstream, following the storm, Lucas could hear a distant roar of falling water. The rain eased, then stopped altogether. He went back to the cabins and changed.
He remembered summer afternoons when it was hot and all the kids seemed to go swimming. There were various groups dotted about the lawn. Lucas’s fellows ran around on the edge of the pool jumping or pushing each other into the water until the lifeguard intervened. Lucas swam back and forth, counting laps. After he’d done a mile, he climbed out, feeling cold and staggering slightly as if he’d forgotten how to walk. His friends lay on big bath towels on the grass. They talked about the summer holidays and where they would go. He lay down next to them on the grass.
Whenever he was with the others, Lucas felt as though his pores were closing, he felt small and painfully self-conscious of his body. He was shut up inside it, he couldn’t be human without it. On his own, he could forget about it, then his edges were those of his consciousness, the damp meadow he was walking over, the passing clouds, the blue strip on the horizon, the seam of forest on the river’s far bank. Then Lucas could have been just anyone, or even no one.
He lay down on the rough concrete slabs beside the pool. There were leaves floating on the water that the storm had blown off the trees, and a wasp was wriggling about. Lucas put out his hand to rescue the creature, but he was afraid he might get stung. His hand hovered protectively over it. Slowly it drifted farther and farther from the edge of the pool.
Lucas remembered Franziska, who was in the same class as him. They sometimes walked home together from school as far as the railroad crossing, where their paths divided. Often they would stand in front of the crossing sign for a long time, talking. Franziska had so much to say, she never seemed to get to the end of it. But at the class party she didn’t want to dance with him, she made some snotty remark and got herself something to drink. And later she was seen dancing with Leo.
Lucas picked three stones from the rosebed that surrounded the pool, washed the clay off them, and dropped them into the water one after the other. Once the ripples had stopped, he could see them lying on the bottom. He lowered himself slowly into the water. It was so cold it took his breath away. For a long time he stood on the lowest step of the ladder, up to his belly, and then he slipped in. As soon as he started to move, the cold abated. He dived for the stones. The first time he only managed two, he didn’t see the last one until he was on the surface again. He released them from his hand. When they dropped, they made a little clucking sound in the water, and then they sank waveringly to the floor. The second time, Lucas found all three. He wasn’t an especially good swimmer, but he was a good diver. He took a few deep breaths, pushed off the side, and dived down on a diagonal slant. He saw the blurry white tramlines and the bottom of the pool quickly move beneath him. Now he was swimming just over the floor. After the third line, he felt an ache in his throat and chest. He had to rise to the surface, he couldn’t make it all the way across. But he carried on, and the aching diminished. He now had the feeling he could dive forever. Over the last few yards he expelled the air he still had in his lungs, and then his head broke the surface just in front of the edge. He took deep breaths and turned and swam slowly. He wished Franziska could have been there and seen him. One time, as she was getting out of the water, her bikini top slipped and for a second Lucas caught a glimpse of her small bare breast, and the nipple dark and erect.