We're Flying

by Peter Stamm

  In the late afternoon they went down to the beach. They rubbed each other’s backs with sunscreen, and Niklaus felt as though Alice’s touch had changed since they had slept together, not more tender perhaps, but more aware. He too took his time about it, and noticed how Alice liked it when he pressed his fingertips against her spine and over her shoulder blades. It looks as though the vacation has turned out all right after all, she said. One week of rain, one week of fine weather, said Niklaus, I don’t think we can complain. Do we need anything? Bread and prosciutto, said Alice, we’ve still got some cheese. And something for tomorrow. I feel like cooking. Do you have money on you?

  THE SHOPKEEPER, who usually greeted them boisterously, today merely nodded and mumbled something. Wonder what got into him, said Alice, filling up their basket. Olives? she asked, holding up a jar of black olives. Niklaus nodded, and went over to the wine section, to look at the prices and compare them with what they had been quoted at the estates. When he turned, he saw Alice standing at the meat and cheese counter. The shopkeeper was jabbering away to her. Niklaus went outside and read the headlines of the German newspapers on the rack. A moment later, Alice came out of the store, looking upset. She walked off, not turning to look for him. He caught up to her in a few quick strides and asked what the matter was. That little boy is dead, she said, the father ran him over. He was backing up into the road, and didn’t see him behind him. They walked silently back to their vacation home. Niklaus put the shopping away. Alice stood leaning against the kitchen table, watching him. What shall we do? she asked, when he had finished. There’s nothing we can do, said Niklaus, we don’t even know their names. We could ask them if they need anything, said Alice. It must have happened the day we spent at the nature reserve. The shopkeeper said the father’s cries could be heard all over town. I’m glad we weren’t here then, said Niklaus, and he felt rather cowardly. That evening, they ate standing up in the kitchen.

  • • •

  WHEN NIKLAUS AWOKE, it was just getting light. He checked his watch, it was a few minutes past five. Alice was gone. He found her in the living room. There was no light on, and she was by the window in her nightgown. When he came in, she quickly turned to him and then looked away again. He came up behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders. For a while they stood there in silence, and then Alice said, They’re leaving. Only now did Niklaus see that the back of the black SUV was open. Look, said Alice, and Niklaus saw the man from Stuttgart coming through the garden carrying a suitcase that seemed to be very heavy. Together they watched him come and go a few more times. Last of all, he carried the damaged tricycle to the car. He could find no room for it, and pulled out some of the already packed things, looked at everything in bewilderment, and packed everything back in. Then he went into the house.

  Maybe that’s why I never wanted to have children, said Alice very quietly. Because I was afraid of losing them. We’re bound to lose each other sometime anyway, said Niklaus. That’s not the same thing, said Alice, that’s in the natural way of things.

  Niklaus went into the kitchen to put on the coffee. Then he heard Alice calling him. He went to her, and put his arm round her bony shoulders. Now! she breathed, as though something long-awaited was at last happening, and she pointed. The man had left the house again, he was supporting the woman who walked beside him with slumped shoulders and lowered head, leading their daughter by the hand. The woman was wearing a heavy wool sweater over her summer dress. The man walked her to the car and helped her get in, as though she were handicapped or very old. The little girl stood quietly next to the rear door, until the father came around for her, and carefully strapped her into the child seat. Last of all, he got in himself. Through the window, they heard the engine start, then the headlights were switched on, and the car rolled very slowly away.

  Niklaus heard the coffee machine spluttering in the kitchen, but he didn’t pay it any attention. He pulled off his pajama bottoms and drew Alice to him by the hips. Urgently he raised her nightie and reached a hand up between her legs. They made love standing up, more forcefully than a few days before. Alice didn’t say a word, he was hardly aware of her breathing.

  Holy Sacrament

  REINHOLD STOOD BY the window, looking out. A couple of men were walking by, and instinctively he took a step back. If he was honest, he was afraid of the people here, they were so moody and sullen. Their coarse language repelled him, and their humor shocked him. His predecessor had been like them, a rough, noisy man who went out drinking with his flock on Saturday night and preached to them on Sunday.

  When Reinhold took the job a year ago, he had been full of good intentions. He had looked forward to the move to Lake Constance, and thought people in the south would be more open. He had been mistaken. Whatever he turned his hand to had failed. All sorts of things were held against him, the use of bread instead of wafers for Communion, and grape juice in place of wine, altogether the way that he didn’t officiate in the style they were familiar with here. Word was that he neglected the elderly of the parish, while the fact that he was on first-name terms with the confirmands put a few more noses out of joint. He had wrecked things with the lady organist because he let his wife play guitar in the service a couple of times, and with the sexton because he kept too close an eye on the books.

  Reinhold drew the curtains and went next door. Brigitte was watching TV. He had stopped telling her about his troubles, she was finding it hard enough to make the adjustment, and becoming a minister’s wife was never her idea. He sat down next to her on the sofa. On the TV there was a little boy who claimed to be able to “read” the letters in alphabet soup with his mouth. Brigitte laughed. Isn’t he something? Reinhold said nothing, he knew what was on her mind.

  He lay there in the dark, unable to sleep. He could hear the TV in the living room. He asked himself what he might have done wrong. He had reached out to people, explained himself, and, at moments, been conciliatory. But all that seemed only to whip up the people against him even more. He no longer had the strength to fight, and barely enough to do his job. There was a time when the Sunday service had been the high point of his week, now he dreaded the stony faces and the cold silence with which his parish met him. When he read the Bible, its verses no longer spoke to him, and when he stood in the pulpit, he felt nothing but embarrassment. Twice already he had canceled worship because he was lying in bed with cramps.

  THE ALARM WENT OFF at seven, Brigitte must have forgotten to adjust it for Sunday. When Reinhold leaned over her to turn it off, she awoke. She asked him if he minded if she didn’t come to church today. She wasn’t feeling well.

  Reinhold shivered when he pulled off his pajamas in the bathroom. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the reflection of his pale, stringy body. Hurriedly he turned away and got under the shower. Over coffee, he went over his sermon once more. He would speak on Romans 9. Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

  Then, still far too early, he set off. It was cold and damp. The area had been fogbound for weeks, and the forecast was for more of the same. No one was out and about at this time, only a few tousled seagulls pecked around in the overflowing trash cans in the little pedestrian precinct. The church was still locked. Reinhold was relieved not to have run into anyone. He walked down the dark nave to the vestry. There was an electric heater there, but still it was so cold he could see his breath. Reinhold pulled on his surplice, and read the Luther prayer that one of his predecessors must have pinned on the wardrobe door. O Lord God, dear Father in heaven, I am indeed unworthy of the office and ministry in which I am to make known Thy glory and to nurture and serve this congregation. But Reinhold didn’t even feel unworthy. He sat there, brooding, until he happened to hear the church door fall shut, and a few minutes later a few random notes from the organ. For a long time his only communications with the lady organist had been via email, and the sexton did his job in silence and without lo
oking at him. Reinhold’s hands were stiff with cold. He started marching up and down, to get his blood moving. His predecessor had been in the habit of greeting his congregation at the door, but Reinhold needed these moments of silence, and he only entered the nave during the organ prelude. That, too, was taken amiss.

  When he heard the organ, he cleared his throat, gave a little tug at his surplice, and emerged from the vestry. With rapid strides and eyes lowered, he went to his place behind the pulpit and sat down in such a way that the congregation could see him in profile. When the organ finished, he waited a moment for the last echo to die away, then he stood up and walked behind the altar, where the bread and grape juice were standing along with two lighted candles. The church was empty.

  It took a moment for Reinhold to grasp the fact. No one had come to Communion. Only the sexton was standing by the mixing console, and up in the loft was the organist, with her back to him. He was sure she was watching him in the little rearview mirror that was fitted up there. He breathed deeply, then he said, Peace be with you. Let us pray. He hesitated, as though waiting while the congregation got to their knees, then he spoke the prayer as he did any other Sunday. Amen, he heard himself say. Let us sing Hymn 127, verses one through three. No sooner had he spoken than the organist began to play, her slight body and head in vigorous motion, though her playing lacked feeling and lacked love. The sexton stood there, holding his unopened hymnal in both hands. Dearest Jesus, speak to us. Reinhold sang loudly, though his voice cracked. If at least Brigitte were here, he thought, but maybe it was better that she wasn’t, to experience this final humiliation.

  At the end of the second verse, the organ suddenly stopped, and Reinhold saw the organist get up and leave. Now there was only his own voice to be heard, and the footfall of the organist, hurriedly and not at all discreetly clambering down the narrow flight of steps from the loft. She stopped in front of the sexton, whispered something to him, then slipped on the coat she had been carrying over her arm and left the church. The sexton followed her out, and the door crashed shut.

  Dear Jesus, when to you we come in need, allow our prayers to succeed. The last words echoed away in the empty space. Reinhold waited for complete silence, then he leafed through the big Bible to the text for this Sunday, and began to read from the Epistle to the Romans. I say the truth in Christ, I lie not. He stumbled and had to cough. He took a sip of grape juice from the eucharist and continued. I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ.

  He had meant to speak on the relations between Christians and Jews, on developments in the Middle East, and on quarrels and reconciliations in general, but now he felt like the boy on TV yesterday, as though he had to laboriously spell out every word, every letter. After the reading he prayed and sang once more. Then he called out, as loud as he could, We are all invited to share in the holy sacrament. And suddenly he felt as though he could see the church full of people, full of the shadows of those who for hundreds of years had celebrated Mass, had been baptized and married here and been given comfort as they lay dying. They arose, they came to him, and he gave them the bread and the wine, an endless stream of humanity. At that moment a bright ray of sunshine fell through the stained-glass windows of the church, and the space was transformed, becoming an explosion of light. The beams cracked and the organ boomed, it sounded like mighty breathing, an awakening from a long sleep.

  Reinhold felt the blood shooting to his head. He took the basket with the bread, and he proceeded down the aisle and out of the church. The fog had begun to lift, in one or two places there was a glimpse of blue sky and in the east the sun lit up the earth, as it had on the very first day. In the square in front of the church, various community members stood in little groups. They seemed to have been waiting for him, perhaps the lady organist or the sexton, who were also standing there, had alerted them. Even Brigitte was there.

  Reinhold walked up to them and held the basket aloft. The staff of life, he cried out. The people looked at him with hostility and shrank away. Then Reinhold heard a mewing cry, and raising his head, saw a gull hovering in the air above him. He took a piece of bread from the basket and threw it up, and with a tiny flick of its wing, the gull leaned forward and caught it in its beak. It flew so close to his head that he could feel the draft of its wings. And suddenly he was mobbed by a whole flock of seagulls. He threw bread around in gay abandon, and finally flung the whole empty basket into the air. All are invited, he shouted merrily. The seagulls’ mewing sounded like crazed laughter, and Reinhold too was moved to laugh; in fact, he couldn’t stop laughing, for at the end of many weeks of darkness, he finally saw the light.

  In the Forest

  for if he has lived sincerely,

  it must have been in a distant land

  —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

  THE HUNTER MUST get into position very early in the morning. By the time Anja is awake, he’s already there. He keeps very still, and he is so far away that she can only just make him out, but even so, she has a sense of knowing him and being close to him. All day she thinks about him. When she zips herself into her sleeping bag at night, she imagines him approaching her sleeping place, to watch over her while she sleeps. His gaze is calm and friendly. He picks up her clothes, sniffs them, as though looking to find a scent. Then quietly he takes off, climbs up the ladder into his high stand, and waits.

  Even before the sun reaches Anja, she is woken by the confused singing of many birds. She lies there a moment longer, looks secretly across to the high stand, and sees the hunter sitting there, and her heart starts to beat faster. She takes a little more time in the mornings now, and risks getting to school late. She notices herself moving more consciously, and she feels her body’s beauty and freshness, as though it were she observing it and not he. She is in her underwear, but she is in no hurry to get dressed. She stretches, combs her hair, squats down to wet her hands in the dew, and looks around, as though she were seeing the forest for the first time. She hums a tune and wonders if the hunter can hear her. It’s a shy form of courtship. Because all the time Anja knows she would run off if he left his stand and took so much as a single step in her direction.

  I LIVED IN THE FOREST for three years, that’s the most Anja will say on the subject, even years later. It was no secret, even the children knew, but at that time it was grownups who were asking questions that Anja didn’t want to answer, couldn’t answer. The school psychologist was asking them, after she’d been found. Why? Others gave answers for her: a broken home, father and mother both violent and both alcoholics, often disappearing for days on end. No, Anja said, this has got nothing to do with my parents. No one could understand that she wasn’t running away from something, but toward something.

  When she looked out of the kitchen window at the wooded hill on the other side of the expressway, she didn’t feel anything. You could only feel the forest when you were in it. That was the thing that made it so special, the way you could step into it as if into a room. You needed to be in it to be able to absorb it and be absorbed by it. She didn’t go into the forest much anymore, and people didn’t understand that either if they happened to know her story, and took her for some kind of forest creature. She didn’t pick mushrooms, she didn’t watch birds or animals, she didn’t know more names of trees than other people. Nor was she one of those bleeding hearts who got agitated about every tree that was cut down. On the contrary, it was a relief to see how people dominated the forest, which sometimes seemed to her like a disease, something that proliferated and spread. Only the noise of chain saws still bothered her, because back then it signified the threat of being found. The routes taken by the foresters were less predictable than those of the hikers, the joggers, and even the hunters, who had their fixed places that they liked to drive up to, if they could, in their pickup trucks. But over time, Anja noticed that the lumberjacks didn’t proceed without a plan either, and that they tackled a forest a piece at a time. Once or t
wice, because of that, she had to move camp, which was bothersome but not threatening.

  All this was twenty years ago. In the meantime she had trained as a bookseller, had worked, married, had two children. What was left of her old self were memories and a sensitivity, an alertness, that Marco mistook for nervousness.

  THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMEONE Anja was trying to catch up to, her parents, her school friends, dream characters she didn’t know and who still seemed to be somehow familiar to her. She was always running after people, in the certainty she wouldn’t be able to catch them. Anja wanted to be quicker, but it was as though her limbs were lead, and the air was a viscous soup that required a violent exertion for each movement. She sought to free herself, but that only made the invisible bonds tighten around her. Then she woke up, her forehead burning, her pajamas soaked in sweat. The screaming had awoken her, it was two in the morning. Anja pulled the covers over her head, but she could still hear the screams, hear things being knocked over, the crash of the front door. Often she was all alone in the apartment in the morning. The door was ajar. On the floor lay the wreckage of whatever had fallen over in the night, a sort of still life with destroyed objects.

  School was the only secure place. Where Anja liked best to be was in the physics lab on the lower ground floor, with its dim light and metallic smell, or in the library, among the tightly packed shelves full of the past. When the library was closed, she hung around the school grounds until it grew dark. The worst weren’t the shouts or the blows. The worst was coming home, and no one there. The expectation, the certainty, practically, that they would arrive sometime in the night.