We're Flying

by Peter Stamm

  The psychologist looked at her the whole time. When she walked out, he followed just behind. He had a little shiny car, he offered to give Anja a lift somewhere, but she refused. When he drove off, she saw the child seat in the back, and a little sticker in the rear window in the shape of Lake Constance. Anja felt nothing but contempt for him.

  SHE NEVER MANAGED to find out whether the hunter had betrayed her or whether it was her own fault. Perhaps she had dropped her guard. The forest wasn’t about power or fleetness of foot, the only thing that mattered was alertness, attention, living wholly in the present. That was an advantage animals had over humans, for them memory was only experience, and not another world in which you could lose yourself.

  It was just before her final exams, Anja was eighteen and could do as she pleased. Even so, one morning a policeman visited the classroom to ask her some questions. He was friendly enough, but the fact that afterward they all spoke to her as to an invalid, that offended her. Michaela’s parents offered to put her up temporarily. She declined and moved back in with her parents, who were intimidated by the police and treated her like a stranger. After a few weeks, she managed to persuade her father to pay the rent for a staff room in a nurses’ hostel. No sooner had she moved in than she stopped going to school. It was spring, and the exams were in fall. Anja was a good student, and everyone urged her to stick it out, but she stood her ground.

  It wasn’t difficult to find a job. Anja had always spent a good deal of time in the bookstore when she was feeling low, or it was raining. The bookseller knew she had no money, and had given her reading copies of recent publications and asked her afterward how she’d liked them. Anja had done errands for her, or minded the shop when she had to be away for a while, to go shopping or to a doctor’s appointment. She had been pleased when Anja turned to her to ask if she would take her on as an assistant.

  During her training, Anja lived in an attic room above the bookstore. Apart from the customers and her boss, she had very little contact with people. Erwin visited the shop from time to time, and now it was she who was recommending things to him, books, novels, stories, to divert him from his introverted musings. Eventually he stopped coming. To begin with, she didn’t even notice, later she heard from another customer, who had also been to school with her, that a forestry worker had died and Erwin had been responsible. He had been cutting down a tree, the other fellow wasn’t paying attention and had been crushed. The customer explained how there had been an inquiry but no charges had been filed. Anja wondered about writing Erwin, but she didn’t know what to say, and eventually it was too late for that. Soon after, she heard that he had given up his job, and begun to train as a psychiatric nurse. When she bumped into him on the street a few months later, he had joined a free church, and wanted to talk to her about God. She gave him the brush-off. Back home she cried over him.

  HAVE YOU HAD YOUR BREAK TODAY? Anja sees the poster everywhere. She has taken the kids to McDonald’s. The little one is telling her how his neighbor gave him an apple to eat. That was months ago, and he’s told her a dozen times, but it doesn’t bother him. The only significance the story can have for him is that it’s something he remembers. To Anja, it’s as though he’s using his memory to escape from her. She watches a world come into being in him to which she has no access. After lunch, the two boys argue over the presents that came with their Happy Meals. One of them wants the other’s, but he’s not prepared to swap. Anja sends them out, and tells the older one to take his brother to kindergarten. He sulks and fusses, and only agrees after she promises him an ice cream.

  When the children are gone, she gets herself some coffee, then she goes to the shopping center. This is her territory, she knows every nook and cranny of it by now. She walks through the shops as though she worked there. On the ground floor there’s a discount bookstore, it’s a chain, and the stock is all best sellers and cheaply produced coffee table books on popular topics. Marco thought she might apply for a job helping out there, just a few hours a week. He probably thought it would do her good. But Anja has had enough of books. Ever since they’ve been living out here, most of life strikes her as a waste of time, especially television. Only music is an occasional exception.

  She likes the provisional quality of the buildings in the shopping center, which will be knocked down after a couple of decades and replaced by others. She likes the piles of merchandise, the soulless items sealed in plastic. She is capable of walking around for hours on end and picking up the things on display. She tests the fabric of clothes, sniffs them, tries them on. In the food sections, she opens packaging and quickly crams some of the contents into her mouth.

  The customers in the stores seem somehow incomplete, they are missing something in their present, provisional setting. Anja doesn’t perceive them as people, not even the salespersons. On the rare occasions she is addressed, she gives a start and mutters something, No thanks, just having a look, and goes on her way.

  She concentrates so hard on her walking that it ceases to be automatic. Her sensitivity becomes extreme, the cracks between the tiles irritate the soles of her feet. When she comes home after such expeditions, she is exhausted and can barely tolerate the children, and yells at them over everything and nothing.

  FOR A TIME, Anja lives in a clump of pines so dense that almost no light gets in. Only the moss on the forest floor glows with a fluorescent green. She has been on edge for months, and this is the safest place. Like a diseased animal, she has retreated here. It’s difficult to force herself to go to school every day, the only thing that gets her up in the morning is her fear of being found. When Michaela asks her to come around after school, Anja shakes her head. She spends whole afternoons in her sleeping bag under an old army groundsheet that she bought at a flea market. The ground under her is covered with a dense layer of pine needles that set up a little cracking and rustling. It’s been a long winter, in some spots the snow is still there in late March. Once it’s thawed away, Anja dares to leave her pine refuge. She sets up on the edge of a clearing, on a little piece of boggy meadow ringed by trees that’s hard to get to. Only animals come here, and sometimes a hunter. A week before Easter it finally gets warm, and the forest seems to change from one day to the next.

  Anja hears the twittering of the birds and the quiet rush of distant traffic on the highway, and shouting children crashing through the undergrowth. A low-flying plane approaches slowly, seems to hang overhead forever, and moves away. The wind picks up and shakes the last of the dry leaves on the trees, which make a sound like rain. When she shuts her eyes, the space seems to expand; when she opens them again, the colors are unexpectedly pallid. Only the green of the pines is strong, and that of the fresh grass, just starting to peep up among the old dead grass, crushed by the snow. Everything here is alive, even dead wood is swarming with creatures, with funguses and beetles and ants. At the far end of the meadow is a high stand, creaking in the wind.

  In autumn, there’s a hunter sitting up there. Anja has got up, put her clothes on, and brushed her teeth, when she suddenly becomes aware of him. Perhaps he made a noise, or she had a sense of being watched. He hasn’t leveled his rifle at her, even though for a moment she’s afraid she might get shot. Then fear gives way to a feeling of security. She carries on calmly, stowing her things under the groundsheet, and dives into the bushes.

  The man comes again. For a whole week he’s sitting up there every day, watching her. He must realize she’s seen him, but he gives no indication of it, not so much as a nod or a little wave of the hand. She relishes the attention, but at the same time she can feel something being broken. The spell is shattered. One morning the hunter is no longer there. For a while, Anja carries on as before, waits for him to come back. She is impatient, comes up with various theories. For the first time she feels bored in the forest, and the cold weather gets on her nerves. She can feel that she won’t last out much longer. When she is found shortly afterward, she is almost relieved.

  WITHOUT BEING
WHOLLY AWARE of it, Anja expects to find the hunter in the bookshop. Even though they’ve only seen each other at a distance, she is sure she would recognize him. He has dark green trousers, a fleece top, and a funny little hat. His rifle is slung over his shoulder. He doesn’t say a word, only looks at her and smiles. His smile is kind, but it spells danger. Anja shrinks back, hides behind a bookcase, waits for him to come after her. She flees from him, luring him farther into the darkness of the shelves, the vaults full of books, full of boxes. She hurries through a labyrinth of passageways she has never seen before. The hunter is close behind. He won’t let her escape.

  ANJA MET MARCO. He liked to visit the shop from time to time, to order books on automatics and robotics. They got talking, and finally he asked her out for coffee, so awkwardly that she couldn’t refuse. He courted her, she knew for ages that he would eventually try to kiss her, she was almost counting on it. It took a couple of dates before he finally got up the courage, and then everything happened very quickly. They married when Anja was pregnant.

  Shortly after their tenth anniversary, Marco confessed one evening that he had a girlfriend. For weeks he had been troubled and nervous, and Anja couldn’t really say she was surprised. The indifference with which she greeted the news infuriated him. She didn’t hold it against him, he had to get rid of his agitation somehow, and the way he did it was blaming her, and shouting at her, and then immediately apologizing and weeping and then shouting again. Be quiet, she said, the children.

  The separation passed off without strife or scenes. Only when Marco asked her to forgive him, she impatiently shook her head. She kept the apartment and the kids. Marco and his new girlfriend moved back into the city. The kids spent more and more time with their father, and before long got on with the girlfriend better than they did with Anja. Each time she handed the children over to Marco, he would ask her casually whether she was seeing anyone. He was hoping she would remarry, so that he could stop paying her support. Anja would have been happy for that to happen, but she didn’t need a man, or companionship wasn’t what she needed.

  One time, the security guard sat down at her table. It felt as though he was in breach of a tacit agreement between them. Anja shook her head in annoyance. She walked off, leaving her half-empty plate. After that she avoided the supermarket for a while.

  When Anja passes the school building, she can look through the large window into the classroom, but she doesn’t recognize any of the children. She walks through the business park. The sky is clouded over. She looks at the display of the domestic appliance store, which is right next to the erotic center. She feels the glances of the men walking in and out, they simultaneously disgust and fascinate her. At the pedestrian crossing, she has to wait for a long time after pressing the button. Trucks are bringing fresh goods; cars have their music turned up so loud, they seem to be throbbing. Behind the main storehouse and the rail tracks is a little creek, along which a footpath leads. Anja looks at the mural on the high wall around the recycling center, it’s of a jungle scene. Some things are merely hinted at, green and gray cross-hatched areas, a pale blue sky. Only a few details have been fully executed, crumbling temple ruins, a few enormous trees, a leopard that seems to leap out of the wall at the onlooker. The painter seems to have given up his work long ago, in one or two places the picture has been daubed with graffiti.

  The path ends at a railway line. The other side of the line is the soccer field. The humming of the mower blows across, and the damp air carries the smell of freshly mown grass. Anja sits down on the field and watches the passing trains. She lies down and shuts her eyes. She has one more hour before she has to pick up the kids from school.

  SHE IS STANDING in front of a staircase that leads straight up. She runs up it, encounters a heavy, battered steel door. She hurls herself against it, the door swings open, and she is standing in a back courtyard. Quickly, but without haste, she walks on. She has never been here before, but it feels familiar, she doesn’t hesitate for a moment. The hunter is close behind her, she doesn’t turn around, but she can feel his presence, his nearness. It’s early in the morning, there’s no one out. Only now does it dawn on Anja that she can’t hear anything, not a sound, it’s as though she were deaf. The road leads through a tangle of alleyways. Eventually Anja comes out on a large square. She walks to the middle of it, then stops and looks around. At this point she sees the hunter. He has emerged from one of the alleys and is standing quite still. Slowly he takes his rifle down from his shoulder, goes down on one knee, and takes aim. His face is rigid with concentration, his eyes expressionless. Even though they must be twenty yards apart, Anja can see his finger slowly curling round the trigger, and then the flash of flame in the muzzle, and at the same instant she feels a great exquisite pain in her breast and a warm dribble of blood—it feels a bit as though she has stepped into a hot bath. Then she is lying on the ground, and the hunter is kneeling at her side. He strokes the hair back from her brow. There are tears in his eyes. He makes to speak, but she shakes her head and smiles. It’s all right.

  Ice Moon

  IT WASN’T UNTIL I locked my bicycle that I registered there was something different from usual. I walked back to the entrance of the industrial park and saw the lowered blinds in the porter’s lodge. With the annual Christmas whirl, I had forgotten that Biefer and Sandoz were both retiring at the end of the year. A month before, someone had organized a collection to buy them each a retirement present. I had contributed, signed a couple of cards, and then not given the matter any more thought. Now I felt sorry I hadn’t said good-bye to them.

  On the glass door of the little porter’s house was a map of the premises. Below it was a list of numbers in case of emergency: fire, police, ambulance, and a number for the administration. In a transparent document wallet next to that was a letter from the administrator. He wrote to wish all the tenants a happy holiday, with many happy returns for the New Year. The letter was decorated with an illustration of a fir twig and a candle.

  Time was, hundreds of people had worked in the factory, but after production and development had been contracted out abroad, the industrial park emptied, until there were only the two porters left. The manufacturing company had transformed itself into a shell, and moved into offices near the station. The old brick buildings on the lakeshore were left deserted for a while, and then rented out piecemeal. Artists, graphic designers, and architects were now working in the labs. An ex-employee opened a little bar in the weighing room, where we sometimes met at lunchtime, for coffee or a sandwich. A violin maker and a furniture maker set up their workshops in the old production halls. A couple of start-ups that no one knew what they did had leased space. There were rooms that people moved into and then vacated almost immediately.

  The lakeside location was nothing short of spectacular, and every couple of months the newspapers would run stories about ambitious redevelopment plans for luxury apartments or a casino or a shopping center. But the necessary investors never came through. We were all on short-term leases, which were regularly extended each time one of these projects went down the tubes. Sometimes the administrator would show up with a bunch of men in dark suits. We’d see them standing around outside, and with sweeping gestures tear down the buildings and run up new ones. Whichever porter happened to be on duty followed them at a distance across the site, and only stepped up when there was a door that needed unlocking. To begin with, these tours had given rise to wild, panicky rumors and speculations, but by now no one seemed to think anything would ever change.

  When I got to the office in the morning, one of the porters was always there. Biefer generally sat in the lodge—which was glazed on three sides—smoking his pipe and reading the paper. Sandoz preferred to stand outside—even when it was well below freezing—with his hands in his coat pockets.

  Earlier, they had both delivered the mail, but since we now all had mail boxes, all they did was take in occasional parcels or tell the bicycle messengers where our studios were. They
took down the numbers of illegally parked cars, and sometimes you could see one or the other of them walking around the site with a huge bunch of keys in one hand and a pointed stick in the other, to scrape the litter away from the disused rails. Mostly, though, they would be at the main entrance, which was now always open, quietly overseeing the comings and goings on the site.

  Biefer and Sandoz were never there together. There was a shift change at noon, and they seemed to be at pains never to meet. In the beginning, I couldn’t tell them apart, even though they could hardly have been more different. It was only superficially that there were similarities, both of them being short and squat and thinning on top. They wore blue coveralls, and in bad weather Sandoz added a black coat and a leather hat. He came from the French part of Switzerland, and—even though he’d been working here for over thirty years—spoke in heavily accented German. He was a moody fellow, there were days when he’d chatter away, and others when he’d barely get a word out, and would act as though he’d never seen you before when you said hello. Biefer, by contrast, was a local and almost exaggeratedly friendly. Whenever I ran into him, he would ask about my children, whom he’d seen once or twice, no more. We would talk about the weather and football and communal politics—not often about himself or his family. Biefer occasionally referred to his wife, but only once did he tell me about his two sons, who were both living abroad.

  One cold foggy morning, maybe two months ago, Biefer stopped me. From a distance I could make out a fuzzy outline beside the porter’s lodge, and I assumed it was Sandoz. When I was a lot closer, I saw it was actually Biefer. I waved to him, but he held up his hand like a traffic policeman. I pulled over in front of him, and he asked me if I could help him with something. I asked what it was about. Not here, he said, oddly conspiratorial, and turned around.