In Strange Gardens and Other Stories

by Peter Stamm

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I haven’t got it on me.”

  She said that didn’t matter, I was to wait here for her anyway. She was going shopping, and would be back.

  “Funny, it being your birthday on Christmas Day.”

  “Yes,” she said, as though it had never occurred to her, “I suppose you’re right.”

  She went off down the street, and I knew she wouldn’t be back. I knew it wasn’t her birthday either, but I would still have gone with her if I’d had the money. I finished my cigarette, and lit another. Then I started back. There was a bar across the street. I went in and asked for a beer.

  “Are you French?” asked the man next to me. “I’m Dylan.” As in the great poet Dylan Thomas, he said, light breaks where no sun shines …

  “Did you ever,” Dylan asked me, “read a love poem from a woman to a man?”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t read poetry.”

  “I tell you, you’re making a mistake there. You’ll find everything in poetry. Everything.”

  He got up and went down a short flight of stairs to the rest room. When he came back, he stood next to me, put his arm round me, and said: “There aren’t any! Women don’t love men, believe me.”

  The barman gave me a signal I didn’t understand. Dylan pulled a tattered volume from his pocket and held it over our heads.

  “Immortal Poems of the English Language,” he said. “It’s my Bible.”

  There were dirty little scraps of paper stuck in between many of the pages. Dylan opened the book at a certain place.

  “Now, listen to the way women love men,” he said, and he read out: “Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways … Not one word about him. All Mrs. Browning does is say how much she loves him, how magnificent her feelings for him are. Here’s another one …”

  An old man next to me whispered: “He’s always doing that.” And he made the same signal as the barman before him. I started to get it, but I was already feeling a bit drunk, and I didn’t want to go just yet. I just smiled, and turned to face Dylan who had turned to another poem.

  “Miss Bronte,” he said, “same story! Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee! Far, far removed … That’s how it starts, and then it’s all about her pain. Nothing about the guy. Or this … Mrs. Rossetti: My heart is like a singing bird … My heart is like an apple-tree … And so on, till the last line, which goes: Because my love is come to me. Do you call that love? Is that the way a person in love would write? Only someone in love with herself.”

  He put the book away, and put his short arm around me again.

  “You know, my friend, there’s no such thing as a woman’s love. They love us like children, or the way the creator might love the thing he’s created. But as little as we find peace with God do we find peace with women.”

  “Does that make God a woman?” I asked.

  “Of course,” said Dylan, “and Jesus is Her daughter.”

  “And you’re his sister,” said the barman.

  “I don’t like women with beards,” said the old fellow on the other side of me.

  We fell silent.

  “Homosexuals will all go to Hell,” said the old man.

  “I’m not going to get involved on that level,” said Dylan angrily, and moved closer to me, as if seeking protection. “The two of us were talking about poetry. This young man here doesn’t have the prejudices of you two clowns.”

  “The next round’s on the house,” said the barman, and he put a cassette of Christmas tunes on the stereo behind him.

  “God rest ye, merry gentlemen,” sang Harry Belafonte.

  “Yo,” went a young man at one of the tables, “he misadeh misadeeho …”

  The barman set our beers down on the bar in front of us. I was pretty drunk by now. I raised my glass, and said: “To poetry!”

  “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” said the old man.

  “Now read the poems that men have written for women,” said Dylan, and he recited from memory: “She is as in a field a silken tent, at midday when a sunny summer breeze has dried the dew …”

  Overcome, he stopped, looked down at the dirty floor, and sadly shook his head.

  “Women call themselves romantics, as if they would call themselves American,” he said. “They love it when you say you’re beautiful, your eyes shine like the sun, your lips are red as coral, your breasts are white as snow. They think they’re romantic because they like to be adored by men.”

  I wanted to contradict, but he said: “I just want to open your eyes. Don’t let women make a fool of you. They’ll tempt you with their spare flesh. And once you’ve bitten, they’ll break your head open and eat you up.”

  I laughed.

  “You remind me of someone,” said Dylan.

  “Some friend of yours?” I asked.

  “A very good friend. He’s dead now.”

  I went to the rest room.

  “I’ve got no money left for the bus now,” I said.

  “I’ll take you home,” said Dylan.

  I thought it must be dark by now, but as we stepped out of the bar, it was a fine afternoon. The rain had stopped.

  There were still clouds in the sky. But the low sun shone through underneath them. The houses and trees and cars glistened and projected long shadows. Dylan had his car parked on Queens Boulevard. He turned into a sidestreet.

  “That’s not my way home,” I said. “You’re going the wrong way.”

  Dylan laughed. “Are you scared of me?” he asked.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m just turning the car around,” he said. “Are you that scared of women too?”

  “I don’t know … I guess not.”

  We drove back toward Manhattan in silence. I hadn’t walked nearly as far as I thought.

  “Here,” I said, “I’d like to walk the last bit.”

  I got out, and walked around the car. Dylan had wound down the window and held out his hand.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said, “and thanks for the beer.”

  Dylan wouldn’t let go my hand till I looked into his eyes. Then he said: “Thanks for a pleasant afternoon.”

  As I crossed the street, he called after me: “And Merry Christmas.”

  EVERYONE’S RIGHT

  And we lie here, our orient peace awaking

  No echo, and no shadow, and no reflection.

  —Henry Reed

  I could see Monika’s yellow rain jacket through the trees. I had put on water for coffee when she called me. The forest was dense here, and the ground was covered with boughs and twigs that snapped underfoot. It was hard going, and after just a few steps my pants and my hands were filthy with moss and algae that covered everything with their slime.

  “Quiet,” said Monika softly, as I approached. Then I saw that Michael was curled up on the ground in front of her.

  “What’s the matter with him?” I asked, once I heard his noisy breathing.

  “When he caught sight of me he ran off, and then he fell,” said Monika. She knelt down, and shook Michael gently. “What happened? Where’s Sandra?”

  “I lost my shoe,” he said, panting. “I can’t find it anywhere.”

  “Where’s Sandra?” asked Monika.

  “Gone to get help.”

  It was only by chance that I had wound up in Sweden at all. Monika had recently broken up with her boyfriend, and since the canoe tour had already been booked, she asked me whether I’d like to go with her. I’d been in love with Monika back in high school, but there was one terrible night when she told me she wasn’t in love with me. We had stayed friends, and I’d gone on hoping for a while, till one day she told me she had a lover. All that happened years ago.

  We had run into Sandra and Michael on the train. They were both wearing purple fleeces and trousers with loads of pockets. Sandra said this was her fifth visit to Sweden, she had worked in the travel business, she loved the north, her ca
r had been broken open and robbed once in Goteborg. She spoke Swedish place names as if she had mastered the language. When Monika asked her, she said no, unfortunately not, she just spoke German, French, Italian, and, of course, English. She said her name was Sandra, and her husband’s was Michael.

  “My husband’s name is Michael,” she said. “We’re on our honeymoon.”

  Michael didn’t say anything. He didn’t even seem to be listening, and just stared out into the forest. Only once, when a heron flew up from close to the tracks, and cleared the treetops with a few lazy wingstrokes, did he say: “Sandra, look.”

  “This will be our last vacation for some time,” said Sandra. “We’re having a baby in six months. Isn’t that right, Michael?”

  Michael was staring out of the window again, and Sandra repeated: “Isn’t that right, Michael?”

  “Yes,” he said eventually.

  “You seem to be over the moon about it,” said Monika, with an exaggeratedly warm smile.

  “It seems such a miracle to me,” said Sandra, “to feel a new life stirring within me.”

  “The real miracle will be when the life starts stirring on its own,” said Monika tartly.

  “Don’t you want children?” asked Sandra, turning to me.

  “Children aren’t compatible with the interior design of our apartment,” said Monika quickly.

  The campsite was on the edge of a small town, between an automobile factory and the big lake. When we went to the store to buy provisions, we ran into Sandra and Michael again. Sandra said we had to buy mosquito repellent, and only Swedish mosquito repellent worked on Swedish mosquitoes.

  “Have you vino?” an Austrian woman was asking at the checkout ahead of us. The checkout clerk shook her head, and Sandra told the woman about the Swedish laws governing the sale of alcohol.

  “I can’t stand that woman,” Monika whispered in my ear. In the evening, as we were heading for the pizza joint next to the campsite, we saw Sandra and Michael crouching in front of their tent, cooking.

  “We’re having a proper adventure vacation,” Sandra called out. “The pizza place is no good, and it’s expensive.”

  Michael didn’t say anything. It was true, the pizzas weren’t very good, and they were really expensive. But Monika did imitations of Sandra all through supper, and we spent a fun evening.

  “I can have much more of a laugh with you than I could with Stefan,” she said.

  “Is that why you split up?”

  “No,” said Monika. “He wanted to have a baby.”

  “And you?”

  “He just wanted it because he was scared. All his friends were having babies. He was probably afraid everything would carry on in the same way. And that he would get old. All that. That’s what he said.”

  “And you?” I asked again.

  “Well, in the end, you’re on your own anyway,” said Monika.

  “Don’t you want a baby?”

  “No. I want to get through life alone. Even if it means growing old on my own.”

  Monika said ideally she would have gone on the canoeing tour on her own as well. But then she had read that at some points you had to carry the boat across land for a little ways, and she didn’t think she could do that. And so she’d asked me to come.

  “So I’m here as your bearer?”

  “No. You know what you mean to me. You’re my oldest friend, and that’s more than the greatest lover.”

  When we returned past Sandra and Michael’s tent, we couldn’t see them anymore. But from inside the tent we could hear Sandra moaning: “Oh, yes! Oh, give it to me! Oh, that’s so good!”

  Monika coughed and in a disguised voice called out something that might sound like Swedish. There was silence right away.

  “I’m going for a shower,” Monika said when we’d got to our tent. “Last showers before the highway.”

  By the time she was back, I was already in my sleeping bag.

  “Turn away,” she ordered. She undressed, and I smelled the fresh smell of soap. She clicked off the flashlight. We lay side by side, silently. Then Monika asked me: “Do you yell like that each time you sleep with a woman?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Glad to hear it,” said Monika. “Good night.”

  The next morning, when we went down to the canoe rental place, Michael and Sandra were already there. Sandra was talking about universal rights. Everyone was entitled to walk in the forest, and to go on the river, and pick mushrooms and firewood for his own personal use. She said, basically you were allowed to live in the forest. Just like the animals, free, without money. To live off roots and berries, and whatever the forest would provide. Off the fruits of nature, was what she said.

  “Hunger, cold, and disease,” said Monika, “those are the fruits of nature.”

  Michael stood there silently. Then a canoe rental person came along, and we loaded the canoes onto an old bus, and drove to the starting point of our tour. The road led further and further into the forest. Our driver drove fast, and sometimes he jerked the steering wheel to the side, to avoid a pothole in the unmade road. And then he would laugh. Now it was Sandra who was very quiet, except once I heard her say: “I’m not going to be sick. It’s just a matter of will power.”

  Sandra and Michael seemed to get their boat ready to go in no time at all. They paddled off, while the driver was still explaining the use of the camping stove to us, and how to tie the most important knot. We were to keep our life vests on at all times, and keep our baggage tied on, in case we should capsize. Then, before we had the canoe in the water, he had turned the bus, and vanished into the forest.

  After a few hours I felt exhausted from the unfamiliar exercise, from the heat of the midday sun, and from the long journey the day before. But I didn’t say anything, and paddled on in silence. Eventually I forgot the soreness in my arms, my strokes became calmer and more rhythmic, and we made steadier progress. I had the sense that my body had detached itself from my head, and was working automatically.

  Then, all at once, it was late, and we were surprised that the sun was still so high in the sky. At eleven at night, you could still read a newspaper here out of doors, Sandra had told us in the train, but when we finally found a place to pitch our tent, we merely pitched it and made our supper.

  “Ideally, I’d never stop,” said Monika, “just keep going down the river, night and day.”

  “It would be nice not to know where we were going,” I said.

  “You never know where you’re going anyway.”

  The following days all resembled each other. We got up late, made coffee, set out. Sometimes we swam in the river, or lay around on the grass during the midday heat. One sunny afternoon, we moored on a tiny island in the middle of a lake. We had something to eat. I had meant to read, but I was already too tired. I turned onto my back, and closed my eyes. The sun was bright, and I saw colorful whirling shapes in orange and light green that spun in circles. I fell asleep.

  When I opened my eyes, the sky above me looked almost black. My mouth was dry, and my body felt warm and heavy. It took me a while to come round. With an effort I turned onto my side. Monika wasn’t there, and I stood up and crossed the little patch of grass to the place where we’d fixed the boat. Monika’s clothes lay on the grass. I looked out onto the lake, and saw her some way off.

  “Come on in,” she shouted, swimming back toward me, “the water’s lovely.”

  “That sounds like a film,” I said. “The water’s lovely. People only say that in films.”

  “But it really is lovely.”

  “Funny, you can’t even describe it.”

  “It’s true,” she said, “I can’t describe it. Is that silly? But I really can’t.”

  She emerged from the water. I had never seen her so nearly naked. Her hair was plastered against her head, and the water dribbled out of her bathing suit.

  “Do you know that I used to be hopelessly in love with you?” I said. “You broke my heart. I th
ought you were the woman of my life.”

  “When was that?” asked Monika, shaking the water out of her hair.

  “When you told me you didn’t love me.”

  “Did I say that?” Suddenly she started laughing. “Oh, if only you could see your face. I remember. It was after our class trip. I was in love with Leo then, but he didn’t like me.”

  “When was the first time you slept with a man?” I asked. I had sat down in the grass, and was looking at her. Monika turned her back to me, and pulled off her bathing suit. Then she dried herself with her towel, and got dressed. “I was seventeen,” she said, and turned to face me again, “it was with a friend of my brother’s. He was a lot older. Maybe ten years or so. You were all so childish then with your talk of undying love and God and the meaning of life. I just wanted to see what it felt like.”

  “That’s all I wanted too.”

  “Nonsense,” said Monika, “you were in love, you just said so.”

  We were now paddling through forested country, but we started looking at it more closely, and noticing that the landscape kept changing, and the colors and the water. The water was black or blue or dark green, and sometimes our canoe slipped through patches of water-lilies or through beds of reeds. When there was a wind, we kept inshore. In the evenings, we tried to tally up the days, and looked at the map to see how far we’d come. We soon lost all sense of time.

  We hadn’t seen another human being for days when we saw a canoe on the bank. Then we saw Sandra and Michael who were lying naked on the grass. I hoped they wouldn’t see us, but they seemed to hear us, and looked up. They didn’t wave, and we pretended we hadn’t seen them.

  “Lying there like animals,” said Monika. “With her, I always have the feeling she’s trying to prove something.”

  “Because she’s having a baby?”

  “No, it’s not that,” said Monika. “Haven’t you ever seen children where you can just tell they’re going to turn into idiots just like their parents? Even quite small children.”