In Strange Gardens and Other Stories

by Peter Stamm

  “They do it at home too,” said Stefan. “I used to have Italian neighbors. They always kept their shutters closed. And an enormous satellite dish on their balcony.”

  “Maybe homesickness,” said Anita.

  We strolled along the promenade. The sun had gone down, but it was still hot. There were tables and chairs out in front of the restaurants. There were big luminous signs showing the food they offered. The red was bleached, and the food all looked blue and unappetizing. One restaurant had fish and shellfish lying out in front of it, in baskets full of crushed ice.

  “Can you smell anything?” Stefan asked. “I can’t smell anything. Surely you should be able to smell it.”

  “If fish smells fishy, you shouldn’t eat it,” said Anita.

  We were unable to decide on a restaurant, and we walked on to the end of the promenade. There we sat down on a low wall. The sky was empty, it looked locked up against the neon from all the restaurants. Stefan had lain down on the wall, and was resting his head on Anita’s lap. She was stroking his hair. I sat next to her. Our shoulders were touching.

  “Look at that star,” said Stefan, “it must be a fixed star, it’s so bright.”

  “It’s an airplane,” said Anita, “only airplanes give out that much light.”

  “Airplanes blink,” said Stefan, “and they have red and green lights.”

  The bright light slowly moved across the sky. We were quiet, and watched it disappear into the west.

  “It’s a nice feeling,” said Anita, “to think there are people up there, flying into the morning. Somewhere another day’s beginning. Here it’s still night, and they’ll be seeing the sun already. The American sun.”

  “I feel I’ve been here for ever,” said Stefan.

  “I could live here,” said Anita, “and do nothing but look at airplanes, and eat and read. I feel really at home here.”

  “I wonder where Maria is now,” I said. “I wonder what she wanted to give me.”

  THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL

  After five mild, sunny days on the island, clouds started to mass. It rained overnight, and the next morning it was twenty degrees colder. I walked over the reef, a giant sandbar in the southwest, which was no longer land and not yet sea. I couldn’t see where the water began, but I thought I had a sense of the curvature of the earth. Sometimes I crossed the tracks of another walker, though there was no one to be seen far and wide. Only occasionally a heap of seaweed, or a black wooden post corroded by seawater, sticking out of the ground. Somewhere I came upon some writing that someone had stamped in the wet sand with his bare feet. I followed the script, and read the word “ALIEN.” In the distance I could hear the ferry, which was due to dock in half an hour. It was as though I could hear its monotonous vibration with my whole body. And then it began to rain, a light and invisible shower that wrapped itself around me like a cloud. I turned and walked back.

  I was the only guest staying at the pension. Wyb Jan was sitting in the lobby with Anneke, his girlfriend, drinking tea. The room was full of model ships, Wyb Jan’s father had been a sea captain. Anneke asked me if I wanted a cup of tea. I told them about the writing on the sand.

  “Alien,” I said. “It’s exactly how I felt on that sandspit. As strange as if the earth had thrown me off.” Wyb Jan laughed, and Anneke said: “Alien is a girl’s name in Dutch. Alien Post is the most beautiful girl on the island.”

  “You’re the most beautiful girl on the island,” Wyb Jan said to Anneke, and kissed her. Then he tapped me on the shoulder and said: “When the weather’s like this, it’s best to stay indoors. If you go out, it might drive you crazy.”

  He went into the kitchen to get me a cup. When he came back, he switched on a lamp and said: “I’ll put an electric heater in your room.”

  Anneke said: “I wonder who wrote that. Do you think Alien’s found herself a boyfriend at long last?”

  WHAT WE CAN DO

  Evelyn had suggested a café with a silly name like Aquarium or Zebra or Penguin, I can’t remember. She often ate there in the evenings, she said. When I arrived, only two of the tables were occupied. I sat down near the door and waited. I looked at the menu. It was one of those places where the dishes have strange names, and the portions are on the small side.

  We could go out for a beer together, I had said to Evelyn when we shook hands on my last day at work. It was what I said to everyone on that day, without ever really meaning it. Evelyn said she didn’t drink beer, and I said it didn’t have to be beer. And then she said sure, and when was convenient for me. I didn’t have any option but to make a date with her.

  When Evelyn finally turned up, a quarter of an hour late, I was pretty drunk.

  “Would you mind if we sat over there?” she said. “I always sit over there.”

  She greeted the guests at the other tables by name.

  “Do you live here or something?” I asked.

  Evelyn found it hard to choose a dish. Even when the waitress had already taken her order, she changed her mind again.

  “Don’t you know the menu by heart, then?” I asked.

  Evelyn laughed. “I always have the same thing,” she said. After that, she didn’t say anything, and just beamed at me. I talked about God knows what. By the time the food finally arrived, I had no idea what else I could have spoken about. Evelyn seemed not to have any interests. When I asked her about any hobbies she might have, she said: “I always wanted to be good at singing.”

  “Do you take singing lessons?”

  She said: “No, that’s too expensive for me.”

  “Are you in a choir?”

  “No, I feel ashamed to sing in front of other people.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly an ideal basis for a career as a singer,” I joked, and she laughed.

  “No, I just wish it was something I was good at.”

  No sooner had we drunk our coffee than Evelyn said the restaurant was closing in a quarter of an hour.

  “Shall we go and have a nightcap somewhere?” I asked, out of politeness, when we were standing on the pavement.

  “I don’t like to go to bars,” said Evelyn. “I hate the smoke. But if you like, I’ll make us both a hot chocolate.”

  She blushed. So as not to make the situation still more embarrassing, I said if she had coffee, I’d be happy to go along. She said she had instant, and I said that was fine.

  “Doesn’t your girlfriend mind you going out with other women?”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “I don’t either,” said Evelyn, “I mean, a boyfriend. Just now.”

  Evelyn lived on the third floor of a tenement block. She looked in her mail box. It seemed just to be a kind of reflex, because she must have emptied it earlier in the evening. As she stepped into her apartment, she gestured clumsily and said: “Well, welcome to my palace.”

  She led me to the living room, pointed to the sofa, and told me to make myself at home. I sat down, but as soon as she’d disappeared into the kitchen, I got up again and looked around. The room was furnished with light clunky pine furniture. On the bookshelf were about thirty illustrated volumes on all kinds of topics, a few travel books, and lots of novels with bright covers, and titles with women’s names in them. There were costume dolls lying and standing around all over. On the walls were felt-tip drawings of cats and flower pots, which I assumed Evelyn had made herself.

  It took a long time for Evelyn to have the coffee and hot chocolate ready. The coffee was much too weak. I told some story about something or other, and then Evelyn suddenly started talking about an illness she suffered from. I can’t remember what it was, but it was something to do with her digestion. Only then did it occur to me that she smelled bad. Perhaps that was why she reminded me of a plant, some potted plant that was missing something, either light or fertilizer, or else was too heavily watered.

  After that, Evelyn was very quiet, but when I got up to go she suddenly started talking.

  She said: “I get the
se letters, from a man. He seems to know me, I don’t know.”

  A man who called himself Bruno Schmid had been writing to her for months, she said, and I wasn’t sure whether she wasn’t just putting on airs. But she did seem genuinely disturbed.

  “I keep them hidden,” she said, and she pulled down a small box lined with marbled paper from the bookshelf. There was a bundle of letters inside it. She took out the top one and passed it to me. I read.

  “Dear Miss Evelyn,

  I like you, I find your proximity appealing. Are we in any danger of wanting something unbeknown to ourselves? It should be neither sinful nor lethal. Children need parents to ward off dangers. I have never been able to get away from their warnings. My faith takes up a fair part of my time, and of my fortune. But there is much left, which I would like to share. I sense you have unfulfilled hopes, and I would like to learn about them. I wonder what I can do for you. Best wishes …”

  “He always writes the same things,” said Evelyn, looking at me beseechingly.

  “Some poor madman,” I said.

  “What does he mean when he says it shouldn’t be lethal?”

  “Life always ends in death,” I said, “but I don’t think he’s dangerous.”

  “Sometimes I wish I was old already. Then it would all be over. All that disquiet.”

  “Are you scared of him?”

  “The world is full of maniacs.”

  To distract her, I asked her about her dolls. She said she collected dolls in national costume. She already had thirty of them, mostly given her by her parents, who traveled a lot.

  “Have you gone on to a new job already?” she asked.

  “I wanted to take a trip around the world.”

  “Perhaps you could bring me back a doll,” she said. “I’d pay you, of course.”

  Then she disappeared to the bathroom, and didn’t come back for a long time. When I left, I kissed Evelyn on both cheeks.

  “Will we see each other again?” she asked.

  “I’m not quite sure when I’m leaving,” I said. “You can call me. If I’m still here, that is.”

  Two weeks later, I had a call from Evelyn. I had given up my plans for going around the world, and decided to go to the south of France for a few weeks instead. Evelyn asked if I’d like to come over for supper. She had asked a few people.

  “People from work,” she said. “It’s my thirtieth birthday. Please come.”

  Even though I had no desire to see my former colleagues again, I said I would come. I had a feeling I owed Evelyn something.

  When I turned up on the evening in question, I was the first person there. Evelyn was wearing a short skirt that didn’t suit her, and an old-fashioned apron over it.

  “I had to shine the doorknobs this morning,” she said. “It was an idea of Max’s. It’s something they do in Germany. When a woman gets to be thirty and is still single, she has to polish doorknobs.”

  She said some of our colleagues had put mustard on the doorknobs over the whole floor.

  “They want to keep on doing it now. It’ll be Chantal’s turn next. And men have to clean the stairs. You’re only allowed to stop when someone kisses you.”

  She said it had been ghastly, but I had the feeling she had quite enjoyed being the center of attention for a while. She showed me a long chain of paper cartons she had had to wear round her neck.

  “Because I’m now what the Germans call an old box,” she said, and laughed.

  “And who kissed you?” I asked.

  “Max,” she said. “After a couple of hours. He’s one of the guests.”

  The other guests all came together, Max and his girlfriend Ida, Evelyn’s boss Richard and his wife Margrit. They seemed pretty happy. Max said they had stopped in a bar in the neighborhood, and drunk an aperitif. They had gone in together to buy Evelyn a present. He handed Evelyn a box, and the four of them started to sing: “Happy birthday to you.”

  Evelyn blushed and smiled sheepishly. She wiped her hands on her apron and shook the package.

  “I wonder what it can be?” she said.

  Inside the box was a cookbook, Recipes for Lovers or Cooking for Two or something of the sort.

  “There’s something else in there as well,” said Max. Evelyn pulled aside some crumpled crepe paper. Under it was a vibrator in the shape of a colossal orange penis. She stared into the box, without touching the thing.

  “It was Max’s idea,” said Richard. He was embarrassed, but Margrit, a heavily made-up woman of fifty or so, laughed shrilly and said: “Every woman needs one. Especially once you’re married.”

  “I got this one out of Ida’s collection,” said Max, and Ida: “Max, you’re so awful. You know I don’t have anything like that.”

  “Not anymore,” said Max, “not anymore. We’ve supplied the batteries as well.”

  “I have to go to the kitchen,” said Evelyn, “otherwise the supper will burn.”

  She put the crepe paper back in the box, shut the lid, and went out.

  “I told you it was a bad idea,” whispered Richard.

  “Ah, nonsense,” said Max, “it’ll be good for her. You’ll see, in a month she’ll be a different person.”

  Margrit laughed shrilly again, and Ida said: “Max, you’re disgusting.”

  “Anyway, Evelyn’s got you now,” Max said to me.

  Then they started talking about work, and I went into the kitchen to help Evelyn.

  She had gone to a lot of trouble, but the food was nothing special. Even so, the atmosphere was relaxed. Max told dirty jokes that made Richard and his wife laugh. Ida seemed to be drunk after her first glass of wine, and didn’t say much except that Max was awful. Evelyn was busy serving the food, and taking out the dirty dishes. I was bored. After supper, we drank tea and instant coffee. Then Max said we should leave Evelyn on her own now, she was probably dying to try out her new present. The four of them got up and put their coats on. I said I would help Evelyn with the washing up. Max said something off-color, and Ida said he was disgusting. Evelyn showed them down to the front door, and I heard loud laughter from the stairwell, and then the door crashing shut.

  When Evelyn came back she said: “I can wash up tomorrow.” Then she said she wanted to freshen up. It seemed like a sentence from a film or a cheap novel. I didn’t know what it meant, or what I was supposed to say. She disappeared into the bathroom, and I waited. I wanted to put on some music, but I couldn’t find any CDs I wanted to listen to, so I left it. I took down an illustrated volume about the Kalahari Desert, and settled down on the sofa. I wished I could be somewhere else, preferably at home.

  I heard Evelyn go from the bathroom to the bedroom, and then she finally came back to the living room. She was in her underwear, which was white and solid and shiny. She had slippers on her feet. She stopped in the doorway, leaned against the doorjamb, and pushed one leg in front of the other. I had just been looking at photographs of gophers, skinny, catlike creatures that stand over their burrows and look into the distance. I set the book down next to me on the sofa. We didn’t speak. Evelyn went red and looked down at the floor. Then she said: “Would you like another coffee? I think there’s some hot water left.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She disappeared into the kitchen. I followed her. She took down the jar of instant coffee, and I held out my cup. She tipped in way too much coffee powder, and poured in hot water. Oily scum formed in the cup. I saw Evelyn had tears in her eyes, but neither of us said anything. I sat down at the kitchen table, and she sat down opposite me. She sat slumped on her chair, with eyes closed, shaking. I looked at her. Her bra was too big. The two arced cups stood out in front of her breasts like shields. Once again, I noticed her disagreeable smell.

  “Are you gay?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, and wished I was drunk.

  “I’ve got a headache.”

  “Are you not cold?”

  “No,” she said. She stood up and folded her arms across her chest, h
olding her upper arms in her hands. I followed her into the bedroom. She lay down on the bed, and started sobbing silently into the pillows. Her body jerked convulsively. I sat down on the side of the bed.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  I ran my hand down her back, and along her legs down to her feet.

  “You’ve got a pretty back,” I said.

  Evelyn sobbed aloud, and I said: “A pretty back has its attractions.”

  She turned over and for a moment lay quite relaxed in front of me, her arms by her sides. She took slow, deep breaths, and looked up at the ceiling. Then she said: “It’s no good. And it’s not going to get any better.”

  “You mustn’t expect too much,” I said. “Happiness consists of wanting what you get.”

  “I want a glass of wine,” she said, and sniffed and slowly sat up. There was a packet of Kleenex beside the bed, and she took one out and blew her nose. Then she got up and went over to the chair where her dress was hanging. She hesitated briefly, and then pulled out a pair of jeans and a blouse from the wardrobe. I watched her get dressed with practiced movements. When she bent over to smooth the stockings over her knees, I momentarily felt like sleeping with her.

  “We’re at our best when we do what we can,” I said, “what we’ve always been able to do.”

  Evelyn turned to me and said, buttoning her jeans: “But I don’t like what I do. And I like what I am even less. And it’s just getting worse.”

  We went back into the living room, and she got a bottle of wine from the kitchen. Then she went over to the stereo, pulled a few CDs off the rack, and put them back. Then she switched on the radio. A Tracey Chapman song was playing. I went to the bathroom. From the corridor I heard Evelyn slowly singing along: “Last night I heard a screaming …”

  She didn’t sing well, and when I walked back into the living room, she stopped.

  “I have to go home,” I said. “Will you be all right?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’ll be fine. Will you do me a favor?”