by Peter Stamm
“My wife and daughters are keenly anticipating your visit,” he said, and led me to a slightly run-down white single-story house. Outside the door was a pond with goldfish in it. We walked into the house. Four women were standing in the corridor.
“My Cathy,” said the doctor. “Kathleen. And my three daughters, Desiree, Emily, and Gwen.” I shook hands four times. The doctor was talking about something or other, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the three sisters. They closely resembled one another, they were all about thirty, all tall, all slender. Their faces were pale and serious, but ready to break out in spontaneous laughter. They all wore their hair long, Desiree’s and Emily’s was chestnut, Gwen’s had a reddish tinge. All three wore skirts and old-fashioned blouses with lace trim, and thin woolen stockings. Dr. Kennedy asked me how I liked his daughters. I didn’t know what to say. The sisters were very beautiful, but their beauty had something almost absurd because of the way it was repeated in all of them.
“Aren’t they perfect creatures?” said the doctor, leading the way to the sitting room, where the table was already set.
Dr. Kennedy had told me in the pub that his wife would be glad for the chance to speak German again. But she barely said a word throughout the meal. She had greeted me in German, but with a strong English accent. I couldn’t believe that she really was German. When I asked her where she’d grown up, she said it was somewhere in the east. She had lapsed back into English. While we ate, the doctor talked about politics and religion. He was a Protestant. I asked him if his name wasn’t Irish. He shrugged his shoulders. His three daughters were as quiet as their mother, but they were very attentive. If I looked in their direction, they smiled and offered me wine, or passed me a dish if my plate was empty. Once I asked Gwen if it wasn’t very isolated out here. She said they all loved the house. And there was plenty to do. Had I seen the garden?
“You can show our guest the garden tomorrow,” said Dr. Kennedy.
The garden was Gwen’s responsibility, he said. Desiree’s was the accounts. She kept the books, and made sure there was always enough money in the house. And Emily? Emily was the most gifted of the three, and his favorite. She read a lot, and wrote, and played music and painted.
“She’s our artist,” said the doctor, and the women nodded and smiled. “Maybe she’ll show you her portfolio tomorrow. But not tonight.”
After supper, the sisters cleared the table, and Dr. Kennedy ushered me to his study. We sat down in leather chairs, and he poured whiskey and offered me a cigar. He talked some more about politics, and told me about his work in the hospital. He was an orthopedic surgeon, specializing in knee injuries. He told me about the way scores were settled in poor districts.
“If someone’s caught with drugs, or stealing cars, or some kind of nonsense, he is told to appear at a certain time in a certain place, and they shoot him in the knee. If he doesn’t appear at his summons, the whole family is expelled from the city.”
It was stupid and pointless and disgusting, said the doctor. He shook his head, and poured more whiskey. From somewhere in the house, there was the sound of a violin. “Emily,” said Dr. Kennedy, and he listened. A smile lit up his face.
Desiree came in. She went to the bookshelf, pulled down a book, and started leafing through it. The doctor inclined his head in her direction, and raised his eyebrows.
“You’re very welcome,” he said. “We’ll all be extremely happy if you do.”
Then he asked after my family, and where I had grown up. I looked across to Desiree. She smiled, lowered her gaze, and carried on leafing through her book. Was I often ill, the doctor wanted to know. I looked healthy, he could tell that from my eyes. Had my grandparents lived to a very great age? And were there any hereditary illnesses in the family, cases of insanity, for instance? I laughed.
“My profession,” said the doctor in mitigation, and refilled our glasses.
“As long as you don’t want to take blood from me …”
“Why not?” he said smiling. “Why not, indeed.”
I wasn’t used to whiskey, and my head was spinning. When the doctor told me no buses ran at this time, and I was very welcome to stay the night, I didn’t hang back and accepted his offer.
“Desiree will see to it that you’re comfortable,” he said, got up, and left. “Good night.”
The music had stopped some while back. As I stepped out into the corridor with Desiree, I could hear the receding sound of the doctor’s footsteps, and then everything was silent in the house. Desiree said they had all gone to bed. The days in Deep Furrows were filled with work, it was early to bed and early to rise. She took me to the guest bedroom, disappeared, and came back with a towel, a pair of pajamas, and a toothbrush. She said her room was next to mine. If I should want or need anything in the night, I was just to knock. She was a light sleeper.
I went to the bathroom. When I came back, Desiree was in my room. She had changed into a morning robe, and had pulled the comforter off the bed, and turned back the sheets. She was holding a glass of water. She asked if I wanted a hot water bottle, or if she should turn the heating higher, or draw the curtains? I thanked her, and said I had everything I needed. She set the water down on the nightstand, and remained standing next to the bed.
“I’ll tuck you in,” she said.
I had to laugh, and she laughed as well. But then I slipped into bed, and she tucked me in.
“If you were my brother,” she said, “I would kiss you.”
I woke up early. There was activity all over the house. I dropped off again. When I went into the kitchen it was past nine o’clock, and Gwen was just doing the dishes. She set the table for me, and said when I had finished breakfast she would show me the garden. Her father had gone into town with her mother, and Desiree was in the office. As I ate, I heard the violin again, a sad, quiet tune.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Gwen said. “The music, the house, everything?”
“You should be here in springtime,” she said as she led me through the garden. She showed me the hydrangeas, the lilac and hibiscus bushes she was especially proud of. She talked about her successes with breeding and grafting plants, and various prizes she’d won. She had a pair of clippers in her hand and as she spoke, she would sometimes stoop to chop at a slug, and watch as the body writhed around its frothing wound. That was how she pictured Paradise to herself, a garden of God, and the blessed who planted and tended it.
“A life with flowers and for flowers,” she said, “to be always in the garden, in summer and winter alike. And to be working there.”
When I’d arrived there the night before, a stormy wind had been blowing, but here in the garden the air was still and calm. The sky was gray, the light a little dim, as though it had been filtered on its way down to us.
Gwen took me by the hand, and said she wanted to show me something. She led me to a little stand of trees at the edge of the property. Under an oak tree with oddly shaped, waxy leaves, there was an old stone slab in the ground. “My grandparents,” she said. “They were born here, and they died here. Both on the same day.” Gwen knelt down, and brushed the stone with her hands.
When you’re in the grave, my love,
In the darkness of the tomb,
I’ll climb down to you from above,
And press myself against you.
Gwen said the poem out loud in German. At first it failed to register. I asked her to say it again.
“Our mother taught us poems,” she said. “It’s so beautiful. So much pain, and so much desire.” Her grandparents had died on the same day, she said again, that was how much they had loved each other. The funeral had been a joyful occasion. I knelt down to try and decipher the writing on the stone. I could only just manage to read the names, the year of birth was wiped away, the year of death was 1880-something.
“How can they have been your grandparents, if they died over a hundred years ago?” I asked. “And how can you remember the funeral?”
But Gwen ha
d disappeared. I heard a rustling in the leaves, and stood up, and walked into the stand of trees. Gwen was ahead of me, sometimes I could see her form in among the trees. When I caught up with her, she stood leaning against the high wall that surrounded the property. She said: “I am the lily of the valley, and you the apple tree.”
She laughed and looked straight at me, until I lowered my eyes. Then she pushed off the wall, and set off for the house. Her hands were folded behind her back. I followed her at a short distance. When she reached the rose beds, she told me to go on inside, she had something she needed to see to.
Inside the house, it was quiet. Only the soft tone of the violin, always playing the same run of notes. I went to the kitchen, and poured a cup of coffee. The music had stopped, and then it began again. It was a familiar tune, but I don’t know where I had heard it before. I went looking for it, and came to a door. The music sounded very near now. When I knocked, it stopped, there was silence for a moment, and then the door opened.
“I was waiting for you,” said Emily, and she told me to come in.
“What was that tune you were playing?”
“Oh, I was just playing,” she said, “it’s something I made up.”
She pointed me to the sofa with her bow. I sat down, and Emily started playing again. Her expression was concentrated, almost worried. The music was very beautiful. The melodies seemed to merge into one another, and I often had the sense of recognizing one or another of them, but then I couldn’t think where from. Suddenly Emily broke off in the middle of a tune. She said she couldn’t find the ending, she just had to go on and on playing. The only reason she played was to find the ending. She even dreamed of finding it, sometimes.
“I’m walking in the garden. I hear the tune, it doesn’t stop. I know the tune, but not the resolution. I’m looking for it in the garden. Then my father finds me. He takes my coat away. And when I wake up, I can’t find it anywhere.”
Emily sat down beside me on the sofa. She leaned over her violin, which she held cradled in her arms like a child. Her head was to one side, as if she were trying to listen to some distant sound. I asked her whether she hadn’t ever thought of leaving here. She slowly shook her head and said: “I have already taken off my dress, how can I possibly put it on again?”
She put her violin away with a gesture of impatience, and said: “Anyway, where would we go?”
I asked her whether she would show me her paintings. She shook her head.
“When you come back,” she said.
I said I was going now.
“I won’t see you out,” she said, and got up with me. I thought she wanted to kiss me on the cheek, but instead she whispered something in my ear, and pushed me out the door. As I walked through the house, I heard Emily begin to play again, the same sad melody she had played last night and this morning, and that I still couldn’t identify.
I left the house, and walked through the garden. Gwen was nowhere to be seen. The gate was locked. I scrambled over the wall, and was relieved to be standing out on the street. I didn’t want to wait for a bus, and set off down the hill. Earlier on, the sky had been overcast, now a fresh wind was blowing an ever darkening succession of clouds across the sky. The trees beside the road were moving violently, as though trying to tear loose from the earth. In the east, it looked like rain. I had almost reached the foot of the hill, when an old white Mercedes approached. It drew up alongside me. Dr. Kennedy leaned across the front passenger seat, and wound down the window.
“Are you going already?” he asked. “Who let you out?”
He said I could perfectly well stay as long as I liked. I said I didn’t have anything with me, all my things were back at the B and B. He said he would drive me there, we could pick up my things, and be back here in no time. He opened the door, and I got in.
On the way into town, it started raining. I asked Dr. Kennedy about the grave in his garden. He said he didn’t know who was buried there. He had bought the property thirty years ago. They had come across the stone in the course of building work. He said the dead were of no interest to him. Then he asked me which of his daughters I liked best. I said they were all three beautiful.
“Yes, they’re beautiful all right,” he said, “but now you have to make up your mind. We will all be very happy.”
We drove through an area of ugly tenement blocks. Children were playing by the roadside, and a couple of men standing with cans of beer outside a fish truck turned to stare at us. I asked the doctor whether this was a Catholic or Protestant part of town. That didn’t matter, he said, misery was the same everywhere. Like happiness, indeed. He said he found it all repulsive. I asked him whether he had never considered moving away. He said he had built a wall around his house. And he took note of who came into his garden. He asked me who had let me out, and looked at me.
“I climbed over the wall,” I said.
The doctor’s face became expressionless. He looked tired. He didn’t say anything, and watched the road again. He stopped outside the B and B and said he would wait for me in the car.
I went to my room, and packed my things. I thought of all that I had seen and all that I might yet see. I looked out the window. The white Mercedes was parked outside. The rain had stopped, and the doctor had gotten out, and was pacing back and forth on the pavement. He was smoking a cigarette and seemed nervous.
I had packed everything, but I didn’t go downstairs. I stayed by the window, looking down. The doctor walked back and forth. He dropped a butt in the gutter, and lit himself another cigarette. Once, he looked up at me, but he couldn’t have seen me through the curtains. He waited probably half an hour, then he got into the old Mercedes and drove off.
I thought of the evening I had first met Dr. Kennedy. After he had gone, I sat on at my table. I drank my beer, and waited, I don’t know what for. Then a tune surfaced through the noise. One of the musicians had begun to play, and gradually the others fell in. The conversations at the tables grew quieter, and finally stopped altogether.
The music was at once sad and cheerful, melancholy and rousing and full of strength. It filled the room, and didn’t stop. The younger players, children some of them, gradually packed away their instruments and went away, but the rest carried on playing, and others came along and filled in the gaps in the circle. When the drummer left, he handed Terry his drum, and now Terry was playing along with them too, hesitantly at first, then with a growing confidence. Among the musicians I remembered the old man who had coached the children in their singing the day before. He was playing the fiddle. He looked very serious.
I stood by the window of the pension, and looked out. The clouds passed swiftly across the sky, continually changing their shape. They were moving from east to west, crossing the island, and moving out to the Atlantic. I stood there for a long time, thinking about the music and the old man and what he had said to the children. You have to ask the question, and give the answer. It’s one and the same thing.
THE EXPERIMENT
I met Chris on a basketball court, way uptown in Manhattan. Guys from the neighborhood met up to play there, and you could turn up when you liked, and play till you were tired. Chris was the only white guy I ever saw there. Whenever he was playing he wanted proper teams, and he kept score, and he objected when someone held the ball too long.
When I got tired, I would sit in the shade of some trees at the edge of the court, and watch the others. One time, Chris sat down alongside me, and asked if I lived locally. We talked for a while and got along pretty well, and when I told him I was looking for a room he suggested I move in with him. He had just split up with his girlfriend, he said, and was looking for a subtenant.
We shared the apartment for a little while, without seeing much of one another. Then Chris fell in love at a college party. He told me all about it that same night. I had already been asleep. It was past midnight when he woke me.
“I’ve fallen in love,” he said.
“That’s nice for you,” I
said, “now can I go back to sleeping, please.”
“She’s an Indian girl called Yotslana. She had the most amazing jet-black hair you can imagine. And her eyes …”
The following evening, we talked about women and love. Chris was raving about his Yotslana, and maybe because it was getting on my nerves, I argued that true love could never be physical. The physical corrupted everything, it opened your eyes, and destroyed any ideal, spiritual love.
“I think you should keep your one great love unconsummated,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if you have other relationships on the side, it doesn’t even matter if you live with another woman.”
Chris listened silently. For the next few weeks, he was thoughtful. He stopped talking about Yotslana. He met her from time to time, and after those meetings he would get home late. When fall came around, I moved to Chicago. Chris helped me pack my things, and drove me to the station.
“How’s your Indian girl?” I asked.
“We’re in love. She’s moving in. She’s quarreled with her parents, and of course your room’s vacant.”
“Good luck,” I said, and promised to visit in the spring.
In Chicago, I found myself living with a young couple in a big apartment on the South Side. She was a dancer, he was a photographer. He was Brazilian, and the two of them had married so that he could remain in the country. He was gay, the dancer explained my first evening there,but they were very devoted to each other, maybe more than most couples, because they didn’t expect anything of one another. Sometimes he would come to her bed on Sunday mornings, and then he would be like a child.
The winter was very cold, but our apartment was cozy and light. Nelson, the photographer’s boyfriend, came around most nights, and when the two of them disappeared into the bedroom the dancer laughed, and turned the music louder. Each of us lived his or her own life, but we would have the occasional communal meal together, and listen to piano music by Chopin and Ravel. And sometimes, three or four of us would lie side by side in the big bed, watching old episodes of Star Trek on television.