How I Lose You

by Kate McNaughton

  This chain of thought startled her: she was thinking like she used to. Making connections. And she remembered how much she used to care about all the violence she had seen in the world, how much she had wanted to understand it. How meeting the young man – still so young, younger than she was – who had wanted to shatter his own body into thousands of tiny pieces in the name of Allah, who had wanted to shatter other bodies into thousands of tiny pieces in the name of Allah, as many of them as possible, what an uncanny moment that had been, how she had looked into his eyes, and listened to what he had said, and felt at once like she understood him completely, the fire, the rage, the willingness to die for something so much bigger than yourself, but also could never understand him. How she had once wanted to make sense of all this, connect all these dots – Al-Qaeda, Iraq, the West, the Congo, the South, the East, Afghanistan, the CIA, the Soviets, Bosnia, Chechnya, the blood and the blood and the blood – and how, after having seen so many bodies torn apart, so many glazed eyes and strewn limbs and flies crawling through open mouths, how one quiet body in a cosy bed in North London had made all of that seem futile, had taken the sting out of all this pain and injustice.

  Eva couldn’t find the article about Kenya, so she opened an earlier drawer (Adam ordered them by five-year periods, into which all sorts of different documents – medical records, letters, tax returns – were placed, as though he was modelling his life on the economic history of the USSR) – and gasped as she caught sight of a folder entitled ‘Berlin’.

  For a while, she just gazed at the tag, ‘BERLIN’, written in Adam’s meticulous handwriting – too meticulous for a doctor. She could see the strokes of his pen, imagine his fingers guiding it carefully, attentively, remember the care and attention with which these same fingers would trace a stroke down the inside of her arm. Then she slipped her own fingers, gently, into the opening of the folder, and took out a slim wad of papers of different shapes and sizes. A few flyers for concerts and bars – ‘La Femme im Club Bassy’, ‘BAIZ BLEIBT’, ‘Walacatha’ – and she felt a pang of anger towards Adam that she didn’t know what they all stood for, and whether he had been there, and now she couldn’t just ask him about it. A beer mat inscribed with ‘Berliner Pilsner’. A couple of theatre programmes: ‘Volksbühne’, ‘Schaubühne’. A world that was Adam’s, and that she knew nothing about. And a slip of paper, on which he had written a name and address – Ulrich’s name and address. He would have written those words down years ago, when he first started looking for a room in Berlin. And then Ulrich had become a part of his life, and she had never even met the guy. She ran her fingers over the slip of paper, over the strokes of Adam’s pen.

  And then that name again, that name she had been trying to ignore ever since she’d looked through his emails, but which she realized now had been lying in wait for her all along, in some dark corner of her brain.

  Lena Bachmann.

  And the name screamed at her and made her doubt and made her pulse race and the world shift into an ever so slightly softer focus before her eyes, and maybe start to move a little, and she had to put a hand out to steady herself.

  What had this life been, this other life of his?

  What was this city, that was hers and not hers?

  She had to know.

  She rang Bill.

  ‘Eva.’

  ‘Bill. I’ll email you the articles I’ve selected tomorrow, OK? And then you can have the final decision on what goes in, I don’t want to have to deal with it. I’m going to go away for a while.’

  ‘Blimey. That’s a bit of a turnaround.’

  ‘I’m going to Berlin.’

  ‘And why ever not? Eva, I’m on a Tube, about to go underground – look forward to the email. And auf Wiedersehen.’

  Eva laughed, giddy with fear. ‘Auf Wieder—’

  But they had been cut off.

  ‘OH FOR FUCK’S sake.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re doing it again.’

  ‘I’m doing what again?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘I really don’t!’

  How has it got to this stage? She’s sure they didn’t argue like this a few months ago. She’s sure a few months ago he made her feel good about her globetrotting lifestyle, like it was actually something that was quite sexy about her. Why do they always argue now? How do you get to this stage?

  ‘You’re trying to make me feel guilty.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Eva, what have I done?’

  ‘You know. You’re giving me that look.’

  ‘What fucking look?!’

  ‘You don’t want me to go, do you?’

  ‘…’

  ‘You know how important this is to me, and you don’t want me to go.’

  ‘I’m just worried about you.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘I don’t remember you being this worried when I went off to Iraq.’

  ‘That was – different.’

  ‘I know it was bloody different! You know what the difference was? Iraq was at war. Congo: not at war. At least, not in the part I’m going to. So I don’t know why you’re suddenly getting so concerned about my safety, after happily waving me off to total shitholes for years.’

  ‘How can you say that? You know I’ve always worried about you when you’ve gone off to those places – I just didn’t want to be holding you back.’

  ‘So why are you trying to hold me back now?’

  That wasn’t what she meant. It’s a terrible thing to say. Of course Adam isn’t holding her back, has never held her back; on the contrary, he’s been pushing her forward, supporting her, giving her a strength she would never have had alone. The problem, when you are in the middle of an argument with someone you love, is that you have a range of choices of things to say, things that might be true, hurtful, unfair, honest, downright lies, caring, nasty, vindictive, generous, or any combination of those things, and usually you go for exactly the wrong one. And then, once the words are said, they are out there, in the open air, inscribed on the register of all the things you have ever said to each other, and there is no getting away from them any more.

  ‘Is that really how you feel about me – that I’m holding you back?’

  Adam’s mood has shifted, from conciliatory to cold, hard-eyed, wounded.

  ‘Of course it isn’t. You know it isn’t.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It just came out.’

  ‘But you said it.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  Then, the challenge is also that you don’t have to choose your words just once, get them out and live with whatever they have created – there are always more things you could say, more potentially disastrous options, and once you’ve started on a conversation like this you have to just keep on going until you have dug deep enough into each other’s insides to reach some kind of conclusion, or stalemate, or exhaustion.

  ‘Adam. There’s something you’re not telling me. I know you always worry about me, but come on, you wouldn’t be like this about me going if there wasn’t something else. What is it?’

  Adam looks at her inscrutably. The problem with these kinds of arguments is that the person you love also has a huge panoply of words to choose from, and they all have consequences of their own. It’s all this reacting to each other’s words that is the problem.

  ‘Adam – I can’t know where to start if you won’t tell me what you’re thinking.’

  His voice answers with a hard edge that scares her:

  ‘I don’t know what I’m thinking.’

  ‘…’

  ‘But – you must feel this too – that things haven’t been going well between us for the past few months.’

  She has been feeling it, of course – has often been railing against him internally, has even daydreamed of what a life without him might be like – but
it’s worrying, and unexpected, for it to be brought up by him. And how strange, that there is no particular incident at the root of all this, or at least none that she can pinpoint, that they just seem to have slipped into this state of natural irritation, as though it is just life itself that has been eroding their love, just the passing of time.

  She doesn’t answer for now, lets Adam slowly come out with the words, form sentences, watches his moves before making hers, like a poker player.

  ‘And – I don’t know. I guess I feel strange about you going when things are so fragile between us. I’ve always felt in the past, when you’ve gone on these trips, that whatever happens, at least I don’t have any doubts about – well, I don’t know, about where we stand in relation to each other. Right now – I don’t know.’

  ‘Right now you don’t know what?’

  They used to joke about divorce. When you marry someone, you develop this gallows humour, in the euphoria of this big adventure you’ve embarked on together: oh my God, I’m going to have to divorce you if you put this knife in the dishwasher again! You didn’t ring the plumber? You forgot? That’s grounds for divorce, you know. Divorce like a bogeyman, something to give you the thrill of a scare, because you sort of believe in it even though you don’t really. A joke word. And now neither of them wants to say the joke word, because the joke doesn’t sound so funny any more.

  ‘I don’t know – I don’t know if you’re going to be with me, if you go away. Before, I always knew that you would be thinking of me, loving me, missing me, wherever you were – that I’d be a part of your life, even if we weren’t together. Now – now I’m not sure I will be. And I’m not sure you’ll be a part of my life.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I think – to be honest, it’ll be a relief not to have you around to argue with all the time.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Isn’t that terrible?’

  There’s a catch in his voice when he says this, and she knows he means it as a reaching out to her, but she can’t help but let anger dictate her reaction. Our stupid pride. Our stupid, self-defensive reflexes.

  ‘If it’s going to be such a fucking relief not to have me around, why are you trying to stop me from going?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to feel that way about you. And I don’t want you to be feeling that way about me. To be relieved that I’m not there.’

  ‘Who fucking said I’d be relieved not to have you around?’

  He’s right. She definitely will, in a way, be relieved not to have him around. How have they come to this?

  ‘I think you will be. Would be. At least a part of you would.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘And what’s – I mean, where’s the evidence for this? What makes you think that’s what I’m thinking?’

  He almost whispers it, as though it is a dangerous thing to bring up, as though he is uttering one of God’s secret, forbidden names:

  ‘The Holden Prize party. You’d rather not have had me there. When you were talking to all those people, you’d rather I hadn’t been there.’

  ‘When I was talking to all those people? Which people?’

  ‘That Tom guy, for example.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I think you’re looking forward to being with him in the Congo. To not having me around.’

  ‘Who the fuck cares about Tom?’

  This is disingenuous. She totally fancies Tom. It would be hard for Adam not to have noticed, given it’s the first time she’s fancied someone else – in a serious way – since she and Adam have been together. Tom, with his inky-black hair and astonishing green eyes, his sardonic sense of humour, his pumped-up war photographer’s frame, so imposing next to Adam’s slender figure.

  Her heart goes out to Adam; all he needs is some reassurance. But she worries it would sound untrue, because it kind of would be, in a way, even though of course she still loves him and wants to be with him and knows that Tom is basically a bit of a tool, it’s just he is also very sexy, right now, at this moment in time, after months of marital attrition, Tom is definitely a sexy proposition, but also an irrelevant one, and Eva is worried that Adam might not understand all the subtleties of this. She can’t risk sounding insincere, and also, by the way, she is pretty pissed off about all these accusations, when she has always been faithful to Adam, and wasn’t planning on doing anything with Tom even if, admittedly, she isn’t completely immune to his charms.

  ‘I don’t give a shit about Tom, OK? He’s a self-satisfied womanizer. I can’t think of anyone I’d less like to have an affair with.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Christ. Then what the hell am I meant to say?’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘I’m not going to bloody Congo to bloody shag Tom.

  ‘…’

  ‘Jesus. I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. I mean, if anyone has the right to ask questions, it’s me, anyway.’

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?!’

  ‘You’re the one who’s got a whole other life going on in Berlin.’

  ‘What the—? I’m there, like, for a week every three months or something. And it’s not like I haven’t asked you a million times to come over with me.’

  ‘Still.’

  ‘Still what?’

  ‘…’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘What about that Lena woman?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lena Bachmann.’

  ‘What about her? She’s just a friend.’

  ‘I thought she was just a colleague.’

  ‘She’s not a doctor. Just someone I know in Berlin.’

  ‘You told me she was a doctor.’

  ‘Well, you must have misunderstood me.’

  ‘You told me she was a fellow doctor you’d met at a medical conference.’

  ‘Well, I mean … She’s not. She’s just a woman I know in Berlin. I’ve met people in Berlin and struck up acquaintances with them, sorry.’

  ‘That’s not how you told me you met her.’

  ‘As I said, you must have got the wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘It was pretty clear, the way I remember the conversation.’

  ‘Well, I don’t remember it, so how am I supposed to answer that accusation?’

  ‘Ah, so I’m accusing you now, am I?’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘What am I accusing you of, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know, you tell me.’

  ‘No, really, you tell me – I’m interested to hear what you think I think is going on between you and this Lena character.’

  ‘OK, this is just absurd. We are ending this conversation right now.’

  ‘Right. Interesting.’

  ‘For the record, though, I can’t believe you’re trying to put this stuff on me.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.’

  CARMEN TUGGED NERVOUSLY at the sleeve of her sweater: she would pinch a bit of it at the wrist, and twist it until it was double-wrapped around her fingers, then let it go again. With every repetition, the fabric stretched a little more irreversibly, its deformation setting like drying cement. Georgie was eyeing Carmen’s hands with fascination, wincing with every twist: in truth, the sweater looked expensive, not something to be destroyed so thoughtlessly. Carmen didn’t even seem aware that she was doing it.

  They were waiting for Henry to come back with the drinks, and as always happened when Georgie was left without him, they were all struggling to think of what to say next.

  Both Eva and Carmen had put their hands to their wallets when Henry had offered to go and get the first round, uncertain of how dire his situation had become. He’d waved them away blusterously.

  ‘Oh come on, I can still stretch to a round at your leaving drinks, Eva.’

  But Georgie had winced at that as well. She had deep
bags under her eyes, which her make-up could only do so much to conceal. Carmen’s eyes, in contrast, had more like faint rings around them, the colour of a week-old bruise, and they had a tendency to dart around frantically when she wasn’t being careful.

  How broken they had all become.

  It was Georgie who finally thought of something to say.

  ‘So, you’re leaving tomorrow then, Eva?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘It’s very brave of you.’

  ‘Brave?’

  ‘Yes – to … just go off like that. To somewhere where you don’t know anybody. After … all that’s happened.’

  ‘Well. I don’t know. It feels like the right thing to do, somehow.’

  ‘You’re not worried you’ll feel lonely?’

  ‘I’m lonely as it is, Georgie. Unfortunately.’

  Eva surprised herself by the frankness of her response – she was hardly used to having heart-to-hearts with Georgie, of all people. And Georgie surprised her with her reaction, a slow, sad nod of understanding, an undisguised display of feeling that was quite out of character. Carmen had noticed it too, and was examining Georgie with curiosity.

  Then Henry returned with the drinks, and ideas of things to talk about. Though he looked worried too, his face drawn and weathered in a way it never used to be, he still retained his usual bonhomie. The only time Eva had seen him lose it, really, was in the weeks immediately following Adam’s death. And then, either because it was such an essential part of his character, or because it had been so successfully drilled into him by his polite English upbringing, it had slowly returned, and even now, in spite of the circumstances, it endured.