How I Lose You

by Kate McNaughton

  ‘What on Earth are you doing?’

  ‘I just needed to photocopy something for this conference …’

  ‘What, in the middle of the night?’

  ‘I know, I just woke up and I kept thinking about it and worrying that if I didn’t do it right away I’d forget …’

  ‘You’re such a weirdo.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry, I didn’t think I’d wake you up. I hope I haven’t disturbed your parents.’

  ‘They’ll be fine, I don’t think they can hear it from their room.’

  ‘Oh good. Anyway. All done now.’

  He slips past her out of the room, papers in hand, and vanishes back into their bedroom, so that for a moment it seems to Eva like she might have dreamt the whole thing, she is so barely awake and the night-time stillness is so deep. But then she does hear the sounds of zipping and rustling paper behind her bedroom door, and she notices that Adam has left the printer on, which is unlike him, and the desk lamp too, and she goes over to turn them off.

  And on her father’s desk is the picture of her mother with her parents, which is odd because usually it sits on the bookshelf in the living room – perhaps her dad has decided to keep it closer, this picture of his wife from a time long before he knew her.

  She picks it up, and looks at it: her mother, aged what, sixteen or something, her long hair tumbling in wild locks around her, looking proudly, almost defiantly into the camera, with her father and mother on either side of her, both stiff and smiling uncertainly, awkward about posing for the picture, perhaps, or else with other things on their minds. They are standing in front of a gate, behind which can be glimpsed the church Eva’s grandfather had just taken over. Grandfather. How strange that this photograph provides the only faces Eva can put to those names, grandfather, grandmother, Opa, Oma, condemning them to a life in her mind as two slightly uncomfortable ageing people, an image which sits dissonantly with the thrilling, subversive adventures she simultaneously imagines them having had. How strange that this photograph and the samizdat are all that is left of her mother’s family ever since Adam broke the Meissen tea cup that was their only other remaining possession.

  The whole house is quiet now, as though time has been removed from it.

  Eva puts the photograph back down on her father’s desk, switches off the printer and lamp, and feels her way back to the bedroom in darkness, her fingers touching tentatively on walls and doorframes, until they have found their way back to the warmth of their duvet and Adam’s smooth skin.

  THERE IS A person you knew once, in all of his beauty and tenderness and infuriatingness and joy, in all of his countless dimensions, and then there is the moment of his death like poison ivy around your memory of him. You try to get it out of the way, but it won’t budge.

  He lies there, dying all over again, every time you speak to him.

  And you see that death is above all a distance, an unbridgeable chasm between you, the mysterious stillness of his body so radically different from the time and movement that continue to run through your flesh, and time and movement run through your brain too, neurons firing and synapses crackling into questions and doubts: who is this person I thought I knew so well, who I thought was a part of me? Who is he when now he is a strange corpse, mute, entirely closed to me? Did we ever understand each other, touch each other, talk to each other? Did we ever look into each other’s eyes and see in there a fire that was like our own, recognize somebody who was not completely a stranger?

  THIS CORRIDOR IS exactly as she would have expected it. Long. Smooth. Antiseptic. She takes her time walking down it, because the longer she spends doing that, the less soon she will be inside the room. The décor is ominously placid: pastel colours, Italian landscapes, still lives. So conspicuously gentle. Here and there, a poster with health advice delivered in the simplest possible terms. She feels oppression in these signs of benevolence, the threat of the institution. No one should have to be here. She hurries along the corridor.

  Carmen turns as she walks in, with a wan smile that suits the setting. The glint in her eye is absolutely the same as it has always been. Eva sits on the chair by the bed, lays the flowers on the trolley by Carmen’s head. Another still life: grapes, a box of chocolates, today’s Guardian, a plastic glass and water jug hazy from years of repeated sterilization, a battered copy of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Flowers.

  ‘Actually, I’d better put these in water, hadn’t I.’

  Eva rises, weirdly self-conscious of her movements, which only makes them more jittery. She grabs the flowers too tightly and skits over to the sink in the corner of the room, while Carmen watches her in silence.

  ‘Hm. I don’t suppose they’ve given you a vase? You’d think they’d provide vases.’

  She puts the plug in and stares at the sink as it slowly fills with water. She can see her reflection in the tap, and wonders how many faces have been mirrored here, what shades of insanity have contemplated their distorted features in the gleaming metal. She is postponing the moment of having to return to Carmen. She removes the wrapper from the flowers, crumples it up – so loud – and throws it in the bin, puts their stalks in the water. They hang a little limply over the edge of the sink, each one so lonely and fragile now that it is not held close to its companions by an elastic band. She returns to the bedside, sits down, looks at Carmen.

  ‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’

  ‘They’re daffodils, actually.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘God, I’m sorry, Carm, I haven’t even said hello. Hello.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Tired. I think they’re drugging me.’

  ‘Well – they probably are. I don’t know. Well, I mean, they almost certainly are.’

  ‘Bastards.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  Eva looks at her friend: the white hospital gown, the frantic darting of her eyes.

  A different person.

  She thought they knew each other, she thought they shared all their secrets, the fears and joys buried deepest within them.

  How long has Carmen been hiding this darkness, this terrifying landscape of conspiracies?

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About what happened.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Remember, Carm? You were on London Bridge.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many …’

  ‘I had not thought death had undone so many.’

  A SINGLE MATTRESS on the floor, one pillow, the duvet encased in a cover that had faded over the years. A clear desk and a non-ergonomic chair (surely that must have killed Adam’s back?). A clothes rack lined with hangers, just the basic skeletal structure, in the corner of the room. One of those canvas clothes-storage units you got for about twenty quid in Ikea. It looked like a monk’s cell.

  Ulrich appeared with a towel.

  ‘I give you a – er – Handtuch.’

  ‘A towel. Thanks.’

  ‘No problem. So. Probably you want to rest a bit?’

  ‘Well – I’ll unpack at least, yes.’

  ‘No stress, take your time. When you want, I can show you around the Kiez – the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Thanks, that would be great.’

  ‘Ach so – also, I wanted to show you this.’

  He pulled a box out from underneath the canvas thingy.

  ‘Some papers of Adam. I have not looked at them, but maybe there are some things in here you want to keep.’

  ‘Oh. Thank you, Ulrich.’

  ‘So. I am in my room. When you want to go out, just say.’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  Ulrich wasn’t how she’d imagined him: he was tall, massive, like a bear. His movements were slow and gentle, but you c
ould tell, if you looked at the bulk of his biceps pushing out at his T-shirt, that he had force to unleash. He seemed to find it perfectly natural for Eva to be staying with him, and she wondered if this was just because he was used to renting his spare room out, or because through Adam he felt he knew her already. What had she imagined he would be like, actually? Eva wasn’t sure. Perhaps she hadn’t imagined anything: Ulrich had been a name she had heard Adam mention hundreds of times, but had never tried to flesh out in her mind. She’d never, really, tried to flesh out any part of his life here in her mind.

  And now, in this large, sparsely furnished room, she tried to imagine that life. Adam arriving, like she just had, putting his suitcase down, reclaiming a space that would have grown familiar to him. It was strange to picture him, so house-proud back in London, living in these spartan conditions. She looked at the mattress, tried to imagine him wrapped up in that single duvet, and suddenly she could see him, how sweet he looked when he was asleep, with his hair mussed up and a quizzical furrow to his brow. The clarity of the memory pushed a surprised sigh out of her: such images came less frequently to her now, and she sometimes worried that he’d been erased from her brain. The only problem with them was that they made her feel his absence all over again. But then, wasn’t that why she’d come to Berlin: to recapture the fading memory of him, and therefore also of her loss?

  If only one could come without the other.

  She opened up the box that Ulrich had pulled out for her, flicked through the first few sheets of paper: medical-research stuff. Wedged at the front, a few photos stuck on to pieces of card: one of her at home – she remembered that day, just a regular lazy Saturday, reading the paper at the kitchen table and the sun pouring through the bay windows so beautifully that Adam had wanted to immortalize the moment. A photo of the two of them on their honeymoon – God, they looked so young. And a photo of the two of them with Henry and Carmen at uni, lounging outside on a sunny day. God, they looked like children. The photos had Blu-tack marks on their backs – Adam must have put them up on the walls during his stays here. She peered into the box: sure enough, there was a packet of Blu-tack at the bottom of it. She smiled: good old, ever-organized Adam.

  She stuck the photos up on the wall above the mattress, then started to unpack. Sliding a stack of T-shirts on to one of the canvas shelves, she had an uneasy sense of Adam making the same gesture, as though the room itself had a memory that it was projecting on to her, or as though a loophole in time had been opened up and she and an Adam from years ago were standing simultaneously on the same spot. As though she and Adam were the same body.

  It had scared her sometimes: how much she needed him, as though they really did share one body. How sometimes, when she was far from home, away on assignment, seeing so many other lives, so many other ways of living, she would feel that she was only one of a thousand different possible Evas, a mere fragment of a fractured self, and it was only the way Adam would talk to her as though he knew who she was that gave her some reassurance. If she allowed herself the thought experiment, after they’d had a row or something, of imagining a split-up, a life without him, she couldn’t imagine who she would be. It was the same terrifying panic as she felt now, allowing herself to face up to her thoughts on Lena Bachmann. Would she uncover something here that might force her to retell the story of her relationship, of who she was, of who he had been?

  And yet. It seemed laughable, this idea of Adam having had an affair. If you put it like that.

  And yet. Why had he stopped, at some point – a point that had arrived slowly, unidentifiably over the years, like a slow-growing tumour, but then settled down to stay – why had he stopped asking Eva to come to Berlin with him? Because of another woman, another life in which he was another Adam?

  And yet. Of course Adam was Adam. Of course there was nothing to worry about. Of course this presence she could feel sharing her movements, stacking clothes carefully on top of each other, smoothing them out, was the same man she had known, would always know. And would find again here, maybe.

  ‘REMIND ME WHY we decided to do this again, when neither you nor I have the first clue about DIY?’

  ‘Because, Herr Doktor, it’s meant we were able to buy a much nicer place than we could have afforded if we’d gone for anything we could actually live in.’

  ‘Could you hand me that tray with the white stuff?’

  ‘This looks really liquidy.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Let’s see.’

  ‘Ad, can’t you come down off the stepladder? I’m worried if I hand it to you up there you’ll pour it all over me.’

  ‘I don’t want to come all the way down off the stepladder!’

  ‘Come halfway down, then.’

  ‘OK, I’ll come halfway down.’

  Eva hands Adam the tray of white – what is it? Plaster? Polyfilla? She’s never quite sure what the difference is.

  ‘Hm, it is quite liquidy. I definitely used the amounts they put in the instructions, though.’

  ‘Still. I really don’t think it’ll work like that. It’ll just drip down all over the wall.’

  ‘Hm. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should bung a bit more powder in.’

  ‘And from the way you’re handing the tray back to me, I’m guessing you mean I should bung a bit more powder in?’

  ‘I’m on the stepladder!’

  ‘Right.’

  Eva mixes more of the stuff – plaster, Polyfilla, whatever – in. It solidifies into curd.

  ‘Shit, I think I’ve overdone it now.’

  ‘Well, just chuck some more water in.’

  ‘This could go on for ever.’

  Luckily, there is a sink in the kitchen: one lonely sink waiting patiently to be joined by white goods, cupboards, a sideboard. And a kettle, on the floor. And a Stella Artois fridge Henry stole from his rugby club, also on the floor. The floor is the only place anything can be on, as there is nothing else in the kitchen. Eva loves it. This is how you build a life together: from the ground up.

  ‘OK, I think I’ve got it.’

  ‘Let’s have a look?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Yep, that seems OK. Right.’

  Adam totters back up to the top of the stepladder.

  ‘Hang on, Ad. Aren’t you meant to sand the wall down first? I’m pretty sure your dad said something to that effect.’

  ‘Oh. Really?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘It can’t actually make that much of a difference, surely?’

  ‘Well – I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe I’d better check the book. Could you pass me the book?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Eva hands him The DIY Bible.

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘Hm. You are supposed to sand the wall down first. Well spotted. Do we have any sandpaper left?’

  ‘I think I’ve still got some in the bedroom. Hang on a sec.’

  Eva walks down the short corridor. Kitchen and dining area; living room and study on the right; bathroom on the left. Bedroom. If they have kids, they can always convert the study into another bedroom. In a few weeks, they will have turned this into a home; in a few years, this place will be as familiar to her as her own skin. And now, it is so gloriously, so excitingly new.

  There is sandpaper in the bedroom. There is no bed in it yet. Just think – their bedroom, and they’ve never even slept in it. Their kitchen, and they’ve never even cooked in it. Just think how much cooking and sleeping they will have done in this place in a few years’ time.

  ‘Here you go.’

  ‘Right. Thanks.’

  Eva leafs through The DIY Bible. There’s a section about how to make your own spice rack. She’s never thought of that. It would be nice to have their own spice rack.

  ‘How about making a spice rack?’

  ‘We’ve got one already. It’s going to the left of the sink.’

  ‘Oh.’
/>
  ‘God. I hate sanding.’

  ‘Really? I quite enjoy it.’

  ‘I fucking hate it.’

  ‘Do you want me to take over? I really don’t mind it that much.’

  ‘No. We said I’d do the kitchen.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘Don’t you have a job to do, anyway?’

  ‘I’m taking a break, Stakhanov.’

  ‘Can that break involve making a cup of tea?’

  ‘That’s not unheard of, in a break.’

  ‘No – in fact it’s quite the done thing in some parts.’

  ‘Would you like one?’

  ‘Oh, well. If you insist.’

  ‘Builder’s, or Earl Grey?’

  ‘Builder’s. Obviously.’

  It’s so much fun, boiling a kettle up on the floor. It feels like such an adventure.

  Eva studies the fireplace. It’s gorgeous – Edwardian. The tiles are delicately painted with some kind of flower or bramble. All of them original. Some of them are cracked, which she loves. A home should feel weathered, like it has a history. The grate is black with ancient soot.

  ‘I love the fireplaces.’

  ‘I know, they’re amazing, aren’t they? Though I think my favourite is the stained glass. I just can’t get over it. Look at this one, this bluebird: isn’t it beautiful?’

  ‘Ad, please stop waving at the window, I’d rather you didn’t break your neck right now. But yes, it is amazing.’

  ‘Our house.’

  ‘Our flat.’

  ‘Our flat.’

  ‘Well – the bank’s flat.’

  ‘The bank’s flat. Amazing.’

  ‘Here’s your tea.’

  ‘Thanks. Oh – well, wait, maybe I’ll come down for it. Just let me finish this last bit.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘Do you realize we’re married?’

  ‘I know – it’s crazy, isn’t it?’

  ‘And we’ve, like, got our own place?’

  ‘It’s just – it’s amazing.’

  ‘I’m so happy.’