How I Lose You

by Kate McNaughton

  Eva wonders: what is this story I have created about Lena Bachmann? Am I perhaps raving, creating alternate worlds that bear no connection to reality?

  ‘Look, I don’t know – all I’m trying to say is, try not to think about it, because that will not help you in any way.’

  ‘…’

  ‘But if you have to think about it, remember how extraordinarily capable of survival we human beings are.’

  EVA ARRIVED EARLY at Humboldt University, with twenty minutes to kill before her appointment. She hovered uncertainly in front of the gates: there was no point going in before Lena Bachmann was expecting her.

  And how strange, to have an appointment with the woman your husband may have been having an affair with, to have booked it into your diary like a visit to the dentist.

  The whole situation was absurd. What on Earth was Eva doing, turning up in this woman’s office in the role of the potentially wronged wife? She hadn’t told Lena Bachmann who she was, other than the broadly true fact of her being a British journalist, and now the concealment seemed like a terrible idea, the set-up for a showdown worthy of a soap opera finale. What was she going to do – burst in there exclaiming, ‘I am the wife of Adam Lorvener!’? She was behaving like a madwoman.

  She took a deep breath and turned back towards Alexanderplatz. The Fernsehturm rose up beyond the stately buildings of Unter den Linden. It looked like something out of a cartoon or a sci-fi film, or a hastily assembled prop for a school play: a giant glitter ball with a huge barbershop red and white spiral stuck on top of it. Cut out against the vibrant blue sky, it couldn’t possibly be real.

  She wondered what Lena Bachmann’s story was: what side of the divide she had grown up on, whether as a child she had been brought up to view the Fernsehturm with awe or derision. Eva had spent so much time imagining what Adam’s mystery woman might be like, filling in the gaps with projections and absurd conjectures, that she had forgotten that she didn’t actually know the first thing about who she really was – that Lena Bachmann, for all the time they had spent together in her mind, was a stranger to her. She walked away from the gate: it wasn’t time yet.

  Next to the university stood what looked like a small classical temple. Eva walked between the thick, massive pillars on the porch and into the building.

  A sandstone-lined room with a domed skylight in the centre of the roof. Underneath it, bathed in a shower of sunlight, was a large bronze statue of a woman cradling a man in her arms. The space was heavy with silence.

  Eva walked up to the statue. In front of it, the ground bore the inscription: ‘Den Opfern von Krieg und Gewaltherrschaft’ – ‘To the Victims of War and Tyranny.’

  The woman was vast and hunched, wrapped in swathes of cloth, a headscarf around her head, clogs on her feet; her body was wrapped around the man, who was bony and naked. The eternal baboushka and the body of Christ, Mother Earth and her wayward child, Humanity, the Pietà, the Mother mourning her dead Son. The woman was all curves, in contrast to the man, whose long, angular limbs, bent into something like a foetal position, only accentuated how far he was from the rounded forms of infancy. And yet she cradled him, her son, her son killed by violence, her son grown out of his warm, soft baby cheeks and into the hard lines of adulthood, of the horrors men can inflict on each other. She cradled him, this creature whom she had given birth to only for him to go forth into death.

  And the statue seemed at once to be speaking for all of the dead sons and all of the mothers, the hordes and hordes of them that the twentieth century had gnashed in its jaws, and also to be speaking for this one mother and her only dead son, for the uniqueness of each loss.

  And Eva felt quiet tears run down her cheeks as she cried for her own loss, which was as great as all these other losses, because each loss was as great as the next in this multitudinous sea of losses.

  She turned around and saw other faces looking up at the statue, tourists from all over the world, each lost in the solemn recognition of a universal pain.

  And, realizing she was now five minutes late for her appointment, she hurried out, wiping her cheeks dry, and over into the university, up a grand staircase clad with red marble, through corridors lined with portraits of great German men, and then through more tired corridors lined with neon strip lights and notices to students.

  Then a door with a nameplate: Lena Bachmann. She knocked before she could give herself time to think about it.

  ‘Come in!’

  She had a deep voice and quite a strong German accent. Eva pushed open the door to find herself facing a woman who was quite a bit older than her. Considerably older than her. Fifteen, maybe even twenty years. An attractive older woman, quietly at ease in her own body. Whatever faces, hair colours, sizes and shapes she had given Lena Bachmann, Eva had always assumed that she was roughly the same age as her and Adam.

  ‘Eva Bard?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nice to meet you.’

  She shook Eva’s hand, a warm, firm grip.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Yes, that would be lovely.’

  ‘Sit down, if you want. I come right away.’

  Lena Bachmann disappeared. Eva cast a glance out of the window. Small clumps of people sat, bathed in a mellow sun, on the steps of the opera across the avenue. Its rippling façade, echoing the pillars of other eras, the wide sweep of its steps, the self-conscious grandeur of its lines and curves, seemed laden with the memory of countless other buildings with similarly majestic façades and steps and lines and curves, the people sitting on the steps now part of a grand coterie of people sitting on steps in front of pantheons and theatres and cathedrals and train stations and operas, throughout human time and still now, in other places, and this seemed extraordinary to Eva, that she too had sat on the steps of theatres waiting for her friends, and that she shared this gesture with people in Ancient Rome and Alexandria and some sort of futuristic Beijing.

  ‘Please, sit down.’

  Lena Bachmann was back, two cups of coffee in her hands, nodding at the chair in front of her desk.

  ‘I am sorry, we only have instant here.’

  ‘Oh, no problem. Thank you.’

  They took their places on either side of the desk, as though Eva were a student there to negotiate a bad mark on her coursework.

  ‘So.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘You have said you are a journalist …?’

  ‘Yes, but – actually that’s not why I’m here …’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’m – you know my husband. Adam Lorvener?’

  ‘Adam – ach so. Yes, of course, I know him.’

  Before she knew it, tears had welled up in Eva’s eyes. Just like that. Out of nowhere. She hadn’t cried like this for a while – but it was having to say those words again, to someone else who knew Adam, really knew him, cared for him. Lena Bachmann looked at her perplexedly.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve come because Adam is dead and—’

  She was interrupted by another surge of tears; Lena Bachmann did look thrown off balance now. It was a look Eva had got used to seeing, that unique brand of shock and incomprehension.

  ‘Mein Gott.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I am very shocked to hear this.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I should have let you know, but I didn’t know how to contact you.’

  Lena Bachmann lowered her head and muttered to herself: ‘Der Armer.’ It was a moment of pure, private grief that seemed to encompass her memory of Adam, her sorrow at his loss, her dismay at the cruelty of Fate.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He died in his sleep. It turned out he had a heart condition that nobody had noticed – a thickening of the heart muscle. It’s very rare, and it doesn’t have any symptoms until the heart just stops beating. You know when sportsmen drop down dead in the middle of a race or a football match, you must have heard of cases like that? That’s often what the problem was.’

  She didn�
��t get upset saying this – it was a speech she had down pat now, and besides, it was easier to focus on the technicalities, the rational explanation, than to talk about the loss, the terrible mystery of death.

  ‘Mein Gott.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I am so sorry to hear this. It must be very hard for you. Adam was a wonderful young man.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me.’

  ‘No, it’s – there’s nothing to thank me for. I’m sorry to be bringing such bad news.’

  ‘I’m sorry you have lost your husband. Terrible. And I’m sorry for Adam. It is not right to die so young.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘What are you doing in Berlin?’

  ‘This is going to sound a bit mad … I didn’t really know what to do after he’d died, and I knew that he loved it so much here … so I decided to come. I suppose I felt like it would be a way of – of – I don’t know. Of getting closer to him.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Really? I won’t mind if you tell me I’m completely bonkers.’

  ‘Bonkers?’

  ‘Oh, er – crazy. I won’t mind if you think I’m crazy.’

  ‘I am a historian – I spend most of my time trying to understand people who we cannot talk to directly any more.’

  ‘A ghost-hunter like me.’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’

  ‘I found an address for you – in Adam’s things. But when I went, there was nothing there. Finsterstraße, I think it was.’

  ‘Ah, yes. My old flat. The building has been knocked down. They want to build some luxury apartments there.’

  ‘But then I found you online.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I – I’m not quite sure how to say this. I have a reason for coming to see you – for looking for you. A – a question, I suppose. There were things – a few years ago, we – Adam and I – we weren’t getting on so well. And there were some things – I thought maybe he might be having an affair here. Maybe – well. I wondered if he might be having an affair with you. I mean, I didn’t even think about it at the time, I think I only half believed it anyway – but I – I don’t know. After his death, it just became important for me to know – to know what your relationship was. It bothers me that there’s something so important about him that I don’t know, now that he’s dead.’

  ‘You thought he is having an affair with me? Did Adam tell you this?’

  ‘No. No, he didn’t at all. He wasn’t honest with me about who you were, so I thought … I’m sorry.’

  ‘It is me who is sorry. I hope this has not made you suffer more. So Adam did not tell you anything about what we did together when he was in Berlin?’

  ‘Um. No.’

  ‘Ah. Then maybe I should explain.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  Say something. Jesus.

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  A trio of Italians pushes past them, laden with Primark and Selfridges bags: two to each hand, thick, shiny cardboard and flimsy brown paper bulging with promise. It’s a good distraction from not having anything to say. The width of each person plus purchases considerably exceeds that of the Tube aisle, so that much shuffling and acrobatics are required for them to pass. But still, before too long they have squeezed on their way, leaving a ponderous silence in their wake.

  ‘I wonder if Peter Atwood will be there.’

  ‘I would have thought that went without saying.’

  ‘Not necessarily – he sometimes likes to not turn up to these things just to make it clear how far above the rat race he is.’

  She can feel Adam shift in disinterest next to her – her and her hack’s gossip – judging her for not having anything more interesting to talk about. She only brought it up to make conversation. She doesn’t give a rat’s arse about Peter Atwood.

  ‘Are you hoping he’ll get to see you in all your prize-winning glory?’

  ‘I haven’t won the prize. I’m only shortlisted.’

  ‘You’ll win the prize.’

  He says it with such dismissive certainty. She wants to talk about how much she hopes she will get it, how afraid she is she won’t – she’s had nothing else on her mind since she heard about the shortlist. But she doesn’t want to bore Adam with self-centred career talk. When did he stop being able to listen to her? How have they reached a stage of needing to make conversation with each other?

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  Perhaps she doesn’t listen to Adam. But he hardly says anything any more. She would listen if he did.

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  Perhaps she doesn’t listen.

  She thinks about the novel in her bag, and wishes she could take it out and occupy the time with reading. She wishes there wasn’t this expectation that you will chat to your travelling companion on the Tube. It’s perfectly normal for her to read when Adam is around in other circumstances – in the living room, or in bed. But to do it now would be to admit that they have nothing to say to each other. She feels panic rise inside her, and panics even more as she realizes that it is the same panic you feel when sitting next to a tricky conversational partner at a dinner party: the tremendous anxiety of not knowing what to say to a stranger. Have she and Adam become strangers to each other?

  She sneaks a glance at him. He looks tired, bored, stern. She has never before felt so strongly that she has no idea what he is thinking. She wonders if she still finds him handsome.

  He is handsome, obviously. But does she still find him attractive?

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  Then, mercifully, they are at Piccadilly Circus, joining the mass jostling to position itself at their carriage exit. As they stand there waiting for the train to roll into the station, the warm, impatient bodies hemming them in on all sides, Adam puts his hand on her waist and leans in behind her.

  ‘You’re going to get it because you deserve it. You know that, don’t you?’

  She looks round at him, meets a warm, loving gaze. Suddenly she remembers why she married this kind, wonderful man. He kisses her. The train pulls into the platform and disgorges them, along with countless others, into the London evening.

  ‘What was it – 326, right?’

  ‘No, 316, I think. Hang on, let me have a look.’

  She pulls the invitation out of her bag, feels a tingle of thrill at once more catching a glimpse of her name, handwritten, on the stiff, thick card.

  ‘316.’

  ‘Well, here we are, then.’

  They look at the weighty oaken door, which speaks of pipe-smoking gentlemen and discreet porters. When they push it open, it does, in fact, reveal a porter.

  ‘May I take your coat, Madam? Sir?’

  They exchange a glance, two imposters in this stuffy, outdated world – it reminds her of being students, giggling at having to wear gowns at formal hall. The porter looks at them as though he is used to this kind of reaction, and takes their coats with quiet deference.

  A few steps down a corridor rich with wood panelling and burgundy paint, and they walk into the hall. The luxuriant thrum of the chattering classes swells over them, wraps them in a cloud of gossip and guffaws and snide asides. Eva immediately finds herself scanning the room for allies, enemies, people with power – plotting a route through the gathering, friends to retreat to, targets to accost. She feels the thrill of the cocktail-party chase, made more acute by the knowledge that, as a shortlistee for the prestigious Holden Prize, she herself is one of the hot tickets this evening. She feels Adam tense beside her – he hates these things, the overwhelming numbers, the way people are always looking over your shoulder to check if there is someone more useful to talk to. She needs to find someone to park him with – Jonathan must be in here somewhere.

  ‘Eva! My money’s on you, old bean.’

  ‘Oh God, I waste enough of your money as it
is, Bill …’

  ‘Nonsense! No one deserves this more than you. Listen, I can’t stop to chat, I have to go and schmooze old Tim Peters before he gets so sozzled he’ll forget our conversation, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you, OK? Catch you later.’

  ‘See you later, Bill. Let’s dive in, shall we?’

  Adam looks exhausted, and faintly green.

  ‘Are you all right? You don’t look too good.’

  ‘I’m fine – just completely whacked. Sorry if I’m not at my sparkliest this evening – I might have to retreat to a corner while you go ahead and work the room, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well – it’s not that I particularly want to, but I am going to have to do a bit of hobnobbing …’

  ‘I know, I know. It’s your job. I don’t mind at all.’

  ‘Really? You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. Let’s go and find Jonathan, he must be in here somewhere – he and I can settle down with a beer while you dazzle everyone with your wit.’

  ‘Well. Let’s go and get a drink, at least.’

  They dive into the sea of hacks, snake their way between nattering clusters, dodge past trays of canapés. Eager eyes search for Eva’s, keen to show by congratulating her that they have a personal connection to one of the star guests – but she ignores them, glowering as she carves a route through the crowd in front of Adam. This evening of all evenings – this evening that could mean so much for her career – why does he have to act like a deadweight dragging her down, why can’t he make an effort?

  Jonathan is leaning against a table in a corner of the hall, strategically positioned within striking distance of the bar, and close to a couple of chairs on which it might be acceptable, later, to sit down. He is chatting to a lithe young man with long, beautiful eyelashes.

  ‘My darlings! I was starting to worry you might miss all the champagne.’

  He speaks in the catty, whispering monotone he reserves for glamorous social events, to mark himself out from the effusive, try-hard crowd. Usually Eva likes being taken into this conspiracy, but this evening she resents it by association with Adam.

  Jonathan slides over to the bar and returns with two flutes of champagne.