What You Can See from Here

by Mariana Leky

  I wrote that the letter I was sure he’d written had unfortunately not arrived yet. Then I explained in many, many sentences why it was, in fact, impossible for a letter from Japan to ever make it all the way to the Westerwald, given all the pitfalls and all the conceivable human errors that would plague such a letter on its voyage. Surely, I wrote, Frederik’s letter from the summer was the only one ever to have made it all the way here from Japan.

  Then, after drinking a third half coffee cup of hazelnut liqueur, I started in with never and always. I wrote Frederik that he had upended my entire life and that I’d loved him from the moment I saw him and that nothing could ever get in the way of my love. I wrote that Buddhism is not very well thought out because it’s perfectly clear that things disappear even when we aren’t trying to see them, which is proven by the fact that for several weeks now I hadn’t been trying to see him, but he had still disappeared completely. Because of the hazelnut liqueur, this sentence struck me as exceptionally lucid. I wrote, “Selma, Elsbeth, and the optician also send their very best, of course.” I wrote that yesterday the optician had yet again resolved to reinforce the weak spots in Selma’s floor with Palm’s help. “This is an impossible state of affairs,” the optician said, even though it had been possible for years. I wrote that Frederik not writing was also an impossible state of affairs, and moreover, I wrote that perhaps the opposite was true and he may well have already written seven letters, not one of which, unfortunately, had arrived because of the above.

  I screwed the top back on the bottle of liqueur, put it under the table, and slipped four violet pastilles into my mouth. Mr. Rödder had hidden small stashes of violet pastilles everywhere, even in the pot of a discarded coffee maker.

  I pried open the door and steered clear of Mr. Rödder as he unpacked the new releases. At the counter, I found a book of stamps. I had no idea how much the postage for a letter to Japan cost, so for good measure I covered the entire envelope with stamps.

  The optician entered the bookstore. He had only come to pick me up, but still he held up a book on home repair I had ostensibly recommended to him and which had changed his life.

  “Yes, fine, I get it,” Mr. Rödder called from the back of the store.

  * * *

  “You’re completely disheveled,” the optician said when we were in the car. “Have you been drinking? You smell like, I don’t know, like violet liqueur.”

  “Stop at the mailbox,” I said as we drove into the village. “I’ve written to Frederik.”

  “Just now? In your condition?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Maybe you should sleep on it,” the optician suggested, “or show it to Selma first.”

  We always showed important letters to Selma before sending them. When the optician had to send payment reminders to his customers, he always showed them to Selma and asked, “Is it too brusque?”

  “It’s much too nice,” Selma replied in most cases.

  “Nonsense,” I said, “I’m mailing it now. Enough with the careful precautions already.”

  I put my arm over the optician’s shoulders like a self-important driving instructor.

  “Spontaneity and authenticity are the alpha and the omega,” I said, and realized too late that I should have chosen two words that were easy to pronounce even after hazelnut liqueur.

  Then I got out of the car and mailed the letter.

  * * *

  At seven o’clock the next morning, I was standing next to the mailbox. The mailman opened the emptying flap and attached his mailbag under it.

  “Please give me my letter back,” I said.

  The old mailman had retired the year before. The new one was one of the twins from the upper village.

  “Nah,” he said.

  I had already waited a half hour next to the mailbox. I was cold and had a headache. I imagined how nice it would be to have Palm’s rifle at hand. “Hand it over, jackass,” I’d say, pointing the gun at him, “I’m the one who calls the shots.”

  “Please,” I said.

  The mailman grinned. Little puffs of mist came from his mouth. “What’s in it for me?”

  “Everything I have.”

  “And that is?”

  I pulled out my wallet. “Ten marks.”

  The mailman plucked the bill from my hand and shoved it in his pocket. He opened the bag and held it out. “Help yourself.”

  I bent over the bag. It was much too large and much too deep for the few letters it held. I rummaged in it with clammy fingers.

  “Happy New Year, Luisy,” the mailman said.

  * * *

  The next morning, there was a letter from Frederik in my mailbox. It was a blue airmail envelope. I held it up to the hall lamp. This time the letter was written on thicker paper and you couldn’t make out any of the writing. The words were blurred like the letters on the display panel in the airport when the flights are updating.

  Dear Luisa,

  Please forgive me for not writing earlier. I had so much to do (that’s probably hard to imagine, but it’s true). At this time of year, there are always a lot of guests for whom I’m responsible. I explain everything to them. How to eat in the monastery, how to sit, how to walk, when to be silent, and how long to sleep. When guests come to the monastery, they have to learn everything anew. Like after a serious accident.

  I’ve thought about you a lot. It was so nice to be with you. Stressful, too. I’m not used to being with so many people for that long. There’s not much talking here on the other side of the world.

  And as you can imagine, I’m also not used to being so close to anyone as I was with you.

  Being close is a tricky thing. You’re a mystery to me, Luisa. Sometimes you seem very forward and stick your foot in a door that is trying to close. Other times you seem very blurry. In those moments, I have the feeling that you’re behind a fogged-up pane of glass, and I can only guess at what’s hiding on the other side.

  When I was with you, with you and your family, I kept falling in love with you, at least with what I could see of you (see above, pane of glass).

  But this infatuation has to be transformed because, Luisa, we aren’t made to be together. I’ve chosen this life at the end of a long process for which I had to summon all my courage.

  And as unromantic as it may sound: I don’t want to confuse everything. It’s very important for me that everything be in its place.

  And my place is here, without you.

  I don’t know what you think about all this, that is, about us. Can you affirm the fact that we’re not made for each other?

  Yours,

  Frederik

  I held only this letter in my hand, but when I opened the front door and walked slowly into the bookstore, it felt like I was carrying a very heavy suitcase.

  Behind a pane of glass, I thought. Field, meadow. Crazy Hassel’s farmhouse. Pasture, forest. Forest. Hunting blind one. Field. Forest. Pasture. Meadow, meadow.

  * * *

  I carried the letter around all day. I carried it out of the bookstore and along the main street, where I’d agreed to meet the optician in front of the gift shop. Because the only things I could see were Frederik’s words, I ran right into Dr. Maschke, who was suddenly standing in front of me on the sidewalk.

  “Oops,” he said. “How nice it is to see you.”

  He put his hands on his hips and examined me as if he had just fabricated me.

  “It’s unbelievable, you’re the spitting image of your father.”

  I looked over at the gift shop. The optician was already waiting for me. Smoke wafted up from behind the postcard display rack.

  Dr. Maschke started listing all the questions he wanted to ask Frederik. He talked about “non-action” and “non-attachment” and “not one” and “not two.” This place is swarming with negatives, I thought, hardly listening to Dr. Maschke. I felt like I really was behind a fogged-up pane of glass and was amazed there hadn’t been a clinking sound when I bumped into h
im.

  I repeated several times that I had to get going, but Dr. Maschke kept talking. He talked and talked, until Marlies suddenly appeared at the corner.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Did you have another complaint?”

  Although it wasn’t very cold, Marlies wore a cap pulled down low over her forehead, and a scarf covered the lower half of her still-youthful face.

  I wondered what it was that preserved Marlies so well. Maybe she didn’t age because all her days were exactly the same, so time thought it should leave her face untouched.

  She was carrying an elongated package, which she pointed at Dr. Maschke like a rifle. “I bought a bar lock for my door.”

  “You already have one,” I said.

  Marlies had four locks on her door already. I asked myself how one door could have so many locks. I thought of Frederik’s letter, and a door collapsing under the weight of its locks struck me as such a sad image—I almost started to cry.

  “You can never have enough locks,” Marlies said. “And now I’m going home.”

  Dr. Maschke was fascinated by Marlies, as if she were a masked beauty.

  “Do that,” he said to her. “Blaise Pascal once said: All of humanity’s misfortune stems from one thing: not knowing how to sit quietly in a room.”

  Marlies squeezed the package under her arm and smiled. Not once in my entire life had I seen her smile. I didn’t even know that it was anatomically possible.

  “That’s right,” Marlies said. Not once in her life had she said that something was right.

  “I’ve got to go, too,” I said.

  Dr. Maschke held me by the sleeve. His leather jacket creaked.

  “Speaking of staying at home, do you know why your father is always traveling?”

  I looked over at the postcard display rack, behind which the optician had lit another cigarette.

  “Are you allowed to speak about your patients with people you don’t know? Isn’t that forbidden?”

  “I consider your father more of a friend than a patient,” Dr. Maschke replied. “But far be it from me to impose my insights on you.” It wasn’t so far after all, though, because he pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose and continued undeterred. “He’s always traveling because he’s searching for his own father.”

  “Hunh?” Marlies said. “But he’s dead.”

  “Which is very practical,” Dr. Maschke said. “That way he can be searched for everywhere.”

  He looked at us the way Martin used to look at me when he was waiting for applause after pretending to be a world champion weight lifter.

  Behind the postcard rack on the other side of the street, the smoking stopped and the optician’s foot appeared, crushing a cigarette butt.

  “I really have to go,” I said. “Would you like a ride, Marlies?”

  “That’ll be the day,” she said. She shouldered her package and walked off.

  “Could you give me your Buddhist’s address?” Dr. Maschke asked.

  “That’ll be the day,” I said, and ran across the street with my letter and fell into the optician’s arms.

  * * *

  Late in the evening Selma, Elsbeth, the optician, and I sat on the front stoop. We had spread the blanket from Selma’s sofa on the steps. The optician had read that there would be an especially high number of falling stars tonight.

  Selma, the optician, and Elsbeth had put on their glasses and bent their heads together over Frederik’s letter for a long time, as if it were difficult to decipher.

  “I don’t want to affirm anything of the sort,” I said. “That’s just stupid. And I can’t transform it, either. What on earth is he thinking?”

  The optician stood up and grabbed one of his books on Buddhism from the kitchen; he hoped to find guidance in it for situations where affirmation is withheld.

  He put on his glasses, leafed through the book, then read aloud: “In life, one thing is important: establishing intimacy with the world.”

  “Intimacy with the world,” he repeated, “isn’t that beautiful?” He underlined the sentence again, even though it was already underlined.

  Elsbeth stuck a Mon Chéri in her mouth.

  “We could try tricking him into love,” she said, because she figured that since love can’t be transformed, then we’d have to transform Frederik. “There are a lot of ways to do it. For example, fingernail scraps stirred into his glass of wine will make whoever drinks it absolutely mad with love. You get the same effect by secretly mixing a rooster’s tongue into his food. Or by hanging a chain of owl bones around his neck.” Elsbeth pondered. “It might work with canary bones, too. I think Piepsi would understand.”

  Elsbeth’s canary, Piepsi, had died that morning.

  “Or”—Elsbeth took another Mon Chéri—“you could give Frederik a piece of bread you’ve found. Then he’ll lose his memory. He’ll forget that he doesn’t want to confuse everything.”

  I imagined tricking Frederik into love the way we tricked Alaska by hiding his medicine in a ball of liverwurst.

  “You could carry some verbena dug up with a silver spoon,” Elsbeth suddenly remembered, “then everyone will love you—including a specific person.”

  She looked at the many crinkled, dusky pink wrappers on her lap.

  “The problem, of course, is that he needs to be here for all these to work. But we can manage that, too. If you put three brooms in the oven, you’ll have visitors. That is: specific visitors, too.”

  “A shooting star,” Selma said, and we looked up.

  “All that about shooting stars is nonsense, by the way,” Elsbeth said. “They’re no help at all.”

  “I think there’s only one thing to do,” Selma said. “Whether or not you’re willing to affirm it, you’ll still have to tell him goodbye.”

  The optician cleared his throat. “Frankly, I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this matter,” he murmured.

  “And we all love him,” Elsbeth added.

  “True, but nevertheless,” Selma said.

  “Did you know,” the optician asked, looking at his book, “that we’re all just ephemeral protrusions in time?”

  “What does that have to do with this?” Elsbeth asked, putting all the wrappers in an empty flowerpot.

  Then no one said anything. We sat in silence, looking up at the sky, in which five more useless shooting stars fell toward us.

  Only Elsbeth was not looking up. She looked at me and saw that tears were filling my eyes again because of the stupid affirmation, because of the unimaginable transformation.

  We can do all sorts of things with love. We can hide it more or less well, we can drag it behind us, we can lift it over our heads, we can bury it in the ground and send it up to heaven. And love always cooperates, forbearing and amenable as it is. But we cannot change it.

  Elsbeth gently swept a lock of hair from my forehead. She put her arm around my shoulder and softly said, “If you eat a bat’s heart, you’ll no longer feel pain.”

  Then she stood up.

  “I have to go. I’ve got to leave for town very early.”

  Plump & Chic’s clearance sale was starting the next day.

  “See you tomorrow,” we said as Elsbeth, an ephemeral protrusion in time wearing worn-down pumps, turned and left.

  “Maybe I can find a rooster tongue,” we heard her murmur.

  Selma stroked my back. “You should probably cut and run, Luisa.”

  Selma and the optician looked at each other over my head. They were well versed in the unchangeable nature of love.

  NO NEW INFORMATION

  All night I found it impossible to give my affirmation and I wondered how one cuts and runs. The next morning, in the bookstore, I was still wondering how exactly you cut and run even as I alphabetized the special-order books by customer name. Mr. Rödder tapped me on the shoulder. “Since when does F come before A?” he asked. Then the front door was thrown open and the optician rushed in.

  “Elsbeth ha
s had an accident,” he said.

  Time stopped for a moment after he said this, and then it began racing. It raced alongside us as Selma, the optician, and I drove to the county hospital. Then it braked and passed infinitely slowly as we sat in the hospital corridor and waited with beige-colored coffee cups not one of us could hold straight.

  Doctors came and went constantly. Their footsteps on the linoleum sounded like a child’s hiccups. Again and again the three of us jumped up, and each time we were told there was no new information.

  “Incidentally, I didn’t dream of anything at all last night,” Selma said, answering the question the optician and I had been avoiding for hours. I thought, It can’t be all that serious, and tried to believe it. This wasn’t easy, because Elsbeth had been hit by a bus, the county seat’s public bus. How could it not be all that serious?

  * * *

  The frantic bus driver had said that Elsbeth appeared out of nowhere, right in front of the bus, which was going at full speed. Bystanders said she’d just walked into the street without looking to her left or right, completely focused on a piece of paper she was holding. One of the bystanders had picked up the piece of paper, which had fluttered onto the asphalt far from Elsbeth. It was a list, written in Elsbeth’s shaky handwriting.

  Wine

  Ask Häubels re rooster tongue

  Boil Piepsi’s bones

  Verbena

  Bat heart

  Brooms

  * * *

  When night fell and there was still no new information, the optician stood up.

  “I’m going to call Palm,” he said abruptly and decisively, as if he had just realized that Palm was a celebrated doctor.

  Selma gave him a questioning look.