by Peter Stamm
“We’re only going to a park,” I said, “not the Rockies.”
“It’s not a park, it’s a forest,” said Agnes. “I thought we would go hiking.”
“That’s OK,” I said, and when Agnes looked doubtfully at my town shoes: “I can walk in these for hours.”
There were lots of lakes and canals in the park, and we kept stopping and sitting down to talk by the side of them. I told Agnes she looked different somehow, and she said she’d trimmed her bangs. Then I had to hold on to her while she peered over the edge of the little lake and studied her reflection in the water.
“Is it so awful?” she asked.
“I don’t think it was just that.”
We had brought a blanket and sandwiches with us, and in the late afternoon, we lay down in a sunny clearing. We had something to eat, then Agnes fell asleep, but I didn’t feel tired and sat up to smoke a cigarette. The low sun cut through the trees and cast little splashes of light on her as she slept. I looked at her, and didn’t recognize her. Her face was like an unfamiliar landscape. The eyes were like a couple of mounds in the flat craters of their sockets; the nose was a delicate ridge that gradually climbed and widened to a peak, where it collapsed toward the mouth. I noticed for the first time the soft hollows on either side of her eyes, and the roundness of her cheeks and chin. Her whole face looked strange and unfamiliar, and yet I felt I was seeing it more truly and directly than I’d ever seen it before. Though I didn’t touch Agnes, I had the frightening and yet still intoxicatingly beautiful feeling that I was all around her like a second skin, and could feel her whole body pressed directly against mine.
I stayed perfectly still. The last of the sun’s rays had gone from the clearing, and it was getting chilly. Agnes’s mouth twitched, and her brow creased for a brief moment. Then she awoke. I lay down next to her and held her tightly to me.
“What is it?” she asked, and looked into my eyes with astonishment.
I didn’t look back at her, but I kept holding her, squeezing her even more tightly, kissing her face and throat. She smiled.
“I had a weird feeling of being terribly close to you just now,” I said to her.
“And are you still?” she asked.
I didn’t reply, and Agnes didn’t say anything either, and just held me as though she was afraid I would withdraw from her again. Later on, I told her I loved her, but that didn’t feel like enough, and because I didn’t know how else I might express whatever I was feeling, I didn’t say anything else, and neither of us said much that evening.
12
My love for Agnes had changed, and was different now from anything I’d experienced before. I felt an almost physical dependency on her; when she wasn’t there I had a dismaying sensation of not being complete. Whereas in my previous relationships I’d always insisted on having a lot of time for myself, it wasn’t possible for me to see enough of Agnes. Ever since our hike in the park, I thought about her all the time, and only really calmed down when she was with me, and when I could look at her and touch her. Then, when she was with me, I felt intoxicated, and everything around me, like the air and the light, seemed painfully clear and close, and time itself got to seem concrete and actual as it passed. For the first time in my life, I had the sensation that something outside me, something strange and incomprehensible, was entering me.
I began observing Agnes, and I saw how little I actually knew her. I noticed the private rituals she celebrated, apparently unaware of them. When we went out to restaurants, and the waiter or waitress had set the table, Agnes always adjusted her cutlery. When her food was brought in, she lifted the plate on her two index fingers and balanced it in the air for a moment, as though looking for its center of gravity, and then put it down again.
She never touched strangers, and avoided being touched by them. However, she couldn’t stop touching objects. She would brush against furniture and buildings with her hands when walking past them. Smaller things she would practically grope, as though she couldn’t see them. Sometimes she would sniff them too, but when I drew her attention to that, she would claim not to realize.
When she was reading, she would be so immersed in her text that she wouldn’t reply if I spoke to her. Echoes of what she was reading, intimations of feelings, would chase across her face. She would smile, she would press her lips together. On occasions, she would sigh, or frown with annoyance.
Agnes seemed to be aware that I was observing her, but she didn’t say anything. I think she enjoyed it. Sometimes she would respond to my amazed expression with a smile, but never with vanity.
A few days after our excursion to the lake, the story moved into the future. Now Agnes was my creation. I felt the new freedom lend wings to my imagination. I planned her future for her, the way a father would plan his daughter’s. She would write a dazzling doctoral thesis, and be a star in the university. We would be happy together. I could see that eventually Agnes would come to life in my story, and go her own ways, and that no plan of mine could prevent that. I knew such a moment would come, if the story was any good, and I was both pleased and apprehensive at the prospect.
We didn’t see each other for a few days, but I’d thought about Agnes the whole time, and gone on with the story. When my publisher called me to ask how I was getting on with the book, I tried to set him at ease, and said I’d had difficulties getting hold of certain documents. He said he’d scheduled the book for next autumn, and I promised to deliver the manuscript by Christmas. I put the phone down, rang Agnes, and asked her over.
“You’ll be wearing your navy-blue dress,” I said.
“What do you mean?” she asked in amazement.
“I’ve overtaken the present,” I said. “I know the future.”
She laughed.
13
When Agnes came over the next day, she was duly wearing her short navy dress. It was cold and rainy, but she said: “Orders are orders,” and when I apologized she merely laughed.
“We went into the living room, and Agnes threw her arms around me, and kissed me for a long time, as though afraid of losing me,” I quoted. And Agnes embraced me just as I had described, only she was laughing as she did, and wasn’t afraid. I freed myself and went into the kitchen to finish making supper.
“Can I help?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Agnes sat in the living room, listening to my CDs, while I cooked supper.” I had bought a bottle of champagne, though neither of us particularly liked it.
“What are we celebrating?” asked Agnes.
“It was a very special day for us. I had decided … But first let’s eat.”
“That’s mean,” she said, “first you make me all curious, and then you say …”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “we can talk about whatever it is afterward.”
We talked about other things, but I could see that Agnes was in suspense. She ate faster than she usually did, and when we were finished, we didn’t clear the table and just left our dirty plates where they were. I moved over to the sofa, and took a piece of paper from my pocket.
“Come here,” I said, but Agnes sat down on a chair by the window.
“First of all I want to know what I have to do,” she said. “I don’t want to make any mistakes.”
I couldn’t see her face from where I was sitting. Her voice sounded a little distant.
“Go on,” she said, “read!”
“We sat together on the sofa,” I read, and stopped for a moment. But Agnes didn’t move, and so I continued: “Agnes was leaning back against me. I kissed her neck. I had thought about this moment for a long time, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I forgot the little speech I had prepared. So I just said: ‘Will you come and live with me?’ ” I stopped, waited, and looked at Agnes. She didn’t say anything.
“Well?” I asked.
“What does she reply?” she asked.
I read on: “Agnes sat up, and scrutinized me. ‘Do you mean that?’ she finally asked. ‘Of course,’ I
replied. I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time, but I thought … you’re so independent …”
Agnes got up and walked over to the sofa. She sat down beside me and said: “Are you sure it’ll work out?”
“Yes, I am,” I replied. “When we were by the lake, I felt we were so close, and since that time, I’ve often felt lonely when I’m here by myself. Couldn’t you live with me? I mean … we’d have more space here than in your apartment.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Is that all right? Are you happy?” She laughed and said: “Now let’s see how the story unfolds.” She took the piece of paper out of my hand, read it, and then she said indignantly: “Grateful? Why should I be grateful to you?”
She jabbed me in the ribs.
“I was only kidding,” I said, “I’ve changed it since.”
“Ah, this part’s better,” she said. “We drank champagne. Then we made love, and at midnight we went out on the roof to look at the stars.”
It was raining that night, so we couldn’t see any stars. Agnes caught a chill from going up on the roof in her short dress. But at the end of September, she moved in with me. The lease on her own apartment ran till next spring, and so she left most of her things there, and just brought a couple of suitcases full of her clothes, her cello, and a few personal items with her.
14
Every morning, Agnes took the El to the university. I only got up once she was gone, went to my regular café to read the paper, and was back in the apartment shortly before noon. Agnes had lunch at the university. In the afternoons I wrote, or did research in the library.
It was a peaceful life, our days were all much the same, and we were happy. We had quickly gotten used to each other. I did the bulk of the housework, cooked the meals, and did Agnes’s laundry. Writing took a back seat for a while. I was still collecting material for my train book, without much enthusiasm. When my editor called me again, I asked him to put off the delivery date. First of all he complained and said I was wrecking his entire autumn schedule. But I said I hadn’t had a proper vacation for years, and I needed a break so that the book would be really good. Finally he consented, and then he even said it was probably for the best, as books about trains sold better in the spring than they did in the autumn anyway.
I was also barely working on Agnes’s story anymore. Sometimes we played the game we’d played that evening. Then I would type up a few sentences on the computer, and tell Agnes what she had to do and play my own part. We wore whatever clothes the story said we wore, and, like my characters, we would go out to the zoo or to a museum. But neither of us was much good as an actor and our rather uneventful life didn’t lend itself really to being written about.
“Something needs to happen, to make the story a bit more interesting,” I told Agnes one day.
“Aren’t you happy as we are?”
“Sure I am,” I said, “but happiness doesn’t make for interesting stories. Someone once said that happiness writes white. It’s fleeting and transparent, like smoke or fog. Do you know any painter who could paint smoke?”
We went to the Art Institute of Chicago, to see if we could find a painting of smoke or fog, or a painting of happy people. We stood for a long time in front of Seurat’s Un Dimanche d’été à l’île de la Grande Jatte. Seurat hadn’t painted happy people, but his picture radiated a kind of tranquillity that was the nearest approximation to what we were looking for. It’s a picture of a riverbank on a Sunday afternoon. Some people are promenading, and others just sitting and relaxing on a meadow, among shady trees.
As we approached the picture, it crumbled before our eyes into a sea of tiny dots. The edges of the shapes melted away, and they flowed into one another. The colors in the painting weren’t mixed, but assembled as they might have been on a tapestry. There was no black and no white. Every area contained all the colors, and it was only from a distance that it had any definition. “That’s you,” I said, pointing to a girl in the center of the painting, who was sitting on the grass, holding a bunch of flowers in her hands. She was sitting very upright, but she had lowered her head to look more closely at the flowers. She had a hat and parasol beside her, which she didn’t need, as she was sitting in the shade.
“No, that’s not me,” said Agnes, “I’m the girl in the white dress. And you’re the monkey.”
“No, I’m the man with the trumpet,” I said, “but no one can hear me.”
“Everyone can hear you,” said Agnes. “You can’t shut your ears.”
We went to a place that claimed to serve the best cheesecake in the whole of Chicago, but Agnes wasn’t convinced, and said she would make a better one, with raisins in it.
“You paint happiness with dots,” she said, “and unhappiness with stripes. If you want to describe our happiness, you’ll have to do it with lots and lots of little dots, like Seurat. And you’ll only be able to tell it’s happiness if you step away from it.”
15
The second Monday in October was Columbus Day, and we took advantage of the holiday to leave the city. I had suggested driving to New York, but Agnes said she wanted to go hiking, but a proper hike this time. That was fine by me, and as the forecast was also fine, we decided to take my little tent and go camping. On the map, we found a national park not very far from Chicago. We rented a car, and early on Friday morning, we drove south out of the city.
Agnes had borrowed a video camera from her professor, and while I was driving, she was pointing it out of the window, and filming God knows what. Outside Indianapolis, the traffic got heavier. Agnes was driving now, and I wanted to film her at the wheel.
“Don’t,” she said, “you’ll only break it. My professor would murder me. It’s his favorite toy.”
“I won’t break it,” I said, “and how else am I going to get a shot of you.”
“You write, and I’ll film,” said Agnes.
We were too early for the Indian summer, said the ranger at the entrance to the national park, and he suggested we have our hike in an area that had reverted to wilderness in the course of the last fifty years. At the beginning of the century, he said, people had still been farming there, but in the thirties, during the Depression, they had all upped sticks and emigrated, and the state had bought up the area, and turned it into a wilderness.
“How do you do that?” asked Agnes.
“Just by letting it go,” said the ranger. “Within a few years, Nature reclaimed everything. Civilization is only a thin veneer, and unless you look after it and keep it up, it cracks.”
Agnes filmed the ranger’s little cabin, and the ranger showing me where to go on the map. He waved the camera away and laughed, and Agnes laughed as well. Then he said we should take care, and handed us a leaflet about poisonous plants and wild animals. People tended to underestimate the dangers, he said, and Nature didn’t fool around.
“Why did you film the park ranger and not me,” I asked, as we drove into the park along a narrow forest road.
“He’s a witness,” said Agnes.
After a few miles, we reached a parking lot, where we stopped. It was almost noon when we started on our hike. We walked for hours through wooded terrain. Sometimes we thought we were on paths, but they gave up on us all of a sudden, and we were back to following compass directions through the forest.
“We ought to break off twigs,” said Agnes, “so we find our way back.”
“We’re not going back,” I said, “not the same way.”
From time to time, we passed ruined farmsteads, places where the trees seemed younger and not so close together. It was beginning to get dark as we came over the crest of a hill, and saw the lake in front of us where we planned to make camp. It took us almost another hour before we finally reached its shores.
The sun had gone down, and it was getting chilly. The soil by the edge of the lake was sandy, and that’s where we pitched our tent. Then we gathered firewood that was lying all around. Within a few minutes, we’d collected a great pile of it.
“I’ll light the fire,” said Agnes. “My father taught me how.”
She made a little pyramid out of branches, pushed a handful of kindling into it, and said: “One match.”
And she did it, she lit the fire with just one match. I heated soup on my little gas stove. We sat down on one of the mats, and ate and looked out over the lake, which was calm and dark. Occasionally, we heard a fish jumping, and once a plane flew by, far away.
Even though we were sitting right by the fire, Agnes was shivering. She was getting her sleeping bag, she said, and walked over to the tent. As soon as she had left the circle of firelight, she was gone from sight. I heard a sudden groan and a noise. I leapt up and found Agnes lying on the ground, only a few yards away. Now, facing away from the light, I could see her clearly enough. She was lying on the wet sand, with her legs strangely twisted. I lifted her up, almost falling over myself in the process, and carried her back to the mat. Even in the warm light of the fire, her face and her lips were chalk-white. I stuck my hand up her heavy woollen sweater and felt her heart going feebly. Her brow was clammy and cold. I sat down next to her, and kept calling her name, and stroking her head.
I was terrified. We had to be many hours from the nearest habitation, and I couldn’t possibly find my way to it through the forest, in the middle of the night. I got the water bottle, and dribbled a bit of water into Agnes’s half-open mouth. Then I thought it was idiotic giving water to someone who was unconscious, and I pulled her head up to me, and started to shake her. She felt heavy and floppy in my arms. Finally, I felt her beginning to resist the shaking, and slowly she came around.
“Was I unconscious?” she asked.
“I thought you … I thought something had happened to you,” I said.