by Peter Stamm
He got his things together. On his desk was a little potted plant, a yellow primrose that one of his girls had given him as a good-bye present. The pot was wrapped in tinfoil. Andreas hesitated for a moment, thought about taking the plant home with him. Then he left it. He imagined it slowly withering and dying in neglect. In the fall, other children would be sitting here, shyly eyeing the new teacher.
He stowed books and papers away in desk drawers and in his case. Then he took down the posters on the walls, the collages and placards that the kids had made over the course of the year. Germany’s Constitutional System, German Cuisine, The Life of J. S. Bach. He rolled them all together, and rammed them into the wastebasket.
He walked through the empty school. He looked down at the yard through one of the tall windows. One of his pupils was sitting on a bench and kept looking anxiously toward the door. It was the boy who had been involved in the fights. Andreas wondered what he was waiting for, why he didn’t go home. The boy didn’t budge from where he was.
In the staff room there were still the white plastic cups for the end-of-term drinks that had been given out during the lunch break. Andreas tidied them away, along with the dirty napkins and the half-eaten rolls. He poured himself the remains of the white wine and took a sip. The wine was lukewarm and tasted sour. There was a knock, and Delphine stuck her head around the door.
“No one’s here?” she asked.
“Aren’t I anyone?”
“I wanted to say good-bye,” said Delphine. “It’s my last day today.”
“Come on in,” said Andreas. He found her a cup and poured her some of the wine. Delphine took a sip and shuddered.
“Disgusting,” she said. But she went on drinking it just the same. When she started helping Andreas clear the table, he stopped and said the janitor would take care of it.
“Aren’t you going home?” she asked.
“In a minute,” said Andreas. He said he felt a little envious of her.
“Why?”
“Because you’ve finished here. Because you’re about to walk out, and you’ll never come here again.”
“I’m sure I will. I’m going to visit my class. I promised them.”
“Don’t kid yourself.”
Delphine did not speak. Presumably she knew that Andreas was right. She would go to work at a different school, teach different classes, go out with different colleagues, and wrangle with different parents.
“There’s no point,” said Andreas. “You can’t go back.”
Each time a class graduated, a couple of the pupils promised they would come back and sit in on his new class. Once, someone really had, one of his favorite pupils. He had sat right at the back on an empty chair, and had listened in for half an hour. Then he had disappeared during the break, without saying good-bye.
“I think he was just as embarrassed as I was. I felt like a con artist. The same stories, the same jokes. Only a different audience.”
From his perspective her situation might indeed be enviable, said Delphine. But she would have to get used to a new place, and that wasn’t easy. She had settled here, and wouldn’t have minded staying.
“Do you know where you’re going to go?”
“To Versailles,” said Delphine. “Assuming I pass the exam. I would have preferred to go back to the South, where I come from. But for that I would have needed two hundred and seventy points. The only way I could get that many was if I were married and had a couple of kids.”
Andreas asked where she lived. She said she lived in a chambre de bonne nearby. Before that, she’d lived in Arles, with her parents.
“My father’s a policeman. I grew up in police barracks. We moved every other year.”
She wanted to go back South or to the Atlantic coast. Somewhere near the sea. She loved the sea. With a name like yours, that’s a surprise, said Andreas dryly. From Arles it wasn’t such a long way to the sea, said Delphine. And in the summer vacation, she had always gone to the Atlantic coast with her parents. There was a police campsite near Bordeaux. It was paradise.
By the time they left the school, the boy whom Andreas had watched out of the window was no longer there.
“I’ve got to go this way,” said Delphine, and she pointed down the street. Andreas said he’d walk her some of the way, if she didn’t mind. He didn’t feel like going home.
They walked along slowly side by side. Delphine talked about her class, and her qualifying exams, which she’d found difficult. Andreas asked her whether she was going to the Atlantic this summer.
“End of July,” she said, “after I’ve found myself somewhere to live in Versailles.”
They stopped in a bistro for a drink. First they stood at the bar, then they sat down in one of the little booths. Their legs touched, perhaps by chance. Andreas looked at Delphine. She was pale and her complexion was poor, but she had pretty features. Her dark hair was cut short and kept simple. She wasn’t very slim, but she looked fit.
They stopped talking. Delphine looked Andreas in the eye, smiled, and lowered her gaze. She said she lived just around the corner. Her room was tiny. Andreas said the room he’d lived in for the whole of his first year in Paris hadn’t been much bigger than the bed in it.
“It was in one of those cheap hotels by the station. They have wonderful names and terrible rooms. Mine was called Hotel de la Nouvelle France. I happened to walk past it the other day. The hotel doesn’t exist anymore. The building was gutted. The sign bearing the name is still there, but only the facade is left.”
He hadn’t passed that way by chance. It was in a fit of nostalgia that he had gone to the neighborhood, without really knowing what he was looking for. The streets hadn’t changed much to look at, but apart from the bakery and the Metro, there was no shop and no restaurant that he could recall. Over the door of his local pub there was still the sign, Le Cordial, but in the window there was a dusty scrap of cardboard that said Fermé, which was more accurate. In that first year, when Andreas came back from his nocturnal wanderings, the curtains of the bar would be drawn, and just a thin strip of light would indicate there was still anyone inside. He knocked on the glass door, and the owner pulled the curtain aside, and after looking at him suspiciously, he would unlock the door and admit Andreas. Back then, almost every night had come to an end in the Cordial, with crazy conversations that got ever stickier until they finally completely dried. In the morning, when Andreas took the train to work, he still felt the alcohol from the night before, and he had to make an effort not to fall asleep and miss his stop. The little room was filthy beyond description. The shelf that had once had bottles on it was empty. Tables and chairs were piled into one corner. Behind that was a photo screen that Andreas suddenly remembered one day. It was a yellowed mountain landscape, a small lake surrounded by trees, against a backdrop of snow-topped mountains. The picture must date from some previous owner. The host and most of the clientele were Algerians. Andreas wondered where Paco had got to, and his lovely wife, who had bossed her husband about like a kid.
“The hotel was wretched,” said Andreas, “but I was still young. There was one shower and one toilet for twenty guests. In summer, if it was hot, you had to queue up for a shower. You had to buy coupons for warm water. If we had no money, we made do with cold showers.”
“I couldn’t stand that,” said Delphine. “I need my own bath.”
She said she would stay here until she had found a place in Versailles. But she did want to leave before the vacation.
They paid and left the bistro. Delphine went on, without either of them having said anything. Andreas loved such moments, when basically everything had been decided, but nothing had been said or done. He followed Delphine. Before, they had walked side by side, now she was in the lead, and he so close behind her that he almost touched her. She was wearing cheap clothes, jeans, a white T-shirt, and a jacket with rhinestones. Andreas had a sense that she was walking differently from before, more confidently, as though she knew what he had in
mind. They didn’t speak, not even when Delphine stopped in front of a building and entered a code on an electronic pad beside the door. She held it open for him, and he followed her through a courtyard and up a flight of stairs. On the fourth floor he came to a stop. He was out of breath, and coughing.
“You smoke too much,” said Delphine, who was already on the next landing.
When he got to the top floor, she had disappeared. A door stood open.
The room was furnished rather basically; you could tell it had been assembled by someone who wasn’t planning to use it himself. There were hardly any books on the shelf, and apart from an almost bald basil plant on the table, there were no plants. On the bed there was a sleeping bag on a bare mattress. Next to it on the floor was a huge blue IKEA plastic bag full of dirty laundry. Delphine said she would have to do her laundry tonight. Andreas went up to the little window and looked out.
“A pretty view.”
“I only come here to sleep.”
He turned around toward her. She had sat down on the bed and was looking at him inquiringly. He knew what she expected of him. They would kiss, make love on the stained mattress, then he would accompany her to the launderette before taking her out to dinner. Afterward they might make love a second time, while he kept an eye on his watch to be sure he didn’t miss the last train. He would get dressed, and she would see him to the door, and he would turn to look at her once more on the stairs, to leave a good impression. And that would be the last either of them would ever hear of the other.
Delphine had got up and joined him in front of the window. Their shoulders brushed, and he smelled her perfume, a fresh, lemony scent. Summer, sun, and flowering meadows, he thought—it made him laugh.
“What’s so funny?” asked Delphine irritably.
“I just remembered something,” said Andreas, “a story I was reading. A love story.”
He asked her what scent she used. She asked him whether he liked it. Yes, he said, he did. He started to laugh again. The whole situation seemed so hackneyed.
“What’s the big joke?”
“You certainly confused Jean-Marc.”
Delphine didn’t say anything for a moment, then she asked what Jean-Marc had said.
“That you had slept with him. And that you didn’t want anything to do with him.”
“What a moron.”
Andreas laid his hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off.
“Don’t worry,” he said.
“I’m not worried.”
Andreas sat down on the bed. Delphine sat down next to him. The tension was gone.
“Well?” she asked.
“He really is a moron. My best friend, the moron.”
Andreas laughed, and then he started coughing. Delphine said it didn’t sound good. He thanked her. Delphine said he was a strange person, and that got Andreas laughing and coughing again.
“Don’t worry,” he said, once he had recovered himself a little. “I won’t say anything to him.”
“Say what?” asked Delphine. She said Jean-Marc had been a mistake. It had been one of those evenings where you would go along with anyone at all, purely not to be alone. Did he have those, ever? She couldn’t know that Jean-Marc was going to fall in love with her.
“He didn’t fall in love with you,” said Andreas. “It’s just his vanity. If you’d followed him, called him on the phone, pestered him, he would have dropped you soon enough.”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“I don’t mean it like that. I know Jean-Marc. I bet he showed you photographs of his children.”
“I could have murdered him,” said Delphine, laughing.
They lay side by side on the mattress, and looked silently up at the ceiling. It had begun to get dark outside. Andreas felt very calm. At last, Delphine sat up. She turned and looked at Andreas.
“The launderette shuts in two hours.”
“Is this one of those evenings you would go to bed with absolutely anyone?” he asked.
“No,” said Delphine, and she started to undo Andreas’s shirt. Her face looked quite impassive. She took off his shirt and pants, and then his shorts. Then she disappeared into the bathroom, and came back with a condom, which she carefully opened and put on him. With a few movements, she stripped off her clothes and left them bundled up on the floor. For a moment, she stood naked beside the bed, with her hands hanging down. Andreas was amazed by her pallor. He took her hand, and pulled her down on top of him.
He had meant to go to Brittany to visit Jean-Marc, who came from there, and went back every summer with his wife and kids for a few weeks. He telephoned him, and said he had to put off his visit by a few days. He gave no reason. Nor did he say anything about the biopsy to Sylvia or Nadia. He could imagine their reactions. Nadia would feel sorry for herself, first and foremost. She would be furious with him, the way people are furious with a glass when they break the glass. And Sylvie would straightaway set herself to solving the problem. She was bound to have a friend who was a lung specialist, and who would agree to examine Andreas, and treat him. He left them both thinking he was off on holiday. The only person whom Andreas told was Delphine. He was surprised himself that he talked to her, but maybe it was because she had no great role in his life, that he didn’t know her better than someone you meet on a trip abroad, and then soon lose track of. Even the fact that they had slept together didn’t seem to have brought them together. She asked him what he liked, and told him what she liked, and told him when he was too fast or too rough. When it was over, he really did go to the launderette with her, and while they sat in front of the machines waiting, he told Delphine about the biopsy. Once again, she was cool and objective. She didn’t try to comfort him, or to play down the whole thing. She listened to him carefully, and asked him what time he was due at the hospital and how long it would take. Then she said she would drive him there. He said he could perfectly well walk, it was only fifteen minutes, but Delphine insisted on driving him.
Five days later, she rang the bell punctually. She had left her car in the middle of the road, and when Andreas came out of the house, she was arguing with a truck driver who couldn’t get past. In the middle of a sentence, she broke off, got in the car, leaned over to the passenger seat to let Andreas in. She gestured at the truck driver, and drove off.
The hospital was right behind the Gare du Nord. Andreas walked right past it every day on his way to work, and had never noticed it was there. Delphine drew up outside the main entrance, and kissed him on the mouth.
“Good luck,” she said. She said she wouldn’t be far away. He was to call her when he was finished.
“I’ve no idea how long it’ll be,” said Andreas.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got something to read.”
The operation itself didn’t take long, but afterward Andreas had to go and lie down for a couple of hours, even though he’d only been given a local anesthetic. When they told him he could go, he called Delphine. She said she’d be there in fifteen minutes. He was to wait for her at the entrance. He went out into the big hospital forecourt, ringed by three-story buildings of light-colored sandstone. The complex put him in mind of a barracks or prison. In the middle of the yard was a piece of lawn surrounded by a low hedge, at the far end of it was a tower with a clock. It was half past four. The yard was deserted, except for the occasional doctor or nurse crossing it with quick steps. It was astonishingly quiet, with no sense of the bustling city beyond.
Andreas tried to imagine what it would be like to have to spend weeks or months here, to have a bed behind one of the windows, and lie there weakened after an operation or a course of therapy. He would barely be able to take the few steps to the window, or out into the corridor. He was too weak to wish to be anywhere other than in bed, back in the semi-stupor in which he spent his nights and days. Then, in the middle of the night once, he found himself wide awake. He listened. It was raining outside, and the noise of the rain mingled with the sounds of his neighbo
r breathing. He got up and left the ward. He walked through darkened corridors and down wide staircases to the exit. He snuck past the porter, walked through the city, barefoot and in pajamas. Catch cold, he was thinking, catch my death of cold. Those strange sentences. A patrol car followed him for a while, but he slipped away through a pedestrian street.
Andreas emerged onto the street. A couple of tourists were hurriedly lugging big plastic suitcases across the road to the station. For a moment he thought of catching the next train, never mind where to, anywhere they wouldn’t be able to find him. He failed to spot Delphine, who was parked only a few yards away. She had to wind down the window and call his name. Delphine moved freely about the apartment, as if she had been there many times before. She made tea for Andreas. She found everything right away, the teabags, the teapot, the matches to light the gas.
Andreas, wearing pajamas, was lying down on the sofa. He felt freezing, though it wasn’t cold. Delphine brought him a blanket from the bedroom, and sat down in a chair opposite him. He smiled, and she furrowed her brow.
“What are you, my lover or my nurse?”
“I’m used to it,” she said. “My mother was often sick.”
Andreas was surprised his situation didn’t feel more awkward to him. When he’d been ill before, he would crawl into a corner, and refuse any offers of help or visits. Now, though, he was glad Delphine was with him, looking after him and talking to him.
“Was it very bad?”
“It didn’t hurt, and it doesn’t hurt now. But the idea of them cutting you open and shoving something inside you, that’s terrible.”
He said he didn’t want to talk about it now. He wanted to rest. Delphine asked him whether he would like her to read aloud to him. She went over to the bookshelf, and browsed through the titles.
“Jack London,” she said, “wasn’t he that gold miner? What are you in the mood for? Understanding Germany? Switzerland from the Air, The Judge and His Hangman? A Short Grammar of the German Language, Bertolt Brecht?”