by Peter Stamm
“Everything all right?” asked Jean-Marc, getting up. He put his arm around Andreas. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He got a glass out of the cupboard, filled it, and handed it to Andreas.
“Shall we sit outside?”
“It’s too cold,” said Marthe.
“Then put something on,” said Jean-Marc irritably. “I’m sure Andreas will want to smoke.”
Marthe walked to the door. As she passed Andreas, she briefly put her hand on his arm, and asked him how long he planned on staying. Andreas said he didn’t know. As long as they could stand to have him.
Marthe and Jean-Marc sat shoulder to shoulder in a rusty love seat. Andreas refilled their glasses. It was very quiet. There was only the croaking of frogs to be heard, and the occasional car that whined past.
“They drive like madmen here,” said Marthe. “Last year someone killed himself, just a couple of hundred yards away.”
“On purpose?”
Jean-Marc shook his head. “No, a drunk,” he said. “It was the middle of the night. He didn’t take the corner and went head-on into a tree. The tree was OK.”
“Jean-Marc’s little brother was here when it happened. Pascal, you’ve met him. He repaints cars.”
“He’s got his own business now,” said Jean-Marc, and pushed off with both feet. The love seat swung back and forth a few times, creaking. Marthe said she was glad Andreas was here. Jean-Marc was out all day with the kids, and she got bored all by herself in the house.
“They’re just like him. Nothing but sports. The idea that they might sit down and read a book …”
“That’s not true.”
“When was the last time you were at an art exhibition? Or the theater?”
Jean-Marc pretended to think about it.
“That was the time with that … what’s her name? The blond,” he said at last.
“A German artist,” said Marthe. “That was six months ago.”
“She paints naked men,” said Jean-Marc. “Of course Marthe thinks it’s wonderful. She pretends she’s interested in art. All she wants to see is cock.”
Marthe rolled her eyes and said, God knew, there had been enough naked women in the history of painting. Why not men for a change. Of course, there was a tremendous fuss over it. But there were just beautiful paintings. Anyway, the woman painted clothed men too. And landscapes. She asked if Andreas knew Robert Mapplethorpe. He nodded.
“You should have seen Jean-Marc at the exhibition,” said Marthe. “He was going crazy.”
“They’re not really that big,” said Jean-Marc. “If you use a wide-angle lens, the foreground always looks bigger. It’s a distortion.”
Marthe laughed maliciously. She said it was a pity she didn’t have a wide-angle lens at her disposal. There was obviously something going on between them. Andreas made some remark about Mapplethorpe’s flower photographs, and Jean-Marc started swinging again. They talked about one of their colleagues, a French teacher, who had got divorced recently.
“Andreas did the right thing,” said Jean-Marc. “He never married.”
“Are you with someone at the moment?”
“You can’t ask him that.”
“Delphine,” said Andreas. “Do you know her? She was a trainee at the school this past year.”
Marthe and Jean-Marc glanced at each other and said nothing. Andreas wondered whether Marthe knew anything about Jean-Marc’s infidelity with Delphine, and whether that was what they’d been quarreling about. In the end, Jean-Marc sat up straight. He looked furiously at Andreas.
“Obviously, she’s sleeping her way round the entire staff room,” he said.
Marthe laughed aloud, and rather artificially. Jean-Marc stood up and went inside. He walked slowly, as though he was very tired.
“More wine?” asked Andreas.
Marthe leaned forward and held out her glass. He poured. He sensed there was something she wanted to say, and he waited for her. She drank.
“Cold,” she said, and she laughed again. She said she and Jean-Marc had a kind of tacit agreement.
“What do you mean?”
“He can do whatever he likes. As long as I don’t get to hear about it. And as long as he doesn’t fall in love.”
“What about you?”
“Same with me, naturally.”
She said that of course the agreement had failed. Jean-Marc had fallen in love with Delphine. He had admitted it to her last night. They hadn’t slept all night, and talked about separating. The fact that Andreas was now going out with Delphine of course changed everything. She stopped to think.
“Or then again, maybe not,” she said.
They drank their wine in silence. After a time, Marthe said she sometimes dreamed of going to bed with another man.
“We’ve been married for fifteen years. We’re old hands. But sometimes you find yourself longing for another pair of eyes, a different hand on your neck.”
She spoke very softly. Andreas had sat down next to her on the swing. He put his arm around her. She drew up her knees, and leaned against him. She said again she was glad he was there. Andreas began to stroke Marthe’s hair. She didn’t seem to object, and he caressed her ear, her cheek, her neck. When he began to nuzzle her neck, she stood up, and looked at him with amusement.
“Come on, you’ve already taken Delphine away from him,” she said.
“I’m not thinking about Jean-Marc,” said Andreas. He didn’t like the way his voice sounded. He felt like a caricature of a seducer. He was a little shocked himself, that he was prepared to give up a male friendship that had lasted many years, in order to sleep with the man’s wife. But that was the way of it.
Marthe ran her hand through his hair as one might do to a little boy, and said she had enough trouble as it was. He got up and followed her into the house. Jean-Marc was sitting in the kitchen. He had his elbows on the table, and was staring into space. He looked like Andreas’s idea of a Breton farmer. Marthe and Andreas passed him in silence, and walked upstairs.
“Good night,” said Marthe, and kissed Andreas on the mouth.
He took her around the waist again, but she shook him off.
“No,” she said. “Maybe another time. When everything’s over.”
“You’ll get through it OK,” said Andreas.
“I don’t think so,” said Marthe.
When Andreas came down in the morning, Jean-Marc wasn’t up yet. The children were at the beach, Marthe said. Did he want coffee?
“He won’t be up for ages,” she said, and gestured at a couple of wine bottles by the bin. She poured Andreas’s coffee, and sat down at the table, facing him.
“About yesterday,” she said. She seemed to wait for him to say something. He didn’t.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” she finally said, and got up. “I’m not sure I want more than what my imagination can provide.”
“Don’t apologize,” said Andreas. “After all, it’s not as though anything happened.”
“I have an idea of a marriage,” Marthe said. “The way a marriage ought to be. This sort of thing doesn’t fit it. It might sound a bit stupid, but there’s something unaesthetic about it. I don’t want to play the part of the unfaithful wife. I can’t.”
Marthe stood in the window against the light. Andreas couldn’t make out her face very well. She said she had often deceived Jean-Marc in her imagination, and once, it had almost happened. It was when her younger son had started school.
“That’s years ago.”
She raised her hands and let them sink again. She had suddenly found herself with a lot of time, and not known what to do with it. She had gone into Paris and bought clothes and shoes and kitchenware that she didn’t need. She had seen all those young people, and she had suddenly had the feeling that life had passed her by.
“You know, the old story. Married young, and had children right away. Jean-Marc was my first proper relationship.”
A couple of times, Marthe
had gone to Enghien, one or two Metro stops from Deuil. She wandered around the little lake, had a drink in the casino restaurant, watched the people, and was happy when men turned around to look at her. There she had run into Philippe, the French teacher who had later died of a brain tumor. He told her he went to Enghien every week to play blackjack in the casino.
“I was fascinated. Everyone thought he was going to the library in Paris, to research some book or something, and all the time he was going to the casino. He didn’t look anything like a gambler.”
Philippe had taken Marthe along to the casino, and explained everything to her. The gambling didn’t interest her, but she was fascinated by the atmosphere.
Marthe sat down again, and took a sip from Andreas’s coffee.
“Have you ever been to a casino?” she asked. He shook his head.
“The people are completely single-minded. You get the feeling they don’t even see each other. If they walk into you, they don’t say excuse me. Once, there was an argument about some winnings. Two people both claimed the money as theirs. It wasn’t a big sum, but it was as though it was life and death.”
Philippe played for small sums. He said he gambled for fun, never winning much, never losing much either. When he was with Marthe, he bet more than he usually did, maybe to impress her. Once, he got lucky, in half an hour he won two thousand francs. They went to the bar and drank champagne.
“Then he suggested we go to a hotel room. I was shocked and ran away.”
Philippe started to write her letters. At first, she never answered. Eventually, she got so mad that she wrote to him to stop it. After that they wrote each other regularly. The letters became more and more intimate, they told each other everything about their relationships and their fantasies.
“I wrote him things I’ve never talked about. Not with anyone. That I had never even given a thought to. It happened while I was writing. We got each other going, stimulated each other.”
They met in Enghien a couple of times, but Philippe didn’t try to seduce Marthe again. They walked around the lake, not speaking, not touching. They looked at each other, one walked behind the other, or they moved apart and observed each other from a distance. Sometimes they went to the casino and played at the same table, pretending they didn’t know each other. Or they went into a bookshop, and followed each other among the shelves, or squeezed past each other, so that their bodies touched fleetingly. When Marthe went to catch her train, Philippe stood on the other platform. She waited for a signal from him, but he just stood there, looking at her. A few days later, he sent her a letter describing how he slept with her, long, obscene descriptions that were completely unerotic, and therefore excited her.
“It was weird. I didn’t know I could do that,” said Marthe, laughing. “It was like a game.”
Then Philippe’s wife stumbled upon Marthe’s letters. She sent copies to Jean-Marc, and there was a huge fuss, even though Marthe and Philippe had never slept together. Perhaps it would have been easier for Philippe’s wife to deal with if we had, said Marthe.
“If we had slept together. She could have laid into me, and the whole thing would have been dealt with. But she must have noticed that we shared something that she would never have.”
“Passion?”
Marthe shrugged her shoulders.
“A secret. What do I know.”
They had talked once more on the phone. Philippe had been in tears. He was suffering like a dog. Sometimes, later, she thought that was why he had gotten sick. Of course that was nonsense.
“Did you love him?” asked Andreas.
“I don’t know,” said Marthe, “all I know is that I was ready to leave all of this behind, Jean-Marc, the children, all of it. I don’t know if that’s love.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“He didn’t want to. He said he would never forgive himself for destroying my family. He never had any children himself. Do you know his wife?”
Andreas nodded. “Did you ever see him again?”
“From a distance. I didn’t go to the funeral.”
Andreas suddenly felt jealous of Philippe. He couldn’t explain it. He liked Marthe all right, but he wasn’t in love with her. Perhaps he didn’t envy Philippe because of Marthe exactly, so much as because of her love for him. He had always been careful not to be loved too much himself, with every step that a woman had taken toward him, he would take a step away. He hadn’t been able to take the turbulence, the dependency.
“I was never for marriage,” he said. “You can’t own another person.”
“This wasn’t about possession,” said Marthe. “It was more like an addiction, having to be near him.”
She said she never wanted to go through something like that again.
“Do you think that was Jean-Marc’s revenge? Sleeping with Delphine?”
Marthe shook her head. Those kind of things had happened before. She had noticed it, each time. Anyway, he wasn’t like that. He wasn’t that subtle. He had probably really fallen in love. Now he was going to have to go through what she had been through. She felt sorry for him, really.
“Are you not afraid he might leave you?” Marthe didn’t reply. She stood up and said she was going to the beach to check up on the kids. Did Andreas fancy coming with her?
The sun was shining, but there was a cool wind off the sea. The children ran squealing into the water, and were thrown back by the waves. Andreas and Marthe sat down on a big rock to watch them. Andreas felt like going for a swim, even though he was shivering in his clothes. He got up and went down to the water. Marthe followed him. They took their shoes off, and let the water wash over their toes.
“You’re very quiet,” said Marthe.
“I don’t know how the children can stand it,” said Andreas. “The water’s ice cold.”
He thought about telling Marthe about his illness, but then he didn’t. He mustn’t talk about it. Not to anyone. That was his only chance.
Marthe started talking about Philippe again. She said she thought about him every day. It might sound strange, but she felt closer to him now than when they had to break up.
“Now he doesn’t belong to anyone anymore. He’s free.”
“Who was it who said he always wished his lovers were dead?”
“What a terrible sentence,” said Marthe. “Great beach conversation.”
She called the children. They came out of the water, and ran over to pick up their things. They dried off, and put their clothes on.
When they were smaller, Andreas had sometimes looked after them. He had taken them to the cinema, and watched kids’ films with them and enjoyed himself almost as much as they had. He had bought them ice cream and gone to the park with them, where they had run around and played. They had laughed and screamed they were having so much fun. Then, from one moment to the next, they had clammed up and said they wanted to go home. It was as though they were suddenly afraid of him. On the way home, they almost hadn’t let him take them by the hand, and when they got home, they had flung themselves at Marthe and buried their heads in her skirts, and Marthe had apologized and said she didn’t know what had got into them. What’s the matter with you, she had asked, but the children had stood there sullenly and not said anything. Andreas hadn’t minded. Perhaps he understood them better than Marthe, or Jean-Marc, who told them to snap out of it.
The older the children got, the more they learned to mask their feelings, to conceal their love, and their dislike and their fear. Now they greeted Andreas amiably when they saw him. They weren’t afraid of him anymore, but they had lost their trustingness. They told him about school and tried out their little bit of German on him. How do you do? And Andreas corrected them: How are you? I’m fine. Yes, I’m fine.
Michel, the younger, asked Andreas if he had seen the ships in Brest. Marthe said the big harbor festival was happening again.
“Weren’t you here four years ago?”
Andreas nodded, and Michel talked enthusiasticall
y about the Sedov, a Russian training ship that they had visited a few days ago.
“It’s the biggest sailing ship in the world, a hundred and twenty meters long.”
“Michel wants to be a sailor now,” Marthe laughed.
“Yes, but only on a sailing ship,” said the boy.
“The ship comes from Murmansk. Do you know where that is? It’s way up in the north. And then it’s always at sea. There’s no mama there to look after you.”
When they returned to the house, they found Jean-Marc sitting at the kitchen table, reading the sports section of the paper. He had a headache, he said. Marthe said he had only himself to blame for that. The children disappeared upstairs. They must have felt the atmosphere was wrong. Marthe stood behind Jean-Marc, and laid her hands on his shoulders. He turned his head around and looked up at her with a doggish expression. The scene was pathetic and moving at the same time, a couple of drowning people clutching onto one another. Andreas said he would take the train at quarter to four. Marthe said why didn’t he stay a couple of days. He shook his head, and she said she would give him a ride to the station.
“I’ll do it,” said Jean-Marc.
The way back seemed to Andreas to take longer than the way there, even though Jean-Marc drove fast. The winding road followed the bay inland, and then crossed the river and doubled back along the coast. Jean-Marc didn’t speak for the entire drive, and Andreas closed his eyes, and dozed off. They got to Brest fully an hour before the train was due to leave.
“Do you want to stop for a drink?” Andreas asked, out of politeness.
They went to a café next to the station. Some of the tables were occupied by sailors in dark blue uniforms.
“They must be from the Sedov,” said Jean-Marc. “That’s a Russian training ship. They’re here for the big harbor celebrations.”
“Michel was talking about it,” said Andreas.
They stood at the bar, drinking coffee. Jean-Marc appeared to want to say something. It took him a couple of run-ups before he could ask his question.