Where Love Begins

by Judith Hermann

  Stella empties the commode, the washbowl, the mug with Esther’s stringy spit, she rinses the mug at the sink in the bathroom looking elsewhere, certainly not in the mirror. She vacuums, piles up the old newspapers; she’s brought along flowers, irises and roses, and she arranges them carefully in Esther’s glass vase; she listens to Esther’s monologues and thinks there is a kernel of truth in what Esther’s going on about. Esther is not well liked. Stella puts the books Esther has dropped behind the bed over the weekend back on the shelf. Volumes of poetry, short stories, dream interpretations. She wipes off the shelf and arranges the photos of Esther’s children and grandchildren again; it’s sad to see how many people Esther has lived with, and how alone she now is. Get down to business, Esther calls from the kitchen. Get a move on! She doesn’t specify what business, what move she’s referring to.

  Stella sits down at the table with Esther; cuts the toast into small pieces, says, Esther, be sensible. Let me get at your ear to measure your blood sugar. Esther turns and with the expression of an offended child that knows better, holds her left ear to Stella. Stella squeezes a drop of blood from the soft, delicate earlobe. Your sugar is too high, Esther; and then she watches as Esther confidently lifts her shirt and injects insulin into her swollen abdomen. She records Esther’s numbers in the record book; they sit together peacefully. Stella has the clear sense that Esther is glad she is there, even though she would never say so. In suspiciously good shape, the night nurse had written into the record book, conspicuously lively. Stella knows what that means; increased vitality is often followed by illness, a fall or an accident.

  Close that awful book, Esther says sternly. Leave now. There’s a fresh wind blowing here, I can feel it, and the two of us, you and I, we won’t be seeing much of each other any more. How is your child?

  She’s well, Stella says. She’s doing well. Last week she lost both of her front teeth at the same time; she looks like a little vampire.

  Aha. Esther smiles vaguely. She says, I think you’ll be leaving us, or am I mistaken. You’ll put a nice letter of resignation on Paloma’s desk, that’s what you’ll do. Am I wrong.

  No, Stella says. She says, I don’t know.

  Well, Esther says, this is a dead corner. A dead corner of the world. I don’t remember any more what brought me here, how in God’s name I ever came to be here.

  Stella ponders this as she gets on her bicycle outside Esther’s house. She could have said, Same here. I don’t remember either what brought me here, how I got here.

  In the dim summery light the gardens disappear, the ordinary streets suddenly look completely foreign to her; something is changing, has already changed.

  *

  Recently, Stella writes to Clara, I’ve been having the same dreams I had when I was a child. I dream about the doll’s house that stood in my nursery and a tiny little being, which I know is evil, flits through the night-time doll’s house. It hides in the doll’s house; it’s not to be found, but I know it’s there; it’s in my house. What does this mean? I’m writing you this letter sitting in the garden, it’s already almost dark; I can’t see what I put down on the paper, and I don’t have any words either, not a single little word for my longing for Jason, that feels so final, as if he were dead. But he isn’t dead. He’ll come back again tomorrow, and three beers and a bowl of plums are waiting for him in the refrigerator. Do you still remember how full of confidence we were ten years ago? Almost reckless. And yet it was all about nothing. What we wanted is what we have – a husband, child, a roof over our head, a self-contained life. It’s going to rain soon; you can feel it before it really starts to rain; it’s something electric, it’s in the air. Clara, Take care. As ever your –

  *

  Heat hangs over the city; at night the horizon doesn’t turn black any more, but glows ominously and threateningly orange from under a bank of clouds. Contrary to Paloma’s pronouncement no one dies, but the nursing shifts are arduous and exhausting. Stella accompanies Walter to the hospital. Walter’s catheter has to be exchanged; he has to have his bowel irrigated and then undergo a colonoscopy. He’ll have to stay in the hospital for one long, hot week, and Stella doesn’t know whether Walter knows that his family is coming this week to talk to Paloma; his sisters and his brother. Possibly they’ll take him to a nursing home, clean out and sell his house; how do you transport those fragile cardboard models of bridges, and will it even matter to anyone. Who will take care of the canaries. Could the canaries, if they were freed, survive in the suburban gardens? Stella sits next to Walter in the ambulette. Walter is buckled into his wheelchair; the windows of the ambulette are made of frosted glass, they can’t be opened; it’s impossible to find out what section of town they’re in, where they are. Walter can’t even look out of the window, now that he is actually being driven through the city. Ava would break out in tears at this injustice. There’s a traffic jam. The tinted glass pane separating them from the driver’s compartment is closed, and Stella and Walter watch the inaudible conversation of the drivers, which is apparently about all those things that have always been and will never change, a choreography of gestures and head shaking. They are stuck in the traffic jam. Walter closes his eyes. He turns his face to Stella as if for a very last look, a face from the series of sleepers hanging above his bed. What is Walter dreaming about. Stella knows so much about him and yet so little. She looks at him. In a sickly way he is carefully shaved and his eyelids are wrinkled; the eyelashes are thick as a child’s. He opens his eyes again as if Stella had seen enough. He says, Thirsty, and Stella lifts up the cup and puts the straw between his lips, wipes the water from his chin with a cloth, and puts the cup down again. She says, Is that enough. Walter doesn’t answer. The driver brakes, finally stops, and turns off the engine. Stella sees from Walter’s smile that he doesn’t care, that there’s no connection between things anyway.

  She had spent the morning with him at his desk, lifting his heavy arms and legs, saying, Contract, Walter, do it yourself, contract your muscles, and Walter wasn’t able to complete even one coordinated movement. Should we stop? But he had shaken his head, apparently wanting to go on, to endure it, this sweaty work together in the middle of the living room in the oppressive heat, in front of the television, in front of the animated cartoons, as if the odd movements of the cartoon figures were more like Walter’s own movements than any single movement in real life.

  Stella leans forward and taps on the glass divider; the driver turns around and opens the glass a crack, a prison guard would do it no differently.

  Do you have any idea, Stella says not concentrating; I mean, can you estimate how long we’ll have to stand here like this; because if it’s going to be a long time, we would get out. She knows she sounds like a wilful child.

  Freedom. The freedom to get out of a car.

  If I knew stuff like that, the driver says, I wouldn’t be sitting here. I’d be somewhere else, somewhere completely different, and he leaves it at this arbitrary answer, shuts the divider, turns away.

  I’m going to be leaving, Walter, Stella says. She crumples the damp cloth in her lap. I wanted you to know. I’m going to stop working for Paloma; we’re moving. I’ll still be here till the end of the month; then I’ll hand in my notice; I’m not sure when Paloma can let me go. I’ll still be here when you come back from the hospital. In any case. But later on I’ll have to leave.

  She talks and talks. She knows that she’s talking like this because Walter won’t be saying anything in reply. Can’t say anything about it and can’t ask any questions; he can only alternate between syllables, between sounds that can be understood one way or another, depending, depending on what Stella wants to hear.

  *

  Dermot says, What did you eat today?

  What did I eat today, Stella says. She has to think about it for a moment, then she remembers – lettuce. I ate lettuce and bread and the last cold pancake that Ava couldn’t manage to eat yesterday. And you?

  A little bit of
soup, Dermot says absent-mindedly. It’s actually too hot to eat, isn’t it. But one has to eat. One has to eat something.

  Why did you ask what I ate, Stella asks in all seriousness.

  Sometimes that can be a distraction, Dermot says, and he smiles as if she’d caught him at something.

  They’re standing together in Dermot’s garden. Julia is in the hospital. She’d got up during the night, had sat down in the kitchen, waiting for a sign, and had finally left the house at dawn; she fell just outside the house, and Dermot found her on the front stairs. She was dressed as if for a Sunday church service or for a concert; blood was coming out of her ears. Where did she get the strength to do this, and why didn’t Dermot hear her; why didn’t he hear her get up. How is that possible. Stella thinks that in a certain way Julia walked out of the picture. Walked out for good; a move she had begun by the sea in March forty years ago and had now completed.

  It seems, Dermot says casually, that we’ll be packing our things at the same time. You and I. Our, how do you say it – our trash. He looks at Stella, his face is too familiar for her to be able to tell how sad he is. His friendliness seems to have faded, warmth diminishing, withdrawing. Stella thinks she can understand that.

  He jerks his large head as if he wanted to keep her from such thoughts. He says, Do you already know what you want to do?

  No, Stella says. She has to smile; it’s embarrassing not to know what she wants to do. She says, The sort of work I do I can do anywhere, can’t I. I mean, there are people everywhere like you, like Julia, like Esther. There are people everywhere like Paloma. But perhaps I’ll do something completely different. Let’s wait and see?

  Yes. You’ll see, Dermot says. He sounds matter-of-fact. Change releases energy, an energy you perhaps don’t even know of yet.

  Stella thinks, But that also applies to you then. Does that also apply to you? Will Julia’s death release an energy in you which you don’t have any inkling of now; what energy is that supposed to be.

  She can’t imagine. She stands next to Dermot, and they watch the wind blow through the tarpaulins outside the house. The tarps ripple in a wave-like motion like water, reflecting the light.

  Twenty

  At midday, after Jason’s departure, Mister Pfister puts a yellow slip of paper into the mailbox.

  Stella sees him coming from the bedroom – she is straightening up the bureau, sorting Jason’s shirts, extending his presence that way; she doesn’t want to lose touch – she sees Mister Pfister walking down the street, hoodie top, dark trousers, swollen face, left hand in his trouser pocket; he stuffs what he has in his right hand directly into the mailbox. Then he presses the bell, looking up towards the bedroom, leaving his thumb on the bell while looking up.

  Stella, upstairs in the bedroom, looks down at him. The bell shrills. She stands at the open window with Jason’s shirts in her arms looking down at Mister Pfister; he stands, as if framed by the window, the mullein on the left, the edge of the forest on the right, what a picture. Then the bell stops ringing. Mister Pfister turns and walks back home.

  *

  Stella finishes sorting the laundry. She makes the bed, partially closes the window. In the kitchen she puts the breakfast dishes into the sink and shakes the tea leaves out of the teapot; she neatly folds up the newspaper Jason read that morning, looking for a while at the photo above the headline: three Chinese astronauts who have landed on a desolate landscape. Carefully she wipes off the kitchen table, just can’t stop wiping the kitchen table. She goes into the hall and lets down her hair in front of the mirror, combing it and pinning it together again. She pinches her cheeks, the way Clara always used to. Clara always did that. She puts on her jacket, locks the front door behind her, and unlocks the mailbox.

  *

  Hello, so what does it feel like to be stalked

  *

  Stella closes the mailbox without touching the piece of paper. She leaves the garden and walks out into the warm day, turning left down the street, in Mister Pfister’s violently vibrating tracks. The house of the female student, that of the Asian family, that of the old woman, her deserted garden, the pruned rhododendron, a garden umbrella at the edge of the field, open above an overturned chair. The fallow land of the empty lot, poplar pollen in the gutter, dandelions, then the pool, the terrace where a man sitting in the shade turns disinterestedly to watch Stella, and at last the familiar, fairy-tale house of the bicycle mechanic, a house made of glass, the smell of which Stella knows once and for all – linen and curd soap and mint; she knows how the light falls onto the tiles in the room under the roof and that there are things standing on the stairs for which no place has yet been found, a wooden coffee grinder, juice glasses, film spools; she knows that there’s a picture of a dog hanging on the wall between the living room and the kitchen and that the bicycle mechanic prefers green army jackets – his house is quiet. The two folding chairs lean against the wall, and the first of the bicycles next to the door is still hers.

  Stella looks at the place in passing. She doesn’t stop, doesn’t really slow down; she arrives in front of Mister Pfister’s house, locked gate and black windowpanes, nothing in the garden that would say anything about Mister Pfister, no twist in the plot.

  Stella rings.

  She can hear the bell shrilling inside the house, a bell like her own; still, it sounds different, a bit muted, muffled. She realises with surprise that Mister Pfister has actually got her to do exactly what he usually does – ringing the bell at a house where they don’t want to open the door for her. Pressing her finger down hard on a bell in anger and fury and thinking, I know you’re there.

  He’s managed to turn Stella into a mirror image of himself; so it would seem.

  Stella says, she hisses: Come on out. Open the door. Open-the-door. Come on out.

  The intercom crackles and she can hear his voice.

  This is a private home.

  Stella has to laugh at that. She makes a face, leans forward and says, Oh, yes, I know. Damn-it-all, I know that. And I don’t even want to go inside your house. I would like to talk to you; open the goddamn door, open it.

  Mister Pfister presses the buzzer. Stella leans against the gate; the gate opens. At the same time the front door opens, and Mister Pfister comes out. Stella sees him step onto the doorsill, and she has the feeling that with the opening of the door a sort of energy escapes the house like a liquid, a stream of thoughts and apprehensions, excess tension, oxidising fear. Mister Pfister looks as if it were the first time in his life he ever opened the door for someone. Walked towards someone, into the brightness, into the light. He sets his feet down like a sick person, just like Walter, Esther, Julia; he comes down the three steps towards Stella, a person who doesn’t trust the ground under his feet. The air is thick. Stella feels she’s starting to perspire; she can hear herself breathe. But her hands are ice cold; her mouth is dry; she visualises Ava, Ava’s soft face, and she can hear her little hoarse voice; she also hears the voice of the bicycle mechanic, You can talk to him, go and talk to him.

  Mister Pfister, as far as she can see, isn’t holding anything. He comes towards her with empty hands. He makes a helpless, unambiguous gesture, he gestures at his door – he is inviting her in.

  He is inviting her to come into his house, to sit down. To see what his house looks like compared to hers.

  He has come outside for Stella; she has got him outside; is it possible, Stella thinks vaguely, that this was what it was all about for him. Again she sees how good-looking he is, how young, and how tired; his face is ashen grey; the expression in his eyes is desperate; he exudes a stale, sour smell; his mouth is childish and much too large. He grimaces; maybe it’s supposed to be a smile. He is attempting something, trying to find a tone, something he can hold on to.

  Stella thinks of Jason. On the airplane, of his open hand; she hears herself say, I have a fear of flying. I’m really very afraid of flying, and she hears Jason’s voice, his reassurance.

  She
shakes her head. I don’t want to go inside your house. And I don’t want to stay long. You asked me a question; I want to answer your question.

  Mister Pfister stands still. Stella continues to walk towards him; she could touch him, the dirty material of his hooded sweater; make sure that he really exists. His expression changes from desperation to confusion, then to a questioning lack of understanding.

  The piece of paper, Stella says. She spits out the words. Your yellow, filthy piece of paper with the question, What is it like being stalked. Yes?

  Mister Pfister nods, it dawns on him, he retraces things. The piece of paper. The question, the preclusion of a conversation, his obsession, piecemeal things seem to occur to him, fragments; he looks as if someone whom Stella can’t see were whispering something into his ear.

  It’s horrible being stalked. It’s wrecking my life. It’s wrecking me. I want you to stop it. I want you never again to ring the bell at our house, never again to put anything into our mailbox; I want you to get lost, once and for all. Do you understand. Do you hear me?

  It’s a bit like talking to Ava. Somewhat like saying to Ava, You have to keep your hat on your head. You should never cross the street when the light is red. It’s high time you went to sleep now. Do you hear me. Are you listening to me?

  Stella has a feeling of incipient nausea; maybe it’s pity; it almost makes her stumble. Why doesn’t she sit down with him on the steps in front of the house, one cigarette-length of time, just for a quarter of an hour, how hard would that be. She can’t. No, she can’t do it.

  I just want to talk to someone, Mister Pfister says. He has trouble saying the words, difficulty pronouncing them, word by word, actually unconnected. To talk with somebody. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that it is terrible for you.