‘Got things to do,’ he says, walking past her. ‘Bye then.’
‘Come by next week. Old Schultze comes in every Wednesday again now.’
‘All right, I might come by then,’ he says. He’s at the door already, wants to turn around to her again, but all he does is knock on the doorframe before he leaves the pub. He used to come here a lot, even as a child, with his father.
The old man walks over to Schultze’s house at the other end of the village, where the woods start. There’s a lake in the woods not far from Schultze’s house, where they used to go swimming sometimes in the hot summers, Schultze and him and their wives. He was there a few weeks ago, stood on the banks for a long time, listening to the quiet hum of the motorway a good way off. He had his swimming trunks and a towel with him but he didn’t go in the water; the lake suddenly seemed dark and eerie, he could make out dead white trees on the opposite side.
The old man walks in through the open gate and around the house. The yard’s empty; Schultze hasn’t had hens for a long time.
They sit in the front room, next to each other on the big leather sofa, drinking brandy. The old man sees the photos of Schultze’s two wives on the sideboard. There’s a plate on the table in front of them, half a dried-out cheese roll. ‘Another good August on its way,’ says Schultze. He talks loudly; his hearing’s bad. ‘Yes, it looks like it.’ They clink glasses and drink. For a few minutes they sit there in silence. ‘You haven’t been over in a long time, Albrecht.’
The old man nods. ‘Had a lot to do. I don’t go out that much any more.’
‘Me neither,’ says Schultze.
When the old man went out to the lake a few weeks ago he saw Schultze from far off, pacing to and fro in his yard, from one fence to the other. When he came back from the lake later on Schultze was still on the move, to and fro, from fence to fence, and he wondered where the man got the strength and the stamina at well over eighty; he’d been so tired even on the way to the lake that he’d have liked to have a lie down under a tree.
‘I need your gun, Schultze.’ The old man’s still looking at the sideboard and the photos, and Schultze lowers his head all the way to his chest, leans forward and fills their glasses again.
‘For my dog. He’s old and sick.’
‘Take him to the vet, he’ll do it quietly.’
‘I want to do it myself, you know?’
‘I know,’ says Schultze. They empty their glasses in silence, then Schultze gets up and leaves the room.
The old man walks slowly through the village, back to his house. The sun’s lower now but the sky’s still pure blue. The old man stops outside a couple of houses, looking in at the empty windows. A cat outside a gate, Müller’s old farmyard; is that still the Müllers’ cat? Cats can cope on their own. Müller’s wife moved to town, sheltered housing; she couldn’t get rid of the farm. He turns back round to the cat, sitting in the sun and moving its tail. The old man walks along the outside of the field so he doesn’t pass the graveyard again. The cloth bag with Schultze’s gun in it bumps against his leg as he walks.
‘Will one bullet do you, Albrecht? I haven’t got many left.’
‘Fill it up, Schultze. I don’t want him to suffer.’
Schultze nods and loads the bullets into the long magazine. ‘I hope it still works. Haven’t used it for ages.’ Schultze sometimes used to tell stories about the war, down at the Farmer’s Inn. The old man can hardly remember the war, but Schultze’s nearly ten years older than him.
He walks around the house. He hears Kurt barking. The gun bumps against his leg and he stops still and holds onto the garden fence for support. He stands like that for a while, waiting for Kurt to stop barking. A bee settles on his shirt, and he brushes it off and goes to the gate.
Dear readers,
With the right book we can all travel far. And yet British publishing is, with illustrious exceptions, often unwilling to risk telling these other stories.
Subscriptions from readers make our books possible. They also help us approach booksellers, because we can demonstrate that our books already have readers and fans. And they give us the security to publish in line with our values, which are collaborative, imaginative and ‘shamelessly literary’ (Stuart Evers, Guardian).
All subscribers to our upcoming titles
• are thanked by name in the books
• receive a numbered, first edition copy of each book (limited to 300 copies for our 2011 titles)
• are warmly invited to contribute to our plans and choice of future books
Subscriptions are:
£20 – 2 books (two books per year)
£35 – 4 books (four books per year)
To find out more about subscribing, and rates for outside Europe, please visit: http://www.andotherstories.org/subscribe/
Thank you!
To find out about upcoming events and reading groups (our foreign-language reading groups help us choose books to publish, for example) you can
• join the mailing list at: www.andotherstories.org
• follow us on twitter: @andothertweets
• join us on Facebook: And Other Stories
This book was made possible by our advance subscribers’ support – thank you so much!
Our Subscribers
Aca Szabo
Alexandra Cox
Ali Smith
Alisa Holland
Alison Hughes
Amanda Jones
Amanda Hopkinson
Ana Amália Alves da Silva
Ana María Correa
Anca Fronescu
Andrea Reinacher
Andrew Tobler
Andrew Blackman
Angela Kershaw
Anna Milsom
Anne Christie
Anne Withers
Anne Jackson
Barbara Glen
Bárbara Freitas
Briallen Hopper
Bruce Millar
Carlos Tamm
Carol O’Sullivan
Caroline Rigby
Catherine Mansfield
Cecilia Rossi
Charles Boyle
Charlotte Ryland
Christina MacSweeney
Claire Williams
Clare Horackova
Daniel Hahn
Daniel Gallimore
David Wardrop
Debbie Pinfold
Denis Stillewagt
Elena Cordan
Emma Staniland
Eric Dickens
Eva Tobler-Zumstein
Fiona Quinn
Fiona Miles
Gary Debus
Genevra Richardson
Georgia Panteli
Geraldine Brodie
Hannes Heise
Helen Leichauer
Helen Weir
Henriette Heise
Henrike Lähnemann
Iain Robinson
Ian Goldsack
Jennifer Higgins
Jimmy Lo
Jo Luloff
John Clulow
Jonathan Ruppin
Jonathan Evans
Joy Tobler
Judy Garton-Sprenger
Julia Sanches
Juro Janik
K L Ee
Kate Griffin
Kate Pullinger
Kate Wild
Kevin Brockmeier
Krystalli Glyniadakis
Laura Watkinson
Laura McGloughlin
Liz Tunnicliffe
Lorna Bleach
Louise Rogers
Maisie Fitzpatrick
Margaret Jull Costa
Marion Cole
Nichola Smalley
Nick Stevens
Nick Sidwell
Nicola Hearn
Nicola Harper
Olivia Heal
Peter Law
Peter Blackstock
Philip Leichauer
Polly McLean
Rachel McNicholl
Rebecca Whiteley
/>
Rebecca Miles
Rebecca Carter
Rebecca K. Morrison
Réjane Collard
Ros Schwartz
Ruth Martin
Samantha Schnee
Samantha Christie
Samuel Willcocks
Sophie Moreau Langlais
Sophie Leighton
Sorcha McDonagh
Steph Morris
Susana Medina
Tamsin Ballard
Tania Hershman
Tim Warren
Tomoko Yokoshima
Verena Weigert
Vivien Kogut Lessa de Sa
Will Buck
Xose de Toro
Our first four titles, published in autumn 2011:
Iosi Havilio, Open Door
translated from the Spanish by Beth Fowler
Deborah Levy, Swimming Home
Clemens Meyer, All the Lights
translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire
Juan Pablo Villalobos, Down the Rabbit Hole
translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
Title: All the Lights
Author: Clemens Meyer
Translator: Katy Derbyshire
Editors: Bethan Ellis, Ellie Robins, Jamie Searle, James Tennant
Proofreader: Annie Lee
Typesetter: Charles Boyle
Series and Cover Design: Joseph Harries
Format: 210 x 138 mm
Paper: Munken Premium White 80gsm FSC
Printer: T. J. International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
The first 300 copies are individually numbered.
Copyright
First published in English in 2011 by
And Other Stories, 91 Tadros Court, High Wycombe, Bucks, HP13 7GF
www.andotherstories.org
Originally published as Die Nacht, die Lichter
© S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 2008
English language translation copyright © Katy Derbyshire, 2011
The rights of Clemens Meyer and of Katy Derbyshire to be identified respectively as Author and Translator of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transported in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.
E-book ISBN No. 978–1–908276–05–6
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
All the Lights Page 20