I close the chest of drawers and leave the bedroom, none the wiser. I shall resume my search elsewhere.
Sarah
I’m sitting on a bench looking out over the Outer Alster Lake, snatching a few minutes to myself. The sun beats down on my head, warms my face, my bare arms. I watch the people out for a walk, children playing football on the grass, boats on the water, and I relish the normality of it. I’ve been sitting here for ages. Soon it will be dark and I’ll have to make my way home. But I’m not ready yet.
Then, as a cloud scuds past the sun, I think of the eclipse. It was only a few days ago, but it feels like an eternity.
The world is black. The sun above me is black.
I stand, head thrown back, eyes wide open. I try to drink in the moment, to commit it to memory, to block out any other thought. I made a promise to myself many years ago, and now the time has come to make good that promise. I nod, as if to seal the bond with myself. The trees are rustling softly, almost ceremonially. Only the birds high in the branches seem unimpressed: they sing as if to spite the darkness, as if singing is all that matters. The sun is black and I stand and bask in the sight. There is no more warmth. No light.
Soon afterwards, I leave the woods. I return to my car and get in, braving the stifling heat. I take my phone out of my bag and see that Mirko has called—he’ll be wondering where I’ve got to. I think of Mirko, of the two of us together, and it feels like betrayal. I think of the first time I saw him—the new, good-looking young colleague Claudia and the others had been raving about. I think of our first kiss, at my front door after a school party one evening. I look at my phone and reluctantly read the text that arrived while I was in the woods, saying my last goodbyes to the love of my life. It’s from Mirko, only three words. I stare at them.
Life must go on, I tell myself. I’ve made my decision.
I invite Claudia and her husband to dinner. I ring Mirko and ask him to join us, telling him that it’s time he got to know my son—time to put an end to the secrecy.
I go to the local hair salon, walk past it once, twice, three times before I have the courage to go in. Before I have time to change my mind, I’m sitting in a swivel chair, pulling the page I tore from the magazine out of my bag. Less than an hour later, I’m back out on the street, my head strangely light, almost as if I can breathe again, for the first time in years. I buy vegetables. I buy lemons and herbs and a chicken. I clean and cook. I open the doors and windows, sweep out the ghosts of the past and watch them swirl away. I pick up my son, give him his dinner, lay the table for my guests. I am alive. My husband is dead, but I am still here. I have people in the house—company. Mirko throws me blatant looks which I ignore and take pleasure in. I am an attentive hostess. I laugh. This is how life can be.
I lead the way to the front door, say goodbye to Claudia and her husband, thank them for coming, tell them how lovely it was to see them, realise as I say it that I mean it—and watch them disappear into the darkness. I thank Mirko for the lovely evening and the flowers. Mirko looks me in the eye and gives me an awkward pat on the shoulder.
He was the only one who knew it was the first time in seven years I’d had guests in my house. You can tell Mirko that kind of thing.
We’re silent for a moment.
‘It was about time,’ he says, and I nod.
‘Seven years,’ I say. ‘Seven years is a long time.’
He shakes his head. ‘Time the two men in your life got to know each other, I mean.’
‘Oh.’
‘I like Leo,’ he says.
‘I think Leo likes you,’ I reply. ‘But now I should say goodnight and go in and check on him.’
Mirko smiles and gives me a kiss on the forehead. ‘Can’t I stay here tonight?’
I stare at him in surprise.
‘I’ve been very patient,’ he says.
I can’t. I can’t sleep with him in Philip’s house, in Philip’s bed.
‘Please, Sarah. I’ve been very patient,’ he says again.
I wrestle with myself, but eventually I give in. As we go into the house, I signal to Mirko to be quiet. Whatever happens, I don’t want Leo to hear him.
And all the time I’m reading Leo his bedtime story, I’m thinking that my husband is dead and that Mirko is waiting for me in my bedroom.
We go on like that for a few nights. Somehow it feels wrong, but Mirko insists and I’m tired of arguing with him. I know it’s time I started a new life, and I do my best, my absolute best.
Mirko says he’s tired of the secrecy, that he wants our colleagues to know about us, wants Leo to know about us. I know he’s right, but I’m afraid of how Leo will react. I begin to prepare myself, trying to decide the best way to tell him.
Leo must realise something’s up, because I suddenly say yes to everything—suddenly Mum lets him do whatever he wants, even promising to take him to the zoo, when he knows she hates zoos.
The night before our trip to the zoo I lie awake, asking myself the same old questions.
Only the answers are new.
Philip has died. Philip is dead. Philip will never come back to us.
In the middle of the night I get up and pull on some clothes. After a moment’s thought, I take a clean cotton handkerchief out of the chest of drawers. I leave the bedroom, creep downstairs and go out into the garden. It is quite a bit cooler, despite the day’s heat, and the air smells clean and fresh. There isn’t a sound. I feel like the loneliest person in the universe, but that’s a good thing—I need to be alone for this.
I love our garden. In the first few years after Philip disappeared, I tried to keep it the way it had been before he left, just as I tried to keep everything in the house the way Philip had known it. But in recent years I’ve let nature have its way. I only occasionally mow the lawn under the apple and cherry trees, and here and there I’ve let the wildflowers seed themselves and run riot. The result is an enchanted place where Leo and his friends like to play and where I sit and watch the little spiders spinning their tiny webs in the branches of the currant bushes.
Now the garden lies silent, the only light coming from the kitchen window. No moon, no stars. I step out onto the grass, moving out of the light and deeper into the little wilderness sown by nature these last few years. My eyes grow accustomed to the dark and I make for the small shed behind the apple trees. I open the door and grope around until I find the spade. I close the shed again and let my eyes wander, then decide on a spot beneath one of the trees.
I plunge the spade into the earth, lever out a square sod of grass and lay it aside. I dig deeper, piling up the soil until the hole seems big enough. The air of a clear summer’s night mingles with the pungent smell of earth. I put the spade down and stare into the hole I have dug.
I think of my husband. I see him by the water, in the place on the Elbe Beach where we first kissed and where we decided to get married—our place. I think of the way he used to be—the way we used to be—before that night, young and easygoing and free. I think of the smell of his hair, the curve of his upper lip, his dimples. I think of the ease with which he could pick me up—something no one has done since. I think of his insistence on always continuing a discussion to its bitter end and his frequent complaints about my silence. I think of his sense of humour. I think of all the arguments we got into when we first moved in together. We argued about the pettiest and most ridiculous things. About his craze for listening to Nick Cave’s ‘Do You Love Me?’ umpteen times a day, which used to drive me mad. About the way he left everything standing around without a lid because he was too lazy to put the tops back on bottles of water, jars of jam, tubes of toothpaste. About my refusal to pay bills until the first reminder came, although we had more than enough money, and about my habit of leaving a spare key under the big flowerpot at the front door because I was always locking myself out.
‘How can anyone be so stupid?’ he would ask. ‘How can you leave the key under a flowerpot? Where do you think we are? In some
crazy utopian dream world?’
‘Calm down,’ I would say. ‘No one would ever look for a key in such an obvious place.’
They were ridiculous, trivial arguments—arguments that inevitably ended in laughter or sex.
For the first few years, at any rate.
I know what I have to do now—I just don’t know if I can. But I take a deep breath and do it. Seven years are suddenly enough. I pull the wedding ring off my finger. My flesh resists, but I pull the ring as hard as I can, wrenching it over the creases at my knuckles until at last I’m holding it in my hand. I take the old-fashioned handkerchief that once belonged to my adored grandmother and wrap the ring in it. With the slow, ceremonial movements of a funeral-goer, I sink to my knees, and then carefully, very carefully, I lay my wedding ring in the hole I have dug. When I stand up again, I have the feeling I ought to say something, but I don’t know what. During all the lonely nights I’ve lain awake, I’ve said all there was to say, felt all there was to feel.
I think to myself that love is not a state, not a feeling—it is an organism that hungers and thirsts, a living being that can grow and atrophy, fall sick and convalesce, go to sleep and die.
A single tear rolls over my cheek and down my neck, soaking into the collar of my T-shirt as I take up the spade and cover my wedding ring with earth.
‘Goodbye, Philip,’ I say.
I put the spade down, and for a moment I stand there, my bare ring finger throbbing, before I pull myself together and go back into the house.
Not long after, I take Leo to the zoo. We look at the tired lion and the bright-eyed meerkats. I had expected to grieve, but instead I feel light. I have cut all ties to the past. A new beginning. A clean slate. I am so grateful. I smile cautiously and suddenly feel that everything is going to come right, that I can find new happiness.
I am looking at my son, searching for words, when my phone starts to ring. When I pick up, a man tells me that Philip is alive and coming back tomorrow.
I feel like laughing and crying, and at the same time I have the urge to take one of Philip’s old golf clubs and trash the entire contents of my house.
I don’t know what to feel, what to do. Can’t eat, can’t sleep, drift about aimlessly. I call my best friend but can’t get hold of her. I call Johann but can’t get hold of him. Distraught, I yell down the phone, but there’s no one there. My head feels strange, my body peculiarly light. The whole world seems to have slipped, somehow. All the colours are different—red no longer looks red, green no longer looks green. I eat the raspberries my neighbour gives me and puke them up in little bright red puddles on the parquet. That’s when Leo starts to worry, and I know I have to pull myself together. I’m like a robot that walks and talks and does things but is hollow inside. I talk to Leo, tell him everything will be okay. I call Mirko and tell him it’s over between us and he’s not to call me anymore. When he calls back, I don’t pick up.
I rearrange the house, trying to put everything back the way it was when Philip last saw it.
Before the car arrives to take us to the airport, I go out into the garden, fetch the spade from the shed and dig up my wedding ring.
I remember how it felt, beginning afresh after seven years’ gloom: no Philip, no fireworks, no brimming emotions. But a new chance of happiness.
Poor Mirko. It’s over between us, that much is clear.
I was ready to drop him the moment I heard Philip was coming back. We can’t be together anymore. He’ll understand, in the end. And perhaps one day I’ll manage to forgive myself for so pointlessly destroying everything I’d gone to such trouble to build up—for rejecting Mirko for the sake of a stranger.
I get up from the bench by the lake with a sigh. My life has become too complicated. I don’t know where things go from here.
The stranger
I must have nodded off, in spite of everything. I sit up in a daze.
I shouldn’t have lain down. Haven’t I learnt anything over the past months and years?
My pulse steadies. All is well. The situation is under control. If she’d come back, I would have noticed. I never sleep deeply—I’m on my guard even when I’m not awake. Still, I ought to make sure.
My gaze falls on the framed photos on the wall. So far I’ve avoided looking at them—what would be the point? Now I step closer. Most of the pictures are of her with the boy, but there is one photo that shows her laughing and happy in her husband’s arms. There’s no indication of when or where the photo was taken, but they both look very young and very happy. I tear myself away from her radiant smile and take a closer look at the man. He is wearing a blue polo shirt and a self-confident grin. I feel faint repugnance welling up inside me—he looks like one of those people who have everything fall into their laps and don’t realise their luck. I used to be like that. He looks like me—so much like me—but it was ridiculous to think I could fool her for even a second. I may look like Philip Petersen, know how to move like him, talk like him, but you can’t reproduce the essence of a person. You can’t fake soul. The man in that photo is dead, and no one will ever see him again.
My knee and elbow joints give a dry click when I get up. I stretch, circle my shoulders, ignore the pain. Then I cross the living room and go upstairs as quietly as I can. I make no noise—I’m practised at that. This time I’m careful to skip the fourth stair from the top.
I stop for a moment at the closed door of the bedroom. I know before I open it that the room on the other side is empty, but I’m still relieved. Her presence is so repellent to me that I’m glad of a few minutes longer without her.
Sarah
Constanze’s angry words are still ringing in my head when I park the car in Miriam’s road. I put on the handbrake, rifle through my bag, take out my phone and ring Johann. My impatience is becoming shot through with worry. Johann is a workaholic who can’t live without his phone and is usually available 24/7. What if something’s happened to him?
A metallic clank accompanies the ringing tone—one clank, two clanks, three, four, five, six. No one picks up. Damn. Another two days and nights until Johann lands in Germany and can help me.
I put the phone away, get out of the car and walk the few metres to Miriam’s house. I usually stop and admire the fullblown blooms in her garden, swarming with bees that whirr like nervous satellites, but today I spare no glance for them. I’m here to check on Leo, to make sure he’s all right, and to work out what to do with him for the next few days. I can hardly take him home, but I’m starting to wonder if I should abandon the house to the stranger and stay in a hotel after all.
I draw up my shoulders and ring the bell.
When Miriam opens the door and sees me, she pulls me to her at once. She smells of food and clean sweat.
‘You poor thing,’ she says. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Of course,’ I say. It bothers me that she thinks I need comforting. I’m a thirty-seven-year-old woman, and stronger than most people. I don’t need anyone to comfort me.
I follow her into the kitchen.
‘Is Constanze all right now?’ she asks.
‘Yes, she’s fine.’
‘Today was probably a bit much for her. And then seeing Philip again and—’
‘Where’s Leo?’ I say.
‘Upstairs.’ Miriam smiles. ‘You know, it’s incredible how alike the two of them are. He really is the spitting image of your husband.’
‘Who?’ I ask dully.
‘What do you mean, who?’ Miriam replies in amusement. ‘Leo, of course.’
I blink, puzzled, but say nothing.
‘I was wondering whether you and Philip wouldn’t like to come round for dinner one night next week,’ Miriam says. ‘We’d love to have you. But only if it’s not too much for Philip, of course.’
I don’t reply. Miriam babbles on. Strange, I think, sitting there with her as if nothing had happened. Inside, I’m a different person, but on the outside nothing’s changed. For the first time in my life I rea
lise that everyone I know is an iceberg. I see their tiny, gleaming white tips, but not the forbiddingly large cones lurking in the darkness beneath.
‘It’s wonderful to see the two of you together,’ Miriam says. ‘You look like a Hollywood couple.’ She giggles, as if we were teenagers talking about boys. ‘Although…to be honest, I only knew Philip from the photos on your walls, and if I hadn’t known who he was, I definitely wouldn’t have recognised him this afternoon.’
I take a gulp of the water she’s put in front of me.
‘Crazy how people change,’ she says. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, age suits him. But he looks like a completely different person.’
I take another gulp.
‘Do you know what it made me think of?’ Miriam asks. ‘Martin and I once went to this exhibition of photos of American soldiers who’d fought in Iraq. There were three portraits of each man—one from before the war, one from during the war and one taken afterwards.’ She takes a sip of water. ‘It was amazing. I remember standing there with Martin trying to reconcile the young, open faces from before the war with the marked faces from afterwards. Only a few years had passed, but I’m telling you, Sarah, those men were transformed. Philip’s the same,’ she concludes. ‘As if he’d come back from the war.’
‘It’s not Philip,’ I say, and drain my glass.
‘Eh?’ Miriam says. ‘What do you mean?’
Just then, Leo appears in the door. His eyes are small and red.
‘I don’t want to go home.’ He flings the words at me and then turns round and vanishes.
Miriam and I exchange glances, and I leave the kitchen and go up the stairs after my son. I find him in the guest bathroom. He hasn’t locked himself in, at least—he must have wanted me to come and speak to him.
Leo is sitting on the edge of the shower cubicle and eyes me suspiciously when I come in. I settle myself cross-legged in front of him on the aquamarine bathmat. It’s a small room. The tiles are decorated with stickers of brightly coloured fish. I hesitate. Am I really going to take my son to a hotel, leaving a strange man alone in my house? It seems absurd, but I don’t know what else I can do. How am I supposed to explain it, though?
The Stranger Upstairs Page 14