by Peter Stamm
The clouds suddenly gave way to the sun and, dazzled, Gillian took a backward step. The doctor came in to say goodbye. He said she shouldn’t go out in the sun for the time being and should avoid getting her face wet for a few days. Also she shouldn’t take any exercise, and should avoid all forms of exertion. Apart from that, she could please herself. He shook hands with Gillian and said he had to go, they would see each other again in five months’ time. Gillian looked at her watch. It was a little after two. She packed her case and went out into the corridor. She quickly said goodbye to the nurses. Something kept her from walking out of the main hospital exit. At the end of the landing was a staircase that went down to the emergency ward and a side exit. She called a taxi. While she waited, she wondered where she would go. She didn’t want to see any of her friends, no one she had known from before, who would compare her old face to the new one. When the taxi finally arrived, she put on her dark glasses and almost ran the few steps to it.
From home, she called the police station and asked to speak to Frau Bauer. She was away from her desk, but the man took a note of Gillian’s number and promised his colleague would get back to her. When she phoned three hours later, Gillian was almost in tears. She reminded the policewoman who she was.
What can I do for you?
Gillian hesitated, then she said, my husband wasn’t to blame for the accident. I was supposed to drive us home. And then I got drunk and I couldn’t.
You told me that already, said the policewoman.
It wasn’t his fault, said Gillian again, and by now she was crying.
He still shouldn’t have been driving, said the policewoman coolly. Perhaps you do need help. Shall I give you that victims’ support number again?
I’m not the victim, said Gillian and hung up.
She called Matthias’s mother and told her everything, but she wouldn’t hear of Gillian’s guilt either. She said there was no point in looking for a guilty party. Matthias’s death had been God’s will. The conversation was over almost as quickly as that with the policewoman.
Over the next few days, Gillian kept thinking of the New Year’s party and of how the accident might have been avoided. She should have insisted on staying the night at Dagmar’s, she shouldn’t have gotten into the car, she should never have allowed Hubert to take photographs of her nude.
Early on Sunday she called her parents at the vacation house. Her father picked up. She asked him where exactly the accident had happened. Someone from his workshop had picked up the totaled vehicle, and he was able to tell her the place. Gillian said she was happy to take his offer of staying in the house for a while. He said they wouldn’t be leaving till tonight, the weather was fine, and they wanted to get another day’s skiing in.
What about coming up today? It would be good to see you there.
I can’t manage that, she said.
Well, you know where we keep the keys, said her father.
She spent Sunday straightening up the apartment and packing a suitcase, though she didn’t know how long she would be staying in the mountains. On Monday morning she drove to the scene of the crash. She parked by a forest path a hundred yards farther on and went back on foot. By the side of the road was a withered bouquet of flowers with a burned-down votive candle, the only clue that there had been an accident here. Gillian wondered who had put it there. She picked it up and put it on her backseat. When she stopped at a rest stop an hour later, to fill up, she threw it in a trash can that had Thank You written on it in four languages.
Never will I succeed in putting as much strength in a portrait as there is in a head. The mere fact of living demands such willpower and energy …
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI
Dust was time in material form, Hubert could no longer remember who had said it, or where he had read it. At any rate, a lot of time seemed to have collected in his studio, because there was a thin, almost transparent layer of dust over everything. He didn’t bother to wipe it away, he had only come to take a look through his old stuff and see if there was anything he could use. The big nudes, the naked housewife series, as his gallerist called them, he didn’t even look at, they had become so strange to him, it was as though they were by someone else. He took a stack of large folders from a shelf and opened them one after the other, industrial landscapes, pencil drawings of machinery, portraits, and nudes, the oldest things dated back to his student days. After briefly hesitating, he took down a folder labeled Astrid. It contained two dozen photographs and a few sketches. He had done them right at the beginning of their relationship, during a summer holiday in the south of France. They had driven around, staying in campsites. In every picture there was Astrid naked in a different landscape, sometimes so small that she could hardly be made out. He had thought of drawing the whole series in crayon but only finished a very few. In his memory they had been better than they were. He put them all back in the folder and went on to the next one.
An hour later, Hubert was back outside the building. He had managed to find nothing usable, but carted the slides and projector into his car anyway, raw material that sometime might come in handy. It was midnight, but the air was balmy.
He had been teaching at the art school for six years now. There were two weeks left of the semester, but he was already finished, and he felt that strange mix of freedom and what now? that he was caught up in every summer.
He had lit a cigarette and rolled the window down. There were still plenty of people around, in the distance he heard a police siren. All month, the weather had been unusually warm and dry. First, Hubert had been pleased about it, then the longer it went on, the more it disquieted him. The news carried reports of desiccated crops, and everyone was talking about climate change, but that wasn’t the cause of his disquiet. When he drove over the bridge, he saw the lakeside lights flashing a storm warning.
The next morning a light rain was falling. Hubert had opened the window, and a cool wind blew in his face. He had gotten up early and prepared the apartment for a few months without him. On the car radio he listened to the weather forecast. It seemed the next few days would remain cold and rainy, and the snow line would fall below a thousand meters.
He got caught up in the rush-hour traffic. He wasn’t a very experienced driver, and when he abruptly changed lanes, or got moving too late after the lights turned, the cars behind him honked. On the Autobahn other cars sat on his tail. After two hours, just before he exited the Autobahn, he stopped at a rest site and drank a cup of coffee. In the restaurant there were some pictures by a painter who had made a name for himself depicting elephants and tigers. A little leaflet was provided, which listed the absurdly high prices that were charged for the works. Hubert was almost physically disgusted by the paintings, and he soon set off.
Driving on, he briefly entertained the thought of making a living like that artist. Since he’d begun teaching, he hardly got around to painting anymore. He persuaded himself that it was because he was pushed for time. In his younger days, he always used to mock artists who feathered their nests as professors, but following Lukas’s birth he accepted an offer from the college. A regular job seemed to be the only way of having a reasonably comfortable middle-class life and not ending up as an impoverished artist in the gutter.
When Lukas started kindergarten, Astrid went back to work in the property department of the same bank where she had worked before. They moved into the town next door, where they managed to buy a small house on the edge of the fields.
As well as her work, Astrid pursued her interest in energy and the body. Hubert wasn’t impressed by the esoteric life-help scene she started to move in. He passed occasional ironic remarks, to which she reacted so violently that he didn’t say anything the next time she registered for a weekend course in psychodrama or breathing therapy.
After a short while, she began to offer special coaching for entrepreneurs. She converted their basement into a sort of treatment room. On the walls she hung pictures by an Italian woman artist Hubert kne
w. The multiply exposed cityscapes through which anonymous individuals moved had always struck him as being on the cool side, but Astrid said no, they were perfect for her clientele. On a little corner table she put a rose quartz. She got a flyer printed up, full of executives and problem awareness, resources and parameters, and before long the first clients arrived, usually big shots from her bank, and disappeared downstairs with her.
When I have a large enough customer base I mean to go full-time, said Astrid over dinner.
She got terribly angry when Hubert said the only reason her bosses came to her for coaching was that she was so good-looking. Or is it an accident that you always seem to be in short skirts for your sessions?
You need to think about your own life-work balance, she countered. It would be a start if you weren’t always mowing the lawn when I have clients.
In objective terms, they were doing very well, but Hubert felt increasingly like an impostor when he stood in front of his students and critiqued their work. He always had something big planned for the holidays and then kept putting it off, doing odd jobs about the house and garden or busying himself with vague research for projects that were never realized. He read a lot, and he saw colleagues. He still kept his studio in the old textile mill, but he rarely went there anymore. At first he had supposed his difficulties marked the beginning of a new productive phase. He put off his gallerist month after month. And he in turn asked less and less about what Hubert was working on now and instead sent him photos of the dog he had acquired and invitations to the openings of other artists in his stable. Hubert took a quick look at the postcards and laid them aside with a mixture of envy and irritation at the ardor with which his colleagues pursued their humdrum ideas.
Then one day he got an e-mail from Arno, the head of a cultural center in the mountains where he had had his first and only large solo exhibition seven years before. To him it all seemed incredibly remote, and he had no significant memory of the place, the rooms or the people there, but this Arno guy still seemed to be full of their meeting. He addressed him by his first name, wrote enthusiastically about that show, and invited Hubert to come back. He gave him a budget and carte blanche, he could stay in the cultural center as long as he wanted, only the date for the exhibition was set, the end of June next year. Hubert felt like turning it down immediately, but then he printed out the e-mail and left it with a pile of other stuff in his in-box.
After dinner, he told Astrid about the invitation from Arno. That was a nice time, she said, do you remember? I helped you hang the paintings. I was pregnant then. We had this little room right at the top of the building with a creaky bed. Arno once made some remark about it, but you weren’t bothered. She smiled quickly, then her face took on an expression as though she was confused by what she remembered. Could be, said Hubert, who could remember nothing of all this.
They had been sitting in the garden, Lukas was playing in the meadow with a neighbor’s son. Hubert collected the dirty dishes and carried them into the kitchen. He was barefoot and felt the chill of the grass at approaching nightfall. When he came back, Astrid asked him why he didn’t want to accept the invitation.
Because I’ve got nothing to show, he said.
It doesn’t get any easier, she said. Sometime you’ll need to start working again. The scenery up there is beautiful.
Beautiful landscapes are no use for good paintings.
There are lots of radionic power places around there.
That’s more your thing. Are you trying to get rid of me, by any chance?
Astrid got up and called Lukas. Her voice sounded strangely rough when she told him to come home right away. Ten minutes later, she came out into the garden and said Lukas wanted his good night kiss from his father.
It was cool inside, all the blinds were down. Lukas lay perfectly still in his bed, waiting. At such times Hubert thought of him as a strange creature whose world was so much bigger and darker than his own. Hubert bent down, only for Lukas to grab him around the neck and start kissing him frantically on both cheeks.
Enough, enough, said Hubert. You go to sleep now.
As he walked over to the stairs, he remembered an early cycle of pictures, little colored pencil drawings of kitchens, bedrooms, and living rooms. There were no people in them, but you could sense that someone had either just left or was just about to arrive. He stopped on the top step. From the kitchen he could hear the clatter of dishes. Then he saw Astrid walking through the dark corridor, without noticing him up on the stair. She was carrying a wine bottle and two glasses. Her walk looked as though she was trying not to be noticed. Hubert went softly down the stairs and saw that Astrid had stopped at the glass door that led out into the garden. She was hesitating, perhaps she had heard something or seen something. He took a couple of rapid steps toward her, put his arm around her waist, and kissed her neck. She turned to face him. When he made to kiss her again, she freed herself.
I need to talk to you.
Hubert could only dimly remember the conversation. On the next-door property a halogen beam had come on every other minute or so, because some animal had triggered the motion sensor. In the distance, there was the quiet drone of traffic on the Autobahn. It had gotten colder. Astrid had long since bundled herself up in a blanket. When they finally went in at around midnight, Hubert had trouble walking in a straight line. He carried in two empty wine bottles, set them on the dining table, and lay down on the sofa. Astrid went up to bed without a word.
It was the first of many conversations that always took the same course. Astrid said she felt trapped in their relationship. It was so different with Rolf. He opened up to her. Ever since she had started moving in the therapy scene, she spoke a new language.
Each time, she calmly explained her view of things to Hubert and reacted understandingly to his rage, which only made him still more furious. It all had nothing to do with him. Her decision had been made. In the end, Hubert had no alternative but to agree to a trial separation. Astrid was to stay in the house with Lukas, while he found a small apartment for himself.
Now that Hubert knew about Astrid’s lover, she had no more reason to meet him clandestinely. Every second or third evening she went out. Then Hubert would sit at home all evening and watch Lukas, who had trouble sleeping and had awful nightmares when he did. When Astrid got back at one or whenever, Hubert was sitting in front of the TV, and she vanished upstairs without a word.
The semester was over in the middle of June, but Hubert still went in every day. He had taken a one-bedroom apartment near the lake. He had forgotten all about the invitation to the mountains when Arno sent him a reminder.
What do I have to do to convince you? he wrote. After lunch Hubert had coffee with the head of his department. She knew about his separation from Astrid and urged him to accept the invitation. It was almost twelve months off, in all that time he would surely think of something. Perhaps the pressure of a deadline was just what he needed.
After lunch, Hubert replied to Arno: He’d be happy to come.
In July he went away on vacation with Astrid and Lukas. They had rented the house just after Christmas. Hubert had offered to step down in place of Rolf, but Astrid said they weren’t that far along yet. She had no problem going on holiday with Hubert anyway.
During their two weeks in Denmark, the weather stayed cool and rainy. Lukas was bored. They did all sorts of activities, visited a safari park, a maritime museum on a restored three-master, and a glassworks, where Lukas made a glass mold of his hand. At least by day Hubert could give himself to the illusion that they were still a family. Lukas too seemed to appreciate that they were all together again. Astrid received a string of text messages and at least once a day a phone call. Then she would go into another room or, if they were outside, take a few steps away. Hubert watched her in the distance. She was serious and if anything more irritable after these conversations than before.
When Lukas was tucked up in bed, he and Astrid would sit in the living room d
rinking wine and reading. Eventually Astrid would say she was tired and head for the bathroom. Hubert put his book down and listened to the unfamiliar noises of the strange house, the creaking of the steps, the whooshing of the pipes, and the wind that was always blowing here. He waited for half an hour, then he would go to the bathroom himself. They slept in separate rooms, except once, when Astrid got up to go to bed and she whispered to him: Are you coming? He followed her up the stairs. On the landing she took him by the hand and led him into her room.
The next morning, neither of them talked about what had happened in the night, but for the rest of the vacation, Hubert noticed that Astrid would link arms with him when they walked, or kiss him when he bought ice cream for her and Lukas. Sometimes he would shock himself by thinking that this was the last holiday they would have together.
Their closeness during the two-week vacation only served to distance them further from one another. Their relationship became increasingly pally, they barely quarreled anymore when they met. They compared schedules and talked about who would collect Lukas from school or day care, and who would have him over what weekend. Astrid asked if Hubert knew where the warranty for the coffee machine was or if he would fix the puncture in Lukas’s bike tire. They talked about their work, and sometimes Astrid even talked about Rolf, and Hubert listened without interrupting.
There was plenty to do in the garden, and Hubert took it on. He avoided going into the house. Only when he needed some tools from the basement did he go inside. Lukas often came out, played in his vicinity and kept half an eye on him all the time. Sometimes Hubert asked him to fetch something, and he would jump up and run and get it, as if he too preferred that his father didn’t set foot in the house.