Next World Novella Page 8

  Yet I wasn’t as surprised as you might think. Did you suppose I wouldn’t notice anything? Yes, while you were still groping your way through life half blind, I was good enough for you. While I was editing what you wrote, you were happy to assure me that you would even hold my hand in the next world. But as soon as you could see properly, whose hand did you hold? You owe me an explanation, Hinrich. Do you seriously think I never noticed how much you had changed? How you turned away from what had meant everything to you before? And, let me say in passing, what it meant to me. Did you think I would just sit back and let it happen, when I had wanted to be happy with you for ever? I gave you my word in front of witnesses, could you forget that?

  Yes, you could. You left me. Not physically, I know, but in every other way. Because I am now, at last, also leaving you, I will call you Schepp again, so that you understand I take this seriously, I really have drawn a line underneath it. The Hinrich I knew and loved, and with whom I hoped to grow old, disappeared from my life after his eye operation. Only the pathetic remains are left. Yes, Schepp, you read that correctly, and because I am leaving you I want to have it out in the clear light of day and

  At this point Schepp was overwhelmed by helpless, hysterical laughter, which gave him a fright. He then stared into space for a while, finally blew his nose and said, a distinct note of doubt in his voice, ‘Then this really is a farewell letter? She surely won’t have done herself, well, an injury – done anything silly?’

  No, Schepp had no tears left; all he could do was read on, and there were only about a dozen pages left. He had good reason to wonder what that woman Dana had said about him; he knew she could be economical with the truth. Oh, how could Doro be so credulous, how could she believe what a woman like Dana said? Now that she didn’t even want to call him by his first name, did he have to call her Fräulein Dorothee again, maybe even Fräulein von Hagelstein? He glanced at the parquet beneath the slanting rays of the afternoon sun, where remnants of his life lay scattered. Now, in the softer light, he could make out details of the photographs without squinting. There could easily have been some memory or other among them, he could have dived down, submerged himself instead of giving himself over to what he still had to read. But he did not. He plucked up his courage and did not stop again.

  Yes, Schepp, what you have read is correct; because I am leaving you, I want to have it out in the clear light of day and confess something to you. I too have been unfaithful, for at least as long as you and with far greater consistency. Not the way you are imagining. Although of course I was crazy about her, used every opportunity to meet up with her – at least I can understand you there. How strong she was, bubbling over with joie de vivre, the life force. When I saw her the first time, leaning against the bar, I knew instantly what drove you there evening after evening. After all, I’d felt for weeks that you had changed completely, I sensed it after that night you came home so late, not really of this world, or at least not entirely responsible for your actions.

  You could be forgiven for that, I know that now. But asking to borrow my commentaries on the I Ching the very next day, keeping the book for weeks on end – the I Ching, of all things, the text you usually refer to with mild derision, don’t you think that was a bit tasteless? Or did you really think me so simple-minded? Did you actually not care? Unloved wives are jealous. You underestimate a placid surface; it masks hidden depths. The quieter I became, the more violent I felt inside. And I’m not supposed to get upset. But high blood pressure doesn’t count for much when you’re coming to terms with your husband’s baser instincts.

  Once you start seeking, you find. Even if at first all you find is a short yellowed typescript – why did you never tell me that you’d tried your hand at a novel? Or was it just going to be a short story? At any rate, you went at it, shall we say, full tilt in a way I’d never have expected you to. Forgive me, but did you really write it yourself? You weren’t the kind of man who stood at the bar, you were much more of an outsider, like Marek – were you trying to write about yourself? Well, you weren’t nearly as unworldly as I thought you were before your operation. If I’d guessed … would I have fallen in love with such a Schepp?

  But back to Dana. The way you kept looking at her while you were talking on the phone to Pia! You clearly cared so little about our daughter’s divorce that I immediately drew my own conclusions. It probably escaped your notice, in fact of course it escaped your notice, that I made a date that very evening to meet up with Dana. As soon as I saw that sign tattooed on her throat, everything was clear; I was electrified: Kan, the double water sign, I’d meditated on it for years, it couldn’t be a coincidence. I had to approach her. And so I did. Dana had wanted to be approached, as I now know. Or do you think she met up with anyone and everyone just for fun? Not that she didn’t enjoy it, she certainly wouldn’t have done anything that she didn’t want to do. But she made sure she got paid. I pretended I merely wanted to pass the time while you were on the phone to Pia, said something along the lines of, ‘Do you know what you actually got stuck with there?’

  Dana thought I was cracking a joke and rolled her eyes. ‘A helluva lot of men.’

  ‘A helluva lot of water, as it happens.’ Did she want to know more?

  ‘That’s a new one on me!’ Yes, she said, she was extremely interested, she loved water, she’d always been a good swimmer.

  She pretended she thought the sign was just some kind of modern graphic art. But when, probably inspired by the Kan sign itself, I said I could tell her more about the meaning of her Chinese character, she agreed at once. I found out later that you had approached her in the same way. Do you in fact have any idea what Kan means? I didn’t fail to notice that you were collecting information from my commentaries, you even underlined the relevant passages. But one doesn’t come to understand the I Ching within a few days. For that to happen you have to make a serious study of it. You may not believe me, but in secretly making a first date with Dana, naïve as I was, all I wanted was to protect you from her. She would have robbed you blind, I thought, she would have ruined you, a man like you would have been right up her street – if at the last minute you didn’t do something so foolish that it would hurt her pride. You underestimated her pride. Otherwise, who knows, she might not have remained so aloof.

  When I found out that there was not, as I’d originally assumed, an affectionate understanding between the two of you, I immediately decided to prevent one from forming. Admittedly, even then I was not uninterested in Dana myself. Be that as it may, I wanted there to be something between her and me, something stronger than you could imagine in your besotted intriguing – do you understand? I got in before you did. I seduced her. Oh no, not in the way you’re thinking with your pathetically one-sided imagination. But no less tenaciously and, above all, far more consistently.

  At first I was a somewhat unexpected confidante to whom Dana could tell everything about you that I didn’t want to know. She scornfully enumerated all your earlier affairs and would-be affairs. I don’t have to tell you about those, I’m sure. It’s amazing what she knew about you. She told me in detail how you pursued her from the first moment, with looks, with insinuating remarks. Soon even intruding on her smoking breaks, when she really would have liked to be on her own. You deserved to be rejected unreservedly. But I wanted to be sure, so on the day after you received that slap in the face I went from being her confidante to being her accomplice – we’d been meeting up regularly for a long time, exchanging information about you – and got her a new mobile and phone contract. Yes, you have me to thank for being eventually unable to reach her on that number. You’re surprised, I’m sure; you wouldn’t have thought it of me, would you? I often listened to your messages on the old mobile later, when my determination began to waver. Do I have to repeat what you cooed and whistled to her? Astonishing to think what an amorous fool is hidden inside even you. I’d never have suspected you of such folly.

  Back to Dana. At first I didn’t take a
ny real interest in her, apart from her tattoo. We found her a job at another bar a few streets away, where she could wait tables again until one of the men chasing her would turn too insistent. That should have been the moment for me to say goodbye to her. But by then I could no longer do it. I wanted to win her for myself. Isn’t she a fascinating person? You’d be the last to contradict me. Isn’t she, how shall I put it, isn’t she a woman through and through?

  No, it’s not how you think it is. She didn’t have half as many affairs as you assume, in fact not a single one; after all, she had other worries. A family to feed, mother, grandmother, child – you’d never have dreamt that she’s a mother, would you? Her little boy is growing up in the same farmhouse where she grew up instead of at home with her parents. The fields have been sold off, it seems that nothing is left from the old days except the misery. ‘Either it was raining or the gate at the level crossing was closed,’ that’s how Dana summed it up. She’d already done ‘everything she could’ to make sure her family could manage, everything – do you know what that means? I’d rather not imagine it in any detail. Without sometimes fleecing one or another of the men pursuing her tenaciously, without going off with some of the takings now and then, she couldn’t have coped. And then that curse that seemed to pursue her, always driving her on. Fundamentally she was always fleeing. How else could she escape from the importunate world?

  You know what I mean. You’re condemned to know. In spite of everything, she was very much at ease in her own body; maybe that was what I most admired – she was so incurably healthy. While making herself out to be impulsive, confused, unpredictable, she was clear-minded and realistic and focused about what she wanted – and she almost always got it.

  Is it surprising that things turned out as they were bound to? At only our second meeting she asked me, mockingly, whether my lover did the housework while I was out – not my husband, you will notice. How do you like that? It surely must be confusing, don’t you think? Once, you will hardly believe me, she bid me goodbye with the words, ‘Tonight I shall dream of you again.’ Admit it, that wouldn’t have left you cold either. Then it all happened very quickly, but not the way you’re thinking. Much worse: it became a real friendship.

  Or perhaps not entirely a real friendship.

  It’s difficult for me to write about it. Put into words, it would all suddenly seem so trivial, so ordinary, yet it really was something special.

  I have paused for a while in writing this letter; I still have three days, three mornings when I can sit here and finish it. Almost like old times. As far as Dana and I are concerned, I will spare you the details; we met up as often as circumstances allowed, and that was often. I would not say that I kept her financially, like all the others before me; our relationship was fundamentally different from the one you dreamt of. Besides, we are reasonably well off and secure ourselves, a little money more or less makes no difference. Hadn’t she endured the shipwreck of her life? Wasn’t she doomed to be shipwrecked again and again? Was it not incumbent upon me to help her whenever I could, if only out of simple humanity?

  I have paused again in my writing. Dr Regelsberger says I should not – get so het up. Yes, my relationship with Dana soon became – how shall I put it? – soon became very close. Not that you should think I had no pangs of conscience; I did. But wasn’t it you who started it? Should it not, consequently, have been up to you to put an end to it, or at least try to, you whom I have always loved faithfully? But even during those emotional times you didn’t change, following your gloomy course without sparing a thought for me. I felt so lonely when we were together! You should have realized that I desperately wanted to talk to you, if only because I avoided it so persistently. Instead you let your hair grow out again, as if that would change something inside your head. When we drank our tea in the afternoon you went back to stroking it over your bald patch just as you had done before. Yet nothing was the same. Nothing.

  Isn’t it outrageous, positively detestable, that you never noticed that anything was wrong? How could you be so indifferent to me? But you only ever loved me as you might love a perfect flower arrangement, a beautiful accessory, an arabesque in the margin of your life. For years I tried to reconcile myself to that, to adjust to it. After your operation it was harder and harder for me, and then overnight it actually became impossible. Our time together had run out.

  Did you know that her name is really Danuta? I always called her Danka, which she liked. I think it was what she had been called as a child. No, I never told her about my dark thoughts, simply because when I was with her they did not exist. She was so lively that there was no space left for the melancholy that has afflicted me all my life. Within the first few weeks she did what you have been unable to do for thirty years – you have no idea how I can laugh. As if her mere presence released me, relieved me of the burden I have always carried. All that had made my days so quiet and hard to bear had turned to air.

  Then came the moment when she disappeared from my life too. Not entirely without trace, as she disappeared from yours. Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of her farewell, and I look forward to the day with great joy. At the time, however, although I had always expected it to happen, I was rather distressed, and I was still distressed weeks later. You never noticed; I had already kept my illnesses from you: the neurologist’s diagnosis, the results of the CT scan. For you, after all, I was always to be the woman you married twenty-nine years ago, anything else would just have been a nuisance. So now, as the old Doro, I will say goodbye.

  Well, Dana left me too, just as she has left everyone. So in the end you and I have something in common again, Schepp, who would have thought it possible? But while you have only one evening to remember for the rest of your life, I have four years. Four wonderful years. She had to move on, who knows why, the confused circumstances of her life were never entirely clear even to me. I had only just lent her a little money, but that can’t have been the reason; I did not even mention it when we parted. The only explanation she gave was that it was never too late to make the right decision, she had to go back to where she came from, it was high time she did.

  I asked no further questions. You know that wasn’t the way to get anything out of her. She was planning to leave in a few days anyway, her decision had been made. What a look she gave me when we parted, so full of the tender affection that is possible only between women. Not in the way you may think, but – more comprehensive, more final. A look that I shall never forget.

  It was nearly a year before I could bring myself to make my decision. After all, we have a family, an apartment, destinies to be disentangled. Above all, I had, and have, a conscience! How quickly the two of us, you and I, have grown apart. It began when we stopped sharing a bedroom, and went on from there. But how well we managed, all the same, no upsetting scenes, no major discord, almost perfect – if it hadn’t been for Dana it would have gone on until death did us part. Now life is parting us, and I feel ashamed not where you’re concerned but for myself. I did not want to write to tell you that I am leaving you – I have always thought of marriage as a sacred bond. Only Dana’s farewell look gave me the strength to do it.

  Just as I was the one who took her away from you, now she is taking me away from you. Yes, our ways part tomorrow, Schepp. What would we humans be without the freedom to set out somewhere whenever we want, anywhere, against all reason? At least I have a path to follow, at least I can say that I shall be going to a place where I may perhaps really arrive. Or where I belong. You know, heavy hearts sink faster, and I want mine to be light again, at least as light as it was when we first met. If everything that happens to us is really only an echo of what we carry inside us, then in the end that path will lead me to where I can discover my innermost, deepest, most hidden being, all that I have forbidden myself in past years.

  So much for my confession. I am under some pressure because I must finish my farewell letter tomorrow. When you come into this room, I expect around eleven, I s
hall already be on my way. Around two or half past someone will call to take away what I have packed over the last few days. Please be sensible and do not cause any unnecessary difficulties. For the moment, anyway, I am taking only the bare essentials. You don’t have to worry about telling Pia and Louisa; they already know. Of course in the next few days you will be hearing from my lawyer – no half measures any more, what must be must be. I assure you that he will soon come to an agreement with you. At least, it has all been discussed and prepared, with the requisite powers of attorney.

  Do you think me cruel? It is only logical. What you did to me all these years was cruel, as was, even more so, what you did not do. But I never complained; if you will be kind enough to look back, you will realize that I was always at your side. Or at least you lacked for nothing. You will keep the books, the texts, the source materials. You will go on living in the same way as before. At worst, you will have to look for some other, shall we say, female companion to drink tea with you in the afternoon. According to Dana you have plenty of choice.

  By now I hardly even care. The one thing that still matters to me, as I think for the last time about the two of us, is that I want to have a clear conscience before I leave. The lack of clarity that has come to exist between us over the years is more than I can bear. But how could I have told you, how could I have explained it, when you would have been sure to interrupt me with your constant hair-splitting, or made fun of me in some other way? When I came upon your little story about Marek – for the second time – I finally knew how to clarify matters. What can you do if you no longer have the strength to say something straight out? You find a roundabout way to say it.

  It is never too late to begin a new life. I have felt truly euphoric for the past few days. Today the time has come. I have set the date for my departure so that in future I will still have good reason to rejoice on this day. Before I go, it’s true, I would like to slap your face, but instead I wish you, with all my heart – what? A long life in which you will have plenty of time to think about these things.