The play was banal enough, but for all that Hubert sometimes had to laugh. The other members of the audience seemed to entertain no reservations. In one scene the beautiful daughter emptied a full chamber pot over the ugly sister’s dress. Jill had to take off her dirndl and stand there onstage in old-fashioned underwear, which brought her a separate little round of applause. She wasn’t especially good, though better than the others, and she clearly enjoyed it. At the end, even the ugly daughter got her man, Toni, a yokel in lederhosen. To tumultuous applause the cast bowed, and the lights came on.
Hubert waited at the bar, but instead of Jill there was Arno suddenly in front of him. He was carrying a roll of paper under his arm. Jill called me, he said.
I’ve got an idea for the exhibition, said Hubert.
I’m sorry, but it’s too late, said Arno. Hubert thought he could detect some schadenfreude in his voice. I’ve covered over all the posters. He unrolled one of the pale blue posters he was carrying. Thea Genser, Durch Wasser/Through Water.
She takes pictures of empty swimming pools in winter, said Arno, it’s outstanding work.
I don’t understand the title, said Hubert. He ordered another beer and watched Jill and the young man from dinner in animated conversation. Arno said he had to go on. Hubert took his glass and went over to Jill, who was just laughing heartily.
Armin was suggesting I always wore underwear like that.
He can’t actually be that stupid, said Hubert.
They were both silent.
I think he wants to get inside your pants himself, said Hubert.
Excuse me, said Jill to Armin.
She took Hubert by the arm and walked him over to the door.
Will you please stop insulting our guests, she said. I think it’s best you go home.
I’m not at home here, he said and emptied his glass.
Jill took it from him and said, if he liked, he could spend the night at her house.
When Hubert woke up, Jill was standing by the window, opening the curtains. The sun was shining. Jill went to him and sat on the edge of the bed.
Sleep well?
What time did you get home? he asked.
Not so late that I had trouble getting up in the morning. If you want to have breakfast with me, you’d better get a move on.
After Jill had gone off to work, Hubert looked up his e-mails on her computer and answered the most urgent ones. Although he had been pretty drunk the night before, he had taken the car. Now he walked to the cultural center, he was in no particular hurry.
In front of the building was an old minivan with German plates. A young woman was carrying a big wooden crate inside. Hubert held the door open for her. Only then did he notice the light blue poster that had been plastered over the larger, black one, giving the appearance of a window in a dark room. The steles he had set up yesterday in the entrance hall were parked in a corner, on the floor was a pile of aluminum frames in bubble wrap. The young woman had been in one of the guest rooms, and shortly after she came back. She walked up to Hubert and held out her hand. Hi, I’m Thea. Hubert, he said. Oh, she said. Well, I hope you don’t mind that I’m having the exhibition here now. He shrugged and grabbed one of the steles and carried it up to his room.
He spent the rest of the day pulling single threads out of the place mats, until there were just enough left for one to guess the original shape and size. Music started playing in the building, punctuated by the unctuous voice of a radio announcer. Hubert went into the entrance hall, where Thea was just unpacking her pictures and propping them against the wall. On the floor among the packing materials was a tinny little transistor radio. He asked her if she’d mind switching it off.
No problem, she said.
I can’t work with that sort of noise going on, Hubert said tetchily.
No problem, repeated Thea. I had no idea you were still around.
In the evening, Hubert went for a walk. He followed the road to Jill’s house. Behind him he heard a car. Only when it pulled up alongside him did he realize it was Jill. She wound down the window and asked if he was going somewhere.
It was cold in the house. Jill hadn’t turned on any lights. The blue sky through the windows reminded Hubert of the poster for Thea’s show. Jill sat down with him and lit a cigarette.
What sort of farce was that?
You mean the play yesterday? asked Jill. That’s just for fun, you mustn’t take it seriously.
I mean the whole thing, said Hubert. The invitation to the cultural center, and then your taking the exhibition away from me in the eleventh hour, in favor of a girl who’s barely got her diploma. And you in this ridiculous hotel, you can’t mean it. That’s not you.
Maybe not, said Jill, but life here is less of a strain. Our guests like to have a bit of fun, that’s what they’re paying for, and when they get it, they’re grateful and satisfied.
They sat facing each other in silence.
To begin with, I took an ironic view of everything here, said Jill finally, but over time I got to be really fond of the people. You’d be surprised at who comes here for vacations.
Hubert made to speak, but Jill cut him off.
I think I wanted to show you that. Because of the way you cut me down to size and said I wasn’t there. She stood up and made an actorish bow to him, and smiled. Well? Do you like what you see?
The last remaining days before the opening Hubert worked incessantly. He had set out the steles in his room. On one he put the rest of the log he had whittled, and at its foot the whittlings, on the next the frayed place mats, and on the ground the red threads he had pulled out. Over one stele he looped the picked-at rope. He started covering some pieces of paper with pencil hatchings till gleaming black surfaces resulted, where the individual lines were no longer visible. Sometimes the paper was rubbed through or got warped in the course of the work, but he didn’t mind.
Thea spent days over the hanging of her pictures. Each time Hubert left his room, he found her standing in the exhibition space with a framed picture in her hand or on the floor at her feet. In the evening, Hubert left the cultural center and drove into the village to eat in a restaurant there. Then he would look up his e-mails. Astrid wrote that she was coming to the opening with Lukas and Rolf, perhaps he could reserve them a room in a nice hotel. Nina similarly said she would be coming for the opening, and bringing a couple of friends. He deleted the e-mails without answering them, he had to concentrate on his work.
He only went into the kitchen in the morning, to fix coffee. He no longer appeared at the hotel. What little he needed he bought in the village store. Some days he ate nothing but salted peanuts, until his mouth was burning with them, and drank copious amounts of coffee. He slept badly and had wild dreams from which he often woke bathed in sweat. Sometimes he had the feeling that everything he perceived stood in some relation to his slow work of destruction, the way the light crept over the floor, the rushing of the river audible inside, the cries of the children in the hotel grounds. He tore a piece out of an old shirt and then used a needle to pick thread after thread out of it. The weave was so fine that he needed the lens of his slide projector as a magnifying glass. After he had spent hours working, he pushed everything aside, only to begin right away on the next task. For many hours on end he was unaware of time passing.
Chapter 3
The final will is that to be truly present.
So that the lived moment belongs to us and we to it …