And the light persists. It is high summer. The evenings last for ever.
Finally, as if outstared by the sun, they dress and leave.
Outside it is warm and humid. They start to walk up the picturesque half-timbered street. There are some other people around, people strolling in the evening, and on the terraces of the two or three inns, people.
She has said nothing. He feels, however, he feels more and more, that when she thinks about the situation, she will see that it would not be sensible to keep it. It would just not be sensible. And she is sensible. He knows that about her. She is not sentimental. She takes her own life seriously. Has plans for herself, is successfully putting them in train. It is one of the things he likes about her.
He notices that there are cigarette vending machines, several of them, in the street, out in the open. They look strange among the fairy-tale houses. A village of neurotic smokers. He would like to have a cigarette himself. Sometimes, in extremis, he still smokes.
Nothing seems very solid, and in fact there is a mist, nearly imperceptible, hanging in the street as the warm evening sucks the moisture out of the wet earth.
They sit down at a table on one of the terraces.
He wonders what to talk about. Should he just talk about anything? About this pretty place? About the high steep roofs of the houses? About the carved gables? About the long day he has had? About what they might do tomorrow?
None of these subjects seems to have any significance. And on the one subject that does seem to, he feels he has said everything there is to say. He does not want to say it all again. He does not want her to feel that he is pressuring her.
It is very important, he thinks, that the decision should be hers, that she should feel it was hers.
They sit in silence for a while, surrounded by soft German voices. Older people, mostly, in this place. Older people on their summer holidays.
He says, desperate to know, ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Why did you choose this place?’
‘Why?’ He is not prepared for the simple, ordinary question. ‘It wasn’t too far from the airport,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want to drive too much further today. It was in the direction we were going. The hotel looked okay. That’s all. It’s okay, isn’t it?’
‘It’s fine,’ she says.
He turns his head to take in part of the street and says, ‘It’s not very interesting, I know.’
‘That’s why I like it.’ They share that too — an interest in uninteresting places.
‘I wouldn’t like to stay here for a week or something,’ he says.
‘No,’ she agrees.
Though after all, why not? He does find a lot to like in this place. It is tidy. Quietly prosperous. Secluded in its modestly hilly landscape. Evidently, not much ever happens. There aren’t even any shops — or perhaps there is one somewhere, one that is open mornings only, on weekdays (except Wednesday). Hence, presumably, the cigarette machines. Maybe, with a teaching post at the Universität Würzburg, twenty minutes up the motorway, he would be able to find a way of living here…
As a train of thought it is absurd.
And escapist, in its own weird way.
A weird escapist fantasy, is what it is.
A fantasy of hiding himself in a place where nothing ever happens.
She has another taste of her peach juice. She is drinking peach juice, though that does not necessarily mean anything — she is not a habitual drinker.
‘And now,’ she says, ‘we’ll never forget it.’
The noises around them seem to slide away to the edges of a tight, soundless space. He hears his own voice saying, ‘Why will we never forget it?’ as if it wasn’t obvious what she meant. And when she says nothing, he wonders, fighting down a wave of panic, Is this her way of telling me?
He does not want her to feel that he is pressuring her.
Panicking, he says, ‘Please don’t make a decision now that you’ll wish later you hadn’t made.’
‘I won’t,’ she says.
They sit there, swifts shrieking in the hot white sky.
‘Just,’ he says. ‘Please. You know what I think. I won’t say it all again.’
And then a minute later, he is saying it all again, everything he said in the hotel.
About how they don’t know each other that well.
About the impact it will have on her life. On their life together.
There is a furtive desperation in his eyes.
‘Stop this, please,’ she says, turning away in her sunglasses. ‘Stop it.’
‘I’m sorry…’
She starts to well up again; a solitary tear plummets down her face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again, embarrassed. People are starting to look at them.
He has, he thinks, really fucked this up now. His hand moves to take hers, then stops.
He feels as if his surface has been stripped, like a layer of paint, all the underlying terrors exposed.
‘I just need to know,’ he says.
‘What do you need to know?’
It seems obvious. ‘What’s going to happen?’
‘What you want to happen,’ she says.
‘It’s not what I want…’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I don’t want you to do it just because I want it…’
‘I’m not doing it just because you want it.’
—
It is like waking up from a nightmare, to find your life still there, as you left it. The sounds of the world, too, are there again. It is as if his ears have popped. ‘Okay,’ he says, now taking her hand. ‘Okay.’ It would not do to seem too happy. And in fact, to his surprise, there is a trace of sadness now, somewhere inside him — a sort of vapour trail of sadness on the otherwise blue sky of his mind.
She sobs for a minute or two, quietly, while he holds her hand and tries to ignore the looks of the pensioners who are watching them now without pretence, as if, in this place where nothing ever happens, they were a piece of street theatre.
Which they aren’t.
3
The motorway is taking them north-east, towards Dresden. In the vicinity of each town the traffic thickens. The sun looks down at it all, at the hurrying traffic glittering on the motorways of Germany. It is Monday.
They woke late, to find the sun beating at the curtains, beating to be let in. Heat throbbed from the sun-beaten curtains. They had kicked off the bedding. She had not slept well. She was, in some sense, it seemed to him, in mourning. He had no intention of talking about it, not today.
Last night, after the scene on the terrace, they had walked for an hour, walked to the end of the village and then along the river — little paths led down to it, to wooden jetties where boats were tied in the green water. Steep banks on the other side, where there were more pretty houses. Clouds of gnats floated over the water. It was evening, then, finally. Dusk.
They walked back to the Gasthaus Sonne. They hadn’t eaten anything.
In the harshly lit room, she said, ‘You always get what you want. I know that.’
‘That isn’t true,’ he murmured. Though even then he thought, Maybe it is. Maybe I do.
She was undressing. ‘I should get used to that,’ she said. ‘I know people like you.’
‘Meaning?’
‘People that just drift through life, always getting what they want.’ She was speaking quietly, not looking at him.
‘You don’t know me,’ he told her.
‘I know you well enough,’ she said.