He resolved to break up with Lin. After work, he waited downstairs for her, and they walked out of the building together. He knew they were being watched. He needed challenge, but with such a challenge he was keenly aware of his own impotence. They walked along the road, pushing their bicycles, for some time, before he eventually told Lin about this conversation.
"So what?" Lin didn't take it seriously. "Let them say what they like."
He said probably it was nothing for her, but it would not be so in his case.
"Why?" Lin came to a stop.
"It's an unequal relationship!" he blurted.
"Why is it unequal? I don't understand."
"Because you've got everything and I've got nothing."
"But I'm willing!"
He said he did not want favors, that he was not a slave! Actually, what he wanted to say was that under the unbearable circumstances, it was impossible to have an emotionally happy life. However, at the time, he could not make himself clear.
"So, who's treating you as a slave?"
Lin came to a stop under the streetlight and glared at him. People passing by were stopping to look at them. He suggested going to Jingshan Park to talk. The park stopped selling tickets at nine-thirty and closed at ten. He said they would be out quickly, and the gate-keeper let them in. Normally, when they had a date, they would cycle to the park after work, go up the hill, and find a clump of bushes away from the path, where they could see the lights of the whole city. Lin would casually take off her panty hose, and she did this very seductively. Her panty hose were luxury goods at the time and only available in service departments for people traveling overseas; they were not available in ordinary shops. There was not enough time to go up the hill, so they stopped in the shadow of a big tree by the path not far from the gate. His intention had been to make it quite clear that their relationship was henceforth ended, but when Lin started crying, he didn't know what to do. He held her face in his hands and brushed away her tears, but she began to weep and then to sob loudly. He kissed her, and they embraced like a pair of heartbroken lovers. He could not stop himself from kissing her face, lips, neck, breasts, and belly. The siren sounded over the loudspeakers: "Comrades in the park, your attention, please!"
The park had powerful loudspeakers that made a person's eardrums reverberate. At festivals, from morning to night, they were used for broadcasting revolutionary songs; they were also used at normal times to get people out of the park at closing time.
"Comrades in the park, your attention, please. It is closing time, and the park will be immediately locked up for cleaning!"
He ripped her panty hose under her skirt, thinking it was the last time. Lin hugged him tight, she was shaking all over. However, it was not the last time, but they no longer spoke at work. Each time before parting, they had to decide the location for their next date: in the shadows where streetlights did not reach, by which wall, or under which tree. Once on the street, they would get onto their bicycles separately, and cycle ten or twenty meters apart. The greater the secrecy the greater was the feeling that it was an illicit affair, and, more and more, he sensed that the relationship would end sooner or later.
12
The telephone wakes you and you wonder if you should answer it.
"It's probably a woman, have you forgotten a date?" She is sitting propped against the pillow and turns to look down at you.
"More likely it's for some reception," you say.
"Someone was knocking while you were asleep." She sounds tired.
You raise your head to look up. The sun behind the velvet drapes is shining through the gauze curtains onto the back of the sofa, a newspaper had been pushed under the door. You reach out to pick up the phone, but it stops ringing.
"Have you been awake long?" you ask.
"I feel rather hollow. You started snoring as soon as you fell asleep."
"Why didn't you give me a shove and wake me up? Didn't you sleep at all?" You caress the curves of her shoulders; her body is familiar and intimate, even the warm smell of her body.
"You were so fast asleep. Go back to sleep, you haven't had a decent sleep for two nights." Her dull eyes have dark shadows beneath them.
"Isn't it the same for you?" Your hands glide down her shoulders, grab her breasts and squeeze them hard.
"Do you still want to fuck me?" She looks at you with a wretched expression.
"What are you saying! Margarethe…" You can't understand.
"As soon as you had ejaculated, you fell fast asleep right on top of me."
"That's awful, just like an animal!"
"It's really nothing, people are animals. But what a woman needs even more is a feeling of security." She gives a weak smile.
You say you feel very relaxed when you are with her, she is very generous.
"It depends on who it is. Not everyone who wants it, gets it."
"You didn't have to say that!" You say that you are deeply touched by how kind she has been to you.
"But you will forget sooner or later," she says. "The day after tomorrow, no, it should be tomorrow-another day has gone by and it's probably already midday-I'll go back to Germany and you'll go back to Paris. We can't live together."
"We are sure to see each other again!"
"Even if we saw each other again it would only be as friends. I don't want to be your lover."
She takes your hands from her breasts.
"Why, Margarethe?"
You sit up in bed and look at her.
"You already have a woman in France, it's not likely that you don't."
Her voice is harsh and you don't know how to respond. The sun has moved from the back of the sofa to the armrests.
"What time is it?"
"I don't know."
"But surely you also have a boyfriend? You must." This is the only response you can come up with.
"I don't want to keep up this sort of sexual relationship with you, but I think we can be friends, no doubt, good friends. I didn't think it would suddenly become so complicated."
"What do you mean?"
You say that you love her.
"Don't, don't say that, I don't believe it. Men always say that when they make love with women."
"Margarethe, you are very special." You want to reassure her.
"Is it because I am a Jew, and you've never had one before? It was just a whim, you don't understand me at all."
You say you want to understand her, but that she keeps everything to herself. You have told her a great deal about yourself, but she won't open up. You remember how she kept mumbling something while you were making love.
"All you want is my flesh, not me." She shrugs.
But you say that you really want to understand her, her life, her thoughts, you want to know everything about her.
"For something to write about?"
"No, as a good friend, if I don't count as a lover."
You say she has revived many feelings in you, not just sexual feelings. Memories you thought you had forgotten have come back to life because of her.
"You just thought you had forgotten, it's just that you had not thought about them. However, pain can't be obliterated and forgotten."
She is lying on her back and her eyes are wide open. Without eye makeup, her eyes look a deeper gray-blue. Her nipples are pale red, and the aureoles an even paler red. She covers herself with the sheet and says not to look at her like that. She hates her body. She had said this while making love.