Ingo Schulze
One More Story: Thirteen Stories in the Time-Honored Mode
For Natalia
Then one day followed the next without the basic questions of life ever being solved.
I
Cell Phone
They came during the night of July 20–21, between twelve and twelve thirty. There couldn’t have been many of them, five, six guys maybe. I just heard voices and the racket. They probably hadn’t even noticed light burning in the bungalow. The sleeping area is at the back, and the curtains were drawn. The first sultry night in a good while and the start of our last week of vacation. I was still reading — Stifter, Great-Grandfather’s Satchel.
Constanze had received a telegram from the newspaper in Berlin, telling her to report for work at seven thirty on Tuesday morning. Evidently her secretary had coughed up our address. The series about Fontane’s favorite places was getting bogged down because commissioned articles weren’t coming in on deadline. That’s the problem when you don’t go far away. We’re both on the road all year more or less — I work for the sports section, Constanze for the feuilleton — and neither of us has any desire to spend our vacation sitting around in airports too. We rented the bungalow for the first time last summer — twenty marks a day for twenty by twenty feet — in Prieros, southeast of Berlin, exactly forty-six kilometers from our front door, a corner lot with pine woods all around, perfect when it’s hot.
It was odd being there alone. Not that I was afraid, but I heard every falling branch, every bird hopping across the roof, every little rustle.
It sounded like gunshots when they kicked in the fence boards. And then the whooping! I turned off the light, pulled on a pair of pants, went to the front — we always keep the roll-down shutters open at night. But I still couldn’t see a thing. Suddenly there was a hollow thud. Something heavy had been upended. They yowled. My first thought was to turn on the outside light, just to show that somebody was home and the idiots wouldn’t think nobody would spot them. There were a couple more loud noises — then they moved on.
I could feel sweat beading even on my legs. I washed my face. I could open the window from the bed. It had cooled off a little outside. You could just barely hear those guys now. Finally everything was quiet again.
My cell phone rang at seven on the dot. “Rang” is actually the wrong word, it was more like a “tootle-toot” that kept getting louder, but I liked its familiar sound because it meant Constanze. She was the only person who had the number.
While Constanze talked about how unbearably hot Berlin was and wanted to know why I hadn’t stopped her from driving back into the brutal city, I took the cell phone with me out into the sunny quiet morning and surveyed the damage. Three sections of fence were lying in the path. The concrete post between them had been broken off just above the ground and tipped over. Two twisted steel rods stuck up out of the stump. Out by the gate the rowdies had turned the newspaper tube on its head. Just underneath it I discovered the roof and back wall of the birdhouse. I counted seven fence slats that had been kicked in, plus four ripped loose entirely. Constanze said that she hadn’t realized what a dirty trick that telegram was until now. I really shouldn’t have let her drive back.
I didn’t want to worry Constanze — she’s always quick to get the feeling that something is a bad omen — so I didn’t mention last night’s visitors. It would have been hard to interrupt her anyway. She had already laid into the people who had rented the bungalow before us for turning the power off and leaving a half-full fridge. Suddenly Constanze cried that she had to go, kiss-kiss, and hung up.
I crawled back into bed. The damage was nothing I needed to take personally, of course, and there was a relatively simple explanation, too. The half acre of land that goes with the bungalow is only leased. That will end in 2001, or 2004 at the latest, when the transitional period will be over and our acquaintances will have to leave. That’s why they haven’t invested anything for several years now. The fence is held together by wire in places where the wood is too rotten for nails.
Last fall Constanze wrote an article about the New York police and their new philosophy. I remembered an example about a car abandoned on the street for weeks. Trash collects around it, yellowed fliers are wedged under the wipers. One morning a wheel is missing, two days later the license plates are gone, and soon the other three wheels. A rock is thrown through a window, and then there is no stopping it. The car goes up in flames. Conclusion: You don’t let junk even start to collect.
At least Constanze had been spared this incident. Together we would probably have done something reckless, or Constanze would have been depressed for days because we’d turned chicken and taken cover. But now I had to do something, otherwise next thing you know they’ll be throwing rocks through our window.
I got up to clear the sections of fence from the path. The first slat I picked up broke apart. With its protruding nails it reminded me of a weapon from the arsenal of Thomas Müntzer. First I threw all the slats in a pile. Then I began dragging them to the shed. To leave them lying out where anyone could get at them seemed too dangerous. Maybe I was exaggerating. But the fact was that not even a symbolic barrier protected the bungalow now.
Given the situation it was good to have a cell phone. I’d brought the envelope containing all the instructions — which Constanze had jealously guarded — along with me to Prieros and had finally learned how to activate the mailbox. It was my surprise for Constanze.
The “Hello!” of a man’s voice startled me. Medium build, dressed in flip-flops and a sweatshirt, he was standing at the gate and asked what damage the rowdies had done at our place.
His fence was missing two slats. “A latticework fence,” he said. “Do you know what kind of strength that takes?” The worst thing for him was the dent in the hood of his Fiat Punto. He’d searched a long time for whatever it was they’d thrown, but had found nothing. His crew cut looked like a fur hat set across his brow.
“It always happens during summer vacation,” he said. “All young kids. Always during vacation.”
I led him around. He took the inspection tour very seriously, squatting down a couple of times as if searching for clues. He found more pieces of birdhouse, turned the newspaper tube back to horizontal, and helped me with the rest of the fence slats. He had notified the police last night and evidently hadn’t let them off the hook until they had promised to send someone. “You need to know,” he said, “that this is small potatoes to them. Undermanned like they are, totally undermanned.”
He was interested in what I had to say about the New York police, and I promised to send him Constanze’s article.
“Can you give me your cell phone number?” he suddenly asked.
“My cell phone number? I don’t even know it.”
His frown pulled his bristly hair so deep that its leading edge pointed straight at me.
“I’ll have to check,” I said, and asked what he planned to do in case these guys came back.
“First off, get in touch,” he replied curtly.
“That can’t hurt,” I said.
Inside I sat down on the bed with the envelope in hand. All my colleagues had cell phones. I never understood why they put up with them. I’d never wanted a cell phone, until Constanze came up with the idea of a one-way phone. To make calls, yes — to be called, no, with the exception of her, of course.