“Constanze,” I said. “That’s silly.”
“You need to think about it!” The strap of her nightgown had slipped off her shoulder, and she pulled it back up. But it didn’t stay. “Think of all those people who could call now,” she said. “All those neighbors.”
“Our number’s in the book, a perfectly normal number. Anybody can call us.”
“That’s not what I mean. If a building is on fire or gets bombed and somebody runs out with nothing but his cell phone, because it happens to be in his pocket. You’ll be able to talk with him now.”
I plugged the charger into the extension socket beside the bed.
“It can very well happen,” Constanze said. Her voice now had that “governess” tone of hers. “Somebody calls you up from Kosovo or Chechnya or from wherever that tsunami was. Or one of those guys that froze up on Mount Everest. Now you can talk with him to the bitter end, until it’s all over.”
Braced on her elbow, one shoulder still bare, she went on talking while she stared at the tip of her pillow, which was propped up a little. “Just imagine all the people you’ll be dealing with now. Nobody has to be alone anymore.”
It was pointless to call information, because it was pointless to call Neumann. I don’t know which would have been more unpleasant, to have him answer or to have to listen to the way he pronounced his name on his mailbox.
The display showed the symbol for recharging: the outline of a little battery, with a slanted bar marching across three positions. It was the last thing I saw before I turned out the light. In the dark Constanze said, “I think I’m going to file for divorce.”
I listened to her breathing, her moving, and waited for the tootle-toot.
The shutters on the newspaper kiosk had already rattled when our hands accidentally touched. It took another eternity before we risked moving closer to each other. Then we started to devour each other in a way we hadn’t done for ages, as if lack of sleep had made us crazy.
At some point the tootle-toot began. It came from somewhere far away, like the signal of a spaceship maybe, soft and indistinct at first, gradually pressing closer, growing louder and louder, and finally drowning out everything else, until it seemed as if Constanze and I were moving without making any sound at all. The only thing we could hear was that tootle-toot — until it suddenly stopped, left us in peace, and was as silent as we were.
Berlin Bolero
“What a slime bag!” She pressed her glass to her cheek again. “And you played right into his hand. Kept your mouth shut the whole time. And he’s such a … I just don’t get it.”
Robert spread his fingers wide. He wanted to know if he could feel the wart if it didn’t rub against his middle finger. It had first felt like a scab, then like a crumb of toast.
“Four weeks at the outside,” he said, and looked up briefly. She was still leaning against the windowsill, in her dark blue bathrobe, her right arm under her breasts, her left elbow cupped in her hand. “If they hold to their plan, at most two, two more weeks.”
“It leaves such a nasty taste.” She sipped at her brandy. The red streaks across her cheek were gradually fading. “I don’t understand how you could do it, I just don’t get it.”
The rest of her brandy sloshed back and forth like the waves in the cube that he always picked up from the counter whenever he handed over his insurance card at the dentist’s: a little white sailboat on towering blue waves, always staying afloat, its sail to the wind, even when he upended the cube. His fingers slid into dovetail position. “We’ve made it through ninety-six weeks. And now it’s just two more—”
“Ninety-six shitty weeks!” She squinted and opened her mouth. The glass was empty. “All down the tubes—”
“Those ninety-six weeks weren’t shitty, Doro, not—”
“More than just shitty, it’s been … What do you call it when winos hold their clambakes in the entrance to your building, don’t even look the other way to take a piss. Or when your underwear in the drawer is filthy because somebody’s constantly drilling into a wall on one side or the other. And never a ray of daylight, with the fucking plastic sheeting over the windows, and then I’m supposed to be happy it’s just the sheeting and not some fucking asshole squatting at the window giving me the fucking finger.”
“What?”
“Oh Robert, what planet do you live on?”
“Who did that? Would you recognize him again?”
“Don’t give me that crap.…”
“I’m serious.” He had stood up. But then she gave him that look — he didn’t want to stand in front of her without being able to touch her. The muddy yellow light of the CD player surprised him.
“You think you’re serious, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re usually more imaginative.” She rolled the empty glass between her palms as she moved toward him.
“Doro,” he said.
She poured herself another.
“That’s rotgut.…” He had been keeping count and remembered to include this one. This last glass, filled to the brim, was as good as two.
She knelt down, bracing her hands on the coffee table, and slurped at the brandy. A strand of hair fell across the rim of the glass. “It’s not all that bad, your friend’s rotgut, your bud … dy’s rotgut.” To get to her feet she held on to the armchair. He didn’t want to scold her. What he wanted was for these minutes in their life to match all the others. They ought to be able to remember every hour of their lives without regrets.
“Bud … dy,” she repeated, and tried to drink as she took a step.
The one thing Robert felt he could hold against the man was that he’d lugged this booze along. Neither of them drank the hard stuff. Doro even had friends who never drank. You really had to keep that sort of thing in mind.
“Your bud … dy.”
“Two more weeks,” Robert said, looking at his hands and naked toes. Would he recognize them among a bunch of others? His hands, yes. They’d grown familiar now that he’d been regularly trimming cuticles. “But it’s all been crystal clear, from the start.”
“From the start!” She whirled around. Then she calmly said, “Those construction heinies have had to shell out week after week. They promised buyers vacant apartments, vacant, not occupied. So they just keep upping the ante, week after week.…”
“As if I didn’t know that—”
“And they’ve gone way up by now, I mean sky high. And you claim we’ve discussed this. You guys’ll never get it.”
“What’s with ‘you guys’?”
“I mean you guys, the whole pack of you—”
“Just sit down, okay?”
“I thought you were being clever, letting them dangle out there, and then right before the end …” She briefly balled a fist. Sweat was beading on her forehead, and her upper lip too. “We’ll never get an offer like that again, never!”
“When it’s all over and done with …” He looked at her, he wanted to go on talking. Once they could see the TV tower again, its flashing light, their star, and the magpies on the antenna during the day, and the chimney across the street, and the shadows creeping down the facade in the morning, until the balconies just cast little banners, pennants, as if the wind had picked up, blowing in from Friedrichshain. Robert stared at the ivy with its squidlike arms, at the bicycles in the courtyard.
She laughed.
“I don’t put up with it for two whole years and then say, Thanks a lot. It’s really been renovated nicely, lovely stairwell, good paint job.”
“Not so loud!”
“You’re such a dolt. How do you suppose he comes up with a number like that — one hundred eighty thousand, that’s exactly twenty thousand more. You could have demanded two hundred. Two …” With her free hand she traced the numbers in the air. “And five zeros. Did he show you anything? Some scrap of paper that says the apartment belongs to him?”