“Or don’t let them out of your sight for a minute,” Lore said. She and Fred smiled at each other — you might have taken them for brother and sister. Lore’s black hair was shorter than his and sprinkled with tiny icicles. His wiglike ponytail and his gap teeth gave him an antiquated look. (One of Susanne’s coworkers at her agency has actually hired Fred to play a role in a medieval pageant in Frankfurt on the Oder.)
As she spoke Susanne gazed straight ahead, balancing her wineglass on her knee with just two fingers. Elvira went on holding her bundle of stick pretzels clamped in her hand, without eating a one.
“It can happen,” Pavel said.
“Sure can,” Boris said. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm, leaving the little hairs at his wrist pasted against the skin.
Once Elvira noticed that everyone else had fallen silent, she spoke even more softly. No one except Boris, who was sitting closest to her, knew why Susanne suddenly threw her head back and put her hand to her mouth.
“Can we laugh along with you?” Pavel asked.
“Of course, go ahead,” Boris said, and walked to the balcony door. He opened the Venetian blinds and pulled them up, but so out of whack that they drooped on the right like a fan. Elvira went on speaking softly.
“May I?” Pavel asked and held the bottle up. Elvira nodded. But she didn’t have a glass. There were several volunteers, including myself, who offered to fetch one from the kitchen. Lore won the contest. Pavel stood smiling in front of Elvira and Susanne.
“He wants to laugh along,” Boris said as he tried to adjust the blinds to horizontal. “You’ve finally managed it. Now everybody wants to lend an ear.”
“Oh leave her be!” Susanne exclaimed.
When Lore appeared with the wineglass, Pavel carefully lowered the neck of the bottle to the edge of the glass and poured. “I don’t drink red wine,” Elvira said, never budging. Pavel apologized, took the glass from her hand, and went back to the kitchen.
“So now you’ll all be treated to a fine story,” Boris said. “Something very special.”
“She did tell it so well,” Susanne said, as if that was the end of it.
Elvira seemed to be reconsidering her vanished glass. I was sure she would refuse to tell her story again on command. But then she said, “Well, okay,” laid her bundle of pretzel sticks on the table, and rubbed her hands together. “I’ll start over again.”
“Once more from the top,” Boris scoffed as he tipped the window open and then returned to his seat. “Everybody’s just wild to hear you tell it.”
“I thought,” Elvira said, “that if I’m going to live here I ought to do my part—”
“Hear, hear!” Boris shouted. “A very wise approach.”
Pavel offered another glass to Elvira, this time filled with our white wine, and when she didn’t react, set it down in front of her.
“So I made coffee, five or six times a day, because Boris just has one of those glass gizmos that you press the coffee down into—”
“An Alessi.”
“But no coffee machine, and the gizmo makes at most four cups. I used a good pound of Prodomo every two days. Their favorites were meatballs with onions and ham and eggs—”
“She means the workers,” Boris said.
“And cola, coffee and cola, always 1.5 liter bottles of cola. Most of them drank their coffee black. At first I thought East Berliners drank theirs with milk and sugar and West Berliners black, but suddenly the Easterners wanted black and Westerners blond and sweet. They were all friendly and polite, even the painters, who kept having to come back. Boris had them paint the hardwood doors—”
“I didn’t want to come home to a forest,” Boris said with a nod my way. “Am I right?”
“They did the job without a grumble.”
“There was nothing for them to grumble about; it’s in the contract.”
“When I asked if it bothered them, they all nodded. But they were always friendly.”
“No sooner do you look the other way,” Boris said, “than they disappear, and you have to make a hundred thousand calls to get them back again — hours on the phone.”
“They were always polite, and they carried those tin lunch-boxes, blue ones, red ones, just like I had as a kid in school.”
“So what are you trying to say?” Boris asked.
“I just wanted to say that everything here was always in an uproar, for one reason or another, and—”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“Would you please cut it out!” Susanne cried. “Don’t pay any attention to him.” She selected a pretzel as carefully as if she were playing pick-up-sticks.
“Life here inside was pretty normal,” Elvira said, “until those guys showed up on the balcony.” There was a roughness to her voice, as if she ought to swallow or clear her throat every few moments. “It was the sound of the welding torch — all of a sudden I wanted to know what that noise outside was. At first I thought they’d gotten up here by climbing the trees, that they’d swung through the trees on ropes.”
Susanne burst into laughter.
“If any of you see any trees around here, let me know,” Boris said, turning toward the window. “That’s utterly absurd.”
“They weren’t just on the balcony, they were moving around on the scaffolding, like a crew busy reefing sails.”
“I thought,” Boris said, “that you were going to tell them — why don’t you go ahead and tell them?”
“I was busy with the guys here inside, making coffee and sandwiches, the whole nine yards—”
“The whole nine yards! The whole monkey business!” Boris said, stood up, and left.
Elvira watched him go in shock. Nobody said a word. Everyone’s attention was riveted on her, as if we were all waiting just to hear her speak.
“He really did remind me of a monkey,” she said, half defiant, half intimidated.
“Who?” Charlotte asked.
“The guy I let in — who was doing the metalwork. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see him. If I’m making coffee and sandwiches, then the guys outside should get some too. I rapped on the window. There he squatted beside his welding torch as if it were a campfire. He didn’t even hear me open the door. It was a smell like a sardine can, only stronger. I had to shout for him to understand me. His mouth was hanging open — absolutely perfect complexion, hair like ropes, shiny ropes, just a few strands of gray, and pale blue eyes. And not an ounce of fat on his body. He was glistening with sweat. He held up both hands, he didn’t want to come inside. So I set his coffee down on the tiles, the milk and sugar beside it, and watched through the window as he picked up the spoon between his huge fingers and shoveled sugar into his cup, like he was playing with dollhouse china — but he did it so deftly, like a watchmaker. The cup vanished in his hand, and I thought, That’s not nearly enough for him.”
“Was he King Kong?” Fred asked, but no one laughed.
“He never started before three o’clock. The whole day other workers would be out on the scaffolding or in the apartment. They were there by six or six thirty in the morning. But he never showed up before three. Late afternoon and early evening I was always alone with him out on the balconies, this one here or the one in the guest room.”
“What sort of metalwork was he doing?” Susanne asked.
“The joints along the railings and the ones between the tiles and the wall.”
“And then he came inside.”
“Yes, the third day he came inside. I wasn’t prepared for it, I didn’t know what to do. He knocked on the balcony door and stepped in. Raising his shoulders high, he walked around inspecting the room as if it were a museum. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks and noticed the footprints he’d left behind. “Sorry,” he said. That was the first word I’d ever heard him speak. All I’d ever seen were gestures or him shaking his head. ‘Real nice,’ he then said. ‘Real nice, but if all you do is work and sleep you never get to see it.’”