“And so it was because of his views,” the moderator asked, “that you struck up a friendship with him?”
“He didn’t say anything,” the singer replied, “that we didn’t think and say here thirty or forty years ago, not one thing. He just hadn’t stopped saying it.”
There was another brief pause, then the moderator asked her next question. But the singer didn’t respond. Instead she asked, “Don’t you think there will always be wars as long as someone is making money off them?”
The moderator tried a different question, but the singer insisted: “Don’t you think that even here among us far too many people are making money off war?”
“That’s something I’m not prepared to discuss with you now,” the moderator said, and evidently signaled her director to play some music, so that all you heard was the singer’s next, “Don’t you think …” The music was followed by news, after which the interview continued without further incident.
I could have told about that. But it bore no relation to what had already been said. Besides which, recounting a radio show seemed a rather paltry contribution. I mention it, however, because I’ve asked myself a hundred times now what I would have done as the moderator. Probably have made the mistake of asking the singer about her American friend. Because what consequences should this Rüdiger have drawn from his views? Given up his job? Blown up the Board of Trade? Become a politician?
Mulling all this over, I fell asleep. I dreamed but no longer remember what about.
When I woke up, I winced — of course I found it unpleasant to have dozed off like that. But no one, not even Susanne, appeared to have noticed. Lore was saying, “And there it lay, wet, slimy, smelly.”
Boris, legs outstretched, head propped against the arm of his chair, had closed his eyes. Ines was lying on her back, her head in Pavel’s lap, her legs dangling over one arm of the four-seater. Charlotte was sitting on the rug with legs crossed, elbows on her knees, head propped in her hands, a half full ashtray in front of her. Only Lore and Susanne still seemed wide awake. I later had Susanne tell me the story of the huge fish, which Lore had read about somewhere. But by then Susanne was likewise getting things mixed up.
I then watched how Susanne, following the model of Ines and Pavel, bedded Elvira’s head in her lap without Elvira’s ever waking up.
I nodded off again and woke up again just as Pavel started telling about a friend who had become acquainted with a young woman early last year, a woman not only of noble birth, but rich too. Her parents had bought back their ancestral estate, between Berlin and the Märkische Schweiz, and whipped it back into shape — a Bauhaus castle, as Pavel put it, surrounded by a huge park. “We knew the park, we had taken walks there, it’s open to the public, with pavilions, ponds, meadows, and ancient trees. But whenever we got close to the house there would be signs, just barely taller than the grass, announcing, Private Property. You couldn’t help dreaming about living in a palace like that. So we were strolling around, and suddenly saw a woman sitting in the pavilion up ahead. She was reading, she didn’t even notice us. I could have approached closer, but I realized I was standing between two Private Property signs. I’m quite sure she wasn’t reading Goethe’s Elective Affinities, but no other book would have fit in so well. The most marvelous part was that the large meadow behind is on a low rise that blocks the view of what lies beyond it, so that it came to me that behind it must be the sea or at least a large lake, and the illusion didn’t shatter until you were just a few yards before the adjoining field. When I later learned who my friend’s new acquaintance was, I suddenly found myself believing in fate, but a fate that’s been jimmied out of whack, as if there’s been a mix-up, like dialing a wrong number, so to speak.…”
Ines smiled and said without opening her eyes, “I see, I see.”
“I just mean,” Pavel said, “that we belonged there, not Jürgen. His Elisabeth wasn’t even the woman in the pavilion. Jürgen took us along one time, but the two of them were already on the verge of crisis. I played for them, on a Thürmer piano, but my mind wasn’t on it, I kept observing myself doing the ‘pianist routine.’ From the third floor you could see not just the meadow with its pavilions, but the big field beyond it as well.”
Pavel removed his shoes by pushing against the heels. I watched the motions his toes made inside his burgundy socks. He made no attempt at all to hide their sweat-stained soles. Boris’s arms were dangling from the arm of the chair like flags in a dead calm. He was snoring softly. Susanne was asleep with one hand at Elvira’s waist, her right arm along the back of the chair, her head thrown back, her mouth slightly open. It had been a long time since I had watched her sleep.
I tried to imagine what lay ahead for Elvira and Boris. I decided I would say something this time — I was going to tell him I’d like to see Elvira again.
I woke up at six on the dot. I was cold, my neck and shoulders ached. Susanne was smiling at me. Elvira and Boris were no longer in the room, I didn’t see Charlotte either. Fred was lying on the rug, Lore beside me on the sofa. Ines was asleep in Pavel’s lap. The window ahead of me had been tipped ajar, the floor lamp turned off, the Venetian blinds opened. A fly was crawling along one slat. Outside, a truck — it was either empty or pulling a trailer — was rumbling along over the cobblestones.
It may sound odd, but when I awoke I had a sense of pride, as if falling asleep in a sitting position with other people around were some sort of accomplishment. I was content, content and happy, as if I’d been given a gift I’d wanted my whole life long.
Susanne had closed her eyes again. I’m fairly certain that I didn’t fall asleep again, and that what comes next was not a dream. I heard a helicopter, and then I spotted it between slats in the blinds. I slid down in my chair until I had the helicopter at the same level as the slat where the fly was crawling. The fly would move ahead just a bit, and then wait as if it needed to regain its strength. The helicopter, however, kept getting closer to it. I didn’t need to make any more adjustments in my position. They collided, and then — I swear — the fly swallowed the helicopter. I waited for it to reemerge behind the fly or below the slat, as the laws of perspective dictated — but it never did. The helicopter had vanished. And only then did I notice that its noise had stopped as well — total silence, only our breathing, even the fly never moved from its spot.
Except for that last clause about the fly, my “little novella”—that was my subtitle — was now written, and I gave it to Susanne to read. If it ever got published, she said, even an impartial reader, who knew nothing more than what I had shared with him, would see through the whole thing from the start. I could spare myself the novelistic conclusion. Reality, she remarked, works very differently than in my stories. I asked her if she thought I might not even need to add anything, if the story might not already have come to its conclusion? If I didn’t have a sense of that, she said, then I didn’t need to torment myself by writing stories, there’d be no point in it, period.