Felix was still eating when Martina stood up with a start. She ran upstairs ahead of us. “Nothing this time either,” she said, eyeing me.
It was only then I realized how much I hated having a mousetrap in the house. At that moment — I’m certain of it — the feeling crept over me that those interlocked metal boxes were like bad-luck magnets. We placed the trap closer to the window and crumbled more sponge cake.
It stayed sunny all week. I practiced every day from nine to eleven. I think my playing is pretty good, even if of late there is nobody to hear me. My bow technique especially has improved quite a bit. Bow technique and etudes. I had never really had the time before. Bach and Mozart as my reward. Afterward I concentrate on housework.
When I’m not in the mood for practicing, I listen to music. All I ever ask for are CDs. The public library doesn’t have many to lend out. Of late I’ve been listening to our records again. What a feeling to lift the tone arm to the edge and slowly shift the lever and watch the stylus make contact! The complete Beethoven with Masur, Schumann with Sawallisch. I’ve listened to them since I was fifteen, sixteen. I could conduct them. I could direct it all by heart. I’ve always worked as a construction engineer, usually as project manager. But deep down I’m a musician.
Becker’s wife had taken sick leave. I watched her open the door for her kids. Their front door doesn’t open onto the street but is at the side, directly opposite our bathroom window.
As soon as her husband came home, they would drive off, with Sandra and Nancy usually along. They’d come back after two or three hours.
That Friday Becker’s wife was just returning from shopping when I went to check the mail. She had lost weight. She looked good. I nodded to her but then turned back as if I had the wrong key.
“We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” was the statement I had prepared for any eventuality. She would hardly have been interested in news about the mouse. Not that there was any, although the first thing Martina did when she got home from work was to run upstairs. “Nothing this time either,” she’d say.
I added a piece of ham to the sponge cake. Normally our eyes take only a few days to integrate a strange object into a larger familiar image. But I found the thing more and more disgusting — the very idea of having to hold both boxes in my hands with a mouse running back and forth inside. Or would it play dead? Once we got to that point I wanted to call the Becker kids over. It would add some variety to their lives. And they could take the trap with them.
It was always Martina who heard the mouse. I wouldn’t even have noticed a mouse without her. What plagued me at night were the mosquitoes. I always thought mosquitoes die in the fall. This year it looked as if they were going to spend the winter with us. At first I thought they were biting just me — one even managed to creep up inside a nostril. But come morning I saw that Martina had more bites than me — so I had no reason to complain.
Last year around the same time when I was tidying up the attic, I discovered that a whole army of spiders had marched through the skylight. But mosquitoes in November is an entirely different matter, wouldn’t you say?
That last week in October I had also taken care of the gutters and had cut back the grapevine. Of course I take care of the chores too — from shopping to cleaning house. I like doing it.
If Martina were the one to stay at home, the world would find that perfectly normal. Men, however, are always telling me how much they have to do. And if I say that I’m up to my ears in work too, they grin and give me a dumb look.
You automatically take a backseat of course. I never sit up watching television longer than Martina. When she gets up in the morning I head for the kitchen to make breakfast. As long as Felix was still living here, it was me who woke him up and chased him out of bed.
I think Martina likes having hardly any housework to do and always having somebody who’s there to greet her, who sets the table for her. Everything has its good side. And as long as the money covers expenses … It used to be perfectly normal for somebody to stay at home full-time.
The thing is, once Lippendorf was finished, I put in an application with every department, even PR work. Who should know a project better than somebody who helped build it? After all, I knew that box inside and out. Do you suppose they gave me a chance? They didn’t even call me in for an interview. It’s all a matter of cliques, whether old or new. You side with either one bunch or the other. Otherwise you’re just out of luck. The unemployment office had the bright idea of sending me to a free newspaper. I was supposed to polish doorknobs looking for advertisers. “I built a power plant,” I said, and was out the door. If I ever take on something like that, it’s all over, I’m washed up. I don’t need to explain that, do I?
Early in the second week with the mouse, I had just come in from the yard and was about to take a shower when I heard our car in the driveway, and seconds later Martina’s footsteps. Just as you can automatically hum the rest of a familiar melody, I waited for the sound of her key in the front door. I stepped into the tub, but then turned the tap off again when nothing more happened. I interrupted my shower a couple of times to call Martina’s name. Finally, my hair still wet, I walked out into the yard. Martina and Becker’s wife were standing at the fence. Martina had done some grocery shopping. So I had the excuse of offering to take both bags into the house. I unpacked it all, made some tea, set the table, and thumbed through the newspaper inserts.
“Makes a person feel truly sorry for them,” Martina said after having drunk a glass of apple juice. I was annoyed that she took it for granted that I had once again put together a nice meal and then had to wait for her.
From then on they stood there every evening. Becker’s wife would even come outside in the dark just so she could talk with Martina.
So we were kept well posted. Martina talked about how much Andrea, Becker’s wife, missed her Kevin every time she turned around. “An adult,” Martina said, “would no longer be alive. But with children there’s still hope even when doctors are at the end of their tether.”
I thought about how even in cases like this a certain kind of routine sets in. You drive to the hospital, hold your child’s hand for a few hours, convince yourself he’s just sleeping, talk with the doctors, have them explain what they’ll be trying to accomplish with the next operation, and cry a little before you leave. The garage door signals that they’re back home. Evidently you have to give it a kick to open or close it. One after the other, three motion-sensitive lights go on, and the four Beckers march into the house Indian file as if moving across a stage.
Until yesterday at any rate there was nothing new in the mouse department. I was constantly greeted with Martina’s message of “Nothing this time either.” I was told I ought to pull the furniture out from the wall a little more at least. The back of one cabinet had been nibbled at. “You see!” Martina exclaimed. “Just look at that!”
How was the mouse my fault? Can you tell me that?
I went out into the yard and set to work weeding. The best time for pulling weeds from between the walkway cracks is when everything is damp and nothing is growing anymore.
Suddenly somebody said, “You’ve just about got it licked,” or something like that. Even though he was wearing his bunch of keys as always, I hadn’t noticed the head of the Becker household.
Becker was resting his hands on the fence, and it was obvious this was going to be awkward and I couldn’t just keep on squatting there.
“Well?” I said, “How’s it going?”