On the way back they shopped for groceries at a little store on the main strip. Afterward, on the street, Alice made fun of the other customers who had addressed the storekeeper in loud German and seemed perplexed that he didn’t understand. They could at least learn pane and prosciutto and hello and thank you.
Outside the cottage next to theirs was a shiny black SUV with tinted windows and Stuttgart plates. The trunk stood open. On the road were suitcases and bags, a kid’s bike and a tricycle. A man emerged from the house and walked toward them. Alice greeted him in Italian. The man didn’t reply. Perhaps he didn’t hear you, said Niklaus as they crossed the garden into their own house. Alice shrugged her shoulders. I only hope the kids make as little noise.
Inside it felt humid, and there was a smell of old furniture and cold cigarette smoke. There should be a law against smoking in vacation villas, said Alice. If the chimney worked, we could at least have a fire. They got the quilts out of the bedroom and spent the afternoon on the sofa reading.
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS they didn’t really get to see much of their new neighbors. The weather had cleared, and when Alice and Niklaus had their breakfast on the terrace in front of the house, the SUV was already gone, and they didn’t see it until they returned from dinner at the end of the day, and there were lights on next door. Alice and Niklaus hadn’t so much as laid eyes on the woman and children. Maybe they don’t exist, suggested Niklaus. Once they spent all day in the hills, touring wine estates, and bought a lot of wine and olive oil. When they returned at around five o’clock, the black Hummer again wasn’t there, but an attractive young woman was lying in a deck chair in the garden. She had on a skimpy flowered bikini and was doing sudokus. Buona sera, said Alice, but the woman didn’t respond any more than her husband had a few days earlier. After Niklaus and Alice had freshened up, they went out into the garden too, to read before dinner. No sooner had they sat down than their neighbors’ car pulled up, and the man and two small children got out and went into the garden. Niklaus saw the man bend over the woman in the deck chair and give her a kiss, before vanishing inside. The children didn’t greet their mother, they had been quarreling as they stepped out of the car and were still bickering over something or other. The mother seemed to have no intention of intervening. She lay on her deck chair, puzzling over her numbers. Once, with an angry hissing tone and in broadest Swabian, she called out, Cut it out, the pair of you, but she didn’t even look up, and the quarrel went on as heatedly as before.
Alice lowered her newspaper and looked up at the sky. Niklaus pretended to be engrossed in his book. After a while, she threw it down and went inside. Niklaus waited a moment, then followed her. He found her sitting at the living room table, staring into space. He sat down opposite her, but she avoided his gaze. She was breathing fast, and suddenly she fell into a furious sobbing. Niklaus went around the table and stood behind her. He thought of laying his hand on her shoulder or stroking her hair, but in the end he only said, Just imagine if they were our children.
Alice had never wanted children. When Niklaus found that out, his first reaction had been relief, and he saw that it was only convention in him that had assumed he would one day start a family. On the occasions they had talked about it, it had been to assure each other that they had come to the right decision. Perhaps there’s something wrong with me, said Alice with a complacent expression, but I find children boring and annoying. Perhaps I have a wrong gene somewhere. They both worked hard and enjoyed their work, Alice in customer service at a bank, Niklaus as an engineer. If they had had children, one of them would have had to sacrifice his career, and that was something neither of them was prepared to do. They traveled to exotic countries, had been on a trekking holiday in Nepal and a cruise to the Antarctic. They often went to concerts and plays, and they went out a lot. All that would have been impossible with children. But sometimes Niklaus wondered if having a family might entail not just a loss of freedom, but perhaps a certain gain as well, perhaps he and Alice might have been more independent of each other, without the exclusivity of love and irritation.
Alice had grown up as an only child, while Niklaus’s siblings had no children themselves, so he and Alice knew only other adults. When friends of theirs came to have children, they usually lost contact soon after. If families came to visit, Niklaus and Alice were usually tense and impatient, and reacted clumsily to the clumsy efforts of the children to make friends. Then Niklaus would feel ashamed of himself. He had never regretted not having children, but sometimes he regretted that he had never even felt the desire to have any.
FROM NOW ON, the Stuttgarters were often in their garden. Half the time the children would be squabbling, and the rest of the time they contrived to be just as noisy. The older of the two was a girl of about six. Every so often, for no evident reason, she liked to issue a piercing scream. Her brother was maybe half her age. He was capable of keeping himself amused for fully a quarter of an hour at a time by bashing two objects together. He would only stop when his father yelled at him. Then the mother would yell at her husband, and he would shout loudly back. The coarse dialect didn’t exactly improve matters. At other times Niklaus would see through the shrubbery between the two properties how the man knelt in the grass beside the woman in her deck chair, and rubbed her with tanning lotion. She would have her bikini top off, and he was kneading away at her breasts, seemingly unconcerned whether anyone could see him. Eventually the two of them would disappear, and a quarter of an hour later, Niklaus would hear one or another of the children banging on the front door, calling for the parents.
Alice could stand the noise for ten minutes at most. A few days later, the mere sight of the neighbors in their garden made her turn on her heel. They took their meals indoors now, when they didn’t go to the local trattoria. Niklaus would propose trips, but Alice turned them all down. She was at war, and had to guard the terrain. Why don’t you say something? she demanded. Niklaus looked blank and shrugged his shoulders. What can I say? If they were playing music outside, or making noise at night, then I could complain. I can’t tell them not to talk. Children can’t help being noisy. A rotten upbringing isn’t punishable. Common is what they are, said Alice, and Niklaus nodded thoughtfully.
WHEN NIKLAUS WAS SITTING alone on the terrace, he would catch himself repeatedly looking across to the neighbors’ garden. The woman lay out on her deck chair all day long, doing her puzzles. She had taken to sunning herself topless. She had small firm breasts that reminded Niklaus of those of the Polynesian women in Gauguin’s paintings. He felt a desperate desire to go over and touch them.
Sometimes the man would take the children to the beach, and Niklaus would prowl restlessly around the property, imagining how he might get into conversation with the woman. He would make some casual remark, and she would ask him where he was from. Oh, Switzerland, we only ever drive through it. Then she would realize the laundry was still in the machine. She would put on her top and he would follow her inside, where it was cool and quiet. She would look him long in the eye. Well, what about it? she would say, and take him by the hand.
When Niklaus turned around he saw Alice standing at the window. She seemed to be observing him. He went inside. Alice hadn’t stirred, she was still standing by the window, as though he were still outside. He laid one hand on her shoulder; she tried to shrug it off, but he wouldn’t let her, and spun her around to face him, and kissed her. It took a while before Alice responded, and after a bit she freed herself, and said with a sarcastic laugh that the laundry must be finished. Niklaus followed her into the little room off the kitchen where the washing machine stood and watched as she took out their clothes, giving each individual item a shake. He followed her into the garden and helped her hang up the wet clothes. She kept the underthings separate, and draped them indoors on a little rack, as she did at home. I have the feeling nothing gets properly dry here, she said. Her voice sounded softer than usual. That’ll be on account of the high humidity, said Niklaus. And they don’t get properly clean either, said Alice. This time she didn’t resist when Niklaus kissed her.