Every week there would be something new, a barely used coffee machine that Lara found on eBay, a wooden crate for their shoes, a whole stack of yellow bath towels that were on sale. Simon hardly got involved, at most he would say, Do we really need this? Or, How much did you pay for that? It’s a mistake to economize on quality, these towels will last us forever. Forever is a long time, answered Simon.
He hadn’t brought much into their household, the rented van they had driven first to his parents’, then hers, was barely a quarter full of his boxes of clothes, CDs, and old schoolbooks. Most room was taken up by his stereo equipment, the gigantic loudspeakers, and the computer. They bought a TV on the never-never, an ex-showroom model Simon’s boss had given them a good price for.
How do you like it? asked Lara, producing the corkscrew from the bag she had next to her on the empty seat. Simon picked it up and played with it, saying nothing. He furrowed his brow, pulled on the screw, and the girl raised her arms. A ballet dancer, he said. No, said Lara, just a girl. Do we even have any wine? That bottle from your parents, said Simon. He was still playing with the thing, pulling the handle up and down, causing the girl to wave her hands, as though cheering or calling for help. Was it expensive? We drank that when Hanni and Martin came, said Lara, don’t you remember?
The restaurant downstairs was a bit seedy. Lara and Simon never went there, even though the manageress was their landlady. If they went out anywhere, it was to a place a hundred yards up the road, which did stuffed chicken breasts. They didn’t go to the lakeside disco much anymore where they met. During the week they went to bed early, and if they felt like going out dancing on the weekend, they would go to the city, where there were better clubs and where not everyone knew them.
THE BUS STOPPED outside the station, and the driver wished everyone a nice evening over the p.a. and turned off the engine. The passengers got off, said a word or two in parting, and went their separate ways. Lara knew most of them fleetingly, there was only one man she hadn’t seen before. He had turned once or twice during the trip and looked at her. When the driver said the next stop was their final destination, he had got up right away and gone to the door, even though the bus was stopping anyway. While the bus took its last few corners, the man stood directly in front of Lara. He held on tight and pressed the Stop button again. He had to be about forty, and with his long black coat didn’t seem to really fit in. While she was studying him, their eyes met. The man seemed quiet, almost indifferent, but in his eyes Lara saw an attentiveness and a kind of hunger that were a little disagreeable, but at the same time provoked her. She turned to Simon, kissed him, and asked, Will you come to the market with me tomorrow during your lunch break? She could feel how her voice sounded artificial and even a bit loud, but she felt she had to say something. The man in the black coat was the first to get off the bus. Lara saw him go back in the direction of the main street. After a few steps he turned around quickly, as though to see whether she was following him, and their eyes met once again. Do you know him? Simon asked. Lara shook her head. The face looks familiar to me for some reason.
When Lara locked the door after her, she read, as she did every evening, the handwritten sign that hung there. PLEASE DON’T THROW BREAD AWAY. Beside the door was an old cardboard box filled to the top with stale bread. Lara asked herself what her landlady planned to do with it. From downstairs came music and the sound of loud laughter. When folk groups played there on Fridays, they could hear the racket up in their apartment. Even worse were the toilet smells in the passage and the smoke that wended its way up the stairs. Simon had been down to complain a couple of times, but the landlady just said if they were that bothered by the smell, they should open a few windows.
Are you hungry? Lara asked. I wouldn’t mind a hot bath before dinner, I’m chilled to the bone. The half hour in the bus hadn’t been enough to warm her up. I bought some fresh ravioli, they only take three minutes. I had a late lunch, said Simon, I’m not hungry yet. They were standing together in the kitchen, and Lara was putting the shopping away. She held up the corkscrew. Do you like the color? Green, said Simon, and Lara thought about the bleached colors of the Italian photos again. It was forty-five francs, she said. Do you think that’s too much? Simon shrugged. You could always get a bottle of wine from the restaurant while I’m in the bath, said Lara, and then we can initiate the corkscrew.
She went to the bathroom, filled the tub, and got undressed. The mirror misted over with condensation, and the smell of pine needles filled the air. She turned off the water, and the apartment suddenly seemed very quiet. Then she heard footsteps and Simon’s voice through the half-open door. He said, I’m just going downstairs for the bottle of wine. I thought you’d gone already, said Lara, and she poked her head through the crack, and he kissed her on the lips and tried to barge the door open, but she held it shut. They kissed again. See you in a minute, said Lara. It was odd, she still felt a little ashamed in front of him. When they went to bed, she would get changed in the bathroom and slip under the sheets next to him in her nightie. She would wait impatiently for him to slide across to her, but she would never dream of taking the initiative.
Before they moved in together, it had all been pretty complicated. She introduced Simon to her parents fairly early on in the game, and they liked him, but he never spent the night under her roof. Lara would have felt ashamed of sleeping with him in her childhood bedroom, she would have been scared of her parents walking in on them, or hearing them, even though they weren’t noisy in bed. The times they had slept together were at Simon’s. Lara had always felt tense, and jumped at the smallest sound. In the summer, they had done it in the forest a couple of times, but that was uncomfortable, and Lara had felt just as nervous. She had yet to get used to the new freedom. Even now, she was still scared someone would see them or hear them. Sometimes, when Simon was lying on top of her, she pulled the covers up over his head. When he tried to pull them down, she held on to them and said, I’ll get cold.
She basked in the warm water, and thought about what still had to be done in the apartment, what they were still missing. She would have liked a bedside table, but that didn’t make much sense, as they didn’t even have a bed frame. They had seen a colonial-style bed in the furniture store, a sort of four-poster in poplar, with white tulle curtains. A dream, said the salesman, who had approached them and was looking expectantly at them both. That bed came with fitted tables, and a wardrobe as well. But for the moment it was more than they could afford, and Lara wasn’t sure if Simon liked it, or if it wasn’t a bit girly for him. When they went to see the beds at IKEA, Simon’s only question each time had been, Is it strong? Will it hold up? He probably didn’t mean it like that, but Lara still felt embarrassed in front of the salesman. We don’t need to buy everything at once, she said. So now they had a mattress and box spring on the floor.
After twenty minutes she got out of the bath and pulled the plug. She dried herself on one of the big yellow bath towels. It wasn’t actually a color she liked, that slighty off-, mustardy yellow. But you couldn’t argue about the quality, the quality was excellent. She had put them through the wash a couple of times, and they still felt brand new. Lara had to think about what Simon said: Forever is a long time. Presumably the towels would outlast their relationship, she thought, and that gave her a shock. She loved Simon, and he loved her, but was there any guarantee that he would still love her in five or ten years’ time? Her notions of the future were both very precise and very vague. She wanted children, and a home, and she wanted to go on working part-time once the children were there. In a few years she would get her promotion, and maybe one day she would become branch manager. But all that seemed very far off, a different life. Sometimes she would ask herself if Simon had the same sort of dreams as she did. It made her suspicious when he said, Let’s just see, que sera sera, we’re still young. In fact he felt as strange to her as this apartment that was only slowly turning into home. She never knew exactly what he wanted, he didn’t talk much about himself, it was only when he was together with his friends that he seemed perfectly natural and relaxed.