Sabine took her hand off his back and got up. He heard steps, a dull thump, and a stifled curse. Then the overhead light came on.
I’ve never been inside a cave since, he said and pulled himself upright. Christ, I don’t even ride in elevators anymore. He laughed hoarsely. Sabine said she was going to bed. Her voice sounded dismissive. He said he would drive home, he felt perfectly sober. Sabine didn’t reply. She watched him dress and followed him to the door. She held up her face to him, and he kissed her quickly on the mouth. She seemed offended. Clemens will be disappointed, she said. What about? Christoph asked. She looked at him with an absurdly serious, censorious expression.
The sky was clear, and the stars seemed to be burning in the cold air. Christoph felt the gratitude he felt after every expedition under the surface, the joy of having got back in one piece, and being able to breathe freely after days of being shut in. He walked through the silent village, got lost, and finally found himself in front of the village hall. He felt relieved, even strangely cheerful. Whatever sort of game it was, he had the feeling he’d won.
Three Sisters
HEIDI SKETCHED THE girl from memory. She drew the outline with swift strokes, the low, slightly heavy hips, narrow waist, and large breasts. She started to put detail on the sketch, worked on hands and hair, armpits and collarbone. Why isn’t she wearing anything? asked Cyril. Heidi was working on the face, which was hard to do in its girlish simplicity. My turn now, said Cyril, who was standing next to her, watching. Heidi went on drawing. The shoulders were tricky, the transition to the arms, which the girl had extended behind her, like a swimmer on the starting blocks. Carefully Heidi selected colors, brown and red for the hair, pink and white and a pale yellow for the skin tone. Those are mine, cried Cyril, and he snatched away the box of colored pencils and tried to snatch away the paper as well. She kept him off, and went back to the face. She had to catch the expression, the pert look of a seventeen-year-old girl with oodles of knowledge and no understanding. Mama, wailed Cyril, and when she didn’t react, he grabbed a red pencil and scribbled furiously across the drawing, until the point of the pencil broke off with a nasty click. Heidi tried to hold onto the drawing, the paper tore, and in a sudden surge of fury she pushed Cyril away from her so hard that he fell off his stool. He lay on the ground wailing, though not from pain, she knew his calculating cry, which was capable of driving her to white rage.
Heidi went and shut herself in her bedroom. She lay frozen on the bed, while Cyril pounded on the door with his fists. After a while he gave up, and she could only hear him whimpering. Slowly she recovered herself. She took a few deep breaths. She was sorry she had given the boy a shove. In the evening he would tell his father, and he would give her a concerned look but say nothing. He had been afraid from the very beginning that the boy would be too much for her. After all, he treated her like a child. The pregnancy had been uncomplicated and it had been an easy birth. Anyway she wasn’t overburdened, she just had different views. He spoiled the child, and put up with all his nonsense, the way he tried to spoil her as well. Rainer is a pussy, Heidi’s father had said once, and laughed. He got on better with him than she did.
Cyril whimpered quietly. Heidi opened the door, knelt down, and put her arms around him. No one likes me, he said. Of course I like you, she said, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Here, said Cyril, and she kissed the place. And here. You mustn’t scribble on Mama’s drawings.
CYRIL HAD GONE next door to play with Leah, who went to the same kindergarten. Heidi had carefully smoothed out her drawing and stuck it together with Scotch tape, and hidden it in the box at the top of the closet. Rainer mustn’t see it, he wouldn’t understand. Heidi went into town to buy something she had forgotten this morning. She stopped at the station and ran her eye down the train timetable. The train now ran a minute later than it had six years ago, now it was two minutes past midnight. She went through the underpass and sat down on one of the benches on the platform. The station was deserted, only from time to time a freight train clattered through at high speed, disappearing as quickly as it had come.
She had been all alone on the platform then as well. Her parents hadn’t seen her onto the train, they had been dead set against the idea of her going to Vienna, now that she had learned a trade and had such good final grades. But then she and her father had stopped speaking months ago. If he hadn’t been so concerned with what people might say, he would have thrown her out of the house.
Heidi packed her things at the last minute, she didn’t need much, she would only be gone for three or four days. As she slipped into her shoes in the hall, her mother came out and watched her in perplexity. Then—Heidi was already in the doorway—she said wait, and went into the kitchen and came back with a bar of chocolate. Eat this before your exam, she said, it’ll settle your nerves.
Heidi had got to the station much too early. She took a seat in the cafe garden opposite. The chestnuts formed a dense canopy, only a few dim strings of lights lit up the garden and made the night appear still darker. Only one table was in use—there was a group of men of whom she recognized none. Even so, the men greeted her exuberantly, perhaps to make fun of her. One of them was telling dirty jokes, one after the other. He kept his voice down, but in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, Heidi could hear every word. The men kept squinting across at her. She knew she looked younger than she was. When she went to the cinema, she had to show her ID, even now. The waitress came to her table, a girl not much older than herself, and said the cafe was closed. Last orders, she said, as she went by the men’s table. She disappeared into the restaurant and came back a few moments later with a couple of bottles of beer. We’re closed, she called to Heidi, who had remained sitting, and sat down with the men herself.
Heidi stood up to go. As she turned around once more, she saw that one of the men was gazing at her drunkenly. He got clumsily to his feet, and she was a little afraid he would come after her, but he went instead to the little outhouse where the lavatories were.
It was still warm. The foehn wind had been blowing for days, and even now at night the mountains seemed to loom unusually close. Heidi went over their names to calm herself, there was Helwang, Gaflei, the Three Sisters, the same peaks she could see out of her bedroom window. She remembered the story her teacher had told her at school. How instead of going to church on Assumption Day, the three sisters had gone up into the mountains to pick berries, and how the Virgin had appeared to them, and asked them for their berries. But the sisters hadn’t wanted to give them up, and ever since they stood there, turned to stone. Heidi had always been on the side of the sisters, she didn’t know why. She had sketched the forms many times and in all weathers, but she had never been up there herself. It was an exposed path, and she suffered from vertigo.