“You did nothing of the sort. You have no concrete proof that your parents went to the authorities and—”
“Please,
please,
stop trying to cast everything in a reasonable light. The problem with that place is you had to betray others in order to survive. But in doing so you betrayed yourself.”
I felt like saying:
we all betray ourselves,
but knew it would sound naïve and simplistic. Seeing her so distressed—yet also being so heartened by the fact that she trusted me enough to want to share this painful secret with me—simply deepened everything I felt for her. So what I did do was extend my right hand and placed it on her own. It was still kneading the napkin—and when I first touched it, she stiffed and continued agitating this piece of overwashed linen. So I clutched it tightly—and after almost instinctually trying to pull it away, Petra slowly tightened her fingers around my own. I looked up at her and saw that she was fighting tears.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I said. “Nothing.”
“You are a lovely man,” she said, still not able to look up at me.
“And you are a lovely woman.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I’m telling you: yes, you are.”
“But you hardly know me.”
“You are wonderful.”
“Thomas, please.”
“You are wonderful.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“Well, I haven’t changed my mind since then.”
She laughed a small laugh, then fell quiet for a moment, grasping my hand tighter.
“Nobody ever said that to me,” she finally said.
“Really?” I said, trying not to sound shocked.
“My marriage . . . it was a curious business.”
I said nothing, waiting for her to continue. But she suddenly reached for the menu and her cigarettes.
“I’m starving,” she said.
“Let’s order then,” I said, smiling at her.
“Thank you,” she said, and I knew that what she was actually thanking me for was
not
asking any further questions about her marriage.
The waiter came over. We both ordered pasta. I suggested a bottle of white wine. She nodded her okay, adding:
“I only discovered Italian food after I was evicted from the GDR. Parmesan cheese, linguini, clam sauce, real meatballs—all foods from another planet. But you, growing up in New York, you must have had access with every possible food on offer.”
For the next half hour or so she quizzed me intently about my childhood in Manhattan—wanting to know all about my neighborhood, the little restaurants (like Pete’s Tavern or Big Wong King on Mott Street in Chinatown) where I ate regularly with my dad, the sorts of Broadway shows I was taken to as a kid, the funkiness of the East Village in the early seventies, even getting me to demonstrate the difference between a Brooklyn and a Bronx accent, making her laugh as I mimicked my father saying expressions like
Howyadoin’?
in his original Prospect Heights intonations.
Petra relaxed considerably during the meal—eating the very good spaghetti carbonara and matching me, glass for glass, with the house white. When I once pointed out that she’d gotten me talking about New York for far too long, and surely it was my turn to bombard her with questions about her childhood, she said:
“But I want to know everything about you . . . everything except your past girlfriends. Or, at least, not yet.”
“There’s not much to tell in that department.”
“When it comes to that part of life—the intimate part—there is
always
much to tell. And yes, this is the wine talking now.”
“But you said we weren’t going to talk about that just yet.”
“All right, be mysterious.”
“No more mysterious than you.”
“Ah, but I sense your story is a happier one than mine.”
“Is your story that sad?” I asked.
“Yes. It is that sad.”
And fishing out a cigarette she said:
“And I wouldn’t say no to another half liter of wine if you don’t object.”
“Object?” I said, reaching over and stroking her face with my hand. “This is so . . .”
But before I could finish the sentence she put her index finger on my lips.
“You don’t have to tell me, Thomas. I know. I truly
know
.”
Then, without warning, she put her head in her hands and looked stricken, as if everything was suddenly too much to bear.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I can’t . . .”
I heard her shudder. She pressed her fingers to her eyes. I reached for her again, but she pushed away my hand.
“I can’t . . .” she said again, her voice now a whisper.
“Can’t
what
?”
“Thomas, please do yourself a favor and leave now.”
“What?”
“Just go and spare yourself.”
“
Go?
There’s no way I’m going. There’s no way I’ll let you push me . . .
us
. . . aside. Not when I know . . .”
“And
I
know, too. I knew it the first moment I saw you. That’s why I have to ask you to go. Because this can’t be—”
“Why can’t it be?
Why
? You are everything to me.”
She suddenly stood up, grabbing her cigarettes. Out of nowhere she said three words:
“Ich liebe dich.”
I love you.
Then she raced toward the door.
Immediately I threw some money down on the table and ran out into the street. But Pflügerstrasse was empty. I shouted her name several times. I charged up and down the street, checking in the few doorways that weren’t boarded up, peering down alleyways, still calling out for her. But there was no response. Just the wind blowing up against the corrugated iron sheeting covering all the condemned buildings. I charged down to the main thoroughfare, scanning the street. But, like everywhere else in this no-man’s-land of a neighborhood, there was not a soul to be seen. Petra had vanished.
My head was swimming, not just courtesy of her abrupt departure, but all that had transpired in such a mad rush beforehand. Then there were those three words she had spoken to me before fleeing. She meant them—of that I was absolutely certain. Just as the way everything that had come suddenly spilling out between us—
“I knew it the moment I saw you last week” . . . “You are everything to me”—
was simultaneously irrational and so profoundly true.
Sleet began to fall—insidiously cold and glutinous. I needed shelter in a hurry, but I didn’t want to head to the U-Bahn and home. I wanted to find Petra. But without her address, without her phone number . . .
There was only one solution: I had to return to the restaurant and hope that she too would make her way back there, that, somehow, this running away was . . .
What? An overreaction? A fear of the enormity of it all? Or was it pegged to a lot of hidden stuff that I had yet to discover and, now, maybe never would? Certainly I was punch-drunk by the wild intensity of those last few moments and how, when we started expressing what we had been pondering, cogitating, feeling for days . . . the immense tactile realization that, yes, this was love . . . even though we both still knew so little about each other . . . well, I for one had never known anything like this before. The fact that Petra had run off into the night, that perhaps I had lost her, lost this mad reverie that was still grounded in a very cogent reality; the thought of this all just slipping away, the idea that she had now run out of my life for good . . . it was devastating, unbearable.
I returned to the restaurant. It had remained empty in my absence. The waiter watched me come in, looking desolate. He raised his eyebrows in my direction, as if to ask: “Any luck?” But he already knew the answer to that question. When I slowly shook my head in response, he pointed me toward a table. I sat down and pulled out my packet of tobacco and started to roll a cigarette. He walked over with a large thick bottle of Vecchia Romagna brandy and a small, thin glass. He poured me out a shot, patted my left shoulder in a fraternal, reassuring way, and said one word:
“Drink.”
Leaving the bottle on the table adjacent to my glass, he left me to my cigarette, my booze, my thoughts.
Over the next hour I smoked four roll-ups, drank four small glasses of the Italian brandy, and waited for Petra to walk back in here. But that never happened. During this time I didn’t resort to the usual comfort zone—my notebook, my excessive scribblings—that I usually reached for when I was nervous, troubled, trying to find something to do with my hands. Tonight I simply stared at the ceiling and kept seeing Petra in my mind’s eye, telling myself that I had met the woman of my life, that everything about her—her beauty, her intelligence, her cunning wit, her immense vulnerability, her sadness, her all-encompassing sensuality, the way her hair gently lilted in the air as she shook her head from side to side, the half-surprised peal of her laughter, the way she so quickly cascaded into tears—represented a terra incognita.
And now . . .
I stubbed out my fourth cigarette and downed the last of the brandy and stood up, expecting to feel shaky after all that low-grade Roman alcohol. But all I felt was sadness.
She’s not coming back. She’s run from me, run from us. It’s all over. Over before it even started
.
“What do I owe you for the brandies, my friend?” I asked the waiter.
“On the house.”
“You must let me pay you.”
“You threw down enough money when you went chasing after your friend. You have paid enough tonight.”
“You’re too kind.”
“I hope to see you back here. And now, let me call you a taxi.”
I was suddenly feeling beyond tired. So I nodded my assent. When the cab showed up five minutes later, the waiter again touched my shoulder and said:
“You love her, don’t you?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“You are a lucky man to feel that. Me—I’ve never felt that. Never once.”
“And you’re still single?”
“No—married to the same woman for twenty-five years. So I envy you.”
“But say it doesn’t work out?”
“At least you now know what it feels to feel
that
.”
Cold comfort. I let the waiter help me on with my coat. I shook his hand. I staggered out into the street and the cab.
I was home within seven minutes. I climbed the stairs to the apartment. I surveyed the clean, freshly painted, freshly sanded space that was Alaistair’s studio. I staggered up to my room, tossed my jacket into a corner, kicked off my boots, and fell onto the bed.
The next thing I knew there was a ringing sound in my ear. It took a moment or two for me to work out where I was, how I had gotten there, and that—according to the watch on my wrist—it was two eleven in the morning.
Brnng.
The downstairs doorbell was ringing. Loudly. Incessantly. As if someone was holding it down. Insisting that I wake up. Insisting that I let her in.
The penny dropped. I was instantly on my feet, rubbing the tiredness out of my eyes, racing downstairs in bare feet, running across the cold flagstones of the entrance foyer, flinging the door open, and . . .
There she was. Petra. Drenched. Her hair matted down from the still-omnipresent sleet. Her eyes red, as if she had been crying for hours. Her body shivering as she fell into my arms.
“I’m cold,” she whispered, clutching me tightly, her head so close against mine, her hand running through my hair, then touching my face, as if to prove to herself that I was real, tangible,
here
. I closed my eyes and felt tears.
“Don’t let me go,” she whispered. “Never let me go.”
FOUR
S
EVERAL HOURS LATER—IT
was five twenty according to my bedside clock—I drifted back into consciousness, my arms around Petra. She was lying next to me in bed, dead to the world. I sat up on one arm and simply looked at her, thinking:
she is so beautiful.
As I stared down at her, I recounted the last few extraordinary hours, moment by moment, how, as soon as we were upstairs in my rooms, she pulled me toward her. Within seconds we were kissing so deeply, and with such vehemence, it was as if we were two lovers who had been separated for years—and had been so yearning for each other during this long absence that when the moment of reunion finally happened, we were insatiable.
Then we were pulling off each other’s clothes and tumbling back into the bedroom. As soon as we landed on the mattress, she pulled me atop, letting out a sharp cry as I entered her, then throwing her legs around me to take me as deep as possible. Holding my face in her hands she looked up at me with an expression of such desire, such need, such hope, such ardor, that I immediately blurted what I had known,
felt,
days earlier at the specific moment when she first came into my field of vision.
“Ich liebe dich.”
“And I love you.”
These words were whispered, as if we were exchanging a vow. Then, slowly, with a passion that was as outright as it was absolute, we began to make love. As it built—as our want for each other became almost vertiginous—the passion turned unbridled and just this side of crazed.
Afterward we both lay entwined, gazing into each other’s eyes, bedazzled, shell-shocked, alive to the realization that, perhaps, everything in our lives had just been transformed.
“Oh my love,” she whispered, her arms so tight around me. “Oh my love.”
“I’m yours,” I whispered back, stroking her face.
She buried her face in my shoulder and sobbed.
“It’s okay,” I said, holding her close. “I promise you, all is good now.”
“You cannot know . . . cannot begin to know,” she said, her voice hushed.
“Know what, my love?”
“When I vanished tonight, I wandered the streets for hours, frightened.”
“Frightened of what?”
“Frightened that I had lost you because of my craziness. Frightened that I could not accept the happiness which I thought might be possible with you.”
“But that fear . . . it was due to . . . ?”
“So much. Things I will, in time, explain to you. But for now, please . . . I just want to be in this moment. This incredible moment. With you. So hold me as tight as you can, as I want to sleep in your arms tonight and tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, the next decade, the next century . . .”
“By which point you will have been sleeping in my arms for more than sixteen years. A beautiful thought.”
“I love you, Thomas.”
“I love you, Petra.”
After turning her head to kiss me deeply, she placed it again on the pillow. As my arms encircled her, she closed her eyes and was quickly asleep.
I followed moments later, the intensity, the madness, of all that had transpired rolling over me with punch-drunk force. With my lips touching the back of her neck, I too surrendered to the netherworld of night.
Then it was five twenty in the morning—and I had that moment of befuddlement where I didn’t know where I was, until I felt Petra stir pleasantly in her sleep. Sitting up on one arm, I simply stared down at her, my mind racing. Until you’ve experienced it—and I would hope you have at some juncture in your life—you can never really be prepared for the overwhelming nature of falling madly in love for the first time. You find yourself thinking things you never thought possible until now. Just as you so desperately want all to come right, especially as you are now living in a wonderfully heightened world where all seems so extraordinarily propitious. And the American in me—that part of me that believed in “can do,” overcoming obstacles, getting the barn rebuilt in the wake of the tornado—now thought: whatever it was that had so hurt and tortured Petra in the past, I would make it right. I would be there for her completely and utterly. I would never let her feel alone again in the world. I would calm her fears and make certain she realized she could talk to me about anything. I would be the person she knew would be the one fixed and solid point amidst life’s complex unpredictability. I would be her man.
Yes, I was dwelling in that elevated reality known as
superbia—
in which I found myself seeing life itself in a wholly new and extraordinary way. As I lay there, looking at Petra so happily asleep, so snug against me, so wonderfully omnipresent, I was astounded by the change that had come over me. The way I wanted to give everything to Petra—and how our love was rooted in a sort of instinctual truth. Yes, it was all very sudden, very overpowering. But so what if it had the force of a thunderclap? I
knew.
Just as Petra told me, she
knew,
too. For the first time in my life, I understood certainty. You can spend your entire life searching for the person for whom you are destined. Most of the time you will engage in compromises—some reasonable, some catastrophic, some often edging into quiet desperation and the sadness of limited horizons. But when,
if,
you come face-to-face with the person with whom there is a chance at transcendence, then you have to change everything, if necessary, to make it all come right. For this is your instant, your hour—and such an hour might only arise once or twice during that spell of time known as your life.
After around thirty minutes, I eased myself quietly out of bed and picked up all of Petra’s wet clothes, putting them on assorted radiators to have them dried by the time she awoke. Then, going into the bathroom, I collected my robe off the back of the door, catching sight of myself in the mirror. I am someone who is never cheerful when viewing his reflected image. That morning, however, I did find a smile on my face—and one that was overlaid with true wondrous bewilderment.
I returned to the bedroom, leaving the robe on a chair near Petra’s side of the bed, in case she woke up before me. Then I crawled in beside her, encircling her again with my arms.
“Is that you?” she mumbled, half-asleep.
“It’s me.”
“Come closer.”
And locked together we retreated back to sleep.
When I awoke, I heard a voice humming in the near distance. Light was streaming through the sides of the window blinds and the clock by the bed said eleven twelve. The humming became more distinct as the world came into focus. With it was the smell of fresh coffee percolating. The space beside me in bed was vacant, as Petra was singing to herself in the kitchen, a song in German which sounded vaguely
lieder
-ish and familiar. I sat up in bed, feeling extraordinarily rested and—now this was a new sensation—actually happy.
“Good morning, my love,” I said.
Petra came in from the kitchen, dressed in my bathrobe. She seemed so luminous, so incandescent, her eyes simply glowing.
“Good morning, my love,” she said, putting her arms around me and falling beside me. We kissed deeply. Then, slipping off the bathrobe, we began to make love again. This time we moved even more slowly, with great sensual deliberateness, feeling the sheer intimate pleasure of being so physically amalgamated, so bound together.
Afterward, she took my face in her hands and said:
“This is so . . . God, I want to say ‘revolutionary,’ but it sounds so Communist! But that, for me, is the word. Revolutionary. Because what I feel now, for you, for us . . . this is a new country . . .”
“. . . and one which we are creating for ourselves. And that’s all that matters.
Us
. The rest is noise, Petra.
Us
.”
“The most wonderful pronoun in the world. And one which I’ve never really used before.”
“Nor have I, which, as you say, is what makes this, for me, so, yes, revolutionary.”
“And I’m never getting out of this bed.”
“I won’t hold you to that.”
“But you will hold me always?” she asked.
“You have my word on that.”
“And I am the happiest woman in Berlin this morning. So happy I want to bring us breakfast in bed.”
“You don’t have to go to work?”
“I left them a message last night with the security man in the guard post, telling them I was still unwell. And then I came to find you.”
“And when I opened the door and saw you there. . . .”
We kissed for a very long time. Then we lay, side by side, again simply looking at each other. Until external reality intervened: the sound of a sander at work downstairs.
“Oh, damn,” I said. “I totally forgot.”
“Fear not,” Petra said. “When I heard movement down below, I went out onto the staircase and found myself face-to-face with a Turkish gentleman. He asked for you, said you were doing some work on ‘Mr. Alaistair’s studio.’ When I explained you were still asleep, he told me not to wake you—that he would come by tomorrow to find out if Mr. Alaistair’s condition had improved. I presume ‘Mr. Alaistair’ is your landlord?”
“You could call him that. You could call him many things. A man of many parts, ‘Mr. Alaistair.’”
“Now you have me totally intrigued.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I have all the time in the world. And I want to know everything about you.”
“What about the breakfast together in bed?”
“You have a deal. I bring the breakfast, then you tell me all about this ‘landlord’ of yours.”
“Let me help you organize things.”
“No—I want the pleasure of bringing
meinem Mann
his breakfast. You will allow me to play
die Hausfrau
just this once.”
She disappeared off into the kitchen, humming the same song that greeted my ears as I awoke this morning.
“That sounds like Schubert.”
“Bravo. It is Schubert:
An die Musik
. Schubert in a characteristically reflective humor.”
“It’s beautiful. And the way you sing it . . .”
“Don’t tell me I am a nightingale,
please
.”
“You’re not a pigeon either. But you do have a very agreeable voice.”
“I accept the compliment. But I have a pressing question. Do you take your espresso black or ‘
con leche
,’ and marmalade or cheese with your bread?”
“Black and cheese, please.”
“Just like me.”
She came back into the room five minutes later, a tray in her two hands, still humming the Schubert, her smile even more radiant. After placing the tray on the bed, she first leaned over and kissed me fully on the mouth, then poured us each a small demitasse of espresso. She raised hers to mine, and we clicked them together.
“To us,” she said.
“To us.” And I kissed her again.
The coffee tasted wonderful. I was famished, as it was now well after midday. So the pumpernickel with Munster cheese was quickly eaten.
“All right,” Petra said as I finished the second piece. “Now your end of the bargain. ‘Mr. Alaistair.’ The whole story. Warts and all.”
“All right,” I said. “No holds barred.” And I took her through the Fitzsimons-Ross saga. When I finished Petra said:
“You sound like you actually like him.”
“Well, he has grown on me. Though he is an individual who lives life
in extremis,
I don’t think there is much in the way of malevolence to him. On the contrary, he strikes me as a curiously moral and decent man. Though he can’t articulate such things, I sense he and Mehmet are rather attached to each other. But if word was to get out about their relationship, I doubt Alaistair or Mehmet would survive at the hands of his wife’s family. My hope, however, is that this near-death experience will have perhaps changed him. The hospital is weaning him off heroin. If he manages not to relapse . . . well, it will either be the start of a new phase of his life or a catastrophe. The addict-artist usually believes that his creativity is linked to his habit, which makes it ten times harder to break.”
“So he’s rather all over the place.”
“Bizarrely, he does happen to be supremely disciplined when it comes to his art and orderly when it comes to his home. But one of the many good things about the geography of the apartment—and Fitzsimons-Ross’s work and drug habits—is that we tend to live separate lives. Ever since I convinced him to listen to his blaring music on headphones while painting, we coexist without impinging on each other.”
“That’s good to know,” she said, smiling.
“So if you do move in with me, you won’t also be moving in with him.”
“That’s also good to know.”
“Am I getting way ahead of myself here?”