We're Flying
Authors: Peter Stamm
Praise for
Seven Years
“
Seven Years is
a novel to make you doubt your own dogma. What more can a novel do than that?”
—Zadie Smith,
Harper’s
“Stamm’s talent is palpable, but what makes him a writer to read, and read often, is the way he renders contemporary life as a series of ruptures. Never entirely sure of their position, his characters engage in a constant effort to establish their equilibrium.”
—
New York Times Book Review
“With a patient and impressive commitment to realism, this Swiss novel follows the course of a complicated, troubled marriage … Though Stamm pulls off a quietly spectacular plot twist halfway through the book, he never loses sight of the quotidian things that erode or transform relationships over time: an oddly personal disagreement about the merits of
Rain Man
, or the ‘piles of romance novels, Christian manuals, and Polish magazines’ that crowd a lover’s apartment.”
—
The New Yorker
“Stamm is a master of quietly deliberative stories. In
Seven Years
, as in the best of his work, he puts often simple-seeming characters through extraordinary paces, all the more remarkable given the Carver-like restraint he exercises in his writing.”
—
Bookforum
“
Seven Years
is a powerful, enlightening novel about the eternal search for contentment in life, the often fickle nature of love, and the knowledge that in reality, happiness is rarely how we dreamed it would be.”
—
Daily Beast
“Stamm never flinches, and the unraveling is delivered with a mesmerizing chill.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle
“Here is Stamm’s strength, in a good English translation, the clean uncluttered sentences that take you—as writers since Hemingway have shown—from one crystalline point to the next, so as to travel great distances in the shortest possible time.”
—
Buffalo News
“
Seven Years
is tense and frightening—I couldn’t stop plunging in. Desire is a hunting dog and we never know what it will bring us. This is ruthless truth.”
—Rosecrans Baldwin, author of
You Lost Me There
“Just the kind of thing I like.”
—Lorin Stein,
Paris Review
blog
“Ego, passion, and deception run wild, but the novel’s strength is found in the characters Stamm has created: powerfully imperfect, sometimes despicable, horribly conflicted, and always believable far beyond the archetypes that too often pop up in novels of marital ennui.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Swiss novelist Stamm (
Unformed Landscape
) offers a classic love triangle that reads like a contemporary European version of Richard Yates’s
Revolutionary Road
… Readers looking for a highbrow page-turner will relish this quick read.”
—
Library Journal
“This touching novel is a tour of what makes love work and what tears love apart in the modern world.”
—
Booklist
“A dynamic and taut novel that examines the conflicted heart in the confines of marriage and the perception of what love is.”
—
ForeWord Reviews
ALSO BY PETER STAMM
novels
On a Day Like This
Seven Years
Unformed Landscape
stories
In Strange Gardens and Other Stories
Copyright © 2008, 2011 by Peter Stamm
The first part of this work was originally published in German as
Wir Fliegen
by S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2008.
The second part was originally published in German as
Seerücken
by S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2011.
Translation copyright © 2012 by Michael Hofmann
The translator would like to thank the Canton of Wallis/Valais for the award of residency in Raron, where this translation was completed.
Several stories in this collection have previously appeared elsewhere: “The Suitcase” in
Subtropics
14, Spring/Summer 2012; “Sweet Dreams” in
The New Yorker
, May 14, 2012; “Expectations” in
Guernica
, May 15, 2012; and “We’re Flying” in
A Public Space
16, June 2012.
Biblical quotations in “Children of God” and “Holy Sacrament” have been adapted from the Authorized King James Version.
Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site:
www.otherpress.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Stamm, Peter, 1963–
[Wir Fliegen. English]
We’re flying : stories / Peter Stamm; translated from the German by Michael Hofmann.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-59051-419-1
1. Stamm, Peter, 1963—Translations into English.
I. Hofmann, Michael, 1957 Aug. 25– II. Stamm, Peter, 1963– Seerücken. English. III. Title. IV. Title: We are flying.
PT2681.T3234W5713 2012
833′.914—dc23
2012001180
Publisher’s Note:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v3.1
CONTENTS
Expectations
I
THINK IT’S FUNNY
the way I can pick out a sound, even when there’s a lot of noise and it’s not a big sound, just because I’m waiting to hear it. I bet the others haven’t heard it. They don’t recognize the sound, the quiet creak of a floorboard in the apartment upstairs. They carry on talking, as though nothing had happened. They chat and laugh and drink my wine and eat the food I cooked for them, without anyone saying thank you or this is delicious. Presumably they think they’re doing me a favor by visiting. Statistically, most women meet their eventual partners at work. But our work revolves around five- and six-year-old children. And their parents—either couples or single mothers. Karin and Pim hooked up when they
were Scouts, Janneke and Stefan met on holiday in Australia. They must have told the story a hundred times. Two Dutch people meeting in Australia—it had to happen. They can’t get over it. And now they’re talking about their New Year’s resolutions. Lift the seat, says Karin to Pim. Do you not do that? asks Janneke, making a face. She says she trained Stefan to pee sitting down. Karin says men have different notions of hygiene. What about women who chuck their used tampons in the wastepaper basket? asks Pim. That’s the way they always talk. Not a pleasant or sensible word all evening.
Is there coffee? Stefan asks, as if I was the waitress. No, I say. At first they didn’t even hear. I have to say it again, loud and clear. I’m tired. I’d like you to go now, please. They just laugh and say, Well, we’ll just have to have our coffee somewhere else. As they file out, Janneke asks me if I’m all right. She makes a sympathetic face, as if I was one of the kids that had fallen down and scraped a knee. You would think she was on the verge of tears herself, but she’s not even listening when I reply, Yes I’m fine, I just want to be alone. I don’t think they will stop off anywhere on the way home. I don’t think they’ll talk about me. There’s nothing to say, and that suits me.
I go back quietly into the living room and listen. There’s a long silence, and then I hear the creak again. It
sounds like someone creeping around on tiptoe, trying not to make a noise. I follow the footsteps from the door to the window and then back to the middle of the room. A chair or some piece of furniture is pushed, and then there’s another sound I can’t identify. It sounds as though something had fallen down, something heavy but soft.
I’ve never met Mrs. de Groot, I only know her name from the doorbell. Even so, I have a feeling I know her better than anyone else in the world. I’ve heard her radio and her vacuum and the dinnerware, so loud it’s as though someone was washing up in my kitchen. I’ve heard her get up at night and shuffle around, heard her run a bath, flush the toilet, open a window. Sometimes water dripped onto my balcony when she watered her flowers, but when I leaned out and looked up, I couldn’t see anyone there. I don’t think she’s ever left her apartment. I liked the sounds. They gave me the sense of living with a sort of ghost, a benign presence watching over me. Then a couple of weeks ago, everything went quiet. I heard nothing since. And now the creaking again.
My first thought was: it’s a break-in. While I’m undressing and going to the bathroom, I wonder whether I should call the police or the super. I’m in my nightgown when I decide to go up there myself. I’m surprisingly fearless. But then I’m not really afraid of anything ever.
You’ve got to learn that, as a single woman. I pull on my robe and slip into some shoes. It’s eleven o’clock.