Authors: Peter Stamm
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.
She wrapped the towel around her, rinsed her hair in the sink, and put it up. Suddenly she felt a longing for Simon, she wanted to throw her arms around him, lie in bed with him, and press herself against him. She went to the kitchen, but he wasn’t there. Simon, she called, and went into the living room and then the bedroom. Simon? He must still be down in the restaurant, he was sure to be back any moment. She sat at the table, leafed through the free paper she had picked up at the bus station. One ex–Miss Switzerland wanted to climb Kilimanjaro to
raise money for a children’s cancer hospital, Prince William had worn a toupee for a portrait photographer, or so at least the newspaper claimed, an American was put to death for a murder he had committed twenty-five years ago. Under the headline Gruesome Find on Lake, there was a story about a trout fisherman who had stumbled upon a dead body in the water just offshore. The policemen who pulled the body in were quoted as saying that the dead man had been missing for a couple of months. Presumably it was suicide, though accidental death was also a possibility. The water temperature wasn’t above thirty-eight or forty degrees, if you fell in you wouldn’t last more than a few minutes.
A drop of water fell from Lara’s hair to the picture of the yachting marina where the body had been found. With a shudder she pushed the newspaper away. She had to think about that man being found in the water no more than a few hundred yards away, while she and Simon were getting moved in, or eating their supper, or making love. She felt cold in her towel. There was only a gas heater in the apartment, and the windows were not exactly insulated. Lara went into the kitchen and put on the water for ravioli. She took two plates from the cupboard and a couple of forks off the draining board, and scrubbed at a stain on one of the units, but it wouldn’t budge. The
kitchen was from the seventies, and you could scrub away at it as much as you liked, it never got completely clean. Lara went to the bathroom, blow-dried her hair, and put on some clothes.
SHE SNEAKED DOWN
the creaking staircase. She didn’t turn on the landing light, she didn’t want to be seen. The music had stopped, and the voices had quieted down too. She had almost reached the bottom when the door to the bar opened, and she saw the backlit silhouette of an enormous man. At the same moment, the light went on. The man had a flushed complexion, he pulled the door shut behind him, and passed her without a word on his way to the gents, as though he hadn’t seen her. The voice of the landlady was loud and distinct. He didn’t recognize him right away, she was saying, because the man was lying face down. In summer he would probably have bobbed up sooner. Lara pushed open the door to the bar and stepped inside.
There were half a dozen men at the bar and at one or two tables, and Lara was alarmed because they were all looking at her; but then she realized their attention was on the landlady, behind the bar. She was talking about something else now. They ought to poison that son of
a bitch, she said, to teach him what it feels like. Those poor dogs. Lara had seen the tabloid headline: A
NIMAL
H
ATER
S
TRIKES
A
GAIN
. She saw Simon standing on one of the benches along the wall, his head obscured by an enormous TV mounted on the ceiling. Right behind him and looking up at him stood Danica, the waitress. Even though they were neighbors, Lara had only run into her once or twice on the stairs. Sometimes she heard her footsteps on the landing late at night, but there was never any sound from the studio. Danica had come to Switzerland from Serbia with her parents when she was little, she told Lara and Simon the first time they met. She hadn’t managed to find an apprenticeship, even though she had good grades. Do you think she’s attractive? Lara had asked Simon later. Other women don’t interest me, he replied. But surely you’ve got an opinion? I don’t know, he said. I think she’s got bedroom eyes, said Lara, and Simon laughed and kissed her.
Simon seemed to be doing something with the TV. After a while, he jumped off the bench and said something to Danica. She smiled and switched the TV on, and together they looked at the screen, which was showing a grainy picture of a downhill skier. Simon spotted Lara and went over to her. A faulty connection, he said, and when she looked at him in bemusement, the TV’s on the
blink. He turned to the landlady and said the antenna wire’s bent, he could bring her a new one tomorrow. Isn’t it practical having a workman in the house? said the landlady. What will you have to drink? A glass of red? I was going to buy a bottle of wine, said Simon. It’s on the house, said the landlady. And the young lady? Simon looked at Lara, and then he said I’d rather have a beer, and to Lara, Are you hungry? Sit down the pair of you, said the landlady, dunking a glass in murky dishwater and pouring a large beer.
There wasn’t a free table, so Simon sat down opposite an old man who seemed to have had a few already. Lara slid in on the bench next to him. She asked me if I would take a look at the TV, he said half apologetically. A faulty connection. I thought you weren’t coming back, said Lara. She sounded reproachful, which she didn’t mean to be. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t be clingy with Simon. He had just wanted to help out. She was sorry she’d come down. If she’d stayed upstairs, he would surely not have accepted the landlady’s offer, and would have returned right away. Danica stepped up to the table, bringing Simon’s beer and a glass of wine for Lara. The landlady and the men were still talking about the poisoned dogs, and what the authorities should do to the guilty party if they caught him. The drunk at their table
said under his breath that he could think of a couple of dogs he wouldn’t mind poisoning. Lara wasn’t sure it was for their hearing, and she didn’t reply. She felt her hair, which was still a little bit damp.
For no obvious reason, the drunk started talking about a cruise he’d gone on almost twenty years ago, on the Black Sea. It was dull, those cruises were pretty uneventful. I’ve been in the Crimea, in Sebastopol, where the Russians have a navy base and submarines. That was an experience, that was worth it. Simon didn’t seem to be listening, he drank his beer and looked up at the TV set, where a different skier was on the piste. From the loudspeaker came the sound of cowbells and the rhythmic shouts of supporters. Lara wasn’t sure where the Black Sea was.
Danica appeared at their table, and filled up Lara’s glass before she was able to say no thank you. Now she was sitting there foolishly with her hand over the full glass. She hadn’t had anything to eat since lunchtime, and she could feel the alcohol going to her head. Will you have another beer? Danica asked. Simon glanced quickly up at Lara, as though he needed her permission. Then he said, Yes, sure, and half got up. Will you excuse me, I’ll be back in a moment. Lara let him out. No sooner had she sat down again than the drunk asked if she was from
hereabouts, he hadn’t seen her before. She felt ill at ease in the bar, threatened by the loud landlady and the drunken men who were ogling her. I grew up in Kreuzlingen, she said. The man held out his hand and said Manfred was his name. She shook it and said Lara.
Dr. Zhivago
, he said. That was a nice film. With Omar Sharif, and … who was she again? Julie Christie, said Lara. In the streetcar. The drunk smiled. I have a sister in Kreuzlingen. Have you ever been to Russia? No, said Lara.
She wanted to say something else, it would make her feel safer if she was talking, but she couldn’t think of anything. Where is the Black Sea again? she asked finally. If you’re coming from the Mediterranean, you pass Istanbul and go through the Bosporus, then you’re in the Black Sea. The south shore is Turkey, and in the north are Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia. Have you been to all those places? asked Lara. I went on that cruise, said Manfred, that’s where I met my wife. She’s Ukrainian. She was working on the ship. But that didn’t work out. Danica came back and asked if they wanted anything. Both shook their heads. When she was gone, Manfred said in a whisper, I tell you, those women from the East, and then he laid his finger across his lips.
Lara was relieved when Simon finally returned. She thought he might have gone to the bathroom, but he was
holding a dirty white cable in one hand. He had a brief word with the landlady, and then he climbed up on the bench once more and switched the cables. For a moment, there was just a streaky gray on the screen, then the picture suddenly came clear, and the sound seemed even louder than before to Lara. Simon punched through a few channels on the remote, probably to check that the reception was uniformly good. There was a brief glimpse of two men sitting facing each other. Lara was almost sure that one of them was the man in the black coat, on the bus. But the scene disappeared immediately, to be replaced by a woman arguing with a little girl, and then a group of soldiers sneaking through a forest, and then back to the skiing. Simon returned to the table. I just remembered I had an old cable lying around, he said, and smiled in satisfaction. Shall we go? said Lara, getting to her feet.
The landlady didn’t want any money for the bottle of wine. It’s in return for the cable, she said, giving Lara and Simon her hand, which felt soft and a bit soapy from the washing up. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, one of the men called after them as they left the bar, and everyone laughed.
THE WATER WAS BOILING
violently, half of it had evaporated already, leaving a white chalky line at the top of
the saucepan. Lara quickly turned off the gas. Never ever leave the stove on when you go out, not even for a second, said Simon. As if Lara didn’t know that. It’s not my fault, she said, I thought you’d be back right away. She felt like crying. I didn’t mean it like that, said Simon, and kissed her. Nothing happened. Lara turned away and picked up the corkscrew. Simon watched alertly as she took the plastic seal off the bottle. She had to overcome her own resistance to place her thumb over the girl’s face and apply enough strength to insert the screw into the cork. She looked Simon in the eye, let him see how furious she was. I’m sorry, he said, I know, it’s my fault. She set down the bottle and said, as if in conciliation, You do it. Simon put on a rather ceremonious expression, as though God knows what surprise was in store, and slowly pushed down on the girl’s arms. With a bright popping sound, the cork came out of the bottle.