Judith Hermann - Nothing but Ghosts

The knowledge that he was right, the understanding of the logical consistency and at the same time its impossibility filled me with an unexpected, crazy cheerfulness. He didn’t say, ‘See?’ But he thought it, and while he did what he was eventually going to do anyway, I lay there and couldn’t help laughing, softly and violently, not wanting to stop, and he laughed too, but differently, and I held on to the edge of the bed and thought of Ruth. The way she came into the kitchen in the morning, making herself coffee and sitting down at the table with me and reading the little piece of paper on which she had written what she had to do that day: go to the post office, the supermarket, the chemist, call H. and D., get a present for M., pay the telephone bill. And then it was over and yet it wasn’t, and finally it was, and we rolled apart, he turned round, his back like a wide landscape. Then I fell asleep.

The next morning I was awakened by the ringing of the alarm clock. It must have been very early; the light in the room was still grey; my left hand had gone to sleep, and my shoulders hurt. I was instantly awake, at once tense, on my guard. Next to me Raoul groaned, threw back the covers, turned off the alarm and got up; his naked body was heavy and massive and in the dusky light seemed strangely blurred. He began to get dressed, in an awkward way, then he suddenly turned round to look at me as though it had just occurred to him that I was there – that there was someone else lying in his bed.

When he saw I was awake, he smiled at me and said, ‘I have to memorize a script now, and the rehearsal begins at nine; you can sleep a little longer.’ I said, ‘How late is it?’ He said, ‘A little before seven.’ Our voices were rough and scratchy. He opened the little dormer window; cold morning air came into the room, the dampness almost palpable. When he reached the stairs, he turned round once more and came back, stopped at the doorway and said, ‘When does your train leave?’

I think he dealt me this blow quite intentionally, but I was awake and alert enough not to look taken aback or hurt or surprised. I had no idea when my train left; I didn’t think there was a train back. I said, pleasantly, ‘Eight forty-two,’ and he said just as pleasantly, ‘That means I can still take you to the station.’ Then he disappeared; I heard him in the kitchen putting water on to boil, the refrigerator door opened and shut; he briefly went out into the garden; he turned on the radio.

I sat on the edge of the bed, put my bare feet next to each other on the floor, pressed my knees together, placed my hands on my hips and arched my back. Fleetingly I thought about the expression pulling yourself together. Then I got dressed and went downstairs. Raoul was sitting at the desk reading softly to himself and rocking his upper body back and forth. Without turning to look at me, he said, ‘There’s coffee and some fruit in the kitchen. Unfortunately, I don’t have any real breakfast stuff here.’

I took a tangerine from the kitchen table, poured coffee into a mug. ‘It’s seven thirty,’ the radio announcer’s voice said. I didn’t know where to go; I didn’t want to disturb him – there were no chairs in the kitchen, and going back to bed was out of the question; so I went out into the garden.

The garden extended down to the street, a narrow rectangle of unmowed lawn, two fruit trees, neglected flower borders, a rubbish bin, an old bicycle, and on the lawn in front of the garden fence a swing suspended from a carpet rod. The grass was dark and damp from the night, and rustling sounds came from the piles of leaves under the fruit trees. By now it was light; the sky was clear and a watery blue. I walked down the length of the garden path and back again; then I sat down on the swing.

The coffee was hot and strong; I would have liked to drink it the way Ruth always drank coffee – in one single long gulp – but my stomach rebelled. I swung back and forth a little. I knew that Raoul could see me through the window, and I was afraid that by swinging, indeed by sitting on the swing, I might present a certain image, like some poster, a metaphor, but by then it didn’t matter to me.

The street was quiet – one-family houses, one next to the other, expensive cars parked at the kerb under nearly bare linden trees. There was hardly anyone in sight, but now I could hear voices in the distance, children’s voices coming closer, and then I saw them – kids on the other side of the street on their way to school with colourful satchels on their backs, gym bags, trainers tied together by the laces and hung over their shoulders. I could see the wide driveway into the schoolyard, paper cutouts pasted on the window panes, the school clock on the gable. The children walked past the garden; they didn’t notice me. I watched them. They came by in small groups, some by themselves, slower and still sleepy-eyed, lost in thought, others holding hands and talking to each other in loud and eager voices. ‘Wait for me! Wait for me!’ one kid yelled to another and then ran off, his school bag bouncing on his back.

I peeled my tangerine and watched them. A sweet fruity aroma rose from the tangerine; it rattled me. Raoul sitting in the house, reading Musil. He was working, he was awake. Things could have been different, but this way was all right too. I ate the tangerine section by section; the school bell rang and even the slow kids started running, all in a jumble, bumping into each other or grabbing for the hand of a friend; none of them looked at me. I made the swing go a little faster. The school bell rang again, then stopped suddenly as though it had been cut off.

The front door opened and Raoul called my name; I turned towards him. Perhaps I still wished for something to happen, one last time, but not really. He said, ‘We have to leave now,’ and I got up and went back into the house, set my coffee mug on the kitchen table, the tangerine peel next to it, and put on my coat. We got into his car and drove off. Traffic was already heavy on the main roads, and at the traffic lights people were waiting to cross the street on their way to work, the office, the factory; I felt relieved, as though a burden had been lifted from my heart. I think we didn’t say much; he seemed to be in a bad mood; he said he did not know his lines, that on the whole the rehearsals were awful; he sounded as if he were talking to himself.

At the railway station he double-parked the car, saying, ‘I can’t go to the train with you; I’m going to be late anyway.’ And I said quite candidly, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ We embraced in the car, quickly, cursorily; he kissed my cheek, then I got out. I walked into the station without turning round; I could hear him rev the engine and drive off. The train for Berlin was scheduled to leave at 9.04. I got on and took a seat next to a window, opened my book, and read till we got to the Berlin-Zoo Station. Afterwards I couldn’t remember a single line I had read.

Later I thought I should have listened to him more carefully. I don’t know if that would have changed anything, if I would have made a different decision. Nevertheless, I should have listened to him properly. He had said, ‘Are you the one I think you are?’ and I had understood something totally different from what he had intended. He had recognized me in spite of that. What he had actually said was, ‘Are you a traitor for whom nothing counts, and who can’t be expected to keep a promise?’ He had asked, ‘Would you betray Ruth for me?’ I had said, ‘Yes.’

I see Ruth sitting across from me, naked, her legs drawn up to her chest, her face, a towel wrapped around her wet hair; she says, ‘Promise me.’ She shouldn’t have said it. I never told Ruth, ‘Ruth, I had to know; it had nothing to do with you.’ And I never told her about the kids going to school, their faces, the smell of the tangerine, about that morning. When we were still living together, we had a habit of writing little notes to each other whenever one of us went anywhere without the other. Whenever I came home after having been out without Ruth, there would be a note on the kitchen table if she was already asleep, a short, tender message, sometimes more, sometimes just a few words. Ruth never forgot. I happened to find one of these notes today, a bookmark in a book, the paper a little crumpled, folded up, Ruth’s large, flowing handwriting: ‘My dear, Are you well? It’s been a long day for me and I’m going to bed now – 10 o’clock – my feet are rubbed raw from the damned new shoes. I went shopping, fruit, milk and wine, that was all the money there was. A. phoned and asked where you were and I said, She’s out looking under every paving stone for a message. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that? Good night, till tomorrow. Kisses, R.’