Peter Stamm - We're Flying

The next day I was just about to give my students a dictation when I saw Lucia through the window. I told them I’d be back in a minute, and ran out of the classroom. By the time I was on the street, though, she had disappeared. I hesitated for a minute, then I went home, packed a few things, and called a taxi. I knew the driver, one of his kids was in my class. He didn’t ask me any questions, and didn’t seem to be surprised when I told him to take me to the station.

There was half an hour until the next train, and I was suddenly worried someone might come and prevent me from leaving. The driver had parked his taxi outside the station. He had got out and was smoking and talking on the phone to someone. He laughed, I could hear him from the platform where I was standing. Sometimes he looked across at me, and in spite of the distance, I thought I could make out a triumphant expression on his face.

The train arrived. A couple of skiers boarded with me, but they got off at the next station and I was alone in the car. I opened a window and leaned out. Cold air flowed in. The sky was overcast, and the mountains looked threatening as they passed. Not until the train turned a corner and entered a tunnel did I calm down.

THE BANDAGE ON Bruno’s back felt tight. The wound hardly hurt, but thinking about it got to him and made him sweat more than he usually did. It had been hot for weeks. It was late August, and some people said it would stay hot well into September.

Bruno had worked at reception for thirty years. The past week he had been on the early shift. He was home at three, and Olivia got him to go shopping with her. In the shops she asked him questions he couldn’t answer.

Bruno showered before supper. When he came out of the bathroom in clean clothes, Olivia wanted to change his bandage. The thought that she had left the kitchen and waited for him outside the bathroom door bothered him. I’m sure the bandage has gotten wet, she said, and she followed him into the bedroom. It hasn’t, he said, it doesn’t matter.

Olivia unbuttoned his shirt. He was too feeble to resist, and sank down onto the bed. She sat down beside him, pulled the shirt over his shoulder, and told him to turn around.

Watch out, she said, and already the bandage was off. It doesn’t hurt, said Bruno. It looks fine, she said. It was just a couple of punctures, he said. She said he had always had good powers of healing. He said it felt a bit tight. Olivia was immersed in her work. There, she said, and she stroked his hair, now you’ve earned your supper.

It was seven o’clock. They always ate at seven. It’s supposed to get cooler tomorrow, said Olivia, as she heaped Bruno’s plate. He wasn’t hungry, but he had long since stopped trying to tell her that.

After supper he went out in the garden and stayed out a long time, longer than usual. It was already getting dark when he came in. Clouds had appeared from somewhere. Olivia was in the living room, watching the late news. Bruno went into the bedroom. He got undressed and lay down. Is it raining yet? Olivia asked as she came to bed. Bruno didn’t reply.

He was glad he was on the late shift again tomorrow. He didn’t have to be at the hotel until three, and could sleep in as long as he liked. Olivia woke him with lunch, and after coffee he was out of the house. They didn’t live far from the hotel, and Bruno loved biking home from work. At night the town center was full of young people talking animatedly in the cafes. When he got home, Olivia was usually in bed already, and he went into the bedroom to wish her good night. He kissed her quickly, and she said, Mind you don’t stay up too long.

The cold front had reached the town overnight. Suddenly the air was almost twenty degrees colder, and it had gotten darker, almost autumnal outside. When was he expecting the result? Olivia asked him over lunch. She asked him every day, since he’d gone to the doctor a week ago, to get the mole removed. Tomorrow, he said. It’s bound not to be anything, said Olivia. Of course it’s nothing, said Bruno, just a routine check. Well, better safe than sorry, said Olivia, it’s one less thing to worry about. The uncertainty. That’s why I had it done, said Bruno. Quite, said Olivia. Will they call you, or do you have to call them?

Bruno had left the number of the hotel with the doctor’s assistant. She had promised to call on Wednesday, sometime during the afternoon. The doctor hadn’t even thought it necessary to offer any words of optimism. The chances of it being a melanoma were really very small. Bruno wasn’t worried. On the contrary, he was in a sparkling mood that day, perhaps because it had cooled down at last. He made a joke when he took over from his colleague, and personally arranged the flowers in the room where the Christian businesspeople were meeting in the evening. Then he stepped out onto the terrace and contentedly surveyed the landscape, the little section of the lake you could see from there, and the forested mountains, which seemed to be much nearer now than when it was hot. It didn’t even bother him when Sergio called in to say he was sick. The student who generally filled in on such occasions wasn’t home, but his mother said he would be back soon. Bruno called Olivia. He said he would be back late, he couldn’t say how late. Why today of all days? said Olivia. Bruno didn’t reply.

The Christian businesspeople had all gone home. Marcella emerged from the room with the last of them, and stopped at the reception desk for a chat with Bruno.

Those Christians are lousy tippers, she said, I hope they’ll at least remember us in their prayers. She asked what Bruno was doing there still.

Sergio is sick, he said.

What about the student? asked Marcella. What’s the matter with Sergio?

Bruno shook his head. We’ve known each other for thirty years, he said. He began here shortly after me. You weren’t even born then.

Marcella laughed. She said she was thirty-five.

You don’t look it, said Bruno. Who looks after your kids when you’re at work?

They can look after themselves. My younger girl is ten. My older girl is thirteen. The boy is fifteen.

He had three children too, Bruno said, but they all moved out a long time ago. Marcella said she was just going to straighten out the hall. See you in a minute, she said.

Two middle-aged women left the hotel. Bruno had often been puzzled by the attractive women who stayed as guests of the hotel. They arrived in twos and threes, without their husbands. They shared a room, were out all day, and returned to the hotel in the evening with half a dozen large bags from expensive stores. Sometimes he saw them on his tours of duty by the pool, lying there half naked on their deck chairs. Bruno would stop for an instant and look at them skeptically from a distance. After dinner, the women might leave the hotel once more, and he wouldn’t be around to see them return. Sergio had told him that they sometimes had men with them whom they tried to smuggle in past him. As if he cared who they spent their nights with. He was quite capable of imagining the rest, when the men slunk past the porter’s desk an hour later, with cigarettes between their lips and frosty expressions.

Bruno thought of Marcella in her black skirt. He imagined her coming home. The children were already in bed, the husband was watching TV in the living room. She went into the bathroom and took off her skirt and underskirt. She washed and went to the bedroom in her underwear and pulled on her nightie.

Bruno thought of the time when his kids had still been at home, all those long, monotonous years, all the mornings and evenings. Sometimes he longed for those meals, where no one had said much, nothing of importance. It was the repetition that made them so lovely, the knowledge that tomorrow and the day after and next week and next year they would be sitting together in exactly the same way. There seemed to be so much time then. Not until the children had moved out did he notice how distant they had remained in all those years. When Bruno saw a disaster movie in which an earthquake or flood or volcanic eruption threatened a town, it wasn’t the destruction that moved him or the deaths, only the fate of the man who had become separated from his family and was desperately looking for them in all the confusion. He would have tears in his eyes, and Olivia said what a load of nonsense.