Peter Stamm - We're Flying

While he’s waiting for his hamburger, he sees a woman with a small child walking straight up to him. She is wearing a fawn leather jacket and carrying a black leather bag. They always carry bags, presumably for the technical equipment, the batteries. They may be armed. The child is beyond suspicion. Presumably it knows nothing, it’s just there as a decoy. He looks the woman straight in the eye. She should know that it’s impossible to trick him. And it works: she turns aside and walks past him. Suddenly she speeds up. When she is a few steps past him, she looks back. Her expression is full of fear. He smiles triumphantly.

He waits until the last possible moment before turning on the light in his store. The light makes it easier to see him from the street. That’s the most dangerous moment of the whole day. Sometimes he walks out of the store and watches it from the other side of the road. If a customer walks in, he hurries across the street to be there.

Between six and eight o’clock is the busiest time. After that the customers dwindle away. It used to be he stayed open until midnight, now he closes at ten or eleven. Ever since the big video chain opened two blocks away he’s been getting fewer customers. They are trying to drive him out of business, but he’s not about to give up. He mustn’t give up. He counts the earnings for the day and puts the money in his pocket. Ever since he’s suffered a break-in, he leaves the register open.

He has gotten used to the situation, he is calmer now. On his way to work in the morning, he says hello to the agents. That terrifies them. They never expected him to identify them, and they run away. Good morning, he calls out after them. And in case we don’t see each other again, good afternoon, and good evening as well. He wants to burst out laughing, but controls himself. When he goes home at night, there they are again. He hurries down the street and runs up the stairs to his apartment, taking the stairs two and three at a time. He is so boisterous he feels like ringing all the bells and yelling in his neighbors’ faces that he knows perfectly well what they’re up to. Once he’s locked the door after him, he stops for a moment, then opens it again, peeps out into the stairwell, and locks it again. He goes straight to his living room and switches on the radio, so that no one can hear what he’s doing. His neighbors have complained about the noise. No surprise there.

Only after he’s eaten and showered and has been to the bathroom does he turn off the radio and switch off the light. With heavy strides he goes to the bedroom. That’ll fool them into thinking he’s gone to bed. Their guard will drop. He waits perfectly still for minutes. He is so tired he thinks sometimes that he’ll fall asleep on his feet. His thoughts wander, he loses track of time.

When everything’s quiet, when he’s calmed down, he creeps back into the living room, switches on the video recorder and the TV. He’s rewound the tape to the correct place.

He’s playing in the garden. His mother comes, picks him up, spins him around. The garden blurs with the movement, becomes indistinct. The music reaches its climax. He can no longer keep back his tears. He stretches his arms out to his mother, his hands brush the screen. She looks at him and smiles sweetly.

THE RIVER BATHS were closed, the entrance padlocked. There was a chill rain falling. The lifeguard was nowhere to be seen, perhaps he had gone home or was in the village somewhere. When Lucas clambered over the wire fence, he thought of the drunk who had got in here at night a few years ago and fallen into the pool. They had found him dead the following morning.

He went to the changing rooms, which were in a low whitewashed brick building. Next to the entrance was a sign, MEN AND BOYS. There was no light except what came through the gap between the walls and ceiling, and it was always a bit damp in the cabins, even when it was really hot outside. Lucas browsed along the row of lockers, to see if someone had forgotten a coin, but there wasn’t one. About halfway he stopped looking. He went down to the river. The water was high and pale brown. It flowed so fast that there were little eddies marking its surface. Twigs drifted past, they seemed to be going faster than the current. They must have opened the weir downstream, following the storm, Lucas could hear a distant roar of falling water. The rain eased, then stopped altogether. He went back to the cabins and changed.

He remembered summer afternoons when it was hot and all the kids seemed to go swimming. There were various groups dotted about the lawn. Lucas’s fellows ran around on the edge of the pool jumping or pushing each other into the water until the lifeguard intervened. Lucas swam back and forth, counting laps. After he’d done a mile, he climbed out, feeling cold and staggering slightly as if he’d forgotten how to walk. His friends lay on big bath towels on the grass. They talked about the summer holidays and where they would go. He lay down next to them on the grass.

Whenever he was with the others, Lucas felt as though his pores were closing, he felt small and painfully self-conscious of his body. He was shut up inside it, he couldn’t be human without it. On his own, he could forget about it, then his edges were those of his consciousness, the damp meadow he was walking over, the passing clouds, the blue strip on the horizon, the seam of forest on the river’s far bank. Then Lucas could have been just anyone, or even no one.

He lay down on the rough concrete slabs beside the pool. There were leaves floating on the water that the storm had blown off the trees, and a wasp was wriggling about. Lucas put out his hand to rescue the creature, but he was afraid he might get stung. His hand hovered protectively over it. Slowly it drifted farther and farther from the edge of the pool.

Lucas remembered Franziska, who was in the same class as him. They sometimes walked home together from school as far as the railroad crossing, where their paths divided. Often they would stand in front of the crossing sign for a long time, talking. Franziska had so much to say, she never seemed to get to the end of it. But at the class party she didn’t want to dance with him, she made some snotty remark and got herself something to drink. And later she was seen dancing with Leo.

Lucas picked three stones from the rosebed that surrounded the pool, washed the clay off them, and dropped them into the water one after the other. Once the ripples had stopped, he could see them lying on the bottom. He lowered himself slowly into the water. It was so cold it took his breath away. For a long time he stood on the lowest step of the ladder, up to his belly, and then he slipped in. As soon as he started to move, the cold abated. He dived for the stones. The first time he only managed two, he didn’t see the last one until he was on the surface again. He released them from his hand. When they dropped, they made a little clucking sound in the water, and then they sank waveringly to the floor. The second time, Lucas found all three. He wasn’t an especially good swimmer, but he was a good diver. He took a few deep breaths, pushed off the side, and dived down on a diagonal slant. He saw the blurry white tramlines and the bottom of the pool quickly move beneath him. Now he was swimming just over the floor. After the third line, he felt an ache in his throat and chest. He had to rise to the surface, he couldn’t make it all the way across. But he carried on, and the aching diminished. He now had the feeling he could dive forever. Over the last few yards he expelled the air he still had in his lungs, and then his head broke the surface just in front of the edge. He took deep breaths and turned and swam slowly. He wished Franziska could have been there and seen him. One time, as she was getting out of the water, her bikini top slipped and for a second Lucas caught a glimpse of her small bare breast, and the nipple dark and erect.