Peter Stamm - We're Flying

After the birth, they looked for a bigger apartment. Anja gave up her job, she simply didn’t go back once her maternity leave was over. Marco’s earnings alone weren’t enough for most apartments in the city. After looking for some time, they found a four-room apartment in a new development on the edge of one of the exurbs. The apartment buildings stood between the expressway and the business park. They were occupied almost entirely by young families, there was a school and a kindergarten smack dab in the middle of the complex, and a good direct bus line into the city. Marco’s work was nearby, his commute was half an hour less per day. He asked Anja if she would be happy there, if she felt sure. To begin with, she hardly left the apartment. Then, by and by she started to explore the area and take possession of it.

IT’S AN EVER-CHANGING no-man’s-land, construction going on all the time, and even the finished buildings look like prototypes. Next to the shopping center and the media mart an OBI home improvement store is going up, and there are a couple of big pet stores, a carwash, and an erotic megastore. On one of the last empty lots there are used cars for sale, but even this lot is spoken for. The area is riddled with access roads. There are young saplings on the slope, made fast to stakes in the ground, as though to stop them from running away. There is heavy traffic all day long, with one rush hour at lunchtime and another at the end of business hours; the middle of the afternoon brings a slight letup. When Anja goes out exploring with the stroller, she hardly sees anyone, only the occasional cyclist zipping past her on a racing bike.

She is pregnant again, and walking is getting harder and harder, but only a few days before her due date she sets off once more. When, exhausted, she looks for somewhere to rest, she can’t find a bench anywhere, and ends up having to sit on the grass by the side of a road, with the stroller next to her. The traffic pulls up at a red light, the cars are just a few feet away. The drivers stare, but Anja couldn’t care less. Only when one winds down his window to ask if she needs help does she stand without a word and walk off.

OUTSIDE, IT WAS COLD and rainy. The children were out of the house, but Anja had no energy to do any chores, the mess didn’t bother her or the dirt. The idea of fixing up the apartment, tidying it, making it nice, was alien to her. She paced through the rooms, sat on a chair, picked up a magazine. By lunch she had no idea what she’d done all morning. She ate whatever happened to be in the house, with the children. She didn’t often cook, sometimes she stuck a pizza in the microwave or she took the kids to McDonald’s.

Marco had made her see the doctor about what he felt was her listlessness. But the doctor had just gestured dismissively and prescribed Vitamin B. Maybe it’s the others that aren’t normal, she said to Marco that night, the ones who are always out and about doing something. But Marco shook his head and stared at her as though she was mad.

What she liked best were those days when the kids were away in the afternoon as well, at school or on play dates with friends. Then she would wander around the neighborhood, or if the weather was bad go to the mall or one of the supermarkets. She had started shoplifting again. Once, she was caught, it would never have happened before. A security guard had gone up to her after she passed the checkout, and asked her to follow him. He was very polite, a young man with good manners and a neatly trimmed beard. He took her to a back room and asked her to empty her bag. It gave Anja a strange feeling of satisfaction, to spread out her things in front of him, the key ring with the little toy sea lion, paper tissues, her purse, coins and paperclips, and various leaflets she had picked up. When she pulled out a lacy bra with the price tag still on it and laid it on the table, she fixed the young man with her eyes, and he looked away. Then with a casual gesture he pushed away the things that weren’t hers, and said, You can put away the rest.

The amount at issue was not large, but the store manager made a huge fuss, and threatened that if it happened again, she would be banned from all branches of the store. The way he carried on, it was as though she had robbed him personally, and he seemed to expect her to be remorseful. Asked what made her do it, Anja shrugged her shoulders. I just did it, was all she said, all she could say. She paid the fine unprotestingly. The affair seemed to embarrass the security guard, but Anja got a kick out of the whole business. Still, she would have to be more careful in future.

She kept running into the young man after that. Now that she knew him, she was surprised she hadn’t noticed him before. When they saw each other in the aisles, they looked each other in the eye briefly but didn’t speak. Anja was certain that he remembered her, and that made her happy. It was as though they shared some dark secret. Sometimes Anja saw him walking along behind her. Then she would purposely take things off the shelves and turn them around in her hands, as though wondering whether to take them or not. When she saw the security guard eating in the store cafeteria, she would sit down close to him. More important than seeing him was knowing that he could see her. It was as though his glance in some way ennobled her.

WHEN ANJA ENTERS THE FOREST, it feels to her as though she has stepped outside herself. She sees herself as a stranger, a girl walking among trees. She dreams of the forest in a similar way, always seeing herself from above, from a height of fifteen or twenty feet. She once read somewhere that people dying could see themselves like that, as their souls left their bodies.

The lookout tower is at the center of a complex web of places. There are places for fair weather and places for foul, places to sleep in and others that she only spends time at in the daytime. When it rains, she often sits in a shelter for forest workers, or she climbs up into one of the high stands on the edge of a clearing. The main thing is to stay on the move.

She sometimes runs into Erwin in the shelter. He went to elementary school with her, but it was only in the forest that they got to know each other better. Erwin is training to be a forest warden. He never asks Anja what she’s doing there, and why she wants to know where they’re going to be working next. Sometimes he loans her some money, though he doesn’t have much himself. For a time they meet almost every day. After work, Erwin goes to the shelter. To begin with, she was afraid he might have fallen in love with her. But all he does is bring her books he wants to talk about with her or that he thinks would interest her. Tuiavii’s Way , Erich Fromm on love, books by Nietzsche that he doesn’t understand, and Walden . Erwin is someone who thinks he understands himself, but almost nothing he says is original. Even so, Anja likes being with him. They are close. She hasn’t told him her secret, but he knows the forest.

A strong west wind has been blowing all day, and by evening it’s become a gale. The treetops are individually seized by the wind and hurriedly let go, hundreds of small motions that in their totality become enormous, a rushing and soughing. Look, says Anja. But Erwin doesn’t seem to notice. He is thinking about his books. When he leaves, she says she is going the other way. You always seem to be going the other way, he says. Yes, she says, and laughs, it’s true.

For some reason it’s a time of frequent nosebleeds, almost one a day. She leans over so that her clothes aren’t soiled, and lets the blood drop on the ground. Fascinated, she watches the dark splotches on the forest floor. She feels light-headed, as though something has cleared in her. Sometimes she catches the drops in her hand and licks them up.