Peter Stamm - We're Flying

He looks at his watch. She is under the knife right now. A swollen blood vessel in her brain, one of the doctors said after hours of tests, and explained what they were trying to do. Then the doctor gave him some hospital literature and packed him off home. Have a rest. The literature includes a message from the chief surgeon, a map of the layout, a train schedule, and various other information. At the very end, Hermann found the checklist. Please bring the following items with you on the day you are booked in.

No one was able to tell him what would happen next, no one seems to have any idea. Hermann looks at the list. Personal supports, such as glasses or hearing aid (incl. batteries). Rosmarie doesn’t need any support. If anyone needs help, it’s him. It’s decades since he last packed a suitcase. Even his army kitbag, in the time he was doing national service, was always packed by Rosmarie, and that was thirty years ago. Each time he arrived in the barracks and unpacked his bag, he always found a bar of chocolate she had smuggled in among his things. He goes into the kitchen but he can’t find any chocolate. Ever since he became diabetic, Rosmarie’s kept all the candy out of sight. Reading matter, letter paper, writing things. On the night table are three library books. He reads the titles and the names of the authors—none of them means anything to him. He’s not a reader. Rosmarie’s reading glasses are on top of them. He packs everything. Because he can’t find the spectacle case, he wraps the glasses in a handkerchief and stuffs it in her sponge bag. The suitcase is about half full. Hermann throws in a cardigan and a couple of magazines he finds in the living room, and he carefully closes the suitcase.

In the cafe opposite the entrance are patients and their visitors. Some are wearing dressing gowns, walking sticks are leaning against the tables, one trundles an IV along with him on a stand. Hermann hasn’t seen inside a hospital for years, but the smell takes him back immediately. There is a little kiosk behind the cafe, where he buys a bar of chocolate, even though he knows Rosmarie isn’t a great one for chocolate. It’s the only thing he can do to prove his love, flowers are too ostentatious. You give flowers when there’s a baby on the way, and everyone knows. He remembers seeing bouquets on hospital corridors, looking like trophies in their vases. Rosmarie will be able to keep the chocolate in her bedside table. She will think of him as of something clandestine, here, where everything is out in the open, in the bright light of the fluorescent tubes. Hermann opens the catch of the suitcase, to slip the chocolate in between Rosmarie’s things, but the lid flies open and everything spills out on the polished stone floor. He kneels down, grabs the things, and stuffs them back in as quickly as he can. He looks around—it’s as though he were doing something forbidden. The man on the drip looks his way, without expression. The clothes Hermann went to so much trouble to fold together are all crumpled.

The porter tells him how to get to the intensive care ward. The wards are all color-coded, to ease orientation. Intensive care is blue, yellow is the children’s ward, urology and gynecology are green, surgery is purple. Hermann tries to find some rationale for the pairings, but he can’t do it. Only the red of the cardiology ward makes sense to him.

He is standing by Rosmarie’s bedside. Her head is bandaged and her body is connected up to machines, she is breathing artificially, she has a stomach probe and a catheter. Drugs are being fed into her bloodstream via tubes. Her arms and legs are being kept cool, so as to keep her body temperature down. She is naked except for a sort of white loincloth open at the sides, which can barely cover her. There is a strangely flaccid quality to her features. Hermann stands at her bedside, staring at her, he doesn’t even want to put his hand on her forehead, that’s how strange she looks to him. Only her hands with the painted nails look familiar. From time to time he hears the beep of an alarm from the corridor. It sounds like the hour being struck on a grandfather clock.

A doctor says they will need to perform another operation, create a bypass. His expression is serious, but he also says Rosmarie has been lucky. If she had been brought in just half an hour later … He doesn’t finish his sentence. Hermann imagines what he might have gone on to say. We’re hoping for the best, says the doctor. Do you have any questions? No. Hermann shakes his head. He has the feeling that all of this has nothing to do with him or Rosmarie. The doctor nods to him and leaves with a look that is probably intended to be encouraging. The sister says Frau Lehmann didn’t need anything, she would rather he took the suitcase back with him, then at least nothing would go astray. He should bring her things once his wife was able to leave intensive care. She gives him a form about the patient’s habits and personal preferences. Your answers will help us to look after her, she says; she gives him a pencil and conducts him to a waiting room. He reads through the questions. Does the patient belong to any religion? What form does worship take? Does the patient like music? If so, what? Which smells does the patient like? He thinks of the olive oil soap. Which does she not like? What is her favorite color? Does she have a set ritual at bedtime? Where does she like to be touched?

He walks down several corridors, past reception and the cafe and out into the cold winter afternoon. The stop is between the hospital and the lake. Hermann sees a streetcar leave. The next one won’t be for another half an hour. He could walk home, it wouldn’t be more than an hour or so, but he’s already bought the return ticket and he’s tired, he barely slept last night. He presses the button for STOP ON DEMAND and sits down on the narrow bench. The suitcase is on the ground beside him. He looks at the lake. About a hundred yards from shore, the color of the water abruptly changes from pale blue to deep green. A couple of walkers pass down the shore promenade. They stop at a marker and look back. By the time the streetcar comes, Hermann is frozen through.

HE HASN’T BEEN to the library very often. On rare occasions he has accompanied Rosmarie, or he’s taken books back for her when he’s had to be in town. Even so, the librarian greets him by name. She takes the books from him and asks whether Rosmarie enjoyed them. Hermann is bemused by her referring to his wife by her first name. Yes, he says, I believe she did. I’ve set aside the new Donna Leon thriller for her, says the librarian, and she picks it up from a little rolling shelf next to her desk. I promised her first dibs at it. She stamps the date on the borrowing slip at the back of the book. Only then does she seem to become aware of Hermann’s suitcase, and she asks him if he’s on his way somewhere. Yes, he says. He’s not in the mood to answer questions. The librarian says she could hang on to the book if he didn’t want to take it with him right now. I’m not going away for long, he says, and he grabs the book with a quick movement of his hand. Through a Glass Darkly . The librarian makes some remark about an active retirement and laughs. Hermann thanks her and leaves.

Darkness is falling outside. He turns once more when he notices the librarian watching him through the glass doors, then he heads off in the direction of the station. On the way he runs into a neighbor. The family only moved there two years ago, the man works for an insurance company, the woman stays at home, looking after the two children. Hermann sees her in the garden sometimes. She once complimented him on his peonies and asked him for tips. She said they had lived in a condo before, and she had little experience with plants. The most important thing is to find the right place for each plant, he said. It needs to feel at home there, and then it’ll thrive by itself.