Peter Stamm - We're Flying

The grip on the corkscrew was the girl’s head. She had a pageboy cut and a fixed smile. Lara looked at the price tag. They already had a corkscrew, and they hardly ever drank wine. She hesitated for a long while, the shop woman was already eyeing her doubtfully, then she pulled herself together and took it to the register. Is it for a present? asked the woman, unpicking the price tag and dabbing it on the back of her hand. No, Lara shook her head, no need to wrap it, I’ll take it like that. She looked at her watch. The bus wasn’t due for another half an hour.

Lara worked at the Raiffeisen Bank, and she got off work before Simon, but she liked to wait for him so they could travel home together. Generally, she would sit in the bus shelter, smoke a cigarette, and browse through the free paper. Suddenly she was aware of someone in front of her. She looked up and saw Simon standing there smiling. She jumped up and kissed him on the lips, and he made a remark about her awful habit, sometimes he meant it, at others he was just being flippant. The last few days it had been so cold, she skipped her cherished after-work cigarette and piled into the bus, which was usually standing there when she got to the station. Simon worked in a hi-fi store. After it closed, he needed to tidy things away, and when the boss wasn’t there, to do the register. The bus drivers knew him and they waited when they saw him running around the corner. I had to stay and do the till, he would say breathlessly, drop onto the seat, and kiss Lara on the lips. Have you been smoking again? They were sitting right at the back, the row with the three seats together was their favorite. There wasn’t much light there, and the noise of the engine muffled their whispering.

Lara hadn’t taken off her coat, but still she felt Simon’s shoulder against hers. He told her about his day, picky customers and new equipment and an argument with the owner. Lara loved these rides with him, especially in winter, when it was already dark outside, the half hour up and over the ridge through little villages, past meadows with old apple orchards and plowland. The radio was playing a country music song. That was “Sweet Dreams,” said the presenter, by Reba McEntire, to whom we are devoting the whole of our show today. Lara kissed Simon and laid her head on his shoulder.

They had been living together for just over four months in a little one-bedroom apartment over the station restaurant not far from the lake. It wasn’t ideal, but Simon had wanted to remain in the village he had grown up in, and even though there wasn’t much going on in the place, it proved difficult to find anywhere at all. The building was old and run down, the staircase was a mess, with an old freezer unit in the way, and stacks of white plastic chairs for the beer garden, empty cardboard boxes, and lots of other junk. On the second floor there were a couple of rooms for guests, which were rarely taken, and up on the third was their little apartment and a couple of studios. One of these was empty, in the other lived Danica, a young Serbian girl who waited tables in the restaurant. When Lara and Simon first went to look at the apartment, Lara hadn’t been able to envisage them living there at all. But after they’d been to look at a couple of other places, all much more expensive, they went back to it. Before they moved in, they repainted all the rooms: the landlady chipped in with paints and brushes and left them a free hand with the decoration. They spent whole evenings talking about various color schemes, but in the end they just painted everything white. The rooms looked cozier right away, and Lara was happy. It was the right time to leave home, even though she got on well with her parents. She was ready to decide her life for herself, buy things, move out.

Lara was twenty-one, Simon three years older. He’d had one girlfriend before Lara, but they hadn’t lived together. It wasn’t anything serious, he would say if Lara asked. He had lived with his parents so far, and still needed to get used to the fact that clothes didn’t wash themselves and the fridge wasn’t automatically kept full. But he too seemed to get a kick out of going shopping together on the weekends, and wondering what they would cook today and tomorrow and the next day. Do we need milk? You know, the coffee’s almost finished. We’re out of garbage bags. Sentences like that had an unexpected charm, and a full shopping cart was like an emblem of the fulfilled life that lay before them. When Simon wheeled it into the underground parking garage, with Lara at his side, she felt a deep pride and a curious satisfaction at being grown up and independent.

They had been to IKEA a couple of times, and bought a mattress and a box spring and various bits and pieces for bathroom and kitchen, lamps and tablecloths and silverware. Simon’s parents had given them an old table and four chairs. For a wardrobe they had a set of cheap shelving for which Lara had sewn a curtain of red material. She loved these little tasks, sewing cushion covers, fitting a new toilet seat and a showerhead, putting up posters. Simon would watch her and enjoy it with her. The electrical things were his department.

Every week there would be something new, a barely used coffee machine that Lara found on eBay, a wooden crate for their shoes, a whole stack of yellow bath towels that were on sale. Simon hardly got involved, at most he would say, Do we really need this? Or, How much did you pay for that? It’s a mistake to economize on quality, these towels will last us forever. Forever is a long time, answered Simon.

He hadn’t brought much into their household, the rented van they had driven first to his parents’, then hers, was barely a quarter full of his boxes of clothes, CDs, and old schoolbooks. Most room was taken up by his stereo equipment, the gigantic loudspeakers, and the computer. They bought a TV on the never-never, an ex-showroom model Simon’s boss had given them a good price for.

How do you like it? asked Lara, producing the corkscrew from the bag she had next to her on the empty seat. Simon picked it up and played with it, saying nothing. He furrowed his brow, pulled on the screw, and the girl raised her arms. A ballet dancer, he said. No, said Lara, just a girl. Do we even have any wine? That bottle from your parents, said Simon. He was still playing with the thing, pulling the handle up and down, causing the girl to wave her hands, as though cheering or calling for help. Was it expensive? We drank that when Hanni and Martin came, said Lara, don’t you remember?

The restaurant downstairs was a bit seedy. Lara and Simon never went there, even though the manageress was their landlady. If they went out anywhere, it was to a place a hundred yards up the road, which did stuffed chicken breasts. They didn’t go to the lakeside disco much anymore where they met. During the week they went to bed early, and if they felt like going out dancing on the weekend, they would go to the city, where there were better clubs and where not everyone knew them.

THE BUS STOPPED outside the station, and the driver wished everyone a nice evening over the p.a. and turned off the engine. The passengers got off, said a word or two in parting, and went their separate ways. Lara knew most of them fleetingly, there was only one man she hadn’t seen before. He had turned once or twice during the trip and looked at her. When the driver said the next stop was their final destination, he had got up right away and gone to the door, even though the bus was stopping anyway. While the bus took its last few corners, the man stood directly in front of Lara. He held on tight and pressed the Stop button again. He had to be about forty, and with his long black coat didn’t seem to really fit in. While she was studying him, their eyes met. The man seemed quiet, almost indifferent, but in his eyes Lara saw an attentiveness and a kind of hunger that were a little disagreeable, but at the same time provoked her. She turned to Simon, kissed him, and asked, Will you come to the market with me tomorrow during your lunch break? She could feel how her voice sounded artificial and even a bit loud, but she felt she had to say something. The man in the black coat was the first to get off the bus. Lara saw him go back in the direction of the main street. After a few steps he turned around quickly, as though to see whether she was following him, and their eyes met once again. Do you know him? Simon asked. Lara shook her head. The face looks familiar to me for some reason.