Peter Stamm - We're Flying

Rainer got on well with Heidi’s parents. He had a way of submitting to others immediately, and Heidi’s father liked that. He helped Rainer get a job, and found them a little three-room apartment. From the balcony, Heidi could see the Three Sisters, and when the wind was in the right angle she could hear the trains, and even the platform announcements. On Sundays, Rainer and Heidi went to her parents’, and they all acted as though the baby was already born and belonged to them. Heidi didn’t say much, she sensed that it would pass, and that something different was in store for her, something she couldn’t begin to predict. At the wedding, Heidi’s father made a speech, poking fun at his daughter who had left home to become an artist, and had come back with a bun in the oven. Rainer looked sheepish, but Heidi smiled and raised the baby aloft, like a prize.

HEIDI WENT TO INNSBRUCK many times in the intervening years, but never once to Vienna. Rainer didn’t care for Vienna, much less the Viennese. Anyway, he didn’t want Heidi to get any stupid ideas, he said, otherwise she might start applying to the Academy again.

A train came in, and Heidi quickly stood up. She didn’t want people to see her sitting there as though she had nothing better to do. She went to the supermarket, and then home. She stopped by the neighbor’s. Cyril wasn’t ready to go home yet, he wanted to go on playing with Leah. He can have supper with us, that’s fine, said the neighbor. Not today, said Heidi. Cyril, she called out shrilly, and she stuck her head in at the door, past the neighbor. Cyril!

While she was making supper, she saw the teenagers hanging around the recycling containers. She knew one of the girls, who was a trainee at the bakery. At work she wore a shapeless apron, but on the street you only ever saw her in a miniskirt, with exposed navel and a pushup bra that made her breasts look even bigger than they were. She’s just a kid, Rainer had said once, in a tone that made Heidi suspicious. He often made remarks like that about other women, he seemed to think of little else. In their years together Heidi had lost all respect for him. She refused to participate in his games, and kept to herself whenever she could. He suggested a course of therapy for her, came home with pamphlets for couples workshops. Never, said Heidi, I’ll never do that, and I’ll never talk about those things in front of other people either. She wouldn’t even touch the pamphlets, that was how disgusted she was.

After some time Heidi had begun to draw again, in the mornings, when Rainer was out of the house and Cyril was in his kindergarten. Every evening she watched the trainee baker from her kitchen window, saw her parading back and forth in front of the boys, with her chest out and her bottom wiggling. Heidi wanted to ask her to model for her, but she didn’t dare go down and talk to the girl. Instead, she drew her from memory, she imagined her in all sorts of poses, naked and clothed, from the back, from the front, squatting or kneeling, standing, face averted, with a hand in her hair.

Heidi stood naked in front of the mirror, and then drew the girl, based on her own body, a childlike figure resembling both parents without it being clear which features came from which parent. She hid the drawings in a cardboard box at the top of the closet in the bedroom. There must be hundreds of them by now.

Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she’d stayed on the train and gone to Vienna, and submitted her portfolio. Most likely she wouldn’t have been asked to take the exam. Or she would have failed the exam. Or she would have passed the exam and taken the course, and she would be an art teacher now in some little town or other. The only thing you could say for certain was that there would have been no Cyril, and she couldn’t imagine a life without him, even if she did sometimes wish he had never been born, and she had remained free and independent and able to do whatever she wanted.

She would have liked to talk about all that with Renate, would have liked to show her the new drawings, but since her return she had avoided her former teacher. She thought of that night, the smell of Renate, and her bare feet and her hands, her tanned skin, her pale skin. She felt ashamed in front of her, and secretly she probably gave her some of the blame for what had happened. She never thanked Renate for the card and the soft toy that Renate had sent when Cyril was born. She had the feeling she was making fun of her in some way.

HEIDI WAS MAKING SUPPER. The news was on the radio. Cyril was in the living room, listening to a kids’ tape. He had the volume on much too high, and his story was mixed in with items on the news, making an absurd collage. Outside, Carmen was showing off in front of her pals. In her mind, Heidi changed to the girl, parading up and down, confidently showing off her body, dolled up for no one except herself. Heidi knew by now that Carmen wasn’t interested in the boys, she was just playing with them. She had talked to her, they had had coffee together, she had gone to buy clothes with her and underwear, which she only wore when Rainer wasn’t at home. She had let Carmen put makeup on her and do her hair. And then they had taken pictures of themselves and each other, made little videos using Carmen’s mobile phone camera, masquerades, games, whatever they felt like. Heidi had shown herself to the girl, she imagined her showing the little films to her friends with her cheeky laugh. Heidi was waiting for Carmen to look up at her, but she never did, probably she was just toying with her too.

Heidi imagined what would happen if Rainer found the drawings when she was no longer there. Sometime, looking for a reason, he would go through all her things, and open the box and find the sketches and the photographs. She’s just a kid, he would say, and shake his head, and not get it.

AT THE AGE of forty, Lucia’s mother had gone mad. I think that was the thing Lucia was most afraid of for herself. I asked her what had precipitated it. Just life, Lucia said, shrugging her shoulders. She married this man who loved her more than she loved him. I came along, she raised me, and eventually she couldn’t take it anymore and she cut her wrists. When I found her she was unconscious. I was thirteen.

Lucia was two years younger than me. I met her one summer, when I was staying with my grandparents in the mountains. I’d finished school in the spring, and I was going to start college in the fall. I had been hoping to go walking with my grandfather, but he had fallen ill and was slow to recover, so I had a lot of time to myself. When it rained, I read to try and prepare for college, but when the sun shone I was outside all day, wandering around, swimming in the icy lake, and coming home late.

It was at the lake that I first met Lucia. We hit it off right away, and spent all our time together. We went walking in the mountains, lay in the grass for hours, and when the weather was bad we put on slickers and went out anyway. The meadows were springy underfoot, and when the sun came out the sky was blue like you wouldn’t believe.

Often Lucia asked me to tell her stories. I’d hardly experienced anything in real life, but I always came up with something to tell her about. I can’t remember what, I just remember we used to laugh a lot. Lucia told me about her dreams, places she wanted to visit, things she wanted to buy. A car and clothes and a house. She had it all planned. She wanted to work in one of the hotel bars and make a lot of money in no time at all, and then she wanted a husband and two kids and a house on the edge of the village, near the lake. Then I can sit at home, she said, and look out the window and wait for the kids to come home from school.