Peter Stamm: We're Flying

I THINK IT’S FUNNY the way I can pick out a sound, even when there’s a lot of noise and it’s not a big sound, just because I’m waiting to hear it. I bet the others haven’t heard it. They don’t recognize the sound, the quiet creak of a floorboard in the apartment upstairs. They carry on talking, as though nothing had happened. They chat and laugh and drink my wine and eat the food I cooked for them, without anyone saying thank you or this is delicious. Presumably they think they’re doing me a favor by visiting. Statistically, most women meet their eventual partners at work. But our work revolves around five- and six-year-old children. And their parents—either couples or single mothers. Karin and Pim hooked up when they were Scouts, Janneke and Stefan met on holiday in Australia. They must have told the story a hundred times. Two Dutch people meeting in Australia—it had to happen. They can’t get over it. And now they’re talking about their New Year’s resolutions. Lift the seat, says Karin to Pim. Do you not do that? asks Janneke, making a face. She says she trained Stefan to pee sitting down. Karin says men have different notions of hygiene. What about women who chuck their used tampons in the wastepaper basket? asks Pim. That’s the way they always talk. Not a pleasant or sensible word all evening.

Is there coffee? Stefan asks, as if I was the waitress. No, I say. At first they didn’t even hear. I have to say it again, loud and clear. I’m tired. I’d like you to go now, please. They just laugh and say, Well, we’ll just have to have our coffee somewhere else. As they file out, Janneke asks me if I’m all right. She makes a sympathetic face, as if I was one of the kids that had fallen down and scraped a knee. You would think she was on the verge of tears herself, but she’s not even listening when I reply, Yes I’m fine, I just want to be alone. I don’t think they will stop off anywhere on the way home. I don’t think they’ll talk about me. There’s nothing to say, and that suits me.

I go back quietly into the living room and listen. There’s a long silence, and then I hear the creak again. It sounds like someone creeping around on tiptoe, trying not to make a noise. I follow the footsteps from the door to the window and then back to the middle of the room. A chair or some piece of furniture is pushed, and then there’s another sound I can’t identify. It sounds as though something had fallen down, something heavy but soft.

I’ve never met Mrs. de Groot, I only know her name from the doorbell. Even so, I have a feeling I know her better than anyone else in the world. I’ve heard her radio and her vacuum and the dinnerware, so loud it’s as though someone was washing up in my kitchen. I’ve heard her get up at night and shuffle around, heard her run a bath, flush the toilet, open a window. Sometimes water dripped onto my balcony when she watered her flowers, but when I leaned out and looked up, I couldn’t see anyone there. I don’t think she’s ever left her apartment. I liked the sounds. They gave me the sense of living with a sort of ghost, a benign presence watching over me. Then a couple of weeks ago, everything went quiet. I heard nothing since. And now the creaking again.

My first thought was: it’s a break-in. While I’m undressing and going to the bathroom, I wonder whether I should call the police or the super. I’m in my nightgown when I decide to go up there myself. I’m surprisingly fearless. But then I’m not really afraid of anything ever. You’ve got to learn that, as a single woman. I pull on my robe and slip into some shoes. It’s eleven o’clock.

I have to ring twice, and then I can see the light come on through the peephole, and a young man, much younger than me, opens the door and says in a very friendly voice, Good evening. I’m thinking it was a mistake to go upstairs, and why do I always have to get involved in other people’s affairs, instead of looking after my own. But then you keep reading about people dying, and their bodies left to rot in their apartments for weeks without anyone noticing. The boy is wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt with IRON MAIDEN on it, which I think is the name of a rock band. He isn’t wearing any shoes, and his socks are holey.

I tell him I live downstairs, and that I heard footsteps. And because Mrs. de Groot has clearly moved out, I thought it might be a break-in. The boy laughs and says it’s brave of me to come up and look all by myself. If it was him, he’d have called the police. What made me think a woman lived there? He has a point. All it says on the bell is P. de Groot. For some reason I was convinced that that had to be a woman, an elderly woman living by herself. I tell him I’ve never seen anyone, just heard the noises. He asks if women sound any different than men. First I think he’s making fun of me, but then he seems to mean it as a serious question. I don’t know, I say. He looks at me with this rather boyish look, a mixture of timid and curious. I apologize, and say I’ve just got out of bed. I have no idea why I’m lying. He has this way of making me say things I didn’t want to say, and that from the very first moment. We look at each other in silence, and I think I ought to be going. Then he asks if I’d like a coffee with him. I say yes right away, even though I never drink coffee at night, and I’m in my robe. I follow him inside. When he locks the door, it occurs to me in a flash that he might be a burglar after all, and has asked me in to silence me. He is quite pale and slimly built, but he’s about a head taller than me, and has muscly arms. I imagine him grabbing me and throwing me down on the floor, then he sits on my belly and holds my arms in a painful grip, while he jams something in my mouth to keep me from screaming. But instead he goes to the kitchen, fills a pan with water, turns on the stove. Then he flings open, it seems, every one of the kitchen cupboards. Coffee pot, coffee, filters, he mutters to himself as if it was a spell he’d learned by heart—sugar, sweetener, milk. When he can’t find the coffee, I suggest getting some from my place. No, he says, so firmly that it makes me jump. He thinks for a moment. We could always have tea instead, he says.

The apartment looks exactly the way I imagined it would as an old woman’s apartment. A TV magazine on the coffee table, knitting on the sofa, crocheted rugs and coasters, various knickknacks and passe-partouts with pictures of ugly-looking people in old-fashioned clothes. We sit down, me on the sofa, him on a great big armchair. On the armrest is a little box with a couple of buttons. He presses one of them, and a footrest slowly comes up from the bottom of the chair. With a switch he tilts back and then forward again. For a while he’s busy pressing the buttons, like a kid showing off a new toy. We haven’t introduced ourselves, he suddenly says, and he jumps up and thrusts out his hand. I’m Daphne, I say, and he laughs again, and says, I see. Oh. Patrick. Funny we’ve never met before. The whole time he’s holding my hand in his. He asks me if I live alone. He asks about my life, my job, my family. He asks me so many questions, I don’t get a chance to ask him anything back. I’m not used to people taking an interest in me. I expect I tell him way too much. I talk about my childhood and my little brother who died four years ago in a motorcycle accident, and my parents and my job in the kindergarten. It’s not exactly thrilling, but he listens carefully. He has shining eyes, like the children when I tell them a story.

We finish the tea, and Patrick gets up and opens a sideboard. He finds a dusty bottle of Grand Marnier that’s almost full. He sets a couple of small glasses on the table, fills them, and raises one.