Peter Stamm - Seven Years

In the morning Sonia was the same as always. When I went into the kitchen, she was just fixing coffee. I reached around her waist and she kissed me, as though we’d been going out for years, and then she turned away and fished the milk and butter out of the fridge. Today I’m going to visit architects’ studios, she said cheerfully, do you want some orange juice? I asked her if she didn’t want to call ahead to set up interviews, but she shook her head. The best thing was just to drop by, once people saw you they had more trouble saying no to you. You mean your beauty will win them over? She looked at me furiously. That’s mean, I can’t help the way I look. I said it could be worse, and laid my hands on her shoulders and pulled her against me, and now she hugged me and kissed me properly. She asked if I’d slept well. I said, I dreamed about you. That’s not true, admit it.

Sonia spent the next days traipsing around various architect firms in Marseilles. I went with her and waited nearby in a bistro, drank a cup of coffee, and read until she came out. She shook her head, and before we got out the door she unfolded her list, put a line through the entry, and looked for the next one. So many rejections didn’t seem to affect her self-confidence in the least, she was tough, I’d noticed that at school. Whereas I reacted aggressively to criticism and referred to the professors as idiots, she listened carefully and tried to do better.

We were out all day, I’d already switched from coffee to Pernod, and had stopped reading and instead just watched the people in the cafés, when I saw Sonia emerging from a building she’d gone into a half an hour before. A good-looking man of middle age held the door open for her, and the two of them walked down the street together. I paid at the bar and followed them, but even before I’d caught up, the man opened the door of a white minivan and showed Sonia in. I looked for a taxi. Of course there were none to be seen. I stood there for a while not knowing what to do, before finally setting off back to Antje’s apartment.

Antje was sitting in the living room reading. She asked me what I’d done with Sonia. Nothing, she climbed into a car with a man and drove off. Sounds promising, said Antje, would you like a mint tea, I’ve just made some.

In the kitchen I asked Antje how she met Sonia in the first place. She was friends with Sonia’s parents, Antje said, she’d known Sonia from when she was a little girl. Was she like that then? Antje nodded. A bit precocious and terribly serious. She had a way about her that commanded respect, even when she was just little. Basically everyone did what she said, often without realizing it. She always seemed to be thinking of other people. It never occurred to you that it might be to her advantage too. One of my professors introduced Sonia’s parents to me. They used to go to every opening back then. I had a problem with an unwanted pregnancy, and Sonia’s father helped. Afterward he treated me free of charge for many years. I gave him the occasional picture by way of thanks, but I think he only took it so as not to give me the feeling of owing him. He never put any of them up on his walls, that’s for sure. Maybe his wife didn’t like them. He’s a very cultivated man, said Antje, did you get to meet him ever? Only briefly, at an end-of-semester presentation. Sonia introduced me to both of them. But she was still going out with Rüdiger at the time. Antje laughed. She brought him to visit me once too. I was at the Villa Massimo in Rome at the time. He was classy. How do you mean? Antje shrugged her shoulders. Oh, she said, I don’t know, he was something special, crazy guy. We turned Rome upside down, me and him. Sonia spent the whole day touring cultural sites and went to bed early. I asked her when that was. Last year. Antje looked at me, laughed, and said, there wasn’t anything. You didn’t think that, did you? No, he’s not that type. We just hit it off together. But even then I sensed that their relationship was rocky.

She said she was very fond of Sonia, initially on her parents’ account, but she struck her as being a bit earnest. I recalled that Ferdy had once said Sonia was the most humorless person he’d ever come across, she would ask to be excused when she laughed. At the time I’d contradicted him, just as I contradicted Antje now, but presumably they were right and I wasn’t.

Sonia turned up an hour later. She asked where I’d gone, she’d been looking for me in the café. She was too excited to be upset about my disappearance, but I was angry. I saw you drive off with a man, I said, the least you could do was tell me where you were going. Or are you ashamed of me? I was standing there like a piece of trash. Sonia hugged and kissed me. You poor thing, that was Albert, he says I can do my internship at his firm. And I suppose you had to go and celebrate that together right away, I said, still irritated. He showed me a construction site, he had to go anyway and just took me with him. I didn’t know it would take so long.

Maybe Sonia did have a bad conscience after all. That evening she was especially sweet to me. This time we went out to eat, in a little bar in the old harbor, where Antje claimed they served the best fish in Marseilles. We drank a lot of wine, Sonia drank more than she usually did, and we toasted all kinds of things, Sonia’s internship, the future, architecture, Sonia and me. Afterward we went to a club where it was so loud that most of the time we just sat there and looked at each other helplessly and shook our heads and laughed. Antje ran into someone she knew and motioned to him to join us. She laughed even more than before, and put her hand on the man’s thigh, and kept leaning across to him, and yelled things in his ear that he seemed to find very droll. After about an hour we left. Outside, Antje introduced the man to us and said he was a photographer. The two of them decided to go on to some other place together. Sonia said she was tired, and I didn’t feel like going along either. I wondered if Antje hadn’t hooked up with the photographer so as to leave us alone in the apartment, at any rate it wasn’t until much later that I heard her come home.

I kissed Sonia on the stairs, and then we kissed in the hallway. She was a bit drunk, and kept bursting out laughing while I was kissing her, also her hands were busy, now clasping behind my neck, my shoulders, my back, running through my hair. Probably we were more nervous than stimulated. I couldn’t manage to undo Sonia’s belt. She giggled nervously and said she had to go to the bathroom quickly. She turned the key in the lock, and I heard the toilet flush, and her brushing her teeth, but when she finally came out she was still dressed. I’ve got to go too, I said, and disappeared.

Sonia lay in my bed, with the covers pulled up to her chin. She had hung her clothes over the back of a chair. I started to undress, then she turned out the light, and I had to cross the room in darkness, and banged my foot against the chair with her clothes on it, which fell over with a loud crash. I swore and slipped into bed. Hello, said Sonia in a silly voice, and put out her hands toward me, as though to push me away. I said I wanted to be able to look at her, and leaned across to switch on the bedside lamp, but she clasped me around the neck and began kissing me. I felt for her body. She was in her underwear. When I went to pull off her panties, she grabbed my hands and asked me if I had condoms. Aren’t you on the pill? I asked. No, she whispered. I’m sure Antje’ll have some, I said, and got up, don’t go away. In the darkness I stumbled over the upset chair. I didn’t find any condoms, neither in the bathroom nor in Antje’s bedroom. I went back to Sonia. This time I switched on the overhead light. She blinked and turned away from the light. No luck, I said, and slipped under the covers, I’ll be careful, promise. Sonia said that was too risky for her, couldn’t I go out to the night pharmacy and buy some. She lay there as stiffly as she had on the beach the first time I’d kissed her. I stroked her hair. Go on, she said, be quick. When I returned half an hour later with the condoms, the light was out and Sonia was asleep.