Peter Stamm - Seven Years

We woke early in the morning, I don’t know which of us awoke first. Silently we started caressing each other, it was as though our bodies were reaching for each other, while the rest of us was still half asleep. Sonia kissed me, she shoved her tongue in my mouth, it seemed very big to me, and I got the taste of her sleep. She had pulled off her underwear and laid herself on top of me. I still remember my surprise at her weight and warmth. We moved slowly together like two sleepy desirous animals trying to become one.

We stayed in bed all morning making love, almost without a word. Once Antje knocked on the door, put her head around the corner, and asked us what our plans were, and if we meant to have breakfast any time. When we said no, she went out without a word. Later, Sonia asked me to get her a glass of water. I pulled on my shorts. In the hallway I ran into the photographer, and we said hello. It didn’t feel embarrassing at all, on the contrary, I felt a kind of satisfaction. Are you getting up at last? called Antje from the kitchen. I didn’t reply, and disappeared into the guest bedroom. Sonia had gotten dressed and pulled up the blinds, and was looking out the window. I stood behind her and embraced her. She took the glass from my hand and drank it in slow sips.

Our remaining days in Marseilles were perhaps the happiest in our entire relationship. We strolled hand in hand through the city, looked at old buildings, and stopped in front of construction sites to watch the work. At noon the sun was vertical, and in the sea of light the shadows of the trees were like little islands where we took refuge. When the heat became unbearable, we went back to the apartment. Sonia sketched, and I would read or flick through Antje’s collection of antique illustrated books on all sorts of subjects.

I think Antje was a tad jealous of us, anyway she passed occasional remarks about young love, and said it prevented her from working if we hung around necking all the time. She had a show coming up in the fall, and she wasn’t happy with what she’d done so far this year. At night she stayed out on the balcony with a half-bottle of wine, while Sonia and I disappeared to bed. Sonia used the bathroom first and then waited for me under the sheets, and we would kiss and embrace. Then she would turn out the lights and we would make love. When I woke up in the morning, she had pulled on her pajamas, and when I hugged her, she got up and said she didn’t want to waste the day in bed. I had the feeling of her withdrawing from me, perhaps our nocturnal pleasures were embarrassing. She went to the bathroom, and when she returned, she was freshly showered and dressed. I was still lying in bed, and she sat down on the bedside, and sometimes let me pull her back in, but she fought off my caresses and gave me only brief kisses, and said laughingly I was a lazybones, and would never amount to much.

Wouldn’t it be nice to live here? she asked once. Yes, I said, either to do her a kindness or because at that moment I really believed it, forgetting that I could hardly speak a word of French, and would never land a proper job in this city. I didn’t think about Munich, or of the future; time seemed to stand still, as though there was only the sea and the city and the heat. When a wind picked up, I thought about Africa. I had been looking at a picture book on the Kalahari Desert, and was sitting there dreamily. I saw great expanses of veldt full of animals, herds of animals moving over the plain, quickly and aimlessly. They trotted, galloped, and grazed. They ran across the expanse, following some invisible routes, always the same routes since the year one. They reached a water hole, a pasture, they disappeared into the distance, the wind blew away their traces.

Once there was a trivial quarrel with Antje. I had left a couple of dirty cups in the sink, and she accused us of using her apartment like a hotel. She wasn’t some chambermaid, with nothing better to do than tidy up after us. Sonia felt bad, though it wasn’t her fault. We quickly patched things up with Antje, but the atmosphere wasn’t the same. Two days later we left.

Antje didn’t get up until we had had breakfast. I made her some coffee. Sonia said she was going shopping in town. Antje asked Sonia to take her along, she had to check in on the gallery and run a couple of errands besides. I asked her if she wasn’t tired. No, she said roughly, and drank her coffee standing up.

Sophie wanted to watch a movie. Just this once, said Sonia, although it was really a very common occurrence. Sonia had distinct notions of how to raise a child, and even though she kept having to make compromises, she wasn’t prepared to abandon her ideal line. That way, Sophie’s upbringing presented itself as a sequence of exceptions. Sophie had learned how to live with that. Each of her appeals ended in “just this once.” And since Sonia and I were generally overworked and felt guilty for not spending enough time with Sophie, we rarely denied her. But only once you’ve fed Mathilda and changed her litter, said Sonia. Why is it always me who has to do that, groaned Sophie. You wanted a cat, said Sonia, now you have to look after her.

The two women set off. I put in a DVD for Sophie and went out to the garden. The fog had lifted a little and the sun was peeping through, but the air was still chilly. We had a few vegetable beds where we grew lettuces and vegetables in summer, but this year had been so rainy that we hardly harvested anything, and had neglected the garden out of annoyance. The tomato plants had rotted away, their fruits had gone black and fell off at the slightest touch and splattered on the ground. A few tiny cabbage heads lost themselves in the rampant grass, the cucumber that I’d once trained up a wooden stake had been attacked by mildew and was dried out. I ripped everything up and tossed it in the compost bin. I wanted to hoe the beds, but the ground was frozen. Instead I started to rake up the leaves that had dropped from our neighbor’s great sugar maple onto our tiny patch of lawn and onto the front yard. Once Sophie came out of the house and watched me, then she disappeared inside again. Shortly before noon, Antje and Sonia returned with bulging shopping bags. Half an hour later Sonia called me in to lunch.

After our meal we pulled on our coats and sat down outside to drink our coffee. Sonia talked to Antje about her time as in intern. Antje said Marseilles had changed, even since Sonia’s latest visit. The city was much cleaner than before, but it had gotten a bit boring too. Which is fine by me, she said, I’m not twenty anymore. Sonia said she had found it hard to settle in there, if Antje hadn’t introduced her to a few people, she would probably have spent the entire six months alone. You had so many visitors, said Antje. That’s not true, said Sonia, I did nothing but work all the time. Even so, it was perhaps the time of her life. Albert had trusted her, and she had learned an incredible amount. Do you remember the silly fellow who visited you? asked Antje. The one who went on and on about udders? Jakob? I asked. He didn’t visit me, Sonia said, he just turned up one day. Anyway, he came and stayed with us, said Antje. You thought he was so frightful, didn’t you? I said. He just wrote to me a couple of times, said Sonia. He got the address from my parents. He called them and said he was an old friend, and they had no reason not to believe him.

Jakob had written Sonia long, wild letters that she didn’t answer. Then, in spring, shortly before she was due to return to Munich, he had gone to Marseilles and rung Antje’s doorbell.

And I let him in, said Antje. How was I to know that he and Sonia hardly knew each other? When she got back that evening, she was in for a shock. Why didn’t you just throw him out? I asked. He was all right, said Antje. And he cooked for us too.