Peter Stamm - Seven Years

I started drinking more heavily. I spent a long time over lunch, drinking beer and sometimes wine, until I felt tired, and work was out of the question. I knew it was stupid, but I thought alcohol helped me relax. After I’d had a few, the situation didn’t seem so hopeless, and my mood brightened a bit. After hours I continued. Once, when I was driving Sophie home, I missed a set of lights and almost hit another car. After that I stopped drinking in the daytime, but more than made up for it at night. Soon I couldn’t go to sleep without alcohol.

Once in that time Rüdiger called. He wanted to talk to Sonia, and when I told him she wasn’t there, he agreed to talk to me. Sonia’s in Marseilles, I said. Rüdiger said he was in Munich, if I’d care to have a beer. I didn’t really feel like seeing anyone, but I’d long intended to quiz him about Sonia, so I said okay.

We arranged to meet in a beer garden, but when we met, it was so cold outside that we went to a bar around the corner instead. The place was almost deserted, the air stank of stale smoke and chemical cleaner, but Rüdiger seemed not to notice and sat down at the nearest table. He was looking good and seemed relaxed. He had heard about our troubles, and he must have been able to tell from my appearance how badly I was doing, but he didn’t let on. He talked about Switzerland, where he felt very settled now, and his institute outside Zurich, high over the lake. A little paradise, he said, and — not that I asked him about it — promptly started talking about his job. He talked about spontaneous networks and people who had a sort of entrepreneurial approach to their lives, and kept asking themselves, okay, what are my strengths, my preferences, my assumptions? What am I making of them all? Where am I going, and how will I get there? That’s where the future is, EGO plc. And what if EGO plc goes bust? I asked. Sure, there are some losers, said Rüdiger. The way things are looking now, we’re headed for a new class society, where two-thirds of society will have to work more and more to carry the social burden of the remaining third, which can’t find a niche in the new world of work. I said, that doesn’t sound too good. I’m not here to judge, beamed Rüdiger.

And apart from that, how are you doing? Are you still with Elsbeth? Rüdiger creased his brow, as if trying to remember. No, he finally said, that’s over now. He hadn’t heard from her in ages. I remember seeing her once at one of your parties, I said, I thought back then that she was a bit loopy. She was working on some project that involved bread. Rüdiger laughed. Her father was a baker, that’s what that was about. For a time she made sculptures out of chewed-up bread that looked like those pastry cutouts we used to make at school. Her tragedy was, she didn’t have anything to express. Having a thousand ideas in your head didn’t help either.

He shook his head, as though he couldn’t quite believe he’d ever been in love with Elsbeth. He hadn’t found the ideal woman yet. Maybe you’re asking too much, I said. The ideal woman doesn’t exist. Either they’re too young, he said, or they’re divorced with kids. For a time I was with a teacher who had two sweet little girls, but I want my own kids, and she said she didn’t want another pregnancy. The joys of bachelor life, eh, I said. Ach no, said Rüdiger, I’m fed up having to look and chase all the time. I’d like to be able to sit at home and watch a soccer match on the television and be content.

I’d ordered my fifth pint by now, while Rüdiger was still on his first. I interrupted him in the middle of a sentence, and said I had to go to the restroom. As I washed my hands, I looked in the mirror and thought I still looked pretty good, not like a loser or an alkie, just a bit tired. I’d had bad luck. One day I’d get back on track, I was still young, everything was possible.

Back at the table, we sat and faced each other in silence awhile. The place had filled up, and Rüdiger nodded at the corner where a lone woman was sitting, reading a book. Do you remember how we picked up that Polish girl, he said. She reminds me a bit of her. Say, did you and she ever have a thing together?

I didn’t answer. I wondered how to begin. Finally I asked Rüdiger if he believed Sonia loved me. He looked at me in surprise. How do you mean? If she loves me. Sure, said Rüdiger. Why did you and she break up then? Rüdiger laughed, then coughed. Beats me, it’s a really long time ago. Which of you wanted to break up then? I think it was me, Rüdiger said slowly. How could you leave such a perfect woman? Now Rüdiger started to look worried. Have you got problems? I don’t mean with the company. Did you love her? I asked him. I like her an awful lot, said Rüdiger, she’s absolutely perfect, a wonderful human being. He smiled encouragingly. You’ll get through it, don’t you worry. The building industry will recover, you’ll see.

I was sure he wouldn’t say anything more about his relationship with Sonia, either out of loyalty or because he really couldn’t remember. I said I had to go. Next time we’ll all meet up, yeah? said Rüdiger.

As we left the bar, Rüdiger tapped me on the shoulder. Look, he whispered. A man was standing by the table of the woman with the book. He was talking insistently to her, and she was smiling shyly. Rüdiger walked past me and held the door open. The next story, he said.

I had brought Sophie to my in-laws just ahead of the meeting with Rüdiger. It was just after ten when I rang their bell. Sonia’s mother suggested I should leave Sophie with them overnight. I said I wanted to take her home. Don’t you think we should let her sleep? I’ll carry her into the car, I said, she can go on sleeping there. Have you been drinking? asked Sonia’s mother. Not much, I said, just a little bit. Sonia’s father emerged from the living room, newspaper in hand. He too suggested I should leave Sophie with them overnight. He could drive her to school tomorrow morning. I didn’t want any more arguing, so I climbed up the stairs and got Sophie. She was half-asleep as I carried her down the stairs. She was clutching my neck and pressing her head into my shoulder, and I had a sense — I don’t know why — of liberating a prisoner. Sonia’s parents were standing at the foot of the stairs, with serious expressions. I hope to God you know what you’re doing, said Sonia’s father.

The house looked terrible. To save money I’d told the cleaning woman to stop coming, but I had neither the time nor the energy to look after the place myself. Often I didn’t have any clean clothes left, or I had to wear my shirts unironed. The freezer was full of frozen meals. Sophie didn’t seem to mind the microwaved junk, in fact she liked it, at school the food was terribly healthy, and she hardly ever had meat. In fact she was very well behaved throughout the whole ordeal, playing quietly with her dolls when I had to work and going to bed without making a fuss. When I woke up in the morning, I would often find her lying beside me, and it would take me a long time to wake her up, hardly being able to crawl out of bed myself. Sometimes I went back to sleep, and then she was late for school and I was late for work.

I could feel my body disintegrating. The stress, the alcohol, the smoking, were all taking it out of me. One morning when I was sitting on the toilet, I noticed my bare feet, and I thought I’d never seen them before, they were the feet of an old man, the veins shimmering blue through the pitifully thin skin. This is how it’s going to be from now on, I thought, my body will disintegrate, piece by piece will fail. I felt weak and incapable, and without the strength to pull myself together. Even though the state of the business, objectively, wasn’t all that bad anymore. While I had let myself be incapacitated by my self-pity, the young architects who were working for us had hustled for work and managed to land a few minor contracts. Just carry on like this and we’ll pull through, said the administrator. She talked about it as though it were her firm, which in a sense I suppose it was. We need to convince the creditors that we’ll make it, she said. We’ll draw up an insolvency plan, you pay down a mutually agreed portion of the debt, and in three years you’ll be in the clear, able to start afresh. I said I wasn’t sure I had the energy for that. She said you’ve got no choice. Where I should have been grateful to her, I hated her for her cheery optimism.