Peter Stamm - On A Day Like This

“About yesterday,” she said. She seemed to wait for him to say something. He didn’t.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” she finally said, and got up. “I’m not sure I want more than what my imagination can provide.”

“Don’t apologize,” said Andreas. “After all, it’s not as though anything happened.”

“I have an idea of a marriage,” Marthe said. “The way a marriage ought to be. This sort of thing doesn’t fit it. It might sound a bit stupid, but there’s something unaesthetic about it. I don’t want to play the part of the unfaithful wife. I can’t.”

Marthe stood in the window against the light. Andreas couldn’t make out her face very well. She said she had often deceived Jean-Marc in her imagination, and once, it had almost happened. It was when her younger son had started school.

“That’s years ago.”

She raised her hands and let them sink again. She had suddenly found herself with a lot of time, and not known what to do with it. She had gone into Paris and bought clothes and shoes and kitchenware that she didn’t need. She had seen all those young people, and she had suddenly had the feeling that life had passed her by.

“You know, the old story. Married young, and had children right away. Jean-Marc was my first proper relationship.”

A couple of times, Marthe had gone to Enghien, one or two Metro stops from Deuil. She wandered around the little lake, had a drink in the casino restaurant, watched the people, and was happy when men turned around to look at her. There she had run into Philippe, the French teacher who had later died of a brain tumor. He told her he went to Enghien every week to play blackjack in the casino.

“I was fascinated. Everyone thought he was going to the library in Paris, to research some book or something, and all the time he was going to the casino. He didn’t look anything like a gambler.”

Philippe had taken Marthe along to the casino, and explained everything to her. The gambling didn’t interest her, but she was fascinated by the atmosphere.

Marthe sat down again, and took a sip from Andreas’s coffee.

“Have you ever been to a casino?” she asked. He shook his head.

“The people are completely single-minded. You get the feeling they don’t even see each other. If they walk into you, they don’t say excuse me. Once, there was an argument about some winnings. Two people both claimed the money as theirs. It wasn’t a big sum, but it was as though it was life and death.”

Philippe played for small sums. He said he gambled for fun, never winning much, never losing much either. When he was with Marthe, he bet more than he usually did, maybe to impress her. Once, he got lucky, in half an hour he won two thousand francs. They went to the bar and drank champagne.

“Then he suggested we go to a hotel room. I was shocked and ran away.”

Philippe started to write her letters. At first, she never answered. Eventually, she got so mad that she wrote to him to stop it. After that they wrote each other regularly. The letters became more and more intimate, they told each other everything about their relationships and their fantasies.

“I wrote him things I’ve never talked about. Not with anyone. That I had never even given a thought to. It happened while I was writing. We got each other going, stimulated each other.”

They met in Enghien a couple of times, but Philippe didn’t try to seduce Marthe again. They walked around the lake, not speaking, not touching. They looked at each other, one walked behind the other, or they moved apart and observed each other from a distance. Sometimes they went to the casino and played at the same table, pretending they didn’t know each other. Or they went into a bookshop, and followed each other among the shelves, or squeezed past each other, so that their bodies touched fleetingly. When Marthe went to catch her train, Philippe stood on the other platform. She waited for a signal from him, but he just stood there, looking at her. A few days later, he sent her a letter describing how he slept with her, long, obscene descriptions that were completely unerotic, and therefore excited her.

“It was weird. I didn’t know I could do that,” said Marthe, laughing. “It was like a game.”

Then Philippe’s wife stumbled upon Marthe’s letters. She sent copies to Jean-Marc, and there was a huge fuss, even though Marthe and Philippe had never slept together. Perhaps it would have been easier for Philippe’s wife to deal with if we had, said Marthe.

“If we had slept together. She could have laid into me, and the whole thing would have been dealt with. But she must have noticed that we shared something that she would never have.”

“Passion?”

Marthe shrugged her shoulders.

“A secret. What do I know.”

They had talked once more on the phone. Philippe had been in tears. He was suffering like a dog. Sometimes, later, she thought that was why he had gotten sick. Of course that was nonsense.

“Did you love him?” asked Andreas.

“I don’t know,” said Marthe, “all I know is that I was ready to leave all of this behind, Jean-Marc, the children, all of it. I don’t know if that’s love.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“He didn’t want to. He said he would never forgive himself for destroying my family. He never had any children himself. Do you know his wife?”

Andreas nodded. “Did you ever see him again?”

“From a distance. I didn’t go to the funeral.”

Andreas suddenly felt jealous of Philippe. He couldn’t explain it. He liked Marthe all right, but he wasn’t in love with her. Perhaps he didn’t envy Philippe because of Marthe exactly, so much as because of her love for him. He had always been careful not to be loved too much himself, with every step that a woman had taken toward him, he would take a step away. He hadn’t been able to take the turbulence, the dependency.

“I was never for marriage,” he said. “You can’t own another person.”

“This wasn’t about possession,” said Marthe. “It was more like an addiction, having to be near him.”

She said she never wanted to go through something like that again.

“Do you think that was Jean-Marc’s revenge? Sleeping with Delphine?”

Marthe shook her head. Those kind of things had happened before. She had noticed it, each time. Anyway, he wasn’t like that. He wasn’t that subtle. He had probably really fallen in love. Now he was going to have to go through what she had been through. She felt sorry for him, really.

“Are you not afraid he might leave you?” Marthe didn’t reply. She stood up and said she was going to the beach to check up on the kids. Did Andreas fancy coming with her?

The sun was shining, but there was a cool wind off the sea. The children ran squealing into the water, and were thrown back by the waves. Andreas and Marthe sat down on a big rock to watch them. Andreas felt like going for a swim, even though he was shivering in his clothes. He got up and went down to the water. Marthe followed him. They took their shoes off, and let the water wash over their toes.

“You’re very quiet,” said Marthe.

“I don’t know how the children can stand it,” said Andreas. “The water’s ice cold.”

He thought about telling Marthe about his illness, but then he didn’t. He mustn’t talk about it. Not to anyone. That was his only chance.

Marthe started talking about Philippe again. She said she thought about him every day. It might sound strange, but she felt closer to him now than when they had to break up.

“Now he doesn’t belong to anyone anymore. He’s free.”

“Who was it who said he always wished his lovers were dead?”

“What a terrible sentence,” said Marthe. “Great beach conversation.”