Peter Stamm - In Strange Gardens and Other Stories

We could go out for a beer together, I had said to Evelyn when we shook hands on my last day at work. It was what I said to everyone on that day, without ever really meaning it. Evelyn said she didn’t drink beer, and I said it didn’t have to be beer. And then she said sure, and when was convenient for me. I didn’t have any option but to make a date with her.

When Evelyn finally turned up, a quarter of an hour late, I was pretty drunk.

“Would you mind if we sat over there?” she said. “I always sit over there.”

She greeted the guests at the other tables by name.

“Do you live here or something?” I asked.

Evelyn found it hard to choose a dish. Even when the waitress had already taken her order, she changed her mind again.

“Don’t you know the menu by heart, then?” I asked.

Evelyn laughed. “I always have the same thing,” she said. After that, she didn’t say anything, and just beamed at me. I talked about God knows what. By the time the food finally arrived, I had no idea what else I could have spoken about. Evelyn seemed not to have any interests. When I asked her about any hobbies she might have, she said: “I always wanted to be good at singing.”

“Do you take singing lessons?”

She said: “No, that’s too expensive for me.”

“Are you in a choir?”

“No, I feel ashamed to sing in front of other people.”

“Well, that’s not exactly an ideal basis for a career as a singer,” I joked, and she laughed.

“No, I just wish it was something I was good at.”

No sooner had we drunk our coffee than Evelyn said the restaurant was closing in a quarter of an hour.

“Shall we go and have a nightcap somewhere?” I asked, out of politeness, when we were standing on the pavement.

“I don’t like to go to bars,” said Evelyn. “I hate the smoke. But if you like, I’ll make us both a hot chocolate.”

She blushed. So as not to make the situation still more embarrassing, I said if she had coffee, I’d be happy to go along. She said she had instant, and I said that was fine.

“Doesn’t your girlfriend mind you going out with other women?”

“I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“I don’t either,” said Evelyn, “I mean, a boyfriend. Just now.”

Evelyn lived on the third floor of a tenement block. She looked in her mail box. It seemed just to be a kind of reflex, because she must have emptied it earlier in the evening. As she stepped into her apartment, she gestured clumsily and said: “Well, welcome to my palace.”

She led me to the living room, pointed to the sofa, and told me to make myself at home. I sat down, but as soon as she’d disappeared into the kitchen, I got up again and looked around. The room was furnished with light clunky pine furniture. On the bookshelf were about thirty illustrated volumes on all kinds of topics, a few travel books, and lots of novels with bright covers, and titles with women’s names in them. There were costume dolls lying and standing around all over. On the walls were felt-tip drawings of cats and flower pots, which I assumed Evelyn had made herself.

It took a long time for Evelyn to have the coffee and hot chocolate ready. The coffee was much too weak. I told some story about something or other, and then Evelyn suddenly started talking about an illness she suffered from. I can’t remember what it was, but it was something to do with her digestion. Only then did it occur to me that she smelled bad. Perhaps that was why she reminded me of a plant, some potted plant that was missing something, either light or fertilizer, or else was too heavily watered.

After that, Evelyn was very quiet, but when I got up to go she suddenly started talking.

She said: “I get these letters, from a man. He seems to know me, I don’t know.”

A man who called himself Bruno Schmid had been writing to her for months, she said, and I wasn’t sure whether she wasn’t just putting on airs. But she did seem genuinely disturbed.

“I keep them hidden,” she said, and she pulled down a small box lined with marbled paper from the bookshelf. There was a bundle of letters inside it. She took out the top one and passed it to me. I read.

“Dear Miss Evelyn,

I like you, I find your proximity appealing. Are we in any danger of wanting something unbeknown to ourselves? It should be neither sinful nor lethal. Children need parents to ward off dangers. I have never been able to get away from their warnings. My faith takes up a fair part of my time, and of my fortune. But there is much left, which I would like to share. I sense you have unfulfilled hopes, and I would like to learn about them. I wonder what I can do for you. Best wishes …”

“He always writes the same things,” said Evelyn, looking at me beseechingly.

“Some poor madman,” I said.

“What does he mean when he says it shouldn’t be lethal?”

“Life always ends in death,” I said, “but I don’t think he’s dangerous.”

“Sometimes I wish I was old already. Then it would all be over. All that disquiet.”

“Are you scared of him?”

“The world is full of maniacs.”

To distract her, I asked her about her dolls. She said she collected dolls in national costume. She already had thirty of them, mostly given her by her parents, who traveled a lot.

“Have you gone on to a new job already?” she asked.

“I wanted to take a trip around the world.”

“Perhaps you could bring me back a doll,” she said. “I’d pay you, of course.”

Then she disappeared to the bathroom, and didn’t come back for a long time. When I left, I kissed Evelyn on both cheeks.

“Will we see each other again?” she asked.

“I’m not quite sure when I’m leaving,” I said. “You can call me. If I’m still here, that is.”

Two weeks later, I had a call from Evelyn. I had given up my plans for going around the world, and decided to go to the south of France for a few weeks instead. Evelyn asked if I’d like to come over for supper. She had asked a few people.

“People from work,” she said. “It’s my thirtieth birthday. Please come.”

Even though I had no desire to see my former colleagues again, I said I would come. I had a feeling I owed Evelyn something.

When I turned up on the evening in question, I was the first person there. Evelyn was wearing a short skirt that didn’t suit her, and an old-fashioned apron over it.

“I had to shine the doorknobs this morning,” she said. “It was an idea of Max’s. It’s something they do in Germany. When a woman gets to be thirty and is still single, she has to polish doorknobs.”

She said some of our colleagues had put mustard on the doorknobs over the whole floor.

“They want to keep on doing it now. It’ll be Chantal’s turn next. And men have to clean the stairs. You’re only allowed to stop when someone kisses you.”

She said it had been ghastly, but I had the feeling she had quite enjoyed being the center of attention for a while. She showed me a long chain of paper cartons she had had to wear round her neck.

“Because I’m now what the Germans call an old box,” she said, and laughed.

“And who kissed you?” I asked.

“Max,” she said. “After a couple of hours. He’s one of the guests.”

The other guests all came together, Max and his girlfriend Ida, Evelyn’s boss Richard and his wife Margrit. They seemed pretty happy. Max said they had stopped in a bar in the neighborhood, and drunk an aperitif. They had gone in together to buy Evelyn a present. He handed Evelyn a box, and the four of them started to sing: “Happy birthday to you.”

Evelyn blushed and smiled sheepishly. She wiped her hands on her apron and shook the package.

“I wonder what it can be?” she said.