Peter Stamm - In Strange Gardens and Other Stories

“That’s where I’ve just come from,” said Eric.

Elza said Valdis had said he would go by the hotel to see if Eric was there. Did she not feel like coming out at all, Eric asked. No, said Elza, she didn’t like crowds.

“I’m just enjoying having the place to myself. It happens rarely enough.”

“What about the fireworks later on?”

“I’m not sure.”

Eric said he might call later on. Then he asked Elza how she was feeling.

“Fine, thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry we won’t see each other this time. Yesterday I felt sure you would come over.”

“Valdis didn’t say anything.”

“He said you wanted to go to the movies.”

“I think we were both pretty tired. We’re not getting any younger, after all.”

Elza laughed. She said she had rarely seen Valdis as drunk as he was that night. The taxi driver had brought him to the front door, to be sure he made it safely up the steps.

“I gave the man a big tip,” said Eric.

Elza sounded fine, and after Eric hung up he wondered for a moment whether she might not actually be sick at all. But then he thought, no, she’s just brave. Presumably she didn’t know that Valdis had come to him for money.

Eric went downstairs and asked the receptionist for the way to the market. Valdis had said that was something he absolutely had to see. He would be back in the evening, said Eric, in case anyone called for him.

The market was housed in four former zeppelin hangars behind the railway station. There were some old women standing on the pavement outside, selling plastic bags that had the names of various western products on them. Everyone here seemed to have something they were trying to sell.

Some people sat on the ground, with just an old cardboard box in front of them on which they’d laid out a few things, tapes, ballpoints, broken toys.

Eric didn’t stay long at the market. He found it all pretty dismal. He went back to the Old City. There were flags up in the streets. That morning already there had been choral singing on the stages that had been put up everywhere. More and more people were squeezing into the narrow alleyways, holding hands and walking quickly, as though they had somewhere to get to.

Eric walked back to his hotel. The woman at reception told him a man had come asking for him. He had waited for at least an hour, and then he had gone away again. He had said he would try again later. Eric asked her to change his return flight from Sunday to Saturday. Then he took one of the taxis that were lined up outside the hotel, and gave the driver Valdis’s address, Kiburgas iela 12.

He had the taxi stop at the edge of the project, got out and walked about among the crumbling tenement blocks. They were widely separate, with lawns in between them, and the occasional birch tree. The grass hadn’t been cut for a long time, and it sprouted up between the pavement slabs and in the cracks of the curbs.

Eric looked for the house that Valdis and Elza lived in. Suddenly he couldn’t remember their surname. There were only numbers next to the buttons at the entrance. He tried the door. It was unlocked. He climbed up the steps. In some places, the wallpaper was in shreds.

The individual apartment doors also only had numbers. On the third floor, Eric stopped and listened. He thought he could hear a vacuum cleaner, but he wasn’t sure which apartment the sound was coming from. He stood there for two or three minutes, thinking about Elza, and hoping she might just come and open the door. Then he wondered what he would say if she did. Finally, he went back down the steps, as quietly as he had gone up them.

He walked through the project. There was no one around, except for a few kids playing. The road ended in a large cul-de-sac, in the middle of which there was a flat garage building. A man was leaning over the engine of a car. He scratched his head. Then he looked up. Eric gave him a nod, but the man only looked suspiciously at him as he moved on.

Eric crossed the patch of grass between the last two blocks. At the very edge of the terrain there were a couple of vegetable patches, then an overgrown piece of wasteground, and then forest. Eric followed a narrow path that led into the forest, and then immediately lost itself among the trees. The air was damp, and Eric began to sweat. It was very quiet. He wondered what he was doing there.

When he got back to the hotel at about eight, the woman at reception handed him an envelope with his name on it. Valdis wrote that he had been told Eric would be leaving tomorrow. So they probably would not be able to meet after all. He would be watching the fireworks this evening,at the apartment of friends. If Eric needed anything, he could find him there, or at home tomorrow morning. And if he didn’t hear anything more from Eric, then he merely wished him a safe flight back, and all the best in the future. He looked forward to seeing him next year.

The air in Eric’s room was warm and close. All at once, he felt very tired. He opened the window and lay down.

He was awakened by the fireworks. He stepped up to the window, but he couldn’t see anything from there. He went out into the hall. Some hotel guests stood in front of the window next to the elevator. Bengal lights were reflected on their faces. Three times three hundred and thirty meters made a kilometer, said an elderly man. In the shadow, next to the stairs, stood the young woman from the hotel bar, watching the spectacle over the heads of the guests. When the fireworks were over, she hurried down the steps, back to work. A group of Americans applauded halfheartedly. It was worth it after all, a woman said in German. She had already been asleep, and merely thrown a coat over her nightdress. But it had been worth it. Eric wondered what it was all for. With the money they had gone through here, it would have been possible to pay for Elza’s course of treatment, three times over.

The other hotel guests wandered back to their rooms. Eric looked at his watch. It was a little before midnight, too late to call Valdis’s friends. He went downstairs to the bar.

“We’re closed now,” said the bar woman.

“Just one little beer?” Eric asked beseechingly.

The woman smiled, shrugged her shoulders, and raised her eyebrows in apology. Eric sat down on a barstool, and watched her as she counted up the till. He put a banknote down, enough to pay for the beer many times over. He asked the woman what her name was. She looked at him reproachfully. Then she took a beer bottle out of the refrigerator tray, opened it, and set it down in front of Eric. She pushed the banknote away.

“I’ve already done the accounts,” she said, picked up the bag containing the money, and crossed the lobby to the reception. She wore tight black pants in some shiny stuff. Eric followed her with his eyes. She walked with a light, quick step, almost a hop, and Eric remembered how she had run down the stairs when the fireworks were over. She had taken them two at a time. It looked almost as if she were flying, like a child, like an angel. At the turn in the stairs, she had put one hand on the balustrade, swung round, and disappeared.

Everything in Lisbon was damp. Even though it wasn’t raining, the streets were dark with moisture. Moss sprouted from the walls and facades, and the sky was full of clouds.

I had wanted to take ship and go, but there was a delay in the loading of the freighter and I was forced to wait. I had already moved my things into my cabin. Lisbon had nothing for me. In my mind, I had already said goodbye to Europe, I thought what lay ahead would be more interesting than what lay behind. But the prospect of waiting on the ship was deadly. There’s nothing more boring than a ship in port.