Peter Stamm - All Days Are Night

No problem, she said.

I can’t work with that sort of noise going on, Hubert said tetchily.

No problem, repeated Thea. I had no idea you were still around.

In the evening, Hubert went for a walk. He followed the road to Jill’s house. Behind him he heard a car. Only when it pulled up alongside him did he realize it was Jill. She wound down the window and asked if he was going somewhere.

It was cold in the house. Jill hadn’t turned on any lights. The blue sky through the windows reminded Hubert of the poster for Thea’s show. Jill sat down with him and lit a cigarette.

What sort of farce was that?

You mean the play yesterday? asked Jill. That’s just for fun, you mustn’t take it seriously.

I mean the whole thing, said Hubert. The invitation to the cultural center, and then your taking the exhibition away from me in the eleventh hour, in favor of a girl who’s barely got her diploma. And you in this ridiculous hotel, you can’t mean it. That’s not you.

Maybe not, said Jill, but life here is less of a strain. Our guests like to have a bit of fun, that’s what they’re paying for, and when they get it, they’re grateful and satisfied.

They sat facing each other in silence.

To begin with, I took an ironic view of everything here, said Jill finally, but over time I got to be really fond of the people. You’d be surprised at who comes here for vacations.

Hubert made to speak, but Jill cut him off.

I think I wanted to show you that. Because of the way you cut me down to size and said I wasn’t there. She stood up and made an actorish bow to him, and smiled. Well? Do you like what you see?

The last remaining days before the opening Hubert worked incessantly. He had set out the steles in his room. On one he put the rest of the log he had whittled, and at its foot the whittlings, on the next the frayed place mats, and on the ground the red threads he had pulled out. Over one stele he looped the picked-at rope. He started covering some pieces of paper with pencil hatchings till gleaming black surfaces resulted, where the individual lines were no longer visible. Sometimes the paper was rubbed through or got warped in the course of the work, but he didn’t mind.

Thea spent days over the hanging of her pictures. Each time Hubert left his room, he found her standing in the exhibition space with a framed picture in her hand or on the floor at her feet. In the evening, Hubert left the cultural center and drove into the village to eat in a restaurant there. Then he would look up his e-mails. Astrid wrote that she was coming to the opening with Lukas and Rolf, perhaps he could reserve them a room in a nice hotel. Nina similarly said she would be coming for the opening, and bringing a couple of friends. He deleted the e-mails without answering them, he had to concentrate on his work.

He only went into the kitchen in the morning, to fix coffee. He no longer appeared at the hotel. What little he needed he bought in the village store. Some days he ate nothing but salted peanuts, until his mouth was burning with them, and drank copious amounts of coffee. He slept badly and had wild dreams from which he often woke bathed in sweat. Sometimes he had the feeling that everything he perceived stood in some relation to his slow work of destruction, the way the light crept over the floor, the rushing of the river audible inside, the cries of the children in the hotel grounds. He tore a piece out of an old shirt and then used a needle to pick thread after thread out of it. The weave was so fine that he needed the lens of his slide projector as a magnifying glass. After he had spent hours working, he pushed everything aside, only to begin right away on the next task. For many hours on end he was unaware of time passing.

Jill had gone over to the window of her office and was looking out onto the grounds behind the hotel. It was a gorgeous day, almost all the deck chairs were occupied, children were playing in the meadow, and in the background, in the shade of some mighty trees that stood by the riverbank, a dozen guests were sitting in a circle. Most were barefoot, some only in shorts and T-shirt. They had sketch pads on their knees and were attentively watching Hubert, who was standing in their midst, talking. On a basket chair next to him sat a naked young woman. Hubert gestured expansively, it was as though he was painting a picture in the air.

His course was a rip-roaring success. Jill could have filled it twice over, that’s how many people had signed up for it. A model was easily found as well: Ursina, the masseuse who had a practice in the village and came to the hotel when required. Jill knew that Ursina had sometimes done modeling when she was a student, and she agreed without demur. She seemed completely uninhibited, stretching during breaks or walking around to inspect the guests’ handiwork. Jill waved at Hubert, but he didn’t see her, and she sat down at her desk to finish the schedules for the next month.

Hubert had recovered remarkably quickly from his breakdown. On the morning of the opening, Jill had been seriously worried about him. Arno had called her and told her to come right away. It was her day off, and she was still in her nightie, but fifteen minutes later she was standing next to Arno in Hubert’s room in the cultural center. Hubert was deathly pale, he had beads of sweat on his brow. Jill called the doctor, then she got a large glass of water from the kitchen. You’re dehydrated, she said to Hubert, and helped him to sit up. The doctor prescribed something to lower his blood pressure, but what he needed above all was rest.

My wife is coming, and so are three of my students, said Hubert. They’re under the impression that I’ve got a show.

Is that all you’re worried about? said Jill. Come on, I’ll take you back to my place, no one will think of looking for you there.

During the first few days at Jill’s, Hubert wasn’t up to much. When she asked him in the evening what he had done during the day, he shrugged. After a few days he began to read. Most of the books in the house were Jill’s mother’s, they were illustrated guides to the area, cookbooks, and English novels. This rather random library had led to an improvement of relations between Jill and her mother. There was nothing arcane about her mother’s handwritten marginalia in the cookbooks, but they showed Jill a life that had had no other end in view than to provide a good home for her husband and daughter.

Ever since Jill had moved into the vacation home, her parents came up less frequently. Jill’s father had bad knees, and the stairs were difficult for him. If they went anywhere for vacation, it was to spa hotels, where he could receive physiotherapy.

Hubert seemed to read anything that fell into his hands, a collection of local legends, a book of Alpine flora, a little volume of Engadin proverbs that were painted all over the houses hereabouts.

It’s easy to find fault, and harder to do, he read. There must have been an artist living in that house. Or what about this: A little wolf is present in every one of us.

Jill was in the kitchen, making their dinner.

Love your destiny, even if it is bitter, read Hubert. Do you think that’s true?

Why don’t you wash the lettuce, said Jill.

When she came home the next day, Hubert was sitting in front of the house, sketching. She walked around and looked over his shoulder. He was just copying a sgraffito from the book of proverbs. He leafed back through the pad and showed her the drawings he had done, careful copies of mermaids, crocodiles, and zodiacs graced with sayings. He tore out a sheet and handed it to her. A year is long, ten years are short, she read.