Alois Hotschnig - Maybe This Time

On the sideboard lay the flowers from the market. He put them in a vase with water and read a note listing the day’s schedule. The names and addresses were written in a hand that was not hers.

On the side of the stove, arranged in a sort of cone shape, were several of the stones they had collected on hikes along the river or brought back from trips. He had often warmed his hands with them. One after the other, he held them and thought of the places they had come from.

Photographs of children being hugged or kissed or held out to another adult were taped on the glass panes of the dresser. On the door out to the balcony, the angels painted by the previous tenant’s son had been replaced with beetles. They were no doubt meant to kill the flies.

From the balcony he looked down on the street he had taken to get to work. In the distance a traffic light turned red, and he remembered how she had stood at this light and he had crossed it in the other direction so that he could turn around and watch her from a distance. The light had stayed red for a long time. She had waited, lost in thought, and he had said to himself, she’s the one.

The bedroom door stood ajar. He closed it.

Footsteps approached in the corridor, stopped and withdrew again.

There was a pile of letters and some were from him and some of these were unopened. He opened them and laid them, unread, next to the others and near the pictures he had drawn of her when thinking about her or speaking with her on the phone.

There was also a box of photographs. He rummaged through them and took pictures out of the box and returned them without looking at them. Then he took them out again and examined them more closely. The photos dated from their time together, yet he didn’t appear in any of them.

The phone rang. He had his hand on the receiver when the answering machine came on and he could hear the sound of hesitant breathing.

The more recent pictures were of people he didn’t know. They weren’t always the same people, but some reappeared frequently, showing their varying degrees of intimacy with her. Most were of celebrations — birthdays, Christmas, Easter — or were taken on holiday on different coasts, always in places that had once been theirs. They showed her leaning against a tree or with her head framed by the branches, at a concert or in an art gallery she had discovered. From the variety of places and people in the pictures, you could tell how much time had elapsed, and he noticed how much her face had changed. In many of the pictures he only recognized her after scrutinizing them carefully. But he avoided looking into her eyes. He remembered how he had once wanted to take a picture of her and how long he had waited for a moment when she didn’t look tense and how difficult he had made things for himself because the child in her arms refused to wait any longer and wanted to be photographed immediately. He put the photos back in the box and looked at all the pictures up on the wall, expecting to find himself in them. But only the same faces he had just encountered in the photos from the box looked back at him from the frames.

He didn’t recognize many of the places, but some of them he did associate with her — a lake, a forest clearing, a meadow — places he thought were known only to the two of them. However, there she was, reclining or standing with others in these places, laughing and serious and mischievous, alone or with someone or in a group.

He let his gaze wander, again and again, from person to person, looking for her or for the one whose eyes she sought. One picture showed the two of them in a group. They looked startled, as couples always are in such situations.

Water dripped in the bathroom. He followed the sound and sat on the side of the bath.

Drops fell from the shower head. She had taken a shower before leaving the house. He turned the tap on and off, and on again, and held his hand, and then his arm, under the stream of water. He looked at the dress she had worn to work and thought of a time they had gone to the zoo, when they had seen a lamb being born. She had drawn his attention to it, calling him by the wrong name.

It was dark now. He turned on the light and then switched it off when he realized that it could be seen from outside.

Perhaps she was out there just then, perhaps she was crossing the park or sitting in the café, looking up towards him, right now, at this moment. Perhaps she had been doing so the whole time, just as he had often done when he had arranged to meet friends at the café so that he could sit with them on the terrace. But in truth it was only to be near her or simply watch the light in her window go on or off.

He often followed her right up to her house. He watched her go through the door and disappear inside. He sat beneath the willow or in the park waiting to see if she would come to the window and pull the shades or open the window and smoke a cigarette, looking down on the square or over to the playground, the swing or the boat, wherever.

Once he actually passed the house and, by chance, looked up as she stood by her window. For a second he thought she had waved to him or made a sign. But since he couldn’t be sure whether it was meant for him or not, he continued on his way without looking back.

He had been drawn to the places they had shared and had returned to them again and again. But that was years ago.

The phone rang again. An irritated man’s voice on the answering machine asked how much longer she intended to keep him waiting and whether he should come up to her flat.

She didn’t come and at this stage surely wouldn’t. It was impossible to say what she had planned for him or why she had wanted him to see what he had seen here.

She had rung him a few days earlier. Her voice had been clear and matter-of-fact, as it always was when she was nervous. She had asked him to come at the exact time when she was out of the house.

One day he left, without planning and for no reason. She didn’t ask why. She just let it happen.

The phone rang again. It stopped after the first ring. There was the smell of fresh paint and bread. In the bathroom the water was still dripping. He thought he could hear a key turning in the lock.

The woman stopped me on my way to her neighbours. They were friends of mine who had invited me to visit. She waved me over to her house next door to theirs. From a distance, she had probably mistaken me for someone she knew. That, at least, is what I thought. Yet, even in her living room, she looked at me as if I were a long-overdue guest. Whenever I took a step back, she came closer again. And even though she seemed somewhat confused, I could sense how keenly she watched my every movement.

A huge array of dolls sat, lay and stood on shelves that lined the walls and jutted out into the room, as well as in niches set at regular intervals. On the sofa and all over the floor too, the dolls stood and lay in a jumble, old and new, clothed and naked, but all of them intact. Young, middle-aged and old. A few of them seemed to take pride of place. They sat on their own seats or in their own spaces. Set apart, they stood out from the crowd.

My children , the woman said. Reaching for them one after the other, she hugged them briefly, then returned them where they belonged. They all made something of themselves, she said. Each one is successful. Salon Annie, Salon Elly, Salon Gerda. And they’re all here with me. She sat down on the sofa and combed their hair with a clothes brush.

I stood watching her for a long time until she asked me to sit down too. Grooming her children distracted her, but every now and again she looked at me, steadily and attentively, sympathetically even, and with a level of scrutiny I hadn’t experienced for ages. She couldn’t really have been interested in me. After all she seemed to think I was someone she knew well, someone who was close to her, someone she was seeing again after a long absence.