Daniel Kehlmann - F

I ask myself if he’s ever in his entire life uttered one single phrase that isn’t a thousand times well-worn cliché. I envy him greatly.

On my way to my study I pass the open door to the salon. Ligurna, our Lithuanian maid, greets me looking tragic. I nod to her and hurry on past. A year ago in a moment of weakness I slept with her. Unfortunately it happened not in the kitchen or on my desk but in the master bedroom in our marriage bed. Afterward Ligurna searched carpet and bedside table like a skilled detective for hairs, eyelashes, any other traces: nonetheless I was afraid for weeks that she could have overlooked something. Since then I’ve only spoken to her when it’s unavoidable. I can’t throw her out, she could blackmail me.

I sit behind the desk, swallow two tranquilizers without water, look at the Paul Klee, look at the Eulenboeck on the opposite wall: a canvas covered with a collage of newspaper cuttings, with a crushed Coca-Cola can and a teddy bear glued in the middle. You have to go right up close to realize that it’s all trompe l’oeil. The bear and the can aren’t real, nor are the bits of newspaper; it’s all painted in oils. If you examine the cuttings with a magnifying glass, you see they’re all art criticism about collages.

The painting is from Eulenboeck’s later period, his most valuable. I got to know the old poseur, he was very condescending, very white-haired, and never stopped making really stupid jokes about Ivan and me and how uncannily alike we were. Obviously he thought he knew me well, because he knew Ivan well. It cost one hundred and seventy thousand, supposedly a discounted price for a friend. But all the same it’s got that teddy bear. He gives me joy. I know it’s all a parody of something and nothing in it means what it’s supposed to mean, but I don’t care. On the short list of things that aren’t horrible in my life, that bear is right up there.

What luck that these days you can order every medication on the Internet. How would someone like me have coped fifteen years ago? I cross my arms and lean back. I would like to work in order to relax a bit, but I have nothing to do. Without hope, there’s leisure.

There’s a knock. Laura looks in. “Do you have a moment?”

“Unfortunately not.”

She sits down, crosses her legs, and looks first at the Paul Klee, then at me.

“Is it about Marie?”

“It’s about me.”

“You?”

“Imagine, Eric. It’s about me.”

This I needed. Is she going to tell me another dream? Or has someone offered her a role? That would be truly bad news.

“I’ve had an offer. A role.”

“But that’s wonderful!”

“Nothing big, but at least it’s a start. It’s not easy going back again after fifteen years.”

“You’re even more beautiful than you were then!”

Not bad. It didn’t take me half a second to come up with that, the sentence is all prepared and always at hand. Of course she isn’t more beautiful than she used to be, why should she be, but she’s slimmer and the exercise has paid off, and fine mature lines around her eyes look good on her. She could certainly have a career in movies. I have to stop it.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Yes?”

“I must concentrate on myself.”

She stops, evidently to give me the chance to reply. But what do I say?

“It’s only for a while, Eric. To begin with. We’re not separating yet. Everything will sort itself out.”

She looks at me. I look at her.

“Eric, what is it?”

She pushes her hair off her face and waits. Apparently it’s up to me to say something, but what does she want to hear, what’s she talking about?

“I would move out, but it’s impractical. I have to look after Marie, and I also need Ligurna. It’s better if you look and find somewhere else. Then you wouldn’t have such a long journey to the office.”

“To the office?”

“Besides which the house is close to school. I won’t be able to be home much while they’re shooting. Of course you can see Marie whenever you want.”

I nod, because now I understand what she’s saying, even if it makes no sense. The words have a meaning, apparently the sentences do too, but when you put them together, they’re so empty that she could be talking pure nonsense.

“Eric, I can’t get caught up in your games right now.”

I nod as if I understand. Luckily I don’t have to say anything at first, for she stands up and keeps talking. Through a fog I hear her voice speaking about long, lonely hours and how I’m perpetually busy and how money and cold rationality don’t take precedence over everything else. After a while she stops, sits down again, and waits. I look at her helplessly.

“Don’t try that with me,” she says. “Your tricks. Your negotiating tricks. All your tricks. I know you. It doesn’t work with me.”

I open my mouth, take a breath, shut it again.

She talks on. Her arms are so fine, her hands delicate and elegant, again and again the desk lamp catches the diamond ring on her middle finger so that it flashes sparks. Now she’s saying I mustn’t think that it has anything to do with another man, there is no other man, if I thought any such thing I’d be wrong, because there most certainly isn’t another man and I shouldn’t think anything else.

I concentrate on continuing to look at her attentively, and not letting myself get distressed by the fact that the color has drained out of everything and my face feels as if it’s made of cotton wool.

“Answer me, Eric! Stop it! Say something!”

But when I try to search for a reply, everything just retreats still further. I’m back in the cellar, way down, even deeper than I was, and something is coming up the stairs, someone is speaking. Words put themselves together, it’s dark, and there’s a hundredweight pressing down on me. The voice seems somehow not unfamiliar, and from somewhere a crack of light comes in. The window by the desk. I feel as if much time has passed, but Laura is still sitting there talking.

“To begin with everything can go on like normal,” she says. “We can behave as if nothing had happened. We’d fly to Sicily. Next week we’ll go together to the party at the Lohnenkovens’. In the meantime you can look for an apartment. We don’t have to make it hard for ourselves.”

I clear my throat. Did I really pass out here at my desk in front of her eyes, without noticing? Who the hell are the Lohnenkovens?

“I’m not talking about a divorce just yet. It doesn’t have to go that far. But if it does, we have to be sensible. Of course you have good lawyers. That’s the same for me. I spoke to Papa. He’s behind me.”

I nod. But who are they, who are the Lohnenkovens?

“Okay.” She gets to her feet, pushes her hair back off her face, and leaves.

I open the drawer and pick three, four, five pills out of the plastic packet. As I leave the room, my legs seem to belong to someone else, as if I were a marionette, being manipulated by a not-very-skilled puppet master.

In the dining room, they’re all still sitting at the table.

“All done, your call?” My father-in-law smiles at me.

Next to him, Laura smiles too. Her mother smiles, her sister smiles, her daughters smile, only Marie yawns. I have no idea what call he’s talking about.

“Laura,” I say slowly, “did we just … have you …” It could be the effect of the pills. They’re strong, and I took a lot of them. I could have imagined the whole thing.

Or? I took the pills precisely because of Laura. If she hadn’t come to me, I wouldn’t have swallowed so many. So the pills can’t be the reason that I’m imagining Laura said things that made me take the pills. Or?

“Bad news?” My father-in-law is still smiling.