Matthias Politycki - Next World Novella

But back to Dana. The way you kept looking at her while you were talking on the phone to Pia! You clearly cared so little about our daughter’s divorce that I immediately drew my own conclusions. It probably escaped your notice, in fact of course it escaped your notice, that I made a date that very evening to meet up with Dana. As soon as I saw that sign tattooed on her throat, everything was clear; I was electrified: Kan , the double water sign, I’d meditated on it for years, it couldn’t be a coincidence. I had to approach her. And so I did. Dana had wanted to be approached, as I now know. Or do you think she met up with anyone and everyone just for fun? Not that she didn’t enjoy it, she certainly wouldn’t have done anything that she didn’t want to do. But she made sure she got paid. I pretended I merely wanted to pass the time while you were on the phone to Pia, said something along the lines of, ‘Do you know what you actually got stuck with there?’

Dana thought I was cracking a joke and rolled her eyes. ‘A helluva lot of men.’

‘A helluva lot of water, as it happens.’ Did she want to know more?

‘That’s a new one on me!’ Yes, she said, she was extremely interested, she loved water, she’d always been a good swimmer.

She pretended she thought the sign was just some kind of modern graphic art. But when, probably inspired by the Kan sign itself, I said I could tell her more about the meaning of her Chinese character, she agreed at once. I found out later that you had approached her in the same way. Do you in fact have any idea what Kan means? I didn’t fail to notice that you were collecting information from my commentaries, you even underlined the relevant passages. But one doesn’t come to understand the I Ching within a few days. For that to happen you have to make a serious study of it. You may not believe me, but in secretly making a first date with Dana, naïve as I was, all I wanted was to protect you from her. She would have robbed you blind, I thought, she would have ruined you, a man like you would have been right up her street — if at the last minute you didn’t do something so foolish that it would hurt her pride. You underestimated her pride. Otherwise, who knows, she might not have remained so aloof.

When I found out that there was not, as I’d originally assumed, an affectionate understanding between the two of you, I immediately decided to prevent one from forming. Admittedly, even then I was not uninterested in Dana myself. Be that as it may, I wanted there to be something between her and me, something stronger than you could imagine in your besotted intriguing — do you understand? I got in before you did. I seduced her. Oh no, not in the way you’re thinking with your pathetically one-sided imagination. But no less tenaciously and, above all, far more consistently.

At first I was a somewhat unexpected confidante to whom Dana could tell everything about you that I didn’t want to know. She scornfully enumerated all your earlier affairs and would-be affairs. I don’t have to tell you about those, I’m sure. It’s amazing what she knew about you. She told me in detail how you pursued her from the first moment, with looks, with insinuating remarks. Soon even intruding on her smoking breaks, when she really would have liked to be on her own. You deserved to be rejected unreservedly. But I wanted to be sure, so on the day after you received that slap in the face I went from being her confidante to being her accomplice — we’d been meeting up regularly for a long time, exchanging information about you — and got her a new mobile and phone contract. Yes, you have me to thank for being eventually unable to reach her on that number. You’re surprised, I’m sure; you wouldn’t have thought it of me, would you? I often listened to your messages on the old mobile later, when my determination began to waver. Do I have to repeat what you cooed and whistled to her? Astonishing to think what an amorous fool is hidden inside even you. I’d never have suspected you of such folly.

Back to Dana. At first I didn’t take any real interest in her, apart from her tattoo. We found her a job at another bar a few streets away, where she could wait tables again until one of the men chasing her would turn too insistent. That should have been the moment for me to say goodbye to her. But by then I could no longer do it. I wanted to win her for myself. Isn’t she a fascinating person? You’d be the last to contradict me. Isn’t she, how shall I put it, isn’t she a woman through and through?

No, it’s not how you think it is. She didn’t have half as many affairs as you assume, in fact not a single one; after all, she had other worries. A family to feed, mother, grandmother, child — you’d never have dreamt that she’s a mother, would you? Her little boy is growing up in the same farmhouse where she grew up instead of at home with her parents. The fields have been sold off, it seems that nothing is left from the old days except the misery. ‘Either it was raining or the gate at the level crossing was closed,’ that’s how Dana summed it up. She’d already done ‘everything she could’ to make sure her family could manage, everything — do you know what that means? I’d rather not imagine it in any detail. Without sometimes fleecing one or another of the men pursuing her tenaciously, without going off with some of the takings now and then, she couldn’t have coped. And then that curse that seemed to pursue her, always driving her on. Fundamentally she was always fleeing. How else could she escape from the importunate world?

You know what I mean. You’re condemned to know. In spite of everything, she was very much at ease in her own body; maybe that was what I most admired — she was so incurably healthy. While making herself out to be impulsive, confused, unpredictable, she was clear-minded and realistic and focused about what she wanted — and she almost always got it.

Is it surprising that things turned out as they were bound to? At only our second meeting she asked me, mockingly, whether my lover did the housework while I was out — not my husband, you will notice. How do you like that? It surely must be confusing, don’t you think? Once, you will hardly believe me, she bid me goodbye with the words, ‘Tonight I shall dream of you again.’ Admit it, that wouldn’t have left you cold either. Then it all happened very quickly, but not the way you’re thinking. Much worse: it became a real friendship.

Or perhaps not entirely a real friendship.

It’s difficult for me to write about it. Put into words, it would all suddenly seem so trivial, so ordinary, yet it really was something special.

I have paused for a while in writing this letter; I still have three days, three mornings when I can sit here and finish it. Almost like old times. As far as Dana and I are concerned, I will spare you the details; we met up as often as circumstances allowed, and that was often. I would not say that I kept her financially, like all the others before me; our relationship was fundamentally different from the one you dreamt of. Besides, we are reasonably well off and secure ourselves, a little money more or less makes no difference. Hadn’t she endured the shipwreck of her life? Wasn’t she doomed to be shipwrecked again and again? Was it not incumbent upon me to help her whenever I could, if only out of simple humanity?

I have paused again in my writing. Dr Regelsberger says I should not — get so het up. Yes, my relationship with Dana soon became — how shall I put it? — soon became very close. Not that you should think I had no pangs of conscience; I did. But wasn’t it you who started it? Should it not, consequently, have been up to you to put an end to it, or at least try to, you whom I have always loved faithfully? But even during those emotional times you didn’t change, following your gloomy course without sparing a thought for me. I felt so lonely when we were together! You should have realized that I desperately wanted to talk to you, if only because I avoided it so persistently. Instead you let your hair grow out again, as if that would change something inside your head. When we drank our tea in the afternoon you went back to stroking it over your bald patch just as you had done before. Yet nothing was the same. Nothing.