Matthias Politycki - Next World Novella

If only it hadn’t been for that smell! As if Doro had forgotten to change the water for the flowers, as if their stems had begun to rot overnight, filling the air with the sweet-sour aroma of decay. Schepp noticed it at once, that subtle sense of something Other in the midst of ordinary life, slightly skewing the morning. The darkness of his dreams had affected him powerfully, he had awakened in fear several times, had just now nearly fallen out of bed as a result. He had forgotten to put on his glasses, but he had no problem finding the way; after all it had been his way into the new day for almost thirty years and he knew every segment in the parquet by its creaking. Autumn brightness shone from the far end of the room, turning every object into some sparkling, blurry entity, eventually merging into diffuse patches of colour, and the urgency of the world was muted for Schepp to a few brown, beige and gentle golden hues. On the other hand, nearly blind as he was, he could distinguish the specific aromas of the old books, the furniture, the chaise-longue all the more distinctly. He immediately picked up Doro’s scent, even though he couldn’t see her anywhere he knew that she was there, probably sitting at his desk. Schepp stopped, squinting so that he could at least discern outlines, and as he checked the way his hair lay over his bald patch, stroking the back of his head, he told himself that this morning he was a happy man.

Not least because of Doro, whose own pinned-up hair, mingled black and silver, he could see above the back of the desk chair. At one side he glimpsed the kimono she liked to wear when she sat in that chair, editing what he had written the day before. Obviously she had dropped off to sleep; he wondered what she had found to edit on their return from yesterday’s visit to the doctor; he had not gone back to his desk himself.

Schepp continued his careful walk across the fishbone pattern of the parquet, always expecting to collide with something or stumble over some object that happened to be in his way. Although he could only vaguely make out the sun, the desk, the vase standing on the floor with the rotting gladioli in it, the chair with Doro’s shock of hair, it suddenly all seemed as familiar to him as if he had already seen it once before in exactly the same way, smelt it the same way, experienced it in the same sequence.

Before he planted a kiss on her neck, stealing up quietly like a man newly in love, a fly buzzing somewhere (but even that sounded oddly, bizarrely, familiar), before he bent over Doro, to the little mole at the base of her throat that he knew so well — any minute now she would wake with a start and look askance at him, half indignant, half affectionate — he suddenly registered a stack of paper on the desk, recognizable as a vaguely rectangular pale shape. He was about to pick it up when, quite suddenly, yesterday’s visit to the new ophthalmologist in the old familiar practice came into his mind, and the advice he had so emphatically given. Schepp remained behind the chair where Doro was sitting so still. Yes, Hinrich, he grinned in the direction where he guessed the shape of a great future might be, at the age of sixty-five you’re not too old to start a new life, what a prospect. He finally leaned over Doro. Once again the smell hit him, almost overpowering in its piercing sweetness, as if … as if he had smelt it before. Schepp shrank back.

‘What’s that stink — er, what’s that you’re editing?’

‘Just what I’m wondering myself,’ replied Doro as quickly as if she had been pretending to be asleep, had just been waiting for this moment. She didn’t look up, but gathered the manuscript and held it close to his face. ‘You never told me about this! Did you ever write any more such — such —’

Schepp was quick to say no, he had not, and this dated from a long time ago, he had forgotten all about it.

What, she asked, about the woman in it?

Dana? Schepp vaguely surmised; was he still dreaming? Or dreaming again? ‘Yes, of course, her most of all, oh yes.’ To think that Doro wanted to walk into the lake with her! ‘As if someone like that would accompany you more surely to the far shore — Dana of all people!’

‘Dana? Who’s she?’ Doro cocked her head, most likely regarding him sternly. ‘I thought her name was Hanni!’ As for the lake, she and he were going there together, they’d agreed that ages ago, surely he hadn’t forgotten?

How cool her voice sounded! Schepp knew just what she looked like at this moment; she was almost certainly gazing at him fixedly, gently, firmly. The clock of the Church of the Good Shepherd struck four high notes and eleven low ones, he counted them automatically, and the fly went on buzzing. Doro stood up and came so close to him that he could make out the expression on her face.

‘Hinrich, you haven’t got your glasses on, you can’t even see me.’

She meant it seriously, no question of that. Schepp knew her tone, her look, her way of tracing a little curve through the air with her hand.

‘And how did you know I was reading one of your manuscripts? What’s more, how did you know which one?’

Schepp tried to think. No answer came to him; something was not quite right this morning. Perhaps it had to do with that smell. ‘Listen, Doro, can’t you smell it? I mean, there’s a stink as if something had died and was lying under the sofa.’

‘Hinrich, that’s not something you ought to say, not something you even ought to think!’ Then, with an ostentatious sniff, Doro inhaled and nodded. Yes, she said, she could smell it too, how strange. As if she’d forgotten to change the water in the flower vase and during the night the stems …

Schepp put his hand to his head, could only feel a few strands of hair. Somehow or other he couldn’t seem to get the hang of today, that remark seemed familiar as well, had Doro said it to him once before?

‘But I didn’t forget,’ she said, justifying herself more for her own sake than for his. ‘It can’t be the gladioli.’

What, then? She seemed to become angry, took a few steps backwards and then forwards, came back, kimono wrapped tightly around her as if she were freezing, scanned the room looking for some object that could be blamed for the smell. Not finding anything, she became even more agitated. Schepp couldn’t see it, he felt it from the tone in which she spoke to herself, so cool, so unyielding, so impatient.

‘Don’t get angry, Doro,’ he said, feeling clumsily for where he thought her hand might be. ‘The doctor told you not to, and it’s only —’

Now she was standing in front of him again, her kimono so blue, her skin shimmering almost white in the silky reflection, she must look wonderful. All at once he was terribly afraid for her. ‘Think of your headaches, oh do.’

‘Why do you want to know about my headaches all of a sudden?’ Doro came so close to him that he couldn’t help seeing her features. Her gaze rested inquiringly on him; she shook her head. ‘Hinrich, do you by any chance have something to tell me?’

Before Schepp could answer, a slow smile spread across her face, beginning in the corners of her mouth, then growing up to the little lines at the corners of her eyes. Who knew why; Schepp never knew what to make of Doro’s mood swings. Had he said something stupid? Done something funny? Never mind, the next moment she was smiling radiantly in her incomparable way, and he knew at once, and yet again, why he had fallen in love with her thirty years before and why he still loved her, he knew at once, to the tips of his toes, how good life was. The sun lay on the parquet and made it shine. Schepp closed his eyes. He would have to open a window to let all that happiness out again later.