Daniel Kehlmann - Fame - A Novel in Nine Episodes

A young man seizes her elbow and asks if everything’s okay.

“Yes,” she says, “all okay.”

He asks if she knows where she lives and how to get there.

A number of wicked replies occur to her, but she decides it’s not the moment, and assures him she knows perfectly well.

Back home the light on her answering machine is blinking. Mr. Freytag is letting her know that her medical records have been approved. Her shock makes her realize that she’s still been hoping they’d be rejected, that she’d be told that there’s been an error and her case isn’t incurable. She calls back, and a few moments later he’s connected her to a very polite psychiatrist.

Unfortunately she has problems understanding his accent. What is it with the Swiss, she thinks, they can do it all, so why can’t they manage to talk like normal people? She tells him things from childhood, names the American, French, and German presidents, describes the weather outside, adds fifteen and twenty-seven, and explains the difference between the concepts of optimistic and pessimistic, and skilled and unskilled. Anything else?

“No,” says the doctor. “Thank you. Clear case.”

Rosalie nods. During the additions she’s forced herself not to answer too quickly, and take an extra moment or two so that he wouldn’t think somebody’s helping her. As for the explanations of words, she expressed herself as simply as possible. She was a schoolteacher, and knows from experience: the best thing is never to let yourself stand out. If your test results are too good, you’re suspect and they think you’ve been cheating.

Now Mr. Freytag is back on the line. As time is pressing, she could come next week. “Would Monday suit you?”

“Monday,” Rosalie repeats after him. “Why not?” Then she calls the travel agency and inquires about a one-way flight to Zurich.

“One-way is more expensive. Buy a round-trip.”

“All right.”

“What date for the return?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t recommend it. The cheapest tickets don’t allow you any changes in bookings.” The travel agent’s voice sounds friendly and excessively patient, the kind of voice you only use when talking to elderly women. “Just a moment. When would you like to return?”

“I don’t want to return.”

“But you’re going to want to come back.”

“Maybe better to take a one-way ticket.”

“I could also book it with an open return. But it is more expensive.”

“More than a one-way flight?”

“Nothing is more expensive than a one-way flight.”

“And that’s logical?” asks Rosalie.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s illogical.”

“Dear lady …” He clears his throat. “This is a travel agency. We don’t set the fares. We have no idea how they’re established. My girlfriend works for an airline. She doesn’t understand it either. I recently saw that a business-class fare to Chicago is cheaper than economy. The customer asked why, and I said, Sir, if I start asking questions like that, I’ll come unglued. Ask your computer. I ask the computer too. Everyone asks the computer, that’s how it goes!”

“Was it always this way with the pricing?”

His silence makes her realize he doesn’t even want to think about this. She’s often noticed that people under thirty aren’t interested in why things become the way they are.

“So, I’ll take the one-way ticket.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Business?”

She thinks it over. But it’s not a long flight, why waste money? “Economy.”

He mutters, types, mutters, types some more, and after a long-drawn-out fifteen minutes he issues her ticket. Unfortunately, he says, he can’t issue it as an electronic ticket, the computer’s acting up, nothing to be done. He’ll have to have it delivered by messenger to her home. But that’ll be even more expensive.

“Just do it,” says Rosalie; she’s really had enough.

She hangs up and it dawns on her that she no longer has a care in the world. The dripping tap she’s been meaning to call the plumber about forever, the damp patch in the bathroom, the son of her neighbors who keeps staring up at her window so threateningly, as if intending to rob her—none of it matters a jot anymore, other people will take care of it all, or maybe no one will, it’s over.

That evening she calls the one person she’d like to talk to about what she’s going to do. “Where are you?”

“In San Francisco,” says Lara Gaspard.

“The phone must cost you a lot, doesn’t it?” How strange it is that these days you can reach almost anybody anywhere, without knowing where they are. It’s as if space itself is no longer what it was. On the one hand it strikes her as spooky, on the other hand she’s glad she can talk to her brilliant niece.

“No problem. What’s going on, you sound strange!”

Rosalie swallows, then tells her. The whole thing suddenly strikes her as unreal and theatrical, as if it were someone else’s story or someone had made the whole thing up. When she gets to the end, she doesn’t know what else to say. Curiously, she finds this embarrassing. She stops talking, confused.

“My God,” says Lara.

“Do you think it’s a mistake?”

“Somewhere in there, there’s a mistake, but it’s hard to pin down. Are you going alone?”

Rosalie nods.

“Don’t do that. Take me with you.”

“Out of the question.”

For a second or two, neither of them says a thing. Rosalie knows that Lara knows she would give way if asked more forcefully, and Lara knows that Rosalie knows, but Rosalie also knows that Lara doesn’t have the strength for it, not now, not so abruptly and without any time to prepare, and so both of them behave as if there’s nothing to be done and no argument to be had.

So they have a long conversation full of repetitions and interminable pauses, about life and childhood and God and the ultimate things, and Rosalie keeps thinking she shouldn’t have made this call, that what she’d really like to do is hang up, but that it’s really going to go on for some time because of course she absolutely doesn’t want to hang up. At some point Lara begins to sob and Rosalie feels very brave and detached as she says goodbye, but then it starts all over again from the beginning and they talk for another hour. That was a mistake, Rosalie thinks afterward. You don’t tell other people, you don’t burden them with it. That’s the mistake, that’s what her brilliant niece meant. You do it alone or you don’t do it at all.

The weekend goes by with a strange lightheartedness. Only her feverish dreams, filled with people, voices, and events, as if an entire universe buried inside her were trying to rise again to the light of day, show her that she isn’t as serene as she believes herself to be in her waking hours. On Monday morning she gets ready to pack her suitcase. But she has to pull herself together, for it seems so strange and wrong somehow to be setting off on a journey minus any luggage.

In the taxi on the way to the airport, as the houses file past and the rising sun plays on the rooftops, she makes another try. Is there no chance, she asks me. It’s all in your hands. Let me live!

Not possible, I say crossly. Rosalie, what’s happening to you here is what you’re for. That’s why I invented you. Theoretically maybe I suppose I could intervene, but then the whole thing would be pointless! In other words, I can’t.

Rubbish, she says. All babble. At some point it’ll be your turn, and then you’ll be begging just like me.

That’s completely different.

And you won’t understand why an exception can’t be made for you.

The two things aren’t comparable. You’re my invention and I’m …