Andres Neuman - Traveller of the Century

Hans said: Sophie, my love, other times will come, and they won’t be so different from now. Is that a prophecy? she asked, laughing.

That same morning, before Sophie came to translate Bocage and Leopardi, Hans had got up early to say goodbye to Álvaro, who was travelling to London on business and to see his relatives. They met at the Café Europa. Álvaro congratulated Hans for being only ten minutes late. After breakfast (a hot chocolate and an anisette for Álvaro and a coffee followed by another coffee for Hans) they walked towards the carriage rank, where Álvaro’s manservant was waiting for them, luggage ready, beside the coach. As they passed the twisted towers of St Nicholas’s Church, Álvaro crossed himself and muttered: Please, Lord, let them fall down on my return.

As the carriage loomed, the two friends looked at one another as if they had only just realised one of them was leaving. Hans had the uncomfortable impression of swapping places. Álvaro smiled uneasily, trying to calm himself and trying to understand why he remained troubled. They didn’t know what to say, how to embrace each other. I’ll miss you, Hans shouted at last to the head poking out of the side of the carriage. I-it’s o-only t-two w-weeks! replied Álvaro’s head amid jolts.

As Frau Zeit had predicted months before, at that time of year, the inn, incredibly, had almost no vacancies. Two fair-haired young girls moved quietly about, helping lay the tables and do the laundry. The majority of guests were distant relatives, or friends of distant relatives of the Wandernburgers who had remained in the city for the summer. Hans, unaccustomed, would occasionally cross them on the stairs, and it would take him a moment to recover from the shock and return their greeting. That morning, the Zeits were expecting some of their own relatives, who were coming to spend a few days with them, and who would be obliged to spread out between the innkeeper’s lodgings and the only vacant room, number three. The very room Lisa would hide away in to do her homework.

Cousins, nephews and nieces, uncles piled rowdily into the inn. Some were stout and sluggish like Herr Zeit, others slender and jumpy, like Lisa. Stationed in the doorway, Frau Zeit welcomed them one by one, gave them each a perfunctory kiss and gently ushered them inside. However, as soon as she spied cousin Lottar, she wiped her hands on her apron and stepped forward to greet him.

Lisa saw Lottar walk in, drop his luggage and approach her with his arms outstretched. Aware that her mother was watching her, Lisa gave a little cry and rushed to embrace him. But while she was greeting her second cousin, whose eyes slid down as he clutched her waist, she glanced over to the light streaming in through the doorway.

From the other end of the inn, a nasal voice belonging to one of the Zeit family members suddenly rang out: Come here will you, please, dear, your son won’t stop … Little Thomas keeps … he keeps giving little … Can you hear me, dear?

Bumping his belly against the belly of his brother, Herr Zeit declared: It’s August already! Who would have thought it?

In a corner of the kitchen, Frau Zeit was speaking to her daughter in hushed tones: Is that clear? If you behave in that manner cousin Lottar will never like you (I don’t want cousin Lottar to like me, said Lisa), well you’ll have to. He’s a doctor’s son. He’s respectable. He’s not a bad man. It’s enough that he noticed you. So not another word and be nicer to him, do you hear? Answer me, Lisa, answer me!

Lisa marched out of the kitchen, her mother behind her. At that moment, Hans, who had just returned and was looking around surprised by all the commotion, almost walked headlong into Lisa. She paused to straighten her hair and smile at him. Then she turned and shouted at her mother: If you’d ever been in love you wouldn’t speak to me like that! Frau Zeit stopped in her tracks, bewildered. What, she stammered, what on earth are you talking about? Lisa disappeared down the corridor. Having no one else to speak to, the innkeeper’s wife looked at Hans and exclaimed: Heavens! What a girl! Do you understand her?

Lisa spent the rest of the day shut away in her room and refused to have lunch. Frau Zeit explained to cousin Lottar that Lisa was indisposed. Cousin Lottar nodded ambiguously and said this was perfectly natural, because Lisa had grown a lot since last summer and was no longer a child.

A few minutes before five o’clock, Lisa voluntarily came out of her confinement and walked into the kitchen wearing a nonchalant expression that made her mother even more infuriated. Without saying a word, she helped prepare the lemonade, and when it was time hurried to take it upstairs herself to room number seven.

Before knocking at the door, Lisa eavesdropped outside. Hans’s deep, rather serious voice, was reciting sweet words:

… you wish me to abandon my love,

to accuse and scorn her, while my desire

is to bite, go mad, to die for her.

As usual, Lisa knocked on the door twice without waiting to be told to enter. For this reason, she was able to hear the reply of that stuck-up prig who came there almost every afternoon: You’ve done a perfect job! That was scant praise for a man like Hans.

She walked in deliberately slowly, holding the jug; the sun from the window shredded the lemon pulp, setting off explosions of light. Turned towards her, smiling, the adorable Hans sat holding a piece of paper covered in jottings. Opposite him, the prig sat upright, her hair dishevelled, stupidly clutching a quill. Lisa moved forward. The room was a complete mess. There were open books strewn everywhere, the water jug was filthy, and, to top it all, the prig had clumsily allowed her beautiful peach shawl, which she didn’t deserve, to fall to the floor. Even poor Hans’s bed was unmade — if the chambermaids weren’t more careful she would tell her mother. Lisa glanced at the bedclothes, becoming absorbed in them for a moment until Hans gave a slight cough. Then she carried on walking as if she had never stopped. She went over to them, leant over to fill their glasses, placed the jug on the table and walked out closing the door roughly.

It is night now. The noises, the voices, the scrape of furniture have long ceased. The sound of the cricket emerging from silence floats through the air. The inn is a pool of darkness, scarcely interrupted by the oil lamps on the ground floor. The dining room is deserted, the stove cold. There are no stirrings on the first floor either. No light illuminates the stairs. Yet, somewhere along the corridor on the second floor, the flame of an oil lamp flickers slowly. Lisa is walking barefoot, on tiptoe, as though the ground were covered in prickles, balancing so as not to spill anything from the plate, aware it might give her away the next day. Lisa’s icy feet reach the end of the passageway and stop at the door to room number seven. This is when her hands begin shaking and she fears she may tip up the plate or make some other blunder. Her pointed breast swells beneath her nightdress, holds the air for a moment, then hollows out again. She can hear herself breathing. She counts the breaths. One. Two. Three. Now or never.

As Lisa turns the handle slowly and pushes open the door, the oil lamp casts an intense glow over her hand, illuminating her knuckles, light seems to flow from her fingers. Hans hasn’t noticed yet, for he is no longer reading but forgetting, repeating in a dream the words of the book he was reading until a moment ago. On a chair beside the bed, the flame in the oil lamp flickers. Hans is lying on his back wearing only a pair of short white pants. The open book rests on his chest. Lisa gazes at Hans’s long legs, his big feet spread out. She approaches the bed. She crouches down and places the candle in its plate on the floor. When she stands up again, Lisa’s heart misses a beat — Hans’s eyes are shining now, staring at her with an intensity that startles her.