Джоан Силбер - Improvement

Ulrich thought if they were having good sex without really liking each other, it was probably love.

“Hah,” Dieter said.

They were doing fine until it went on too long. As the rainy spring weather turned warmer, Steffi announced that it was almost the anniversary of their getting together. “June a year ago you were with Bruno,” Dieter said. “You’re not thinking of celebrating with him?”

Steffi did not take this well, and he was sorry he’d said it. He had to apologize; he had to say he was glad they’d started whatever they had, which was almost true.

“Don’t do me any favors,” Steffi said.

But she believed the pileup of their months together meant something, whether he was willing to admit it or not. Being Steffi, she thought she knew what he didn’t.

“ Mein Schatz ,” she said. My treasure.

That definitely was not what he wanted to be called. She was going to ruin what they had with falsity.

And she was always broke now. She was back in another dress store, earning too little for someone like her. Dieter had finally used his hoard of cash to buy a new light table and to rent a bigger studio with another graphic designer, and by this time he was starting to get more work, good work. The long hours at it made him impatient with Steffi. Or something did. Couldn’t she not talk only about stupid TV shows; couldn’t she refrain from putting her muddy shoes on his rug; couldn’t she stop smoking cigarettes in bed? She could, but not happily.

And yet she wanted more of this unhappiness. She wanted to see him more often, she wanted to meet all his friends. Ulrich said, “Well, she’s lively.” Ulrich lived with a woman who had a three-year-old boy and Steffi played tag with the boy all over the living room. It was nice of her, and she did look pretty in the heat of the chase.

“He’s going to marry her, I bet,” Steffi said, when they were back in Dieter’s apartment that night. “People do that, you know.”

“Never heard of it.” Dieter had taken some care not to lead her on.

She looked hurt (as well she might) but then her expression changed to something wily and defiant, and she reached for him in a long, undulant, full-body hug. Dieter understood that his arousal was going to be used to prove her point, but he was aroused nonetheless. That was just the way it was. It wasn’t until afterward that the thought came to him that she was really quite capable of getting pregnant on purpose.

And a week later he was out with Bruno, who was already looking like hell and never had anything good to say about Steffi, when they decided they had to go eat in a Turkish restaurant. Bruno had found one in Neukölin, in the American sector, a dark, rustic little place with posters of the Bosporus at sunset. They were the only Germans there, and they were lustily chomping on delicious kebabs, when two very pretty blonde women walked in. There was a noisy table of teenagers on the other side of them, but Bruno could overhear the women debating the menu. “Adana is the name of a city,” he leaned across to tell them. “The kebab mix is a little spicier there.” He said Adana correctly, with the accent on the first syllable.

Bruno said, “It’s an interesting city.” He was perking up for the girls.

And what terrific girls they turned out to be. They were both schoolteachers—they had Turkish kids in their classes—and they were certainly a big improvement, in beauty and hipness, over anyone who ever taught Dieter. Gisela, the skinnier one, taught art and asked extremely good questions about what Dieter did, and the tall one, Birgit, was a skier and clearly liked Dieter too. Such a thing hadn’t happened to him in a long time (two girls) and had to do with how bad Bruno looked now. Dieter heard himself getting ebullient and talking on and on; he held forth about the Muslim view of the soul, you could see it in the way mosques were constructed. “They know about geometry,” Gisela said. And so he chose Gisela, which was one of the most intelligent things he ever did.

Steffi did not take it well. For a while he saw both women, to avoid being too rash, but soon enough he couldn’t get through another night with Steffi. Steffi was furious when she heard the news. Her face was clenched into what looked like real hate. “You shit. You know what a shit you are?” she said. “You just take what you can get and leave.”

“What did I take?” he said.

The question made her yowl. “I have no value at all to you. You have to say that too?”

“Steffi,” he said, more or less gently. He couldn’t remember why he’d ever bothered to be with her, but he wanted to be his better self here, as if Gisela were watching. He kept feeling, actually, that Gisela was watching.

“I should call your new girlfriend and warn her about you,” Steffi said.

What did she want from him? Did she think he could unsay what he’d said? He was truly in love, for the first time in his life, but if Gisela ever wanted him to leave, he thought that he would simply go. All this greed and fury, all this grasping, where would it ever get Steffi? She was repeating and insisting. The futile noise of it made Dieter cold at heart.

She never phoned Gisela (not that she even knew Gisela’s name but she could’ve found out) and she only phoned Dieter once, to demand that he give back a hairbrush she’d left at his apartment. Dieter found it behind the sink and brought it across town to her. Steffi stood in the doorway with her hand out for the brush. “About time,” she said. When he told her to take care of herself, she said, “What’s it to you?”

He thought afterward about how hardened and stringy she looked. He began to think he should give her something to prove to her that he’d valued her, although he’d never valued her. Not money, of course, but maybe a savings bond. No, that was too weird and familial. Maybe jewelry? That would mislead her. Maybe something that had to do with Turkey? He began looking into the stores in Turkish neighborhoods. There were silk scarves, but not ones Steffi would wear; there were brass coffee beakers and tea sets with gold-trimmed glass cups. She had loved the apple tea the carpet sellers poured for customers, and he saw boxes of it, loose leaves, tea bags, instant granules, labeled with pictures of bright red and green apples. He walked out of a shop with fourteen boxes of different kinds, all they had, and sent them at once by mail to Steffi. Enjoy this. Dieter .

She never answered. Had she moved? He heard not. Was she insulted? It wasn’t much of a present maybe, but certainly not meant as an insult. Did he want thanks, was that creepy of him? He felt ridiculous and also cheap, and he certainly never told Gisela.

He didn’t talk much to Gisela about women he’d been with before. It was all beginning so well between them, there was no need to tell all his stories. But sometimes Gisela asked why he’d stayed with Steffi so long. It wasn’t so long, he said, it wasn’t so bad, whatever they didn’t have hadn’t seemed so important. Gisela looked confused. (If love wasn’t important, what was?) She never pressed him—she had a lovely, calm temperament. For the rest of his life he considered her his greatest stroke of luck. And he secretly believed that if she’d never walked into that restaurant, he might’ve stayed with Steffi forever. And not with good results. He’d fallen into a truthful life, but it might have been otherwise. Sincerity hadn’t come as naturally to him as it did to some people. Dear Gisela had no idea.

Gisela pretty much trusted him from the first, and she wasn’t an especially naive person; her own history included some dark and callous types. Once, when they were out drinking with some friends of hers from school, Dieter made a reference to once having been a great smuggler, and he saw they all thought he was joking. Even when he said, “But really,” they laughed. Gisela had always known to believe him—the ways of the world generally didn’t shock her—but she used to say, “You know you would’ve been caught if you’d kept it up.”