Judith Hermann: Alice

Not looking at Alice she said, You’re the last person who spoke to him, you know that.

Yes, Alice said. I know.

And how did that go, Lotte said.

He said he had thought he was invulnerable, Alice said. Grateful that she was able to say that much, and grateful that Lotte now laughed, softly, but still.

He said that Lotte said. She shook her head.

That’s what he said, Alice said.

They have laid him out in the hospital; that’s one of the good things about Italy. I’ll go there and sit with him. There are other dead people in the room too, a small chapel, other families, it’s actually quite wonderful. He can stay there like that for two days. Or three. Wouldn’t you like to go with me?

No, Alice said. No. I can’t.

All right, Lotte said. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to.

Come with me, Lotte said, I want to show you something.

They stood next to each other on the large terrace with the chair and the stone sphere. Lotte pulled the green hose from the drum, turned on the water. She aimed the broadly fanned glistening stream into the lavender bushes; it took a little while. Lotte said, Wait. Then cardinal beetles began pouring out of the lavender bushes by the hundreds, a redand-black-spotted flood of fleeing insects, seemingly endless. They inundated the terrace, running in all directions.

Look at that, Lotte said. Just look at that.

In the middle of the night, long past midnight, maybe already in the grey of dawn, the Romanian went up the stairs from the terrace to the first floor in the yellow house, past his own room and up to the second floor, through Anna’s room, into Alice’s room. Conrad’s room. Alice’s room. He closed the door softly behind him. The room was dark because Alice had closed the shutters tight. In the dark the Romanian groped his way to Alice’s bed. The narrow bed with the metal frame. Alice stretched her hand out to him; it was the most affectionate of gestures. Because she knew that this would be the most affectionate gesture, she guided her hand as explicitly as possible, explicitly for her and explicitly for the Romanian, whose hand was small and familiar. She couldn’t see his face. He couldn’t see hers. She took his hand with all the expressiveness she had. Drew him to her. The rest was rough and angry, unrestrained.

That afternoon they took a boat. Anna, Alice, and the Romanian. They had only a few days left, but no one cared. The lake remained dark blue, ice cold, sometimes misty, occasionally a clear view. Aggressive swans, ducks with four, five, six, or seven ducklings, the water always soft. Every hour the ferry went from west to east and back again, and the pebbles on the beach got hotter and hotter. That afternoon Anna wore a grey dress with green flowers, sandals with cork heels, her hair in a child’s pigtail. Alice wore a white blouse and a lilac-coloured skirt. The Romanian had on a light-coloured shirt and the torn jeans with traces of melon juice on the seams. The boy at the boat-rental place next to the Mussolini villa with the pretentious view of Monte Baldo and its cloud-enveloped peak felt he had to finish his apple and fling the core to the swans before he could hand over the oars for a boat. A flag hung limply in the shadow of his little boathouse, and the clanking of the chain with which the boats were tied together scared away the swans. The Romanian rowed the boat out of the little harbour, confidently and almost elegantly. Alice saw the boy raise his eyebrows before he sank back into his plastic chair. The Romanian rowed the boat far out, probably dangerously far out; there was no one there who could have told them anything about it, but they could clearly feel the current. A wind had come up, water splashed into the boat, they were all quite exhausted anyway. The Romanian ignored Anna’s oblique references to their distance from shore, showing a casual indifference that didn’t suit him.

Who’ll go swimming?

Not me, Alice said.

With his back to Anna and Alice, the Romanian took off his shirt, then his jeans. Standing naked in the prow of the boat he bent his knees for a moment. Alice looked at him, his back, his arms. Narrow shoulders, slender neck. Bite marks, scratches. Black and blue marks all over. Then he jumped into the water, dived down, and was gone.

Good heavens, Anna said, raising her hand to her mouth; she was truly shocked. Good heavens. Did I do that? An insect had drowned in the milky foam of Alice’s latte macchiato on the terrace of the café in Salò. Alice had felt it on her tongue — very light, a multi-legged body concealed in the white foam. Gagging, she’d spat it out, sticking her tongue far out, had spat it back onto the spoon. What are you doing there? Anna asked, leaning forward, interested and sympathetic but disgusted at the same time.

Alice said, If it’s a spider, I’ll scream. It wasn’t a spider. It was something else, maybe a cricket, or a cicada? Small, black, cute, with little bent legs and a shiny abdomen. Il caldo, il tempo , the waiter had said, pointing up into the sky, shrugging and removing the plate, the spoon, the foam and the little animal from the table. Didn’t bring another coffee. Maybe I almost swallowed a cricket, a cicada, a head-cricket, Alice thought. What was the difference between them again? Conrad would surely have known. But Conrad was morto. Lui è morto . He was being taken to Germany by cargo carrier across the Alps, in July of all times.

Strange. Anna said, We didn’t even get to know Conrad, the Romanian and I, we never even saw him. What was he like? What had he been like?

While … To think that while they had stopped at the petrol station, and while the Romanian was looking up into the sky at a falcon, an eagle, or a buzzard. While Alice was sliding open the top of the chest freezer, and Anna said the word cornetto , and the gas station attendant was drumming with his fingers on the counter and Lotte was sitting in the car, unmoving behind the tinted windows, her profile outlined against the mountain, and Alice’s hand was deep in the chest freezer, in slow motion tearing open a cardboard box full of ice-lollies, raspberry, lemon and sweet woodruff — What flavour is it? the Romanian had asked. And Alice had replied Dolomiti — Conrad had passed away. In a hot room at the end of a corridor with glittering light, his heart had at first fibrillated and then stopped beating, just like that, and no goodbye, that was all. While they paid, walked out into the dusty plaza in front of the petrol pumps, nettles and grass growing between the stones. Thinking about it. Over and over again. I can’t tell you what Conrad was like. I can no longer tell you.

One afternoon Alice packed her suitcases, then sat down for a long time on the chair at Conrad’s table, gazing at the guest book, finally took the pen and managed to draw a dash on the paper; even that was embarrassing. Drinking a last Aperol on the terrace with the red cushions, the cold-blooded lizards, the unbearably beautiful view of the landscape. The Romanian and his indifferent, unchanging politeness. Should I marry you now or what; but we’re much too old to get married — Alice asked herself and came to no conclusion. Go for another swim. One last time. Sandals in hand, she walked to the little dock near the wall and the gate to the overgrown garden. When Alice, alone on the beach, undressed completely, and went cautiously into the water, tripping on the slippery stones, she remembered what Conrad had said about the lake, back then when he invited her to come for a visit. He had said, the lake was always ice cold, she would have to force herself to go into the water. He had said, But you’ll go into the water in spite of that. And you won’t regret it. You’ll never regret it.