Judith Hermann: Alice

Alice wondered what Malte would have looked like today. What sort of mood, what sort of shape would he be in. Her homosexual uncle. No children, unmarried. A long table of scarred wood, the smell of oil paints, turpentine, varnish, sticks of charcoal, hand-rolled cigarettes, pale, transparent cigarette paper as thin as tissue, and tobacco, black and dry. A slightly acrid smell that clung to his fingertips for a long time, the index and middle fingertips on his right hand tinted yellow. An inclination towards ending it all. He would have pushed aside the papers, cups, ashtrays, and sticks of charcoal to make room for her at his table. Alice thought, I would have gone to see him, lovesick. Would have picked up a short, cynical remark of consolation. An indication. And she realised with amazement that she missed Malte, that his departure had spread into her life, even if only as an illusion, a projection aimed almost into nothingness.

How is your father? Frederick asked. He spoke past Alice, through the window. Wait a minute — yes, yes, your father, Christian, Malte’s brother.

He’s well, Alice said automatically. He’s well.

And Alice? He pronounced the name of Alice’s grandmother as if he had forgotten that Alice had the same name. True. It wasn’t the same. Not the same name.

Alice has been dead a long time already, Alice said. She stumbled inwardly, but only over the short, dry word. It wasn’t as if she were talking about herself, it had never been like that. Her grandmother had been dead for almost twenty years. That was hard to believe; she had to repeat it. Alice died twenty years ago. But she wasn’t sick for long. She felt fine, almost to the end.

I’m glad, Frederick said. She was very gentle. Your grandmother. A gentle, wise, and patient woman, extraordinarily patient, considering what a hard time she had. And not only with Malte.

Alice’s grandmother had not been gentle. Or patient.

Those weren’t the right words, not at all. But Alice didn’t contradict him; she hadn’t known her as Malte’s mother. Had no image of the woman who walked out on the porch of the house on Waldhüterpfad in the mornings. The cat purring around her feet, its matted fur. Her grandmother’s hands half a century ago. Her voice back then, Malte’s voice, her gestures, the tender words, all the futile good intentions. When finally her sons were grown men, she got sick. Malte and Christian sold the house on Waldhüterpfad.

There was nothing left of all that. Only the picture of the owl, three chairs, the cast-iron lamp, a few records, the two dumb-bells for a while — and then those too were gone, swept away by something. What’s it like? Alice asked her father every year as they passed the house on their way to the cemetery to place a candle in a red plastic container on the neglected grave. Every year they stopped at the house, and Alice would peer in at the window next to the front door, into the living room, past the furniture of strangers, and out to the rear of the garden, without understanding anything. To be allowed to sit on the porch just once. Just once. What is it like to stand outside the house in which you grew up, now that other people are living in it? Her father raised his hands. What can I say?

Does Christian know we’re meeting? Frederick asked, at the same time signalling to the waitress. The waitress saw him out of the corner of her eye, got up, but not until she had finished reading the page she was on, only then did she close her book.

No, Alice said. No one knows. But not for any particular reason; it’s just that — this is my affair. It’s my business. And Frederick nodded, that’s how he felt too.

Well, then, the bill for the two pots of tea, please.

The waitress stood next to their table, not as if Frederick had signalled to her, but as if she had been assigned by someone else to put an end to their meeting. She held her waitress purse open in her left hand, having placed the right one protectively over her left wrist, covering her pulse. Out of politeness, Alice leaned down to get her shoulder bag, but Frederick paid for them both, leaving the correct tip. Scarcely looked at the waitress, not interested. The waitress snapped her purse shut with a flourish, rattling the coins. Well now, she said. Have a nice day, Hope the rain lets up.

I brought you something, Frederick said. It was a small, fat blue file folder that he had been carrying in the plastic bag. He put it on the table in front of him without opening it.

Malte’s letters. These are the letters Malte wrote to me in the years before he died. You can read them. I think they’ll tell you everything you might want to know. Actually everything is in those letters.

Yes. He looked at the blue folder as if he wanted to reconsider, then he slid the file folder back into the bag, pushed the bag across the table. Alice kept her hands in her lap.

The letters have been in a safe deposit box at the bank all this time. I’m getting old now, and I don’t know when I might pass out and not regain consciousness or something, and I don’t know who might find me then.

He got up, pushed the chair back against the table. His voice sounded quite unemotional. He probably wanted it that way to make it all bearable.

He said, I’d like to have the letters back after you’ve read them.

They both knew this wouldn’t happen.

I’ll give them back to you, Alice said emphatically. Thanks.

She said, By the way, I was there once. I passed by there once.

Where, Frederick asked. Passed by what?

Eisenbahn Strasse 5, Alice said. The house where Malte lived in those days.

Really, Frederick said. And what was it like? He seemed to be truly interested, even if at some remove, from a safe distance.

It was strange, Alice said. How can I describe it — I was nervous; it was as if I were following someone. Spying on someone …

For quite a while she had stood across the street from the house, looking at it, an apartment house like all the others, from the 1870s, its facade renovated. She had thought about the fact that Malte had come and gone across that threshold for a whole year, and then walked in one last time and had not walked out again; they had carried him out, a sheet covering his body and his face. But she preferred imagining what it would be like if the front door were to suddenly open and he were to walk out, hands in his jacket pockets, casting an inquiring glance up at the sky. She wondered if she would recognise him and how — by the scar on his forehead, the protruding ears, old Alice’s eyes, his posture in general. She was sure she would recognise him, and a wave of indignation and affection passed through her, even though the front door remained shut tight and no one left or entered. But it could have been possible. Anything was possible. Raymond might have come out of the house. Or the Romanian. Or Misha, who seemed more alive the longer he was dead; everything seemed to be connected with everything else, and from that perspective it wasn’t surprising that the thing that glittered among the paving stones directly in front of the apartment house door should turn out to be an undamaged gold-coloured cartridge. Without looking to the left or to the right, Alice had crossed the street heading towards the front door, had bent down and picked the cartridge up out of the soft, sandy depression between two cobblestones. And put it in her pocket.

You know, she said, I suddenly had the thought that he didn’t die at all. That all this time he’s been living in the house on Eisenbahn Strasse, all these years. It’s as if I’d finally found out something. Do you know what I mean?

Well, I can imagine it, at least, Frederick said.

There was a cartridge lying outside the front door, Alice said. A nine-millimetre Parabellum.