Judith Hermann: Alice

Was that all?

That was all.

The dream-catcher hung on the rear-view mirror, lashed to it.

Alice took her cellphone out of her bag, punched in the number on the card. Her hands were shaking, she didn’t really know why. She said, I’d like to give away my car, please come and get it, yes, exactly, thanks, that would be very kind. She sat down on the kerb and waited. The car key in her hand, attached to it a metal token with a series of numbers stamped into it that must have had something to do with Raymond’s life, but she had forgotten exactly what. Blocked synapses. She thought hard. Sitting motionless so that the jackdaws came quite close, their gleaming black wings, eyes, blunt beaks — little dinosaurs, absolutely indestructible.

She saw Raymond daily. Every day. She saw him everywhere; it was amazing how many manifestations, physical shapes he must have had — he could be everyman. He was standing on one of the escalators at the main railway station, moving through the high-ceilinged hall, a lightweight suitcase in his hand, his face in half profile, a traveller who was not in a hurry. Alice pushed someone aside and hurried through the hall, saw him step off the escalator, stroll over to the exit; it wasn’t him, it was someone else. Her heart jumped with indignation because she saw him in the last carriage of a departing tram, at the traffic light on the other side of the street, in the queue at the supermarket; he got out of a taxi, lay sleeping on a park bench, rode a bicycle round the corner. He was sitting in an Italian ice-cream parlour, a dish of gorgeous fruit before him; an old man with dim eyes who saw Alice looking through the window, and shooed her away with his hand as if she were an animal. They were all Raymond. The way he walked, stood still, touched the back of his neck with his hand, rubbed his head, threw his shoulders back, yawned, put on his jacket, walked away. He isn’t here any more, Alice, Alice told herself, addressing herself by her name as though she were her own child. Alice, Raymond isn’t here any more.

What mattered was to preserve his memory, without going crazy in the process. To think of him without going crazy or becoming angry. Carefully. Over and over again. Starting from the beginning.

Where’s your husband? the Indian cook asked.

Travelling, Alice said.

Oh really, for a long time? the Indian cook asked. He was sweeping the kitchen floor; the second Indian cook was sitting on an overturned bucket by the damp wall next to the dishwasher; his glasses were fogged up, he was smoking. Arabic music was coming out of a transistor radio, and he was beating time to it with his key chain, in restless, exact syncopation. Alice was leaning against the door to the hallway. The threshold was slippery. The Indian cook swept parsley stems, tomato halves, onion peels, rubber bands into a heap. Quitting time. He was humming to himself, then he put the broom down and drank apple juice from a bottle, taking large gurgling swallows. The day before, the second Indian cook had poured a bottleful of mineral water over his head in the middle of the kitchen, just like that. He didn’t do it for Alice, but in spite of that Alice had enjoyed it.

Oh yes, for a long time, Alice said. It was impossible to say anything else. It was impossible to say, Raymond is dead. She had said that to the waitress, the tattooed one, in front of the house, on the street.

Where’s your husband?

My husband is dead.

The tattooed waitress had said, My heartfelt condolences, yes, my heartfelt condolences; then she gave notice, moved somewhere else; nobody had ever written Happy Hour on the board as beautifully and clumsily as she.

Raymond is dead.

Alice couldn’t say it again. Couldn’t call it out into the kitchen. A draught of air, the aroma of parsley, a plastic tub with shimmering slices of lemon on a bed of ice, heads of lettuce on a wet wooden board, grapes, bananas, honeydew melons, dishrags, canisters of oil, huge glass jars of honey, tubs, and pots. Shortly before midnight. The second Indian cook crushed his cigarette out on the tiles. Took off his steamed-up glasses, cleaned them thoroughly, and put them back on. Still listening, his eyes rolled up, his twitching fingers shaking the bunch of keys, striking the bucket with the key ring, he mumbled something, thought for a while, then he yawned, got up, and with his foot pushed the bucket into a corner. He threw the keys up into the air, caught them, whistling softly; he turned round, extended his hands to Alice. The keys were gone.

Where to, said the first Indian cook.

On a trip.

He puffed out his cheeks, looked at Alice, leaning on the broom handle as if it were a sceptre. Alice looked past him; she didn’t know what to say in reply.

But the Indian cook said, I understand, I understand. Ah yes. I understand. He nodded steadily. Then he pointed at the second Indian cook and said: Four Eyes. Sees more than anyone else. Also going on a trip soon.

Where to, Alice said.

Oh, we’ll see, the Indian cook said. Home? Back home maybe. Mumbai. Or to the moon.

Evenings at the table in their kitchen where Raymond used to sit, his elbows propped up in the invisible indentations that they must have left in the soft wood of the tabletop. Sitting there and watching as the blue flowers on the windowsill rolled up all their thirteen petals when the time came and their day’s work was done. Day in, day out. The spiders that had hatched in the webs between the flower stems had grown, got big, some disappeared, others came into the apartment. Inside. Alice sat on a chair between the table and the cupboard and watched the spider that had set itself up in the corner above the kitchen door, probably for quite some time to come. Raymond would have removed the spider from the kitchen; she would have asked him to. But this spider would stay. Alice’s grandmother would have approved. Alice whispered. Watching the spider spin its web and listening to the sounds in the courtyard. Water splashing, lengthy teeth-brushing. A telephone rang. Doors slammed shut. Footsteps on the stairs. The Indian cooks stamped on cardboard boxes, ripped paper into strips, stuffed the strips into the dustbins; then they smoked a cigarette together, and the smoke rose in the courtyard, all the way up to Alice who quietly went to sit on the windowsill. Late at night bats swooped down. And, of course, there were the last planes.

What was left was lying on the table. The replacement part for the car, the bag with the remainder of the almond horn. Nothing was left. The half-full box that had the jacket in it, the T-shirt, and the odds and ends stood next to Misha’s suitcase which Maja had not yet picked up and which, whenever Alice lifted it, seemed to have got heavier as though there was something in it that kept growing. Since that time she had not looked inside. Alice knew that Lotte had tacked a little piece of paper next to her front door on which Conrad, when he was still alive, had written in a hurried and confident hand:

Be back soon.

Alice searched for something similar for herself and Raymond. Couldn’t find it, but was certain that it existed. One day she would surely find it, probably by accident.

Sometimes Alice went to see the Romanian. She hadn’t seen him for a long time, which was no problem, didn’t seem to be a problem. Yet who knows, Alice thought, you find out about that sort of thing only later. The Romanian had grown older too, grey hair at the temples and thinner in a worrisome way, but his jug-handle ears still glowed unscathed. And he drank beer just as he always used to do and hadn’t taken up smoking again, saying, I’ll do that later on, when my last days come.

You can’t choose the time, Alice said, amazed at so much ignorance. You can’t know when your last days will be.