Ingo Schulze - One More Story - Thirteen Stories in the Time-Honored Mode

It had scarcely cooled off at all overnight. He heard music coming from a radio in the back courtyard. Marek heard the announcer, joined then by an incessantly clucking female voice. On the blue runner beside the bed lay Magda’s panties, blouse, his shirt and underwear. It was shortly before seven by the alarm clock. His tie hung on a nail beside the bed, along with necklaces and other glitzy baubles. Marek rolled over on his side, pressed his face against the pillow, and breathed in the fragrance.

He had held Magda in his arms for hours, guarding her slumber, and then he had watched as she sat up and pulled off her nightshirt. He had never realized that there could be so much love inside one body.

Not twelve hours before Marek had still been sitting in Knesebeck Strasse working on a brief that he had to deliver at ten on the dot today to Herr Dr. — an honorary degree — Strobonski, owner of Assmann-Schibock GmbH in Hamburg, one of Continental’s suppliers. He was supposed to evaluate the most elegant way — that had been the phrase — for Witold Strobonski to place the ownership of his firm in the hands of his three daughters.

Marek was accustomed to short nights. That’s why he had a six figure salary. Just as the theme music for the eight o’clock news struck up, Strobonski’s secretary had called and canceled the appointment. In the next instant Magda had appeared in the blue vest of a private courier service to hand him the piece of paper he’d been waiting for all his life — or so he had believed until yesterday at any rate. The order had been placed for new stationery, and after July 1 his name would appear on the letterhead of Baechler, Thompson & Partners.

In his cover letter Baechler had fudged by referring to “your name,” since he could hardly have written “Herr Marek.” In order to avoid his ostensibly unpronounceable last name, everyone called him Herr Marek. And now this Herr Marek would be a partner with Baechler, Thompson, and their twenty-two other partners.

To his dismay Marek heard the apartment door. He wanted to stay right here on his pillow and spare her the sight of a face strewed with red pimples. It was especially bad in the morning. Nobody at age thirty-four still had pimples like his.

“Well, sweet dreamer,” Magda said, stepped up to the bed, bent down, and kissed him on the mouth, spreading both arms wide as if to keep the bag of pastries and the milk out of his reach.

To him it seemed as if she had gone out shopping wearing only her nightshirt and jeans jacket. He heard her bustling around in the kitchen.

Magda had asked whether she could use the office restroom, and laid her clipboard on a visitor’s chair. Marek would have loved to sign his name again on the delivery form — larger, with a grand flourish, so that it didn’t look as if it had slipped from under his hand. A signature, as one learned in the seminars Baechler recommended, betrays a great many things, practically everything. Bad luck, he suddenly realized, was not about to be changed, not even by a signature.

“Do you always have to work so late?” Marek had just wanted to hold the girl back for a moment, to get a good look at her. He had said there was cause for celebration, and she had replied that she wanted to do some celebrating of her own now too. A deft brush-off — or so he thought. And if she hadn’t said, “Shall we go?” he would probably have stayed right there at his desk.

The coffee machine gurgled. Marek’s feet had no sooner touched the floor than Magda stepped through the door, holding a tray at her tummy.

“Well,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Get enough sleep?”

Marek made room for her. He was afraid she would start talking, and like a chess player planning his next moves, he could see it coming — he would have to ask whether he could visit her again. Just as he had yesterday evening, he wanted to brush a strand of hair back behind her ear. But she was already cuddling her cheek in his hand, yes, clamping his hand like a telephone between her shoulder and head.

“It’s so lovely here with you,” she said.

“It’s so lovely here with you,” he said. It was almost unreal the way she had pulled all those needles and clips from her hair and shaken her head in that way he had only seen in the movies, sending her hair cascading down over her shoulders and back. Like a waterfall — but he hadn’t said that, because that was a cliché.

“Are you coming back? Coming again this evening?”

“How can you ask?” Marek flared up, “how can you …?” He knelt beside her on the bed and embraced her. He held her in his arms just as he had held her all night. The nakedness of his body felt awkward now. She shouldn’t think that … And while he was thinking it and staring at the breakfast tray beside the bed, she whispered, “Lookie there, the curious young lawyer is back,” and grabbed his penis as if shaking hands. “Good morning, Mr. Lawyer,” she said.

The morning news at eight was coming from the courtyard when Magda carried the tray back to the kitchen, poured the cold coffee in the sink, and started to brew more.

“Why are you laughing?” she asked.

“I was going to ask you to give me your pillow.”

“My pillow?”

“Yes,” he said with a nod.

“But you’ll have to bring it back every evening,” she said in earnest.

“Yes,” he said. “Definitely.”

“But that’s such a lot of trouble.”

“But I don’t want to be separated from your bed ever again.”

Marek was afraid he’d said something wrong. Magda ran her hand through his hair. He closed his eyes. “Marek? Marek!” She waited until he laid his head to one side and opened his eyes. “It’s never been so beautiful as with you, Marek.”

He wanted to say that it had never been so beautiful as with you , but that would have sounded silly.

“Maybe I’m just dreaming,” he finally said. “I’m dreaming that you came to the office yesterday and looked at me as if we had seen each other before.”

“And you were sad,” she said. “You got up, buttoned your jacket, walked around your desk, and said, ‘Have a nice evening.’”

“And you smiled because I was so stiff, you were laughing at me.”

“Not at you! I was imagining what it would be like to have children with you.”

“Children?”

“You looked so respectable, respectable and sad.”

“Because I thought you were going to vanish again in the next moment.”

“That’s why you were sad?”

“That’s the only reason, only because of you.”

“And what were you thinking?”

Marek shook his head.

“What’s wrong?”

“I was just looking at you. I just wanted to go on looking at you, the way you were standing there, short, blond, and very tired …”

“‘Short and blond and very tired’?”

“I thought, She’s so beautiful she has to be tired.”

“Why’s that?”

Marek lowered his head beneath her gaze. In front of him lay a half-eaten roll smeared with liverwurst. When the commercial for Höffner Furniture was over, Marek said, “If someone is beautiful, then she has a boyfriend, maybe a couple. And they’re constantly wanting something from her. And so she doesn’t get enough sleep. I mean — oh, you know what I mean.”

“That in just one night I—?”

“No!”

“But you just said that I spend my nights with various men—”

“Boyfriends. I said ‘boyfriends’—”

“With various boyfriends—”

“I’m sorry. Please, I didn’t mean it that way. Please forgive me.”

Magda took a deep breath and sat up straight. She didn’t have to say another word, he knew he had ruined everything and that he should leave now.