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

“Hear, hear!” Boris shouted. “A very wise approach.”

Pavel offered another glass to Elvira, this time filled with our white wine, and when she didn’t react, set it down in front of her.

“So I made coffee, five or six times a day, because Boris just has one of those glass gizmos that you press the coffee down into—”

“An Alessi.”

“But no coffee machine, and the gizmo makes at most four cups. I used a good pound of Prodomo every two days. Their favorites were meatballs with onions and ham and eggs—”

“She means the workers,” Boris said.

“And cola, coffee and cola, always 1.5 liter bottles of cola. Most of them drank their coffee black. At first I thought East Berliners drank theirs with milk and sugar and West Berliners black, but suddenly the Easterners wanted black and Westerners blond and sweet. They were all friendly and polite, even the painters, who kept having to come back. Boris had them paint the hardwood doors—”

“I didn’t want to come home to a forest,” Boris said with a nod my way. “Am I right?”

“They did the job without a grumble.”

“There was nothing for them to grumble about; it’s in the contract.”

“When I asked if it bothered them, they all nodded. But they were always friendly.”

“No sooner do you look the other way,” Boris said, “than they disappear, and you have to make a hundred thousand calls to get them back again — hours on the phone.”

“They were always polite, and they carried those tin lunch-boxes, blue ones, red ones, just like I had as a kid in school.”

“So what are you trying to say?” Boris asked.

“I just wanted to say that everything here was always in an uproar, for one reason or another, and—”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“Would you please cut it out!” Susanne cried. “Don’t pay any attention to him.” She selected a pretzel as carefully as if she were playing pick-up-sticks.

“Life here inside was pretty normal,” Elvira said, “until those guys showed up on the balcony.” There was a roughness to her voice, as if she ought to swallow or clear her throat every few moments. “It was the sound of the welding torch — all of a sudden I wanted to know what that noise outside was. At first I thought they’d gotten up here by climbing the trees, that they’d swung through the trees on ropes.”

Susanne burst into laughter.

“If any of you see any trees around here, let me know,” Boris said, turning toward the window. “That’s utterly absurd.”

“They weren’t just on the balcony, they were moving around on the scaffolding, like a crew busy reefing sails.”

“I thought,” Boris said, “that you were going to tell them — why don’t you go ahead and tell them?”

“I was busy with the guys here inside, making coffee and sandwiches, the whole nine yards—”

“The whole nine yards! The whole monkey business!” Boris said, stood up, and left.

Elvira watched him go in shock. Nobody said a word. Everyone’s attention was riveted on her, as if we were all waiting just to hear her speak.

“He really did remind me of a monkey,” she said, half defiant, half intimidated.

“Who?” Charlotte asked.

“The guy I let in — who was doing the metalwork. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see him. If I’m making coffee and sandwiches, then the guys outside should get some too. I rapped on the window. There he squatted beside his welding torch as if it were a campfire. He didn’t even hear me open the door. It was a smell like a sardine can, only stronger. I had to shout for him to understand me. His mouth was hanging open — absolutely perfect complexion, hair like ropes, shiny ropes, just a few strands of gray, and pale blue eyes. And not an ounce of fat on his body. He was glistening with sweat. He held up both hands, he didn’t want to come inside. So I set his coffee down on the tiles, the milk and sugar beside it, and watched through the window as he picked up the spoon between his huge fingers and shoveled sugar into his cup, like he was playing with dollhouse china — but he did it so deftly, like a watchmaker. The cup vanished in his hand, and I thought, That’s not nearly enough for him.”

“Was he King Kong?” Fred asked, but no one laughed.

“He never started before three o’clock. The whole day other workers would be out on the scaffolding or in the apartment. They were there by six or six thirty in the morning. But he never showed up before three. Late afternoon and early evening I was always alone with him out on the balconies, this one here or the one in the guest room.”

“What sort of metalwork was he doing?” Susanne asked.

“The joints along the railings and the ones between the tiles and the wall.”

“And then he came inside.”

“Yes, the third day he came inside. I wasn’t prepared for it, I didn’t know what to do. He knocked on the balcony door and stepped in. Raising his shoulders high, he walked around inspecting the room as if it were a museum. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks and noticed the footprints he’d left behind. “Sorry,” he said. That was the first word I’d ever heard him speak. All I’d ever seen were gestures or him shaking his head. ‘Real nice,’ he then said. ‘Real nice, but if all you do is work and sleep you never get to see it.’”

Now Elvira picked up a pretzel stick too, but didn’t eat it, just held it like a pen between her fingers. Except for Boris’s puttering around in the kitchen, total silence reigned.

“The man was a giant. At first I thought maybe he stuttered, but he wasn’t a stutterer at all. But he kept blinking the whole time. And he didn’t budge from the spot. Then he asked to take a pee. The guest toilet wasn’t finished, so it had to be the bathroom. It felt strange to let him in there. As he came out he was drying his hands on his pants legs. He said: ‘I call it mange, it’s deep under the skin, y’know, mange is what I call it.’” His hands were an anthracite color, like the lead in a pencil. ‘Pipe in, water out, that’s all it takes,’ he said. I didn’t quite get what he meant. He went on leaving footprints behind and looking straight at me, as if I’d said something, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I sat down with him at the kitchen table. He didn’t want a sandwich, just coffee and a cigarette. ‘Junos’—he meant the brand of cigarettes—‘I settled on them.’ And then he just kept looking around and saying things like: ‘Gotta cost a pretty penny too, but if all you do is work and sleep, don’t matter much.’ He talked about ‘Mercedes wages’ and ‘a whole day for a working stiff’ and ‘three weeks just for the rent? Don’t need to watch that pot boil.’”

“But he didn’t harm you, did he?” Pavel asked.

“I was afraid of that too,” Susanne said, giving Pavel a nod of approval.

“He told how he’d ‘headed for foreign parts right off,’ in ’90. Hadn’t done anything wrong, no arrests, but when he came back a few years later, his building had been sold and the account where he’d sent his rent was closed, and that was the only reason for his record, he said ‘record.’ But he’d taken time to do good work for us. ‘Corners,’ he said, ‘my corners get an A, customers care about corners.’ Passing the television, stereo, and VCR on his way out, he said: ‘VCR, gotta keep the economy hummin’, I bought me just five tapes and got the knack of it, but then gave it away, not my thing.’”

“Knows her master’s voice!” Boris shouted as he came in with a tray. “And now she wants to swing from vine to vine with him, living with him like Jane of the jungle. She’s thinking about getting a pad of her own, not some palace like this. End of story. Next topic!”