Christopher Kloeble - Almost Everything Very Fast

That was a moment that hadn’t been at all to Albert’s liking; the four of them standing across from each other in Fred’s garden, nobody saying what everyone (aside from Fred) was thinking: Do I really have to lock myself in a car with them? Albert had clutched the makeup compact tighter as Klondi stepped over to Violet and the two of them shook hands. A natural, reciprocal aversion had been detectable between them ever since, and this was concentrated now in the enclosed space of the Beetle. There was no obvious reason for them to dislike each other, thought Albert; after all, they barely knew anything at all about each other. On the other hand, there was no particular reason for affection. Albert wasn’t about to interfere; he’d be happy as long as Violet didn’t steer them into every pothole on the road, wedged as he was between Fred’s passenger seat, which was pushed as far back as possible, and the car’s awkwardly slanting roof. Crammed into this sardine can of a car, it was hard for him to ignore the fact that they were all on the road because of him. All for one, and one for himself. It made him uncomfortable. In spite of this, he had to get to Sister Alfonsa, he had to find out who his mother was. He wanted an answer to the great WHY. And if it was someone banal, fine, he’d be satisfied, actually, he’d even prefer that, then there wouldn’t be any doubt that he hadn’t lost anything much in the first nineteen years of his life, that growing up in Sister Alfonsa’s care had been, in the truest sense of the word, a blessing.

Fred bent his upper body over the digital clock in the center of the dashboard. “There certainly aren’t ninety thousand minutes left anymore, are there?”

Klondi leaned forward. “What do you mean, sweetie?”

“Albert says, ‘In ninety thousand minutes I’ll be dead.’”

Klondi glanced over at Albert. “Is that what he says?” She laid a hand on Fred’s shoulder. “You’ll live much longer than that.”

Violet downshifted and stepped on the gas. “I’m not so sure you should say that.”

Albert, who didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire, lifted up his chess notebook, in which he’d recorded a few because s over the past years, in front of his face.

Because this woman is perilously stupid, she believes nothing can happen the first time you do it. And then, of course, it happens. As I enter the world, I want to tell her: Do something clever for the first time in your life and keep me, I’m pretty smart, I can give a little of that to you. I’m trying my damndest to make her hear me, I’m screaming. But she’s too dumb. She thinks screaming is nothing but noise. And dumber still: she believes that if she runs away, she won’t hear that screaming anymore.

Or: This woman thinks a mother’s role is overrated because she didn’t have one of her own, and after all, in the end she made something of herself, didn’t she?

Or: According to this woman, “pregnancy denial” is nonsense, how could there be such a thing, every woman knows when she has a bun in the oven! No, in her opinion it’s just indigestion. Until, suddenly, there I am. And what does she do then? She says thanks a lot, washes herself off, gets dressed, and marches out of the hospital without me, glad that the indigestion has finally faded.

Or: For this woman, getting pregnant is simply part of life, like brushing her teeth. She can’t explain why it keeps happening to her of all people, miscounting now and then while taking the pill isn’t such a big deal, and it isn’t as if she’s entirely renounced condoms simply because it feels better for women, too, without them, she makes a genuine effort, hand on heart, in her opinion none of her girlfriends are as careful as she is, but then, none of them are so fertile. If she’d been around in the early forties, they would have awarded her the golden Mother’s Cross, at the very least. Can anyone really hold it against her that sometimes she loses sight of the big picture and forgets where exactly she’s scattered her genes?

Or: Somehow this woman understood it differently, when her man told her he wanted only the best for her. Many big, expensive things were what occurred to her, not a wizened parcel of flesh that shrieks reproachfully at you when you give it away.

Or: This woman thinks it’s a shame when pregnant women don’t take responsibility for themselves, but I’m not, strictly speaking, her child yet. In her opinion, a child isn’t automatically your child just because you’ve been pregnant with him, no, it takes much more than that, a child only becomes your child when the mother and the baby have properly bonded, that is, established a rapport, and if that doesn’t occur — which, regrettable as it may be, can happen — then the child is indeed related to you, it has a place on the family tree, but really, what does that mean, and anyhow, you can’t love everybody, our social behavior is selective, and if that holds for friendships and life partners, it would be backward to claim that it’s heartless for the same principle to apply to children. Mothers should finally buck the idea that they have to accept supinely everything that life sets before them!

“So there aren’t ninety thousand minutes left?” asked Fred.

“Maybe a few less,” Albert added now, trying to keep the peace.

Violet smiled into the rearview mirror.

Klondi rolled her eyes, then said, “Fred’s told me about the two of you. How long have you been together?”

For a fraction of a second, the Beetle crossed the road’s center line.

Albert looked Klondi in the eye, and shook his head.

She raised both eyebrows. “Oh. What happened?”

Albert didn’t answer that, and to his great relief, Violet kept silent as well.

Fred said, “My nose is tickling.”

Albert was grateful to him for the distraction.

Klondi and Violet answered at the same time: “Then scratch it.”

Albert looked straight ahead, and was reminded once again that Fred was one of those very few people the back of whose skull he could make neither head nor tail of. A pair of hair whorls twisting in opposing directions lent it an aristocratic note, which otherwise never came to the fore.

Violet shifted to a higher gear. “Have you ever been to Saint Helena?”

“Me?” asked Klondi.

“You,” said Violet.

“Never so far,” answered Klondi, and presented her teeth to the rearview mirror, which Violet quickly twisted to the right without looking, removing Klondi from the reflection.

“Do you have children?” Violet asked.

The way Klondi’s chin trembled for a moment before she answered in the negative didn’t escape Albert, and it made him think of her ex-husband, the bus driver Ludwig, and her daughter in the moon-white dress.

Violet glanced over her shoulder: “Something wrong?”

“No,” said Klondi. “No, no.”

“How’s your internship going?” Albert interjected.

Violet nudged the rearview mirror back into position, and cleared her throat. “Totally great.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Yeah, me, too. I’ve gotten to know so many exciting people. It’s cool.”

“My nose tickles,” said Fred.

Albert: “Then scratch it.”

The car left the woods, and Violet didn’t slow down when they passed a highway sign, so Albert could make out only the second half of the name of the town they were going through. He’d always made the trip to Saint Helena by train, plus a couple of miles on the bus. He felt as though they weren’t traveling toward Saint Helena at all, but some other, unfamiliar place. Reason urged him to remain calm; two or three hours more, then they’d arrive. He’d find Sister Alfonsa, and she’d share what she had to share, and after that they’d head home. That was all.