Once everyone was seated around the table, Julia stood up. Sven cast Paula a questioning look, but she just shrugged. Julia gave a speech. She thanked us all for her gifts and for having come, both young friends and old, from both East and West. Unfortunately we didn’t see each other as often as we used to, people used to have more time for each other. Now I cast Paula a questioning look as well. It was so easy to lose sight of each other, Julia went on. “Unless,” she said with a serious, determined look, “we women hold everything together.”

  Paula pressed her lips together and her eyes danced. Sven kept his head down. Julia finished her speech, someone began to clap, the others joined in, and Hans was so pleased with Julia that he started laughing, and then Sven could lift his head and join the laughter, and then Paula laughed, too, and we then all laughed at each other.

  THE OTHER MAN

  1

  A FEW MONTHS after he retired, his wife died. She had cancer, inoperable and untreatable cancer, and he had taken care of her at home. When she died and he no longer had to worry about her meals, her waste, her emaciated body, her bed sores, he had to worry about the funeral, the bills, the insurance, and that the children received what she had intended them to have. He had to see to it that her clothes were cleaned, her lingerie washed, her shoes polished, and that it was all packed into boxes. Her best friend, who owned a secondhand store, picked up the boxes; she had promised his wife that her elegant wardrobe would be worn by beautiful women.

  Even though these were unfamiliar chores for him, he had grown so used to keeping busy around the house when there wasn’t a sound to be heard from her sickroom that he constantly had the feeling he had only to climb the stairs and open the door, and he’d be sitting down beside her bed to exchange a word, share some news, ask a question. Then, like a sudden blow, would come the realization that she was dead. It often happened when he was on the telephone, too. He would be leaning against the wall between the kitchen and living room, where the telephone was, everything perfectly normal, talking about normal things, feeling normal, and then it would come to him that she was dead, and he’d have to stop talking and hang up.

  Then one day the work was done. He felt as if the line had been cut, the ballast tossed overboard, and he was drifting over the land with the wind. He saw no one and missed no one. Both his daughter and his son had invited him to spend time with them and their families, but although he felt he loved his children and grandchildren, the idea of living with them was unbearable. He didn’t want to live in any world of normality that wasn’t his old normality.

  He didn’t sleep well, woke up early, drank tea, played the piano a little, sat staring at some chess problem or other, read and jotted down notes for an article on an issue that he had encountered in his last years on the job and that had stayed with him ever since, without ever really occupying him. By late afternoon, he would begin to drink. He would take a glass of champagne with him to the piano or the chessboard; at his evening meal, a bowl of canned soup or a small sandwich or two, he would finish the champagne and open a bottle of red wine, which he would empty as he jotted his notes or read.

  He went for walks through the city streets, in the often snow-covered woods or along the river, frozen at its banks sometimes. He would set out at night as well, at first a bit unsteady on his feet, stumbling now and then, scraping against a fence or wall, but soon with a clear head and firm stride. He would have liked to walk by the seashore, hour after hour. But he couldn’t bring himself to forsake the house, this husk of his life.

  2

  HIS WIFE HAD not been especially vain. At least she had never seemed especially vain to him. Beautiful, yes, he had thought her beautiful and had shown her the delight her beauty gave him. She in turn had shown him that she delighted in his delight—with a glance, a gesture, a smile. There had been a charm in those glances and gestures, and in the way she would eye herself in the mirror. But not vanity.

  And yet she died of her vanity. When her doctor discovered a lump in her right breast and advised an operation, she had stopped going to him, out of fear of the mutilation. All the same, she had never boasted of her high, full, firm breasts, nor had she complained as she wasted away during those last months before her death and her breasts hung like empty pants pockets turned inside out to show there’s nothing in them. He had always had the impression that she had a perfectly natural relationship with her body, for good or ill. Only after her death, when he learned from a casual remark the doctor made that she had avoided the operation, did he ask himself whether what he had thought was a natural relationship had not in fact been one of self-indulgence and, ultimately, resignation.

  He blamed himself for having noticed nothing back then as the operation loomed before her, for her having not wanted to talk with him, to share her fears and arrive at some decision. Back then—he had no spontaneous memories of the period when she must have heard the news about the lump and the need for an operation. He fitted memories together piece by piece, but found nothing remarkable. They had been as close as ever, he had been under no special pressure at work or traveling any more than usual, and she had gone about her job as always, too. She was a violinist in the city’s orchestra, coprincipal, first desk, and also gave lessons. He recalled that for the first time in years, after only talking about it, they had actually made music together again, the sonata La folia, by Corelli.

  His self-reproach fell silent before such memories and made room for an uneasiness as to the closeness between them. Had he deluded himself about that? Had they not been so close? But what could have been lacking? Had they not had a good life together? And they had made love until the last stages of her illness, and talked right up until her death.

  The uneasiness also vanished. He often had a feeling of emptiness, though he couldn’t say himself what was missing. Even though he could never imagine putting the question to the test, he would ask himself if it was really his wife he missed or not simply a warm body in bed and someone to exchange a few words with, who found what he said fairly interesting and to whom in return he could listen with a fair amount of interest. He also asked himself whether the longing to return to work that he occasionally felt was really about his work and not about a social context of some sort, and some role that he could play well. He knew that he was slow, slow to perceive and to process things, slow as well to involve himself, slow to cut free.

  Sometimes he felt as if he had fallen out of his life, was still falling, but would soon hit bottom and could then start all over again—tiny, but from scratch.

  3

  ONE DAY A letter came for his wife, from someone whose name he didn’t recognize. There was always mail for her—printed matter, bills for magazines and club memberships, a letter from some friend he hadn’t included when sending the death announcements, but immediately recalled just by looking at her letter, the death announcement of some former colleague, or an invitation to a gallery opening.

  The letter was brief, written with a fountain pen in an easy hand.

  Dear Lisa,

  You think I shouldn’ t have made things so difficult for you back then, I know. I don’ t agree, not even now. And yet, as I didn’ t know then but know now, I have myself to blame. But you’ re to blame as well. How lovelessly we treated our love back then. We suffocated it. You with your worry and I with my demands, when we could have let it grow and blossom.

  There are sins of an unlived life, of an unloved love. Did you know that a shared sin binds the two sinners for life?

  I saw you a few years ago, when your orchestra was here doing a guest performance. You’ve grown older. I could see your wrinkles and the weariness of your body, and I thought of your voice, how it could turn shrill with worry and defensiveness. But none of that helped; if the situation had offered itself, I would have simply got into the car or boarded the train with you and gone off, to spend nights and days in bed together again.

  You can’ t deal with my thoughts? But with whom should I share them if not with you!

  Rolf

  The return address was a large city in the south of Germany. When he had read the letter, he got out a map of the city, searched for the street, and found it near a park. He pictured the man writing the letter at a desk with a view into the park. He himself looked out at the treetops along the street in front of his house. They were still bare.

  He had never known his wife’s voice to be shrill. He had never spent nights and days in bed with her. He had never simply got into a car or boarded a train with her and taken off. At first he was merely amazed, then he felt cheated and robbed; his wife had cheated him out of something that belonged to him, or at least was due to him, and the other man had robbed him. He grew jealous.

  His jealousy was not restricted to things his wife had shared with the other man and he knew nothing about. How was he to know if she was one person with him and a different person with the other man? Maybe the person she had been with him was the same person she was with the other man. When Lisa and he were at a concert and their hands found one another because they both liked the piece, when he watched as she put on her morning makeup and she tossed him a little glance and a little smile before returning to concentrating on herself in the mirror, when she woke up in the morning and snuggled up to him and stretched, when he told her about a problem at work and she seemed scarcely to listen, only to surprise him hours or days later with a remark that showed how attentive and considerate she was—the intimacy of their life together had been revealed to him in such situations. He had found it self-evident that theirs was an exclusive intimacy. But now nothing was self-evident any longer. Why shouldn’t she and the other man have been just as intimate with one another? Why shouldn’t she have also sat hand in hand with the other man at a concert, winked and smiled at him while putting on her makeup, stretched and snuggled up to him in his bed?

  4

  SPRING CAME, and in the morning he would be awakened by chirping birds. It was the same every morning. He would wake up happy to hear the birds and see the sun shining into his room, and for a moment the world seemed in order. But then it would come to him again: the death of his wife, the letter from the other man, their affair, and how in that affair his wife had been a totally different woman from the woman so familiar to him, and yet at the same time must have been exactly the same woman he knew. Affair—that’s what he had begun to call what the letter had revealed, and as for the question of whether there were two reasons for his jealousy, he had come to the conclusion that that was the case. Sometimes he asked himself which was worse: that the person you love is another person with someone else or is in fact the person you know so well. Or is one just as bad as the other? Because you’re robbed either way— robbed of what belongs to you and of what should belong to you?

  It was like an illness. A sick person likewise wakes up in bed and needs a moment to recall that he’s ill. And just as illness passes, so mourning and jealousy pass as well. That much he knew, and he waited to get better.

  With the onset of spring his walks became longer. Now they had destinations. He no longer just headed off, but crossed fields to arrive at the locks in the river that angled across the plain, or walked through wood-lands to the castle above, or through blossoming orchards at the foot of the mountains to reach a neighboring town, where he stopped for dinner and then took the train home. More and more often he would take his usual late-afternoon bottle of champagne from the fridge, only to put it back. More and more often he also found himself thinking of things that had nothing to do with his wife, her death, the other man, and their affair.

  One Saturday he walked into town. He had had no reason to do so for the last few months. There was a bakery and a grocery where he lived, and he hadn’t needed anything more. As he neared the center, as traffic grew heavier, and the shoving throngs of people ever larger, as he passed store upon store and the air became filled with voices, the hum of traffic, the melodies of street musicians, the cries of peddlers—he became frightened. He felt the busy, noisy crowd pressing in on him. He went into a bookstore, but it was also full of people jammed between the shelves, at the tables and cash register. He stood for a while near the door, unable to decide whether to stay inside or leave, blocking the way as people bumped into him and muttered annoyed apologies. He wanted to go home, but did not have the energy to step out on the street and walk home, to board a tram or look for a taxi. He had thought he was stronger. Like a convalescent patient who overtaxes himself and suffers a setback, he would have to start healing all over again.

  When he finally managed to get himself onto the tram, a young woman stood up and offered him her seat. “Aren’t you feeling well? The way you were standing there in the bookstore had me worried.” He did not remember having seen her in the bookstore. He thanked her and sat down. His anxiety didn’t let go. To start healing all over again—did that mean that he had hit bottom? He would have gladly believed it, but had a sense that he was falling ever deeper.

  At home, he lay down on his bed in broad daylight. He fell asleep and woke up a few hours later. It was still bright, and the anxiety was gone.

  He sat down at his desk, took out a sheet of paper, and wrote, without date or salutation:

  Your letter arrived. But it could no longer reach the woman you wrote. The Lisa you knew and loved is dead.

  B

  For a long time his wife and friends had called him BB, until at some point it became simply B. He had signed memoranda and directives at the office with a B for Benner. He had made a habit of signing personal mail with a B for Bengt as well, even notes to his children, who called him “baba,” not “papa,” slipping affectionately into the soft regional dialect. He liked the idea that B was right for so many different roles.

  He put the sheet of paper in an envelope, addressed it, added a stamp, and tossed it in the mailbox a few blocks away.

  5

  THREE DAYS later he received a reply.

  Dear Bay!

  You no longer want to be the Lisa that I loved? She is supposed to be dead to me?

  How well I understand your wish to forget the past when it reaches so painfully into the present. But it can only reach into the present if it is still alive. The past we shared is still as alive for you as it is for me—how good that feels! And how good, too, that, although you never answered my letters back then, you have written me now. And that you have remained my Bay, even when you hide it in an abbreviation.

  Your letter has made me happy.

  Rolf

  Bay? Yes, she had had brown eyes and reddish-brown curls, fine brown hair on her arms and legs, bleaching to blond in summer when she tanned, and a lot of brown moles. Out of admiration he had sometimes called her my brown beauty. My Bay—that was something else. It was curt, overbearing, possessive. Bay—that was a mare whose muzzle you stroked, whose flank you patted before swinging up onto her and exerting the pressure of your thighs.

  He went to his wife’s writing desk, a Biedermeier piece. He knew that it had a secret compartment. But when he had gone through her things after her death, he had been reluctant to search for it. He emptied out all the compartments, pulled out all the drawers, found the wall where the secret compartment had to be, and, after a while, the piece of molding that he had to push to turn the wall into a cube that rotated on its axis till it revealed a door. It was locked; he forced it open.

  A packet of letters with a red ribbon—from the postmark he could tell that they were the letters of the young love his wife had told him about. A poetry or photo album with leather straps and a lock. He recognized the handwriting of her parents on another packet with a green ribbon. He also recognized the handwriting of the other man. Four letters were held together by a large paper clip. He took them over to a chair by the window, a wing chair with a sewing table, both Biedermeier pieces like the desk, all bought together with Lisa before their marriage. He sat down and read.

  Lisa,

  Things have turned out differently than you imagined at the beginning and they’ re more difficult. I know that it sometimes frightens you and that you’ d like to run away. But you mustn’ t. Nor do you have too. I’m with you, even when I’m not beside you.

  Do you doubt my love because I don’ t make things easier for you? That’ s not within my power. Yes, I would like it better, too, if things were easier for us, if we could be together, live for one another, and nothing else mattered. But the world isn’ t like that. And yet it’ s a wonderful world, for it allowed us to find and love each other.

  I cannot leave you, Lisa.

  Rolf

  No, Lisa, not again. We tried a year ago, and six months ago, and you know that I cannot leave you. I cannot be without you, any more than you can be without me. Not without my love, not without the passion I give to you. If you leave me and I crash I’ ll drag you down with me. Don’ t let it come to that. Be mine, just I shall always be your

  Rolf

  You never came. I waited for you, hour after hour, and you never came. Ah well, she’ s not going to make it on time, I thought at first, and then got worried and telephoned around, to be told by your cleaning lady that you couldn’ t come to the phone. By your cleaning lady! You didn’ t just not come, you had your cleaning lady make excuses for you.

  I am full of anger, forgive me. I have no right to be angry with you. It was all too much for you, things couldn’ t go on like this, they had to change, and you could only show me that by not coming. And that’ s the only way I could possibly have understood this.

  I have understood it, Lisa. Let’ s forget everything for a while that’ s weighing down on us. You’ ll be in Kiel with your orchestra next week, add an extra day or two to the trip for us. And let me hear from you soon.