Rolf

  The cleaning lady! The cleaning lady! Is she there every day? At least she’ s there every time I call. Or your husband— he’ s soon going to start to wonder about the man who calls in the evening and then always hangs up when he answers. Oh, Lisa. There’ s something absurd, comical, about my failed phone calls. Let’ s put an end to the absurdity, let’ s laugh at the comedy, laugh together, laugh in bed, cuddle and laugh and cuddle again and laugh again and . . .

  I’ ll be here all next week. I’m waiting for you, not just on our day and at our usual time, I wait for you every day and every night and every hour.

  Rolf

  The writer had not dated any of the four letters. The postmark on the first letter lay twelve years in the past, eleven for the other three, mailed within a few weeks of each other.

  What happened after that last letter? Had Lisa given in? Had the other man given up? Simply given up without another letter?

  6

  HE COULD remember the period the letters came from quite well. There had been an election eleven years ago, and although the same coalition remained in power, the cabinet secretary for his department had changed. The new secretary had sent him into temporary retirement, replacing him, as an independent, with a member of one of the governing parties. Granted, within a year he had been reassigned to a position in a state-funded foundation, an interesting job as it turned out. But he no longer had the kind of power he had had and enjoyed for a few years in the cabinet department.

  Yes, during those last years in the department he had been under a lot of pressure, had had to travel a lot and work on his files on the weekends, if not at the office then at home. All the same, he had thought everything was fine with his marriage and family; he had also believed that he had made sure of it by periodic but adequate interactions with his wife and children. But had he really? It seemed to him now as if he had not only been fooling himself, but had done so knowingly. He recalled situations when Lisa had seemed distracted, cold. “What’s wrong?” he would ask. “Nothing,” she replied. “Something’s not right.” “No, everything’s fine. I’m just tired,” or “It’s that time of the month,” or “My mind’s just on the orchestra” or “on a student of mine.” He had not probed any further.

  And then, when he had lost his department post, soon after that last letter? To his shame he realized he had even fewer memories of his marriage and family from his year of temporary furlough. He had felt he had been treated unjustly, had felt hurt, had licked his wounds and waited for someone—the world at large, the government, the cabinet secretary, his friends, his wife, his children— to right the wrong. He had been so busy watching what he got or didn’t get from others that he had never even noticed how things stood with them. He remembered his campaign against his noisy children and their friends. In his mind their happy racket had been a failure to respect his need for peace and quiet.

  He found nothing in his memories that could answer the question of whether the affair between Lisa and the other man had continued after that last letter. There had been occasions during that difficult year when Lisa would approach him, and he, as children do, would push her away, so that she would love him in spite of it, really love him. He remembered that much, but nothing else of what went on between them. He couldn’t imagine that she could have spent a great deal of time outside the house, except with the orchestra, without his noticing, since he had been at home the entire time. But what had he noticed for that whole year?

  He wrote:

  Your letters now are like your letters back then; they’ re pushing me. You’ re pushing me. If that doesn’ t change, or better, if you don’ t change, you’ ll never hear another word from me. Don’ t make the same mistake again.

  B

  It left him feeling uneasy. But he found it didn’t matter. He would have felt as uneasy if he hadn’t written the letter. Or written a different one. Lisa had pulled away from the other man, and if that is how things had stayed, he wanted to come to terms with that. And if it had not lasted long. And if it had not gone too deep.

  7

  Lisa, my Bay,

  Be fair. I was desperate back then. I had made a mess of my life, despite all your help and my own efforts to fight back, and then you tossed me out of your life as well, the way you would throw a stray dog out of your apartment, and then close all the doors and windows. I didn’ t know what to do. I wasn’ t trying to push you. I only wanted to reach you, see you, talk to you. I don’ t remember precisely what I wrote in those letters to you back then. But I can’ t imagine that what you call my being pushy doesn’ t show my desperation, my fear of losing you or having already lost you. And then when I finally got you on the telephone and met you in the rain, just around the corner, and you told me that it was over, for good, that you no longer could or would see me—didn’ t I leave you in peace?

  Or maybe you don’ t mean just the end. Do you mean the beginning? When you ran away from me and I ran after you and caught up with you there beside the church wall? Yes, but if I hadn’ t pushed my hands against it, one on either side of you, and trapped you inside my arms, I couldn’ t have told you what I had to say. But I didn’ t touch you, until you put your arms around my neck. And our first night, you put your arms around me then, too—don’ t you remember? It was cold, so cold you didn’ t want to come out from under the blanket, and so I sat up and leaned across you and turned out the light on your side, and then you finally brought your arms out from under the blanket, and took me to you.

  I know you kept asking me later if I hadn’ t been plotting our first meeting for a long time, whether I hadn’ t set you up. Back then I was unwilling—still am—to say that we met by chance. It was a gift from heaven.

  Do you still have the pictures? Only you have prints of that first set. A colleague of yours took them, and I can still see you in one: the restaurant in Milan, all those musicians sitting around a big table, and me beside you, after the oboist saw me sitting alone at a table and invited me over to join your party. The next set of pictures are from Lake Como—I still have the negatives. We had the little boy from the fruit stand snap one of them, and we look confused but in love, happy and determined. And another shows that big old white hotel where we spent our first night; the mountains still have snow on them, and you’ re leaning against our rental car and have a scarf wrapped around your head the way Caterina Valente did in the fifties. You took only one of me, without my noticing; I had stepped out on the balcony, my coat on, ready to leave, and I’m looking down at the lake where there’ s not a single boat or ship in sight because it’ s still cold. And the one of you in the early morning light, the one you gave me in a silver frame.

  If you felt that I was pushing you—at the beginning, at the end, whenever—I’m sorry. I thought we both were suffering under the pressure of the situation, that neither of us was as free as we would have liked to be. Each of us was trapped in a different way, and perhaps you found your conflicts harder to bear than I did mine. But I didn’ t have it easy, either, and the hardest part was that I constantly had to ask you for help.

  I don’ t dare ask to see you again. But you should know that I would like that very much.

  Rolf

  He had put the album back in the secret compartment where he had found it. He took it out now, cut the leather strap, and opened it. The album also began with the pictures of the table in the Milan restaurant: eyes blinded by the flash, gestures animated by alcohol, empty bowls and plates, full and empty carafes, bottles, and glasses. He recognized several of Lisa’s colleagues. She was sitting beside a man he had never seen before. In every picture he was smiling at his neighbor, at Lisa, at the camera, raising a glass in his left hand, his right arm around Lisa’s shoulder. Then came the pictures from Lake Como: Lisa and the other man beside a fruit stand, Lisa with a car in the driveway of a turn-of-the-century hotel, Lisa beside a palm tree at the shore, Lisa in a café, a cup of espresso and a glass of water on the table in front of her, Lisa with a black cat in her arms. He also found the other man on the balcony overlooking the lake. And he found Lisa in bed. She was lying on her side, arms and legs wrapped around the quilt, and her sleepy, contented face turned toward the camera.

  There were other pictures too. In some he recognized the buildings, streets, squares, the castle or a church in the city where he lived. Some might have been taken in the other man’s city. No pictures suggested any more trips. The last one showed the other man in a swimsuit coming across a lawn and carrying a towel. Tall, slender, with good posture and a confident stride, a full head of hair and a gentle smile—he was a good-looking man.

  8

  HE EXAMINED himself in the mirror. The white hair on his chest, the liver spots and moles all over his body, the fat at his hips, his thin legs and arms. His head with its sparse hair, the wrinkles in his forehead, the deep creases etched between his eyebrows and running from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth, the thin lips, the sagging skin under his chin. He did not find pain or sadness or anger in his face, only vexation.

  Vexation was eating away at him, consuming his past life in little bites. Whatever had kept his marriage afloat—love, intimacy, habit, Lisa’s cleverness and solicitude, her body, her role as the mother of his children—it had kept his life outside their marriage afloat, too. It had even kept him afloat during his occasional fantasies of another life and other women.

  He slipped on his robe and called his daughter. Could he come tomorrow? Not for long, just a few days. No, he was still managing on his own. He wanted to talk with her.

  She told him to come. He could hear the hesitation in her voice.

  Before he left the next morning he wrote a reply. He still couldn’t bring himself to address the other man directly. Once again the letter began right in:

  You’ re so good at self-deception! Yes, we each were dealing with a different situation—but what was it we had in common? And why should it have been so hard for you to have to ask me for help? I gave it. Wasn’ t that harder? Making things prettier than they are—you did it back then, and you’ re doing it now. Yes, I still have the pictures. But when I look at them, they don’ t bring back happy memories. There were too many lies.

  You want to see me. We’ re not that far along yet—if we ever will be.

  B

  He hadn’t used his car in months. He had to call a mechanic to help get it started. Driving again felt strange, but not unpleasant. He turned on the radio, opened the sun deck, and let the spring air in.

  The last time he had driven this route was with his wife. She had already been very ill and had weighed next to nothing; he had wrapped her in a blanket and carried her down the stairs and across the street to the car. He had loved doing that—tucking her in, lifting her up, and carrying her. Before they went anywhere she would let him wash and comb her, and put on a little eau de cologne; she had stopped wearing makeup. He carried her, and she was fragrant and sighed and smiled.

  The memory was unclouded. He noticed that his memories of the last years, the years of illness and dying, were untouched by his latest discoveries. As if the Lisa whom he had wooed, with whom he had had a family and won a place in life, and the other Lisa who had slowly ebbed away were two different people. As if sickness and dying had canceled out everything his jealousy tried to grasp.

  The road led through small towns, fields, and forests, through an ordered world of white stucco and red bricks, and a well-ordered nature, too, flaunting its brilliant green and rioting colors. The streets in the towns were deserted; the children were in school and the adults at work. Between towns he met an occasional car, a tractor, a truck. He loved this rolling landscape between mountains and plain. It was part of his and Lisa’s home and they had remained faithful to it even when his career had taken him to a high-level job in the capital. They had kept their house here, the children had remained in their school, and he had commuted to work sometimes only for a day, or several days, or even a whole week. The children loved this landscape as well; even when they left home they didn’t go far—an hour by car to his daughter’s, two to his son’s. And at high speeds on the autobahn it took half that. But he wasn’t in any hurry now.

  He tried to plan the conversation he wanted to have with his daughter. What should he tell her about Lisa and himself and the other man? How could he ask if Lisa had spoken to her about him and the other man? He thought he knew that Lisa and his daughter had been close. But he wasn’t sure. His memories of Lisa and his daughter arm in arm, of his daughter coming home and calling for her mother, or of Lisa on vacation with him, but spending hours on the phone because their daughter needed to talk with her—that all came from a time when his daughter was still a teenager.

  9

  “WHAT DID you want to talk with me about?”

  His daughter was making up the couch in the living room for the night. He had offered to help, but she had said no, and he stood there now with his hands in his pockets. Her voice as she asked was defensive.

  “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

  She smoothed out the blanket and stood up. “Since mother died we’ve invited you again and again, and I thought it would do both of us good to get closer, since we’re both . . . since you’ve lost your wife and I’ve lost my mother, and Georg and the children would have been delighted, too. You turned us down and that hurt a lot. Now here you are and want to talk. It’s just like it used to be, when for months you didn’t pay any attention to us and then suddenly one Sunday morning wanted to take a long walk with us and talk. We couldn’t think of anything to say, and you got angry—I’d rather put all that behind me.”

  “Was it so bad?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at his shoes. “I’m sorry. I lost contact with you when I had so much to do all those years. That left me with a bad conscience, but I didn’t know what to ask you. I was more desperate than angry.”

  “Desperate?” his daughter asked ironically.

  He nodded. “Yes, really desperate.” He wanted to explain to his daughter what his life was like back then and that he had been aware that he had lost his children’s trust and how it had hurt him. But he could already see rejection of what he wanted to say in his daughter’s face. She had become stern and bitter. Behind it all, he could still recognize the open, happy, trusting girl she had once been, but he could no longer speak to her or draw her out. Nor could he ask how that happy girl could become such a bitter woman. All the same, he could ask the question he had brought with him, even if she did snub him again. “Did your mother ever talk with you about our marriage?”

  “ ‘Your mother’—can’t you simply say ‘Mother’ or ‘my wife’ like other husbands, or ‘Lisa’? You make a point of saying she’s my mother, as if . . . as if . . .”

  “Did your . . . did Mother ever say that she didn’t like it if I spoke of her that way?”

  “No, she never said she didn’t like anything you did.”

  “Do you remember a time, about eleven years ago? You had just finished high school, and that summer . . .”

  “You don’t need to tell me what I did then. I know myself. That summer, to celebrate my graduation, Mother and I spent a week together in Venice. Why?”

  “Did she talk about me on the trip? About our marriage? Maybe about another man?”

  “No, she didn’t. And you should be ashamed to ask questions like that about Mother. Ashamed.” She went briefly into the hall and came back with two towels. “Here. The bathroom is yours. Breakfast is at seven-thirty, and I’ll wake you at seven. Good night.”

  He wanted to take her in his arms, but as he stepped toward her, she just gave him a little good-night wave and slipped out of the room. Or was it a wave of dismissal?

  He didn’t use the bathroom. He was afraid. The trip down the hall to the bath demanded more courage than he had. What if he opened the wrong door and suddenly found himself standing in his daughter’s and her husband’s room? Or in the children’s room. Or in the stairwell, with the apartment door closed behind him? He would ring the bell, curse himself, and have to apologize. He decided not to visit his son, either. And he wouldn’t visit Lisa’s best friend to ask her about Rolf.

  10

  HE LEFT the next morning, when the house was empty, when his daughter and her husband were at work and the children in school. He said his good-byes in a note.

  The trip took four hours. He didn’t know the city well, but found the street, the house on the park, and a room in a nearby hotel. He hung up his clothes in the wardrobe and went for a walk. His hotel was on a little street that crossed a wide avenue with wide sidewalks and ended on a little square. From a bench in the square he could see down the street where the other man lived. His house was an art nouveau building that had been divided into apartments, and like neighboring buildings it looked out on a brook and the park to the rear.

  Over the next few days, whenever he walked to the bench, he found it empty. The warm weather certainly was inviting, but it was only a few steps farther to the benches in the park, where it was much nicer to sit. He stayed here for the time it took him to read his paper, no more, no less, then walked past the other man’s building, and crossed the brook into the park. He made his rounds a bit later each day. And all the while he forged his plan— to investigate the other man, to encircle him, to research his habits and likes, to win his trust, to find his weak point. Then—he didn’t know what would happen then, what he would do next. Somehow he would erase the other man from his and Lisa’s life.

  Around noon on Tuesday of his second week, he was sitting on the bench when the other man came out of his building. He wore a suit with a vest, had on a tie, and had pushed a matching handkerchief into his breast pocket. A dandy! He was heavier than in the photographs, but cut a stately figure as he strode swiftly along the sidewalk. When he reached the square he turned down the small street, then again on to the wide avenue. After a few hundred yards he took a seat on the terrace of a café. Without his even ordering, the waiter brought him coffee, two croissants, and a chessboard. He then took a book from his inside breast pocket, set up the chessmen, and played out a game from his book.