One More Story: Thirteen Stories in the Time-Honored Mode

Cell Phone

They came during the night of July 20–21, between twelve and twelve thirty. There couldn’t have been many of them, five, six guys maybe. I just heard voices and the racket. They probably hadn’t even noticed light burning in the bungalow. The sleeping area is at the back, and the curtains were drawn. The first sultry night in a good while and the start of our last week of vacation. I was still reading — Stifter, Great-Grandfather’s Satchel.

Constanze had received a telegram from the newspaper in Berlin, telling her to report for work at seven thirty on Tuesday morning. Evidently her secretary had coughed up our address. The series about Fontane’s favorite places was getting bogged down because commissioned articles weren’t coming in on deadline. That’s the problem when you don’t go far away. We’re both on the road all year more or less — I work for the sports section, Constanze for the feuilleton — and neither of us has any desire to spend our vacation sitting around in airports too. We rented the bungalow for the first time last summer — twenty marks a day for twenty by twenty feet — in Prieros, southeast of Berlin, exactly forty-six kilometers from our front door, a corner lot with pine woods all around, perfect when it’s hot.

It was odd being there alone. Not that I was afraid, but I heard every falling branch, every bird hopping across the roof, every little rustle.

It sounded like gunshots when they kicked in the fence boards. And then the whooping! I turned off the light, pulled on a pair of pants, went to the front — we always keep the roll-down shutters open at night. But I still couldn’t see a thing. Suddenly there was a hollow thud. Something heavy had been upended. They yowled. My first thought was to turn on the outside light, just to show that somebody was home and the idiots wouldn’t think nobody would spot them. There were a couple more loud noises — then they moved on.

I could feel sweat beading even on my legs. I washed my face. I could open the window from the bed. It had cooled off a little outside. You could just barely hear those guys now. Finally everything was quiet again.

My cell phone rang at seven on the dot. “Rang” is actually the wrong word, it was more like a “tootle-toot” that kept getting louder, but I liked its familiar sound because it meant Constanze. She was the only person who had the number.

While Constanze talked about how unbearably hot Berlin was and wanted to know why I hadn’t stopped her from driving back into the brutal city, I took the cell phone with me out into the sunny quiet morning and surveyed the damage. Three sections of fence were lying in the path. The concrete post between them had been broken off just above the ground and tipped over. Two twisted steel rods stuck up out of the stump. Out by the gate the rowdies had turned the newspaper tube on its head. Just underneath it I discovered the roof and back wall of the birdhouse. I counted seven fence slats that had been kicked in, plus four ripped loose entirely. Constanze said that she hadn’t realized what a dirty trick that telegram was until now. I really shouldn’t have let her drive back.

I didn’t want to worry Constanze — she’s always quick to get the feeling that something is a bad omen — so I didn’t mention last night’s visitors. It would have been hard to interrupt her anyway. She had already laid into the people who had rented the bungalow before us for turning the power off and leaving a half-full fridge. Suddenly Constanze cried that she had to go, kiss-kiss, and hung up.

I crawled back into bed. The damage was nothing I needed to take personally, of course, and there was a relatively simple explanation, too. The half acre of land that goes with the bungalow is only leased. That will end in 2001, or 2004 at the latest, when the transitional period will be over and our acquaintances will have to leave. That’s why they haven’t invested anything for several years now. The fence is held together by wire in places where the wood is too rotten for nails.

Last fall Constanze wrote an article about the New York police and their new philosophy. I remembered an example about a car abandoned on the street for weeks. Trash collects around it, yellowed fliers are wedged under the wipers. One morning a wheel is missing, two days later the license plates are gone, and soon the other three wheels. A rock is thrown through a window, and then there is no stopping it. The car goes up in flames. Conclusion: You don’t let junk even start to collect.

At least Constanze had been spared this incident. Together we would probably have done something reckless, or Constanze would have been depressed for days because we’d turned chicken and taken cover. But now I had to do something, otherwise next thing you know they’ll be throwing rocks through our window.

I got up to clear the sections of fence from the path. The first slat I picked up broke apart. With its protruding nails it reminded me of a weapon from the arsenal of Thomas Müntzer. First I threw all the slats in a pile. Then I began dragging them to the shed. To leave them lying out where anyone could get at them seemed too dangerous. Maybe I was exaggerating. But the fact was that not even a symbolic barrier protected the bungalow now.

Given the situation it was good to have a cell phone. I’d brought the envelope containing all the instructions — which Constanze had jealously guarded — along with me to Prieros and had finally learned how to activate the mailbox. It was my surprise for Constanze.

The “Hello!” of a man’s voice startled me. Medium build, dressed in flip-flops and a sweatshirt, he was standing at the gate and asked what damage the rowdies had done at our place.

His fence was missing two slats. “A latticework fence,” he said. “Do you know what kind of strength that takes?” The worst thing for him was the dent in the hood of his Fiat Punto. He’d searched a long time for whatever it was they’d thrown, but had found nothing. His crew cut looked like a fur hat set across his brow.

“It always happens during summer vacation,” he said. “All young kids. Always during vacation.”

I led him around. He took the inspection tour very seriously, squatting down a couple of times as if searching for clues. He found more pieces of birdhouse, turned the newspaper tube back to horizontal, and helped me with the rest of the fence slats. He had notified the police last night and evidently hadn’t let them off the hook until they had promised to send someone. “You need to know,” he said, “that this is small potatoes to them. Undermanned like they are, totally undermanned.”

He was interested in what I had to say about the New York police, and I promised to send him Constanze’s article.

“Can you give me your cell phone number?” he suddenly asked.

“My cell phone number? I don’t even know it.”

His frown pulled his bristly hair so deep that its leading edge pointed straight at me.

“I’ll have to check,” I said, and asked what he planned to do in case these guys came back.

“First off, get in touch,” he replied curtly.

“That can’t hurt,” I said.

Inside I sat down on the bed with the envelope in hand. All my colleagues had cell phones. I never understood why they put up with them. I’d never wanted a cell phone, until Constanze came up with the idea of a one-way phone. To make calls, yes — to be called, no, with the exception of her, of course.

As I copied our number I noticed that it ended in 007.

“My name’s Neumann, by the way,” he said, holding out a store receipt on which he had scribbled his own number. In the same moment the phone rang. With a hasty good-bye he headed off.

Pretty much everything had gone wrong at the office. Constanze would have to stay in Berlin, at least until the day after tomorrow. She said that the latest deportations had also set off a row within the feuilleton staff itself. I had no idea what deportations she was talking about. We didn’t listen to the radio because the FM button was missing.

Constanze was still angry and claimed that those guys just hadn’t been able to deal with losing to Croatia in the World Cup soccer match. That was why they were carrying on like this.

I told her about last night. She just said, “Well then, come home.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I will, tomorrow.” I didn’t want to look like a coward. Besides, it was easier to deal with the heat here.

I tidied up. In case the police actually did show, I didn’t want them to think it made no difference if something got kicked in here or not. I was also going to tell them that our landlord had only leased the lot, since it was now the property of a Westi. As a final touch I swept the terrace.

That afternoon I spoke with some of the other neighbors as well. We agreed to leave on all the lights we could at night. We parked our cars with the headlights directed at the fences, so that we could suddenly blind these guys and maybe even get a picture of them. Our motto was: People, noise, light. We bungalow dwellers developed a kind of Wild West solidarity. No policeman ever showed his face, but we didn’t waste words talking about that.

Out of a kind of gratitude I dialed Neumann’s number. I had at times found it intoxicating to be connected by satellite with people anywhere in the world. That we were neighbors, not three hundred yards apart, made the idea seem even more fantastic. But instead of Neumann himself, I heard a woman say: “This is the voice mail of …” followed by a pause, and then out of a galactic void I heard the words: “Harald Neumann.” I felt goose bumps creep up my arms, clear to my shoulders. Of course even friends often sound distracted or depressed on their answering machines. But Neumann didn’t just sound downhearted — it was as if he were ashamed even to have a name.

A little later there was a brief thunderstorm. I saw Neumann coming out of the woods with a basket full of mushrooms. He called to me from a good distance, “Like turnips!” He probably meant that in this weather you could gather mushrooms the way you could harvest turnips, or that they were as big as turnips. He invited me to help him eat them.

In comparison with our little shack, his bungalow was a small palace, with a television and stereo, leather chairs, and two bar stools. Neumann served red wine and French bread with the mushrooms. After that we played chess and smoked a whole pack of Clubs between us. There seemed to be no connection between the Neumann here before me and the man who spoke his name for his voice mail. All the same I felt shy about asking him about his family or occupation.

Toward evening the clouds above the lake turned pink. I laid my big flashlight and Neumann’s number where they were handy. By ten o’clock the lightning was flashing with the regularity of a warning light. A cloudburst followed. By then it was clear to me that no one would be coming that night.

The next morning I packed everything up, did a last dusting, and said good-bye to my neighbors. I didn’t find Neumann at home. Presumably he was in the woods again. I don’t think people got the idea that I was a coward. They realized that Constanze was no longer here. The telephone call with our acquaintances — our landlords — proved more difficult. I was supposed to take care of the fence. There were still some posts in the shed. But the refrigerator alone had cost us a whole morning — that was quite enough.

…

In late September the cell phone rang in the middle of the night. In the first moment I thought it was the peep it makes when the battery is low. But the tootle-toot got louder each time. I got up, groped in the dark for my shoulder bag, and rummaged in it. I traced the tip of my forefinger across the keys — I needed the middle one in the second row from the top. The signal was now insufferably loud.

“Those guys are back again. They’re really raising a racket!” And then after a brief pause: “Hello! This is Neumann! What a racket! Do you hear it?”

“But I’m not there anymore,” I finally said.

“They’re really raising a racket!”

The light on Constanze’s side went on. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, shaking her head.

With my free hand I covered the mouthpiece. “A neighbor from Prieros.” I could feel myself breaking into a sweat. I had never mentioned exchanging phone numbers — we wouldn’t be going to Prieros again anyway.

“Are you alone?”

“Somebody has to hold down the fort,” Neumann cried.

“Are you alone?”

“They’re breaking down my fence, the bastards.”

“Have you called the police?”

Neumann gave a laugh, then had to cough. “That’s funny …” It sounded as if he’d been drinking. I had never sent him Constanze’s article about New York.

“What is it you want?” I asked.

“Just listen to that racket!”

I pressed the phone tight to my ear, but it made no difference.

“Now they’re at the mailbox!” he shouted. “They’ll have to sweat and strain at that. Not even two of those lunkheads can manage that. They’ve gone too far.… Enough is enough!”

“Stay where you are!” I shouted.

Constanze was standing in the door, tapping a finger at her forehead. She said something from the hallway that I didn’t understand.

“Hello?” Neumann called out.

“Yes,” I said. Or did he mean those guys at the fence. “Stay inside!” I shouted. “Don’t try to be a hero.”

“They’re gone,” he said, and laughed. “Nobody in sight, they’ve taken off, scared shitless.…” I distinctly heard Neumann take a drink and set the bottle back down. “These lunkheads,” he gasped.

“You shouldn’t be there all by yourself.”

“So how are you doing?” he interrupted me in an almost hoarse voice.

“Stay in the house,” I said. “You shouldn’t even be out at the lake, or just on weekends maybe, but not during the week.”

“When are you coming back? We still have a game we haven’t finished. Or would you like to play by mail? You want to give me your address? I’ve got some dried mushrooms, a whole sack full.”

“Herr Neumann,” I said, and didn’t know what else to say.

“The garbage can!” he suddenly bellowed. “My garbage can!”

“Forget about the garbage can,” I said. “It’s not important.” I called out, “Hello?” and “Herr Neumann” a few more times. Then there was only a dial tone, and the display read: “Call ended.”

Constanze came back into the room, lay down on her side, facing the wall and pulling the blanket up over her shoulders. I tried to explain the whole thing to her — how I’d hesitated at first, but that in the end I’d been glad I could call a neighbor for help in an emergency. Constanze didn’t stir. I said I was worried about Neumann.

“Maybe he’ll call back,” she replied. “This will be happening fairly often now. But of course you never give the number to anybody.”

I think at moments like this we’re both so disappointed with ourselves that we hate each other. I went to my study to fetch the charger for the cell phone.

“And what if he passes your number on?” Constanze turned over and propped herself up.

“Why would he do that?”

“But just imagine if he does!”

“Constanze,” I said. “That’s silly.”

“You need to think about it!” The strap of her nightgown had slipped off her shoulder, and she pulled it back up. But it didn’t stay. “Think of all those people who could call now,” she said. “All those neighbors.”

“Our number’s in the book, a perfectly normal number. Anybody can call us.”

“That’s not what I mean. If a building is on fire or gets bombed and somebody runs out with nothing but his cell phone, because it happens to be in his pocket. You’ll be able to talk with him now.”

I plugged the charger into the extension socket beside the bed.

“It can very well happen,” Constanze said. Her voice now had that “governess” tone of hers. “Somebody calls you up from Kosovo or Chechnya or from wherever that tsunami was. Or one of those guys that froze up on Mount Everest. Now you can talk with him to the bitter end, until it’s all over.”

Braced on her elbow, one shoulder still bare, she went on talking while she stared at the tip of her pillow, which was propped up a little. “Just imagine all the people you’ll be dealing with now. Nobody has to be alone anymore.”

It was pointless to call information, because it was pointless to call Neumann. I don’t know which would have been more unpleasant, to have him answer or to have to listen to the way he pronounced his name on his mailbox.

The display showed the symbol for recharging: the outline of a little battery, with a slanted bar marching across three positions. It was the last thing I saw before I turned out the light. In the dark Constanze said, “I think I’m going to file for divorce.”

I listened to her breathing, her moving, and waited for the tootle-toot.

The shutters on the newspaper kiosk had already rattled when our hands accidentally touched. It took another eternity before we risked moving closer to each other. Then we started to devour each other in a way we hadn’t done for ages, as if lack of sleep had made us crazy.

At some point the tootle-toot began. It came from somewhere far away, like the signal of a spaceship maybe, soft and indistinct at first, gradually pressing closer, growing louder and louder, and finally drowning out everything else, until it seemed as if Constanze and I were moving without making any sound at all. The only thing we could hear was that tootle-toot — until it suddenly stopped, left us in peace, and was as silent as we were.

Berlin Bolero

“What a slime bag!” She pressed her glass to her cheek again. “And you played right into his hand. Kept your mouth shut the whole time. And he’s such a … I just don’t get it.”

Robert spread his fingers wide. He wanted to know if he could feel the wart if it didn’t rub against his middle finger. It had first felt like a scab, then like a crumb of toast.

“Four weeks at the outside,” he said, and looked up briefly. She was still leaning against the windowsill, in her dark blue bathrobe, her right arm under her breasts, her left elbow cupped in her hand. “If they hold to their plan, at most two, two more weeks.”

“It leaves such a nasty taste.” She sipped at her brandy. The red streaks across her cheek were gradually fading. “I don’t understand how you could do it, I just don’t get it.”

The rest of her brandy sloshed back and forth like the waves in the cube that he always picked up from the counter whenever he handed over his insurance card at the dentist’s: a little white sailboat on towering blue waves, always staying afloat, its sail to the wind, even when he upended the cube. His fingers slid into dovetail position. “We’ve made it through ninety-six weeks. And now it’s just two more—”

“Ninety-six shitty weeks!” She squinted and opened her mouth. The glass was empty. “All down the tubes—”

“Those ninety-six weeks weren’t shitty, Doro, not—”

“More than just shitty, it’s been … What do you call it when winos hold their clambakes in the entrance to your building, don’t even look the other way to take a piss. Or when your underwear in the drawer is filthy because somebody’s constantly drilling into a wall on one side or the other. And never a ray of daylight, with the fucking plastic sheeting over the windows, and then I’m supposed to be happy it’s just the sheeting and not some fucking asshole squatting at the window giving me the fucking finger.”

“What?”

“Oh Robert, what planet do you live on?”

“Who did that? Would you recognize him again?”

“Don’t give me that crap.…”

“I’m serious.” He had stood up. But then she gave him that look — he didn’t want to stand in front of her without being able to touch her. The muddy yellow light of the CD player surprised him.

“You think you’re serious, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re usually more imaginative.” She rolled the empty glass between her palms as she moved toward him.

“Doro,” he said.

She poured herself another.

“That’s rotgut.…” He had been keeping count and remembered to include this one. This last glass, filled to the brim, was as good as two.

She knelt down, bracing her hands on the coffee table, and slurped at the brandy. A strand of hair fell across the rim of the glass. “It’s not all that bad, your friend’s rotgut, your bud … dy’s rotgut.” To get to her feet she held on to the armchair. He didn’t want to scold her. What he wanted was for these minutes in their life to match all the others. They ought to be able to remember every hour of their lives without regrets.

“Bud … dy,” she repeated, and tried to drink as she took a step.

The one thing Robert felt he could hold against the man was that he’d lugged this booze along. Neither of them drank the hard stuff. Doro even had friends who never drank. You really had to keep that sort of thing in mind.

“Your bud … dy.”

“Two more weeks,” Robert said, looking at his hands and naked toes. Would he recognize them among a bunch of others? His hands, yes. They’d grown familiar now that he’d been regularly trimming cuticles. “But it’s all been crystal clear, from the start.”

“From the start!” She whirled around. Then she calmly said, “Those construction heinies have had to shell out week after week. They promised buyers vacant apartments, vacant, not occupied. So they just keep upping the ante, week after week.…”

“As if I didn’t know that—”

“And they’ve gone way up by now, I mean sky high. And you claim we’ve discussed this. You guys’ll never get it.”

“What’s with ‘you guys’?”

“I mean you guys, the whole pack of you—”

“Just sit down, okay?”

“I thought you were being clever, letting them dangle out there, and then right before the end …” She briefly balled a fist. Sweat was beading on her forehead, and her upper lip too. “We’ll never get an offer like that again, never!”

“When it’s all over and done with …” He looked at her, he wanted to go on talking. Once they could see the TV tower again, its flashing light, their star, and the magpies on the antenna during the day, and the chimney across the street, and the shadows creeping down the facade in the morning, until the balconies just cast little banners, pennants, as if the wind had picked up, blowing in from Friedrichshain. Robert stared at the ivy with its squidlike arms, at the bicycles in the courtyard.

She laughed.

“I don’t put up with it for two whole years and then say, Thanks a lot. It’s really been renovated nicely, lovely stairwell, good paint job.”

“Not so loud!”

“You’re such a dolt. How do you suppose he comes up with a number like that — one hundred eighty thousand, that’s exactly twenty thousand more. You could have demanded two hundred. Two …” With her free hand she traced the numbers in the air. “And five zeros. Did he show you anything? Some scrap of paper that says the apartment belongs to him?”

The CD player light bothered him, it was like somebody lurking behind the armchair. Every week he pulled out the blue ten-pack of classical music that Dorothea had given him — ten CDs for eighty-eight marks — and selected one. He knew the names of most of the composers, but memorizing titles and conductors and orchestras was like learning Russian vocabulary words in the old days. He couldn’t recall which CD he had heard last.

“You could’ve at least asked, before waiving our claims — as if I didn’t even exist, as if I were just air, thin air.…” She turned around, went out into the hallway, holding the glass with just her fingertips and then slamming it down on the telephone stand. With a few strides he was right behind her.

“I’m not running away,” she cried without looking around. “You blockhead, what a damn blockhead you are!”

“Doro,” he whispered. “The kids.”

“I’ve got to go!” She pulled the bathroom door behind her. He let his arms droop.

He sat down on the living-room sofa, right on the spot where a semicircular crease marked the spot he had just left.

By the time she stepped over the threshold again, he had to know how the evening was to proceed, how they would get to bed and fall asleep. Once they were in bed, the worst was over.

He followed the advice from a book he’d been reading during breaks at work: “Live in distinct units of time.” He just had to get Dorothea and himself through the evening, through the night.

He trusted mornings, the half hour in the kitchen when the kids had dressed and Dorothea came in and he poured the milk into her coffee. When he left the house with the kids, the dishes were already in the dishwasher.

He had been working on the apartment for two and a half years now, first the central heating and electricity, then sanding and sealing the floors room by room, repairing the windows. Every screw anchor, every bracket, every newly painted doorframe, gave him a greater sense of security. It was the boys, however, who gave him real security. When Dorothea would invite her university crowd over and show them the apartment, and he would appear in the living room with the two boys in his arms for a good-night kiss, and Dorothea would say: “Here they are, my three men!”—then no one had it better than he did, at least no one he knew.

Suddenly there was that melody again. It was coming from her purse. Robert knew the classical piece, knew the composer’s first and last names, even knew what name would be blinking on the display of her cell phone. He tossed the purse on the sofa, picked up a pillow, and pressed it down on the purse until the classical melody finally died away.

Robert had trained as a carpenter and switched from construction site to construction site for almost ten years. For three years he did heating installation, for eighteen months he delivered office furniture, hauling and assembling it. For two and a half years now he had been working for Magnum, a catering service. He had never been fired. The companies had all gone bankrupt. Nobody fired a man like him — he would bet you anything on that. There’s always enough work to be done. So there. And Dorothea? He’d never really counted on her, which was why he had been so nonchalant about things. She was already thirty-one when she got pregnant the first time. He had never known you could study that long. Whenever Dorothea got work for a couple of weeks, it was always without pay. She would be so happy to find work that each time he assumed it was permanent. But she didn’t really have to work. He took care of his family, he knew what was good for them. He didn’t need any advice, certainly not from these construction heinies.

The construction heinies had invited them to a renters’ meeting, kept staring at Dorothea, and had gone absolutely nuts when they heard Dorothea’s dialect. A southern German, a woman from their part of the country, evidently they hadn’t expected that, not in an apartment like theirs. But he had decided to put up a fight.

He had removed the lease from its folder only once — for thirty minutes. He had to take it to the copy shop on Wins Strasse, where he could get a discount on Dorothea’s student card. He wasn’t about to let the original get lost — or for that matter even get dog-eared — being shunted around in the mail.

He heard the toilet flush and didn’t know if he should stand up or stay put. Dorothea was well prepared now, had armed herself with complete sentences. He would only be able to repeat how in two weeks … once the plastic sheeting was down, and the scaffolding … after ninety-eight weeks, there’d be sky again, a day of celebration, of victory.… And for the first time that idea didn’t make him happy.

For the first six months nothing happened. Then came the notice about the scaffolding: Beware of Burglars! He bought mace and deposited a can in each room. And then the sheeting. Not one word had been said about sheeting. They had sweltered behind it for ten months before a single construction worker ever appeared. “We’re being pargrilled,” Dorothea had said. He told everyone, “If nobody moves out, they can’t do a damn thing.”

Once things got rolling the construction heinies rang the bell every week, and finally were at the door every day. He didn’t want any renovations. He didn’t have to go through bad experiences to know what was good for him. He had found his spot, and he wasn’t about to leave again.

“Shouldn’t we at least look at another apartment? Just look, I mean.” And he had simply asked Dorothea: “What don’t you like about our place? What does it still need? What did I forget to do? What you would have different? So there.”

The construction heinies crept through cracks just like the dust, and wet towels didn’t help either. He didn’t want the water heater removed from the bathroom, he didn’t want central hot water, he heated with coal, you could depend on coal — even in a power failure, or a war. He had rented a second cellar storage space and had briquettes delivered, as a backup. And bought candles, so many they haggled for a discount.

All these types of guys knew how to do was throw money around, and if that didn’t work, more money, and then some more. He could handle himself. They were the ones behaving badly, losing their patience and accusing him of all sorts of stuff. He didn’t care where they came from or whether the construction foreman lived in Neukölln or Hellersdorf. He knew just one thing — that much money would wreck his family, that they dared not let themselves be softened up and abandon their apartment. They had to survive the ordeal. And he would help Dorothea to be strong.

This fellow had caught on, and so slipped his business card under the door this evening. He was in his midthirties at most, even though he had so little hair left there was no part, even from up close. The skin on his head was shiny. “Anybody who toughs it out this long ain’t about to move out, right? They keep pushin’ their luck. And puttin’ me off till the bitter end.” Robert liked the guy’s Upper Lausatian accent and let him explain.

“I bought the apartment, this place, but vacant. Those guys in the West”—he meant the construction heinies—“say it’s just a matter of money, right, as to when you’ll move out. But I don’t believe that anymore. I want my money back, yeah, want out from under the contract, see? I’ve waited two years. They’ll keep on puttin’ me off to the bitter end.”

Finally somebody had caught on. They were never going to move out, not even for a hundred and eighty thousand. Why shouldn’t Robert sign? The construction heinies would have it in writing, all nice and official, so to speak.

Dorothea got home just as his visitor was about to leave.

“Have you ever stopped to consider”—setting Robert back on his heels—“how long you’d have to work for that kind of money? Six years, seven years.” She wouldn’t look at him, not even when she was speaking, and tugged the collar of her bathrobe tight, as if she were freezing. “Two hundred thousand, a two and five zeros, we’ve never discussed that, never.”

He could feel his eyes twitching, but he didn’t reply. He knew that — even if he was a blockhead — knew it only too well.

“I thought you guys had finally figured out how it works,” she said. “But you don’t have a clue.”

He looked up. Dorothea was bracing herself with one shoulder against the wall.

“You know …” Her head was swaying as if to some melody. Robert had seen her drunk only once before, before the boys were born. The whole way home she had sobbed and kept kicking at him. He had to drag her along behind him, like a stubborn dog. They hadn’t encountered anyone else. If he had left her on her own, she might have frozen to death. She shouldn’t ever forget that. She often came home late, sometimes very late. But the next morning, in the kitchen, everything was fine again.

“You know …” She let go of her bathrobe, edged her way along the wall to the door, and staggered out.

He followed her to the hall. The toilet door banged shut, the light went on, the toilet seat clattered against the water pipe. She retched and immediately flushed.

It was like a scene in a sitcom, when people suddenly appear, make some remark, and vanish again, leaving the others staring helplessly at one another to the sound of a laugh track.

He could hear her again now. She hadn’t locked the door behind her.

He paid no attention to Dorothea’s shriek or to the hand that waved him off, trying to shoo him away. She had to know that sort of thing wouldn’t work with him. He pushed her aside just a little, grabbed her left hand, and pressed against her hips. She bent down over the toilet bowl again, retched, coughed, spat. He held her forehead with his right hand. Her bathrobe was wide open, its long belt now brushing his toes. A thread of saliva dangled into the toilet bowl, where brownish yellow phlegm was floating.

He spoke calm, yes, comforting words to her, while she plucked at the thread of saliva as if it were a harp string. He raised her forehead a little and pulled the toilet chain. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Just take it easy, Doro, nice and easy.”

Gradually the world settled back into place. If he had to he could hold out till tomorrow morning, no question of that. As long as he felt her forehead resting in his hand nothing bad could happen.

Actually things had turned out just as they should have. His decision was final. He had done everything right. He felt like that ship on the blue waves, its sail to the wind. And even this high-proof stuff, this ill-considered gift, had served a function. How could they otherwise have made it through till tomorrow without brandy, without Dorothea’s forehead in his hand? He was grateful to him, to the fellow with the shiny skull, truly grateful.

Robert now knew how he would get Dorothea through the evening, through the night, no matter what she might have to say.

Once this part was over, he didn’t dare forget to turn off the CD player. Then he could check the CD he had played last, and remember the name of the composer. The alarm clock was set. He let Dorothea go on and on.

With his left hand he brushed the hair from the nape of her neck. That had to feel like a caress. Except she could no longer stay on her feet. Her forehead was damp and warm. Or was that his hand? He pushed in closer, so that he could prop his elbows against his ribs. He would make it through this. He just wanted to switch sides, hold her forehead in his other hand. “You’ve got to bring it all up,” he interrupted. “All of it.” Why wouldn’t she finally just shut up?

It turned out to be no more than a twist of his left wrist, just like a familiar gesture of Dorothea’s when she would tuck up her hair. For a moment he sensed the full weight of her head. His right arm dangled there as if it had fallen asleep.

Robert surprised himself with the deftness of his move, as if he had practiced it. He could feel that crumb of bread between his fingers. Her hair wrapped around his hand was wonderfully soft. He pulled Dorothea’s head back farther and farther. Her face was now directly below his. They stared at each other, watching each other, until he realized that it was too late, that he could no longer simply let go. And so, when she closed her eyes for a moment, he saw no way out except to kiss her open mouth.

Milva, When She Was Still Quite Young

To this day I don’t know what I should make of it. Was it a catastrophe? No big deal? Or merely something a little unusual? For me the worst part was those few minutes immediately afterward, that half hour in the car with Harry and Reiner. Harry was driving fast, though the dust kicked up by the redhead in the VW Passat still hung like fog over the country lane. “Gonna be fun,” Harry kept muttering. “Gonna be great fun.” The windshield wipers went on and water spurted up. Reiner — a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, the crushed pack still in his left hand — was clutching the grip above the door. A stone banged against the undercarriage. I could taste the dust on my tongue.

Before we picked up our wives in Perugia we had to get the story we were going to tell them straight. Even though we ourselves didn’t really understand what role the redhead had played. Was she the guy’s girlfriend, fiancée, a prostitute? Or a sharp-witted wife or daughter or, as Reiner suddenly claimed, a killer, whose plans we had just screwed up — or had we done her a favor?

Without even braking, Harry turned onto the road to Città della Pieve. Should we try to make it back over the border today, or would making it to another region suffice? Or was it totally unnecessary for us to take any special precautions?

Harry and Reiner were arguing. I interrupted them just once to say that it was an absurd idea to try to hide our VW Sharan or let it roll down a slope somewhere — in the valley to our left was the autostrada from Orvieto to Rome. Harry told me not to get involved. “You don’t have to worry your little head, not you, you’re free and clear, you restrained yourself oh so nobly.” As he said it he glanced briefly in the rearview mirror.

My one big worry was that sooner or later my wife, Doreen, would figure things out, no matter what sort of story we dished up.

Until that day I had lied to Doreen more out of laziness, and not because I had ever had anything to hide. But for her there’s nothing worse than a lie. That’s why I wanted us to tell the truth, simply tell how it had all come about.

“Go right ahead, just say what happened!” Harry exclaimed. “Explain that to them.”

I was sitting behind Harry and Reiner and had visions of having to move out, of all the thousand chores, all the running around to be done. Although over the last few years things had actually become easier, it was costing more and more effort to deal with the details of an orderly life. That’s what I was thinking about, and how risky it was to be having such thoughts now.

Reiner and Sabine, Harry and Cynthia — we used to camp out together on the shores of the Baltic, later then on Lake Balaton and, when that got too expensive, in the Tatras. Over the last few years we had all moved several times. Harry and Cynthia had even spent two years in Holland. None of us was still working their old jobs. We called one another on birthdays.

I no longer know which of us came up with the idea of Italy, of Umbria. Two years after the earthquake of ’97, there were still bargain-basement prices, and the photos of vacation houses were a promise of paradise.

I had come to realize over the last few years that I needed to work at my friendships if I didn’t want to be all alone someday. Besides, Doreen and I had never gone on a trip with just the two of us. Until last year Ulrike, our daughter, had always come along.

In April I got hold of a map of Italy, located Umbria, and checked how far apart Aviano and Piacenza were. Those names don’t mean much nowadays, but in the spring of ’99 you heard them daily on the radio, because it was from there that NATO aircraft took off headed for Kosovo and Serbia. Not that I would have been afraid, there were hardly any missions by then. But it seemed a bit odd to willingly get too close to such places.

When we left on May 10 it felt like I was taking off for a class reunion. The fact that we were using three cars had a calming effect. Besides we all still got along fine. You could tell that right off.

We spent the first week near Gubbio. We slept late, ate big breakfasts, took occasional long walks, sunned ourselves for hours on the lawn behind the house, and went on an excursion to Assisi.

Sometimes we watched CNN but avoided talking about the details. Reiner said that words like “airbase,” “air strikes,” and “Serbs” already seemed more familiar, more appropriate to him than the German terms, which really just sounded like translations. It was much the same for me. If I read the word Katastrophe somewhere, it immediately became “catastrophe,” whether it was about a flood in Bavaria, pollution in the Danube, or Albanians.

After four days Doreen remarked in the car that she felt like it was high time we went on a real vacation. I asked her what she meant. Was I supposed to pack our bags and declare: “My dear friends, we’ve had enough of you”? “Why not?” she said with a shrug.

On May 15 we went to see the “crazies” of Gubbio. Three teams run through the narrow streets carrying massive heavy candles and figures of saints on their shoulders. What an incredible hoot! The festive atmosphere was infectious. That evening Reiner, Harry, and I stayed on in the kitchen and polished off two bottles of Campari and the rest of our beer. When Sabine arrived to drag Reiner off to bed, he poured beer into her cleavage, which was a really stupid thing to do.

Cynthia demanded a ladies’ shopping trip to Perugia in compensation, while we men would be sent to set up house in our new quarters in Città della Pieve. Doreen’s private response to me was in terms of “treason”—she used that very word — as if I had been guilty of God knows what.

We packed everything into Cynthia and Harry’s Sharan and drove past Lago Trasimena and Chiusi with its Etruscan graves, but didn’t find the turnoff right after Città della Pieve — it’s easy to miscalculate distances — came through a little oak woods, spotted a lovely ruin that evidently now served as a quarry, and suddenly found ourselves in an open field. Straight ahead, glistening in the sun, at the end of the chain of mountains, was our country house, nestled among slopes of green woodlands.

“They’ll all just melt,” Harry said.

Halfway there — with the ruts in the road getting deeper and deeper — he gave a yell and hit the brakes. “A snake,” he said.

Actually we should have been on our guard when we saw a woman emerge from the swimming pool next to the house. She picked up a green towel, shook it out with one hand, and began drying her hair.

There was a large parking area, and we pulled in beside a new Passat with Berlin plates. Our landlord was, we’d been told, a German who owned a horse farm nearby.

We knocked at the door, walked around the house and swimming pool — the water was ice cold — took turns stretching out at poolside on the white plastic deck chair, and took in the view. “Pure luxury,” Reiner said and between two fingers held up a bikini top he’d evidently found in the grass. We knocked again, but nothing stirred inside the house.

Harry pulled out a folded piece of paper. Glued to it was a photograph — tinged a bit too blue — clearly showing this house with this swimming pool in front. I was trying to make out the message scrawled on the back when Reiner gave me a nudge.

An older man was looking down at us from a window upstairs. He had a deep tan, a jutting chin, and gray hair combed front to back.

I called up to him that we were the people who had rented the house for the coming week. “Are we too early?”

At first I thought he didn’t understand German, and tried again in English. He interrupted me, however. “Shitheads,” he shouted. “Beat it, get your asses out of here!” He pushed back from the windowsill and vanished into the room.

“What was that about?” Reiner asked.

“He signed right here,” Harry said, holding the piece of paper up to me. “He signed it, it’s his signature.”

“Herr Schröder,” Reiner called up, “Signor Schröder!” I rapped at the door several more times and finally banged it with my fist.

Harry stepped back a bit and gave the lock a kick. The door sprang open, and a few seconds later Signor Schröder came stomping out.

“Scram!” he shouted. “Scram!” We backed away from his wide-flailing arms. For a moment I was afraid he would set dogs on us.

Schröder reeked of perfume, had strikingly blue eyes, and was shorter than I expected. His Bermuda shorts were hiked almost up to his old-man breasts, which like his shoulders, arms, and legs were covered with gray hair.

We three remained calm. We wanted to talk with him. We were three men, all around forty years old, and were not about to have a doddering loudmouth from Berlin spoil our vacation. We wanted to come to some agreement. We had shelled out a deposit of a hundred marks apiece, after all. But Schröder just kept on yelling “Scram, scram!” and flapping his hands as if we were flies.

Harry showed him the contract. Schröder made a grab for it, and as Harry tried to pull it away it got torn. Schröder wadded up his piece, dropped it, and turned away.

Harry took hold of Schröder’s upper arm. They stood there frozen like that for a moment. Then Schröder whirled around and boxed Harry on the ear. Harry stumbled, fell to the gravel, but was back on his feet at once and hurled himself at Schröder — or better, Schröder had reeled back a few steps after Reiner gave his chest a shove. Harry threw him to the ground.

My friends bent down over him. All I could see was their backs. I had the impression that they were speaking with Schröder in low tones, threatening him. After that it looked as if they were stuffing something into a gunnysack.

I failed to hear the woman’s shouts. They didn’t include a word of German anyway. I just kept staring at Reiner and Harry. They were my friends, and they were in the right. Schröder had earned his little object lesson. And then — you think you know all about it, but in fact the crack of a real gunshot sounds a lot louder and more brittle.

The redhead was aiming at me. I waited for that famous film of my entire life to start fast-forwarding. I also realized it was actually illogical to start with me.

Harry and Reiner stopped working Schröder over and stepped back, back from the door where the redhead stood. She had a yellow purse slung over her shoulder and was dressed in a black pants suit. She aimed the pistol now at Harry, then at Reiner, then at Harry again. I can’t say much more than that.

The old man was lying between them like a big gym bag. I figured the redhead would kneel down to look after Schröder, or maybe even press the pistol into his hand, because suddenly, like a soccer player signaling an injury, he thrust his arm up and snatched at the air a few times.

Without taking her eyes off us, the redhead hissed something at him. I don’t know where she got the green towel that she tossed to him. It landed across his knees. Then she ran along the wall of the house to the parking area, to the new Passat. She must have been familiar with the car, for in no time she was gone, tearing across the field.

I gave the old man a once-over. He was breathing heavily and constantly seemed on the verge of wanting to cough, but evidently lacked the strength even for that. He tried to look at me but kept wincing the whole time, as if in great pain. Although he apparently had come away with just some scratches and abrasions, his chest hair was smeared with blood. Through the front door I could make out large white floor tiles and a huge exhaust hood.

We three were still at odds in Perugia. But it felt good to be among people again. If I ever have to go into hiding, I’d much rather do it in a city than in a forest or mountains.

I suggested we look for a hotel for the night and then inquire at the tourist office tomorrow about a new rental. Reiner and Harry agreed.

Harry said we should nip any stupid ideas in the bud, and Reiner threw an arm across my shoulder. “Let’s be nice to us for a change,” he said.

The women appeared marching at double time, large paper bags slapping at their calves and knees. They had hung their purses around their necks. Doreen’s face and arms were flecked with red spots. Cynthia was crying. This of course worked to our advantage.

Some beggar women with babies at their breasts had followed them. “We didn’t pay them much attention, we ignored them,” Sabine exclaimed. The beggars weren’t about to be shaken off, became more and more brazen, and had finally grabbed hold of Cynthia and Sabine by the arm. “I tried to break it up,” Doreen said. “But they started scratching at me, really sinking their nails in.” And Cynthia said that they couldn’t take their eyes off her new watch, a present from her parents.

Reiner then told our wives our story about a petty crook from Berlin and an Italian whore, adding that at least we’d been able to get our money back and weren’t going to let lowlifes like that ruin our vacation. And that I’d made a marvelous suggestion.

“That’s the best idea of the whole vacation,” Sabine said.

Harry went to arrange for a hotel, while we sat on a terrace directly next to where we had met and ordered mineral water and Campari-orange.

“The awful thing is,” Sabine said, “that you’ve constantly got to keep your eyes peeled in case those women show up again.”

Our hotel was the Fortuna, had four stars, and in front of its glass entrance doors was a thick red carpet with gold stripes at the edges and a coat of arms in the middle.

It turned out to be a very lovely evening. The women modeled their new frocks, and I had a sense that Doreen regretted her charge of treason. She drank at least as much as I did.

Harry whispered to me that I should just hold in there and had no reason whatever to hang my head. The moron had no one to blame but himself, and had collected more than enough for his pain and suffering. “He started it,” Harry said. “He wanted it that way.”

The redhead kept running through my mind, over and over. It’s hard to describe her. She looked like the chanteuse Milva when she was still quite young.

At the breakfast buffet Reiner grinned at me. The hotel bill, he said, had been taken care of.

We found a nice place in Passignano on Lago Trasimena. This was pretty significant territory. Hannibal had won a battle against the Romans here in 217 B.C., but except for a marked trail and a few excavated cremation graves there’s nothing left to see.

Lago Trasimena isn’t very big, and above all it’s shallow. That eased my mind, because news reports that planes unable to get rid of all their bombs over Yugoslavia were dropping them in the Adriatic near Venice were apparently no joke.

Except for an excursion to Orvieto we stuck to Passignano. I wasn’t about to have the redhead recognize us in a restaurant somewhere. Maybe they were looking for us.

But nothing ever came of it. Neither at the border — not a soul there anyway — nor back at home. Several weeks later I received a police notice — a speeding ticket. And at one point Doreen wanted to know what had really happened with the guy from Berlin. I had been expecting the question.

Apparently my answer was so convincing that Doreen didn’t pursue it. Hasn’t to this day. I think she’s forgotten about it. Everything seems okay with Reiner and Harry, too. We are back to calling one another on birthdays. I always intend to bring up what they did to Schröder. But that’s not easy on the telephone.

I know that things have changed somewhat since then, but I can’t put my finger on it. I’ve lost friends before Reiner and Harry, but that’s not it. We might even set things right again. It’s more as if I’ve crossed a threshold, as if my brain shifts automatically to memory — or at least is testing what that might be like someday, when old age really sets in.

I still think about the redhead a lot. Because as things are, she surely is and remains the only person who has ever seriously considered knocking me off. If a woman I don’t know at all decides I shouldn’t die, isn’t it within the realm of possibility that she could just as well have decided to have a go at it with me, maybe a life-long go? I would have climbed into her Passat as a hostage and never surfaced again. I know that sounds odd. But I increasingly find myself considering such notions, and it costs me more and more effort to find my way back to everyday life.

Sometimes, however, I give myself over to the most routine memories, our arrival at the place near Gubbio for instance. I see us unpacking the car that evening. Harry uncorks a bottle. We take a short walk in the meadow behind the house, looking across the hills and up at the towering snowcapped Apennines, each of us with a glass in hand. Nobody says a word, not even when we find ourselves in a circle as if by chance and clink glasses. At this point I never fail to get goose bumps and can think of nothing better than breaking into song.

Calcutta

This was three weeks ago, on a Tuesday. The forecast had been for rain, but it was clear and sunny all day. After putting in my two hours of practice, I ate an early lunch and set to work mowing the lawn. The plan was yard work for this week, the garage and the snow tires the week after — dealing with the car just in general — then came cleaning out gutters and another go at the yard, and finally, as my last outdoor chore before snow set in, the graves. If you wait until the week before Remembrance Sunday, the cemetery parking lot is full.

I first noticed her standing at the threshold of her back door and gazing my way. By “her” I mean Becker’s wife. We generally refer to our neighbors only in the plural, the Beckers — him, her, and their three kids, Sandra, Nancy, and Kevin.

Becker’s wife didn’t respond when I called over. I repeated my “Hello, hello!” and waved. She kept on looking in my direction but didn’t react. On Sunday, that is two days before, she had brought us the mousetrap, and we’d thanked her with a jar of quince jelly.

I didn’t have a clue what could have got her ticked off at us over the course of the previous forty-eight hours. I detached the half-full basket from the mower. But instead of emptying it into the blue plastic bag — which would have meant turning my back to her — I carried it to the compost heap behind the garage. I’m always amazed at how fast grass and our little hard apples are transformed into a kind of glop. The stupid thing is we have no real use for it. What we need is mulch to keep the weeds from shooting up over our heads, and good mulch is expensive.

I reattached the basket to the mower. When I straightened up I automatically looked in her direction, gave another wave, shouted, “The last time!”—I meant mowing the lawn — and attempted a smile. She stood there like a figure in a wax museum.

I went back to work and the pace picked up, since there were no apples lying in the grass and only a few drifted leaves.

Maybe I should say something about the mouse, about the mouse and the mosquitoes. Saturday night Martina had woken me up. “Do you hear that? Don’t you hear it?” She sounded just a little hysterical. “A mouse! Don’t you hear it?” The mouse must have scampered in at the window. There had been frost the past few mornings. Martina claimed mice had no trouble clambering up a stucco wall, especially if it was overgrown with a grapevine.

A mousetrap didn’t even occur to us, as if that was old-fashioned, obsolete. Martina’s plan was to lure the Findeisens’ cat over, and I was supposed to move one cabinet after the other away from the wall. There was no mention of a mousetrap until noon, when she was hanging up the wash and told Becker’s wife all about it.

The two green interlocking boxes looked more like a homemade telescope. Inside was a triggered pedal, so that when the mouse ran over it the door slammed shut behind. Becker’s wife had recommended using sponge cake. Sponge cake was sure to catch any mouse. As I said, that had been two days ago, and I knew of no reason to feel guilty.

And then I just couldn’t take it anymore. I left the mower standing in the middle of the lawn and walked over to her.

“I bought a sponge cake,” I said. “Would you like a piece?” I wanted to add that even stale sponge cake tasted good with Martina’s jelly. But she interrupted me.

“Keep your fingers crossed for us,” she repeated more loudly. With every step she took the legs of her black leather pants rubbed together — a sound somewhere between a squeak and a crunch. “If you want to do something for us, cross your fingers.”

As she spoke Becker’s wife braced herself against the clothes pole and stared at me almost savagely.

Standing between the fence and the quince tree, I listened to her and had no idea how I would ever be able to make my retreat.

Kevin was in a coma. It had happened in front of the theater, between the two construction sites.

She described it all in great detail. I might even say she got caught up in it, pressing both hands to her ribs and pelvis, slapping her thighs, only to begin squeezing her temples between the heels of both hands and attempting to turn her head, but holding it in place as if caught in a vise. Her sweater had inched up to her navel.

Becker’s wife began to weep. I was about to scale the fence and take her hand in mine when their telephone rang.

She left the back door ajar. So I waited. After a few minutes I pushed the mower over to the fence, dragged the extension cord over, and set to work again in view of her back door, never letting it out of my sight. I assumed Becker’s wife was telling somebody what she had just told me, and wondered if she was making the same gestures as she held the phone, but with only one hand touching her body.

Instead of bothering to bend over to empty the mower basket, I went into a squat and, slipping the plastic bag around it, upended it all at once. I worked as if under the watchful eye of a supervisor.

To be honest I was relieved that the reason for her strange behavior wasn’t because of some misunderstanding between us — if there has to be a dispute, better one with your colleagues than your neighbors. At home you need your peace and quiet.

Neighborliness requires nothing more than a greeting and a few extra words. That’s no problem in summer. And when there’s nothing more to do in the yard, you don’t see much of one another, even if your back doors are only forty feet apart.

I rang the doorbell at the Beckers’ and the Findeisens’ just once all last winter, under the pretext of needing a couple of onions and a lemon. You have to do that sort of thing on weekends, of course. And bring back at least twice as much on Monday. You want them to know they can depend on you. Moreover, hardly a week goes by that I don’t accept a package for somebody on the block. And I’m willing to do other favors as well, all anybody needs to do is ask.

And so I kept my eye on her back door, but somehow missed the moment when she closed it. Had Becker’s wife noticed that I had long since finished mowing around the quince tree? Had I looked ridiculous?

It was on the little strip of grass between the street and the house that I found the schnapps bottles. There was always at least one, but this time there were three: two bottles of Golden Meadow and one of Little Coward. A fourth one missing its label had been set upside down on the narrow brick border around our herb bed. Evidently street people had taken a break at our place on their way to the shelter. That also explained the dog shit, which luckily the mower cleared as it passed over.

I always assumed we had come to some tacit agreement with the street people: They were to screw the tops back on the bottles and not fling them into the street or against the wall of the house. Most of the time I just tossed these wino bottles into the garbage, although normally we carefully separate metal caps from glass. But tossing four of them into the container at once — no, I couldn’t do it. On the other hand, the idea of screwing off the caps disgusted me — those belong in the yellow bag — plus having to rinse out the bottles before putting them in the bin for throwaway glass. I propped all four against the garbage can. Maybe Martina would come up with a solution.

That particular afternoon the grass smelled at times like sorrel, then like fish, and then again like it had in the spring. It even left a taste like sliced cucumbers in my mouth.

Around five o’clock Becker himself came home and vanished into the house. He works in a computer store. At one time he had been part of the cadre responsible for selling Planeta printing presses worldwide. Martina always holds up his example to me — he had just rolled up his sleeves. Because he, or so she claimed, didn’t think he was too good for any job.

He’s one of those people who can eat whatever they want and never get fat — and pride themselves on the fact. He almost always wears faded blue jeans, with a big bunch of keys hanging from one belt loop to announce his comings and goings like a cowbell.

Ten minutes later the Beckers drove off with the two girls.

Although it was almost dark and I had done more than enough for one day, I went on working. I prefer to go back into the house along with Martina, or after her on those rare occasions when she fixes supper. Nowadays she’s frequently late, a whole hour on that particular Tuesday. I waited to tell her the news until she was sitting in the kitchen.

I had taken note of every detail — from the broken cheekbones, collarbones, and ribs, to the pelvis and legs, down to the decrease in cerebral pressure, and how Nancy, who had witnessed the whole thing, was getting psychological counseling.

Holding her head between her hands, Martina looked as if she were covering her ears. She often sits there like that when she’s tired. I think we were both relieved to find Felix at the door.

In May he had joined a group of fellow students in a shared apartment not far from Market Square, a real tumbledown dump. He’s been paying the fifty marks’ rent himself. I don’t know where he’s getting the money from.

Martina told him about the Beckers. I was hoping she would forget some detail so I could chime in. She asked me how the driver was doing. I shrugged.

“Close call,” was all that Felix managed to come up with in reply to Martina’s report. She wanted to know what he meant by that. Felix had his mouth full and chopped at the air with the edge of his hand. “It happened to our neighbors, that’s a close call.”

I waited for Martina to say something. But nothing apt came to her either.

Ever since he moved out, Felix and I are getting along better again. We both think Martina’s new hairdo is silly. From a distance it looks like she’s wearing a beret.

Felix was still eating when Martina stood up with a start. She ran upstairs ahead of us. “Nothing this time either,” she said, eyeing me.

It was only then I realized how much I hated having a mousetrap in the house. At that moment — I’m certain of it — the feeling crept over me that those interlocked metal boxes were like bad-luck magnets. We placed the trap closer to the window and crumbled more sponge cake.

It stayed sunny all week. I practiced every day from nine to eleven. I think my playing is pretty good, even if of late there is nobody to hear me. My bow technique especially has improved quite a bit. Bow technique and etudes. I had never really had the time before. Bach and Mozart as my reward. Afterward I concentrate on housework.

When I’m not in the mood for practicing, I listen to music. All I ever ask for are CDs. The public library doesn’t have many to lend out. Of late I’ve been listening to our records again. What a feeling to lift the tone arm to the edge and slowly shift the lever and watch the stylus make contact! The complete Beethoven with Masur, Schumann with Sawallisch. I’ve listened to them since I was fifteen, sixteen. I could conduct them. I could direct it all by heart. I’ve always worked as a construction engineer, usually as project manager. But deep down I’m a musician.

Becker’s wife had taken sick leave. I watched her open the door for her kids. Their front door doesn’t open onto the street but is at the side, directly opposite our bathroom window.

As soon as her husband came home, they would drive off, with Sandra and Nancy usually along. They’d come back after two or three hours.

That Friday Becker’s wife was just returning from shopping when I went to check the mail. She had lost weight. She looked good. I nodded to her but then turned back as if I had the wrong key.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” was the statement I had prepared for any eventuality. She would hardly have been interested in news about the mouse. Not that there was any, although the first thing Martina did when she got home from work was to run upstairs. “Nothing this time either,” she’d say.

I added a piece of ham to the sponge cake. Normally our eyes take only a few days to integrate a strange object into a larger familiar image. But I found the thing more and more disgusting — the very idea of having to hold both boxes in my hands with a mouse running back and forth inside. Or would it play dead? Once we got to that point I wanted to call the Becker kids over. It would add some variety to their lives. And they could take the trap with them.

It was always Martina who heard the mouse. I wouldn’t even have noticed a mouse without her. What plagued me at night were the mosquitoes. I always thought mosquitoes die in the fall. This year it looked as if they were going to spend the winter with us. At first I thought they were biting just me — one even managed to creep up inside a nostril. But come morning I saw that Martina had more bites than me — so I had no reason to complain.

Last year around the same time when I was tidying up the attic, I discovered that a whole army of spiders had marched through the skylight. But mosquitoes in November is an entirely different matter, wouldn’t you say?

That last week in October I had also taken care of the gutters and had cut back the grapevine. Of course I take care of the chores too — from shopping to cleaning house. I like doing it.

If Martina were the one to stay at home, the world would find that perfectly normal. Men, however, are always telling me how much they have to do. And if I say that I’m up to my ears in work too, they grin and give me a dumb look.

You automatically take a backseat of course. I never sit up watching television longer than Martina. When she gets up in the morning I head for the kitchen to make breakfast. As long as Felix was still living here, it was me who woke him up and chased him out of bed.

I think Martina likes having hardly any housework to do and always having somebody who’s there to greet her, who sets the table for her. Everything has its good side. And as long as the money covers expenses … It used to be perfectly normal for somebody to stay at home full-time.

The thing is, once Lippendorf was finished, I put in an application with every department, even PR work. Who should know a project better than somebody who helped build it? After all, I knew that box inside and out. Do you suppose they gave me a chance? They didn’t even call me in for an interview. It’s all a matter of cliques, whether old or new. You side with either one bunch or the other. Otherwise you’re just out of luck. The unemployment office had the bright idea of sending me to a free newspaper. I was supposed to polish doorknobs looking for advertisers. “I built a power plant,” I said, and was out the door. If I ever take on something like that, it’s all over, I’m washed up. I don’t need to explain that, do I?

Early in the second week with the mouse, I had just come in from the yard and was about to take a shower when I heard our car in the driveway, and seconds later Martina’s footsteps. Just as you can automatically hum the rest of a familiar melody, I waited for the sound of her key in the front door. I stepped into the tub, but then turned the tap off again when nothing more happened. I interrupted my shower a couple of times to call Martina’s name. Finally, my hair still wet, I walked out into the yard. Martina and Becker’s wife were standing at the fence. Martina had done some grocery shopping. So I had the excuse of offering to take both bags into the house. I unpacked it all, made some tea, set the table, and thumbed through the newspaper inserts.

“Makes a person feel truly sorry for them,” Martina said after having drunk a glass of apple juice. I was annoyed that she took it for granted that I had once again put together a nice meal and then had to wait for her.

From then on they stood there every evening. Becker’s wife would even come outside in the dark just so she could talk with Martina.

So we were kept well posted. Martina talked about how much Andrea, Becker’s wife, missed her Kevin every time she turned around. “An adult,” Martina said, “would no longer be alive. But with children there’s still hope even when doctors are at the end of their tether.”

I thought about how even in cases like this a certain kind of routine sets in. You drive to the hospital, hold your child’s hand for a few hours, convince yourself he’s just sleeping, talk with the doctors, have them explain what they’ll be trying to accomplish with the next operation, and cry a little before you leave. The garage door signals that they’re back home. Evidently you have to give it a kick to open or close it. One after the other, three motion-sensitive lights go on, and the four Beckers march into the house Indian file as if moving across a stage.

Until yesterday at any rate there was nothing new in the mouse department. I was constantly greeted with Martina’s message of “Nothing this time either.” I was told I ought to pull the furniture out from the wall a little more at least. The back of one cabinet had been nibbled at. “You see!” Martina exclaimed. “Just look at that!”

How was the mouse my fault? Can you tell me that?

I went out into the yard and set to work weeding. The best time for pulling weeds from between the walkway cracks is when everything is damp and nothing is growing anymore.

Suddenly somebody said, “You’ve just about got it licked,” or something like that. Even though he was wearing his bunch of keys as always, I hadn’t noticed the head of the Becker household.

Becker was resting his hands on the fence, and it was obvious this was going to be awkward and I couldn’t just keep on squatting there.

“Well?” I said, “How’s it going?”

“You ever been to Calcutta?”

I thought maybe he had misspoken and meant the Indian restaurant that had just opened up on the grounds of the old Russian barracks. Luckily I just said no.

“That’s a city you’ve got to see!” he exclaimed. “You don’t understand one thing about this world if you haven’t experienced Calcutta.”

He started in and there seemed to be no end to his tale. The whole thing sounded a little odd to me, but I listened all the same. At first I was still thinking about Martina — about me and Martina — but then I just listened to what the head of the Becker household had to say.

“You planning to go back?” I asked when he paused to blow his nose.

“Wait just a sec,” he said, turned around, and went back into the house. He returned with a heavy necklace, corals alternating with silver balls.

“Here, have a look. Stuff like this goes for a song there.”

I raised my dirty hands. He misunderstood and hung the necklace over my right forearm.

It was really heavy. I examined it while he went on talking. After ten minutes he took the necklace back and wrapped it around his wrist. It was already dark when he stuck out his hand to say good-bye.

I called my mother that same evening. Sometime I’d like to actually ask her why she hadn’t let me enroll in the high school that focuses on music. Have you ever heard of a musician getting fired? I haven’t.

Lately my mother always wants to know if I’m sleeping okay. That’s become her criterion for general well-being. I told her I’d be sleeping well enough if weren’t for the damned mosquitoes.

“That’s funny!” she exclaimed. “I’ve got bites every morning, regular mosquito bites.” Now that was eerie, I thought, right out of Hitchcock. If those little beasts were suddenly going crazy at the end of the millennium, that meant something. On the other hand that might get things moving, there might be a lot of new jobs, cram courses for trained exterminators.

Last night I left the window wide open — that way it wouldn’t be so cozy for mosquitoes.

I assume it was the Beckers’ garage door that woke me up. I heard their car start and back out onto the driveway. I recognized Becker’s voice. He was talking to his wife. Then the girls came trotting out. He told them both to go back to bed. All I heard from her was a kind of a clucking and that sound her leather pants make when she walks. Both car doors slammed shut almost simultaneously. I didn’t get up. The girls stayed outside for a while. I could only make out individual words.

I was surprised that they left the garage door open. Maybe they thought they’d be back soon. It was a foolish thing to do, though — an open garage with bikes, tires, and all sorts of tools.

Farther off in town I could hear a few cars and a freight train approaching. We’ve lived here long enough to recognize all the sounds. But they travel this well only on November nights.

Gradually I could make out the stems of the leafless grapevines framing the window. They looked like the feelers of giant snails or like Vs for victory, or like the feet of animals you might assemble out of matchsticks. As it grew lighter and the Findeisens’ car drove off, the stems seemed to turn reddish. Where they thicken at the end they look like Q-tips. For a moment I thought I smelled alcohol, and thought of the street people and their bottles. I had no idea what Martina had done with those.

She slept until the alarm went off, threw me a quick glance, and sat up on the edge of the bed. Before getting up she stretched her arms above her head. I used to pull her back into bed sometimes.

I could sense that it wouldn’t even take her asking me a question — just one single word, something totally trivial — and I’d lose it. I’ve slowly learned to live with the feeling. It hardly scares me anymore. It comes over me with almost soothing regularity. And I give in to it — but of course only when I’m alone. Other people, especially those who think they know me, would find it upsetting. Basically it’s nothing more than bleeding radiators. That has to be done every now and then.

Of course it was clear to me that I had to get up. The timing was tight, and if nothing had been done when Martina emerged from the bathroom, she’d have to leave without breakfast. Pulling the car out and sitting there waiting at the front gate wouldn’t help either.

I thought I heard the Beckers’ car. I raised my head from the pillow and listened. From that position I could see the mousetrap. It was still wide open.

And then I heard the bathroom door and Martina going downstairs. Step by step, stair by stair, finally her heels striking the kitchen tiles and the squeak — or more like the whinny — of the refrigerator door.

Suddenly it was clear to me that the mouse — presuming it was still alive — had been listening to these same sounds and noises, although maybe somewhat muted by the cabinet. And that it probably could tell whether somebody was going up or down the stairs, and that it felt frightened when steps approached, and maybe even joy or at least relief when they moved away again, though that didn’t change its situation. And I understood that all I needed to do was close the trap, carry it out into the yard, and come evening tell Martina that the mouse had shot away like an arrow. I was sorry I hadn’t thought of that earlier, and how this was a great moment to give the trap back, to be rid of it at last — right now, when I could hear the Beckers laughing. I only had to go to the window and I’d see the Beckers, all five of them, coming up the hill and waving at us over and over. Although they were still a good distance off, I spotted the huge sponge cake they were carrying, a gift for their hosts. I still remember wanting to compare their three kids, scampering ahead in their bright outfits, to butterflies in a flowery meadow. “Like butterflies, like butterflies,” I wanted to call out to them.

I can still recall the kids, them and how the sound of their footsteps came closer and closer. Have you ever actually been to Calcutta?