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

Mr. Neitherkorn and Fate

“I needed a haircut,” I began. “But either the hairdressers were busy giving manicures or were fully booked, or I ended up in a beauty salon.” Mr. Neitherkorn looked up from his cup as if about to say something, but then just extracted a sugar cube from the bowl, dunked it in his coffee, and shoved it into his mouth to suck on. “Suddenly,” I went on, “there was a shopwindow, and inside what looked like a swarm of barbers. Their customers, all people of color, were sitting in regal but well-worn barber chairs. The white men working around them didn’t seem too happy, looked lost in smocks a couple sizes too large. They ran shavers across black and brown skulls and finished off by massaging the now bald heads with perfume. When a chair opened up for me, I demonstrated for a short lithe man, probably in his early forties, how much he should take off. He nodded, dampened my hair with squirts from a spray bottle, and picked up a comb. It wasn’t very pleasant for either of us. I can’t get a comb through my hair myself unless it’s soaking wet. But I didn’t complain. After a while my barber asked his neighbor something in Russian. But the man was so busy trimming a beard narrow as a helmet strap along the chin line of a shaved head that he failed to respond. I made some remark. The barber looked at me in the mirror as if enjoying watching me grimace under the tug of his comb. Where was I from? And him? From Bukhara. I said that I’d been to Bukhara once, and had enjoyed both the city and the desert. His comb halted midstroke, and we smiled at each other in the mirror. He described for me exactly where his apartment had been — across from the monument of a Hero of the People, did I remember it perhaps? Pumping cloud upon cloud of vapor from his spray bottle, he tried to prompt my memory with more details, but without success. He had trained as an engineer but had been living in the U.S. for a year now, along with his whole family. ‘Better a barber in New York than an engineer in Bukhara?’ I asked — purely rhetorically. And then he replied: ‘Nu, chto delat? Eto sudba.’”

“And what does that mean?” Mr. Neitherkorn asked, tracing his lips with the tip of his finger.

“‘Well, what’s a man to do, it’s fate’—fate, destiny, something like that. When I left the shop a half hour later — six dollars including a shave — three barbers offered a farewell handshake, and a fourth, who was having a cigarette outside, said: ‘Shchastlivo,’ sort of ‘Have a nice day.’”

“And that’s why you want to write about it?” Mr. Neitherkorn was propping his forehead between his palms.

“It was pure chance. I could have chosen another word just as well,” I replied. “But when somebody says that right to my face, and in Russian besides? Why should I come up with something on my own?”

“But if you’re going to claim that there is no such thing as fate?” He looked up, and I could see the reddish rims of his eyes.

“I meant that I don’t use the word myself. And besides,” I added, happy that I could now put the sentence to good use, “besides, the only important issue is why we believe there is or isn’t such a thing as fate.”

Mr. Neitherkorn crunched down on the last bit of sugar and took a sip without lifting his elbows from the table.

“So the only important issue,” I said, disappointed by Mr. Neitherkorn’s reaction, “is why we use the term.”

“If that’s how you see it,” he said. His tongue was playing with his dentures again.

Every day around one thirty in the afternoon, weekends included, Mr. Neitherkorn would arrive at the apartment. I always heard his key in the door, quickly followed by a key in the two locks to the adjoining room. Then it fell quiet, until he entered the kitchen around four o’clock, made coffee, and waited for me to join him. Usually the cotton plugs were still in his ears — he never went out on the street without them. He supplied the coffee, I bought the milk. If I didn’t show up by five, he would knock on my door. If I was going out for the afternoon, Mr. Neitherkorn liked to be informed — he just wanted to know I was all right.

At first I had acquiesced. But then it became a habit and finally an effort, or simply a drawback of the apartment that justified the rent: $289 for 275 square feet on the seventeenth floor on the Upper West Side — there was nothing cheaper anywhere in Manhattan. And he was gone again by six.

I had found my way to Mr. Neitherkorn by a series of unusual accidents. His wife, also a German, had died early that year. He was now living in an old folks’ home on West End Avenue and dropped by just to organize “final matters”—or that’s how the friend who led me to Mr. Neitherkorn had put it.

I read the article on “Fate” in the Brockhaus lexicon in the library of the Goethe Haus: “A term for the experience that much of what happens to a human being or in the world at large and in history is not the result of human will and action, but is imposed ‘from outside.’ Fate can thus appear as the decree of numinous powers, as ‘law,’ as the will of God, or in its secular form as something determined for a person by biological, social, or psychological factors.” There in black and white was everything you needed to know.

Grimms’ Dictionary offers numerous examples of the use of the word, for instance by Goethe: “Fate, before whose wisdom I stand in great awe, may — given the accidentality by which it works — wield a very clumsy apparatus.” This sentence was the answer to all questions, including those that had vexed me as a schoolboy: Why is the historical mission of the working class legitimate, and why must the working class be led by a new kind of party? Because fate accidentally wields a clumsy apparatus.

There are two pages on fate in Hoffmeister’s Philosophical Dictionary. The first page uses as its point of reference the work of a fellow named Gehl, who in 1939 published a book entitled The Germanic Belief in Fate, in which he explains why among Germans fate is necessarily imbued with a heroic character, and concludes: “What lies concealed behind this is nothing less than the proud belief in the utter freedom of man in the face of every sort of coercion, a belief arising from the depths of the German heart and finding its unflinchingly venerated culmination in a death approached with a smile.”

One should likewise consult Gehl as regards the merger of a personal belief in fate with a mystical, suprapersonal sense of “a common fate of all living creatures.” This is followed by a few bibliographical references and the next article: “Fatuousness.”

“Did you strike it rich?” Mr. Neitherkorn asked. “Have you discovered what fate is?” He rummaged in his shopping bag.

“In the Western world ‘fate’ is conceived of as either passive or active,” I attempted to summarize. “‘Passive’ means there is a point of origin, and after that events unroll more or less according to plan. If you regard it as more active, it functions generatively. You tough life out and hope you won’t get sick. If your own life is more or less determined by outside factors, you assume fate is running the show. Fate is a secularized version of God. You don’t want him to be in charge anymore. Left on your own, however, you feel overburdened. Even if I had found a dissertation on the correct usage of the word ‘fate,’ it wouldn’t have got me much further.”

“There’s definitely a study of that sort,” Mr. Neitherkorn said as he sat down.

“Sure,” I said. “But aren’t stories better than treatises?”

“You evidently don’t have a very philosophical turn of mind, do you?” he asked, cutting the carrot cake in half, including the plastic wrap.

“Philosophy’s never been my thing,” I replied. “That level of abstraction always allows you to assert the exact opposite. Evil — that’s what abstractions are; fate — that’s other people.”

Mr. Neitherkorn looked up. “Is that original with you?” He shoved me half the carrot cake and took a bite of his piece.

“It quickly becomes anything you want it to be,” I said. “Fate — that’s Oedipus; fate — that’s my language; fate — that’s my comrades or my genes. Man’s fate is man. I am fate. Fate — that’s vodka or 7Up or our carrot cake here. It always works, if you don’t apply it too clumsily, or maybe when you do. We should simply say, this and that happened. Why talk about fate?”

“People in fact use the concept of fate,” Mr. Neitherkorn responded, “at the point when they don’t understand what forces are playing games with us.” He looked at the carrot cake he’d been nibbling and cleared his throat.

“Do you know what I don’t understand? Why you’re here.” He ran a fingertip across his lips again and stared at his cup. That’s an odd question to hear from your landlord.

“I’ve got a scholarship,” I said.

“I know that,” he said. “But why did you apply for it? Why do you write your stories here and not in Germany, when ultimately they’re about Germany? Why have you left your wife alone for six months, with a monthly fax and telephone bill of six hundred dollars, spending your summer sitting in front of an air conditioner, in a city where a person can’t even get a good night’s sleep? I don’t get it.”

“Don’t you like being here?” I asked.

“Not in the least,” he said and suddenly sat up straight as a ramrod in his chair. “What would make you think that?”

Sunday. I’ve just received a fax.

“If a writer is going to meditate on fate, somebody should be reading Job softly in the background, the ‘story of a simple man.’ I had just run across a sentence for you while I was reading it this morning and wondering whether to get up and send it off to you, when the doorbell rang, around eight. Job was at the door, your Gypsy. His wife and child are in the hospital in Romania, he needs money. He’d already heard that you’re not here but in America. I had 180 marks on me, so I gave him a towel to wash up with, made him breakfast, and then we headed for the bank. I took out four hundred. Why not more? He’s learned that pleading beggar’s look well, kisses my hand, thanks God. For what? For fifty more to bring the kids a little something. And for his father? I still had thirty left, and I held on to it. All the while I was thinking how it’s no wonder bicycles disappear, and that it’s not just contrary to convention but to nature itself to be alone. And this old house seemed a huge luxury to me. I turned taciturn and unfriendly, Job still running through my mind. I couldn’t deal with very basic reality.

“Fate is simply life that you have to change. But that doesn’t happen often. There’s a passage in Roth — it comes when Mendel Singer’s son Shemeriah is fleeing from the military, just before he’s led across the border: ‘Shemeriah drank some schnapps, he felt hot, but calm. He had never felt so safe before; he knew that he was living through one of those strange moments when a man has to shape his fate no less than the great forces that assigned it to him.’”

I’ve been trying to pay my telephone bill. For questions they give you a number to call. Beneath it the line: “We’re here to help you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.” I’ve been unable to reach anybody — I mean no human being. After the first message you punch a number, after the next another one, and so on and so forth, from message to message. After I’d worked my way through the menu of five punched numbers, it looped back around to the start. I began all over again, pressed one number several times and finally ended up with a message that promised me “assistance” at last. “We’re sorry,” the voice said. “All our lines are busy.” I should try later. But I had no idea how I had managed to get even that far along in the chain.

On Wednesday I went out to Fire Island with C. We stopped in Brooklyn to pick up his wife’s car from the repair shop. C. wove through the streets of Hasidic Crown Heights, as far as the border with the Puerto Rican section. Repairs that would run fifteen hundred in Manhattan cost only five hundred dollars here, C. said, and laughed long and hard.

I stared at the men in their hats, sidelocks, dark glasses, and caftans. They move no more quickly or agilely than other people, but in that garb they seem to, since one unconsciously takes them to be much older than they are. But often what emerges from behind the glasses, under the hat brim, between the side-locks is a child’s face. Or is it the contrast to the black men leaning against the wall beside the garage? There must be ten different Hasidic groups. Menachem Mendel Schneerson was the chief rabbi of the Lubavitchers, whom many held, and still hold, to be the Messiah. Now that he is dead they say they were simply not worthy of him.

“If somebody believes, then he believes,” C. exclaimed. “There’s nothing you can do,” and he laughed as if he had saved another thousand dollars.

He told me about his grandmother, who was the grand dame of Elberfeld back in the twenties. Before 1933 she contributed two million marks to Hitler. She was convinced that when Hitler said Jews, he didn’t mean German Jews but the other ones, the Jews in Galicia. “It took a long time for her to abandon her belief.” He laughed again.

“If we were to understand the Holocaust as fate,” C. added, “that would also mean it could be repeated and we wouldn’t have to ask who did it. There is a difference between saying, ‘the fate of the Jews’ or ‘what the Germans did to the Jews,’ you know?”

T. called. They’re driving west in a rental from “Junk Body, A-1 Motor.” Just outside New York, as they put it, they got into trouble. T. thought she was photographing a group of actors. They were Amish people. “They don’t drive cars,” she said, “don’t have refrigerators, electric lights, no TV, no chemical fertilizers, no telephone. And you know what the craziest part is? They’re completely right, from a practical point of view.”

“I read in last week’s Newsweek,” I said, “that churchgoers are statistically much less likely to have heart trouble.”

“There, you see,” she said. “Another miracle.”

As I came up out of the subway today a man thrust a piece of paper into my hand — nothing religious, not an ad, as the man proudly announced. Instead: “9 ways to find peace of mind.” Under point one it reads: “Nursing a grudge depresses your level of happiness by 50 % on average.” This is followed by less concrete suggestions: You need to cooperate with life, avoid self-pity, but also not expect too much of yourself, etc. Point seven demands the reactivation of “old-fashioned virtues”: love, faithfulness, thrift, church attendance. The culmination is point nine: “Find something bigger than you are that you can believe in.” It claims that self-absorbed materialistic people are less happy on average than those who are religious and act out of altruism. In a study by Duke University the latter folks achieved “top happiness rates.”

On the day after the NASA press conference announcing that traces of organic life had been found in the rocks of Mars, the Japanese guy at the sushi counter asked me a question. But I didn’t understand because of his thick accent. Finally he wrote it down for me on a napkin: Did I believe in God? “No,” I said, “I don’t believe in God.” He turned to a black man who was waiting for his take-out order. Of course he believed in God, he exclaimed. “Who made us if not the Lord?” He was angry at the Japanese guy because he didn’t believe in God. The sushi chef asked me another question I couldn’t understand. And wrote on the napkin again: “UFO.” He believed in them. And me? I shook my head again. What did I believe in, he wanted to know. My mouth was full, and so I had time to think about it. “I believe,” I said, “that the fish here is really fresh and tastes good.” He beamed at me.

Along with my bill I got a fortune cookie whose baked-in message read: “A little patience is often better than a lot of good ideas.” I stood in the elevator and wondered what that might mean in my case, for my time here was slowly running out. As always I stared at the round buttons with their illuminated floor numbers. Twelve was followed by fourteen. No thirteenth floor is listed. The owners’ tribute to fate — to put it in a conciliatory mood?

“I really do understand,” I said to Mr. Neitherkorn after telling him about my lunchtime conversation, “that it feels good to be able to turn to God at any time. But isn’t it also a matter of self-dignity not to be talked into some consoling Band-Aid?”

“Consolation?” he asked. “For what?”

“That everything’s pretty much an accident, our whole existence.”

“Do you think so?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “What’s the alternative?”

This morning a woman called me. She spoke German, gave me her name, and asked how long I’d be renting the room. “Until the end of December,” I replied. Then she could move in with Mr. Neitherkorn at the start of the New Year, she said. She’d have to arrange that with him, but I doubted that he’d be keeping the apartment himself much longer. “He’s just organizing a few things yet.”

“He’s been doing that forever,” she said with a laugh.

“What?” I asked. “Not just since his wife died?”

“Ah! She’s been dead for more than fifty years. If he asks you for your address, you can go right ahead and give it to him. He won’t come in any case.”

“Come where?”

“Oh, it’s all just talk. Whenever he’s too cold or too warm, or the city’s too loud or too dirty, he says he’s moving back to Germany. I’ll give you a call later on,” she said. “Bye now!”

As I stepped off the elevator, I ran into Mr. Neitherkorn. He was earlier than usual today. “Where are you headed again now?”

“To the barber!” I shouted, because of the cotton in his ears. “I want to talk him out of fate.”

Mr. Neitherkorn grumbled something, lowered his eyes. I stepped aside, and the door closed between us.

Already from the outside I could see that I didn’t recognize any of the barbers. I no longer know why I went inside anyway. A black man dressed in a suit entered behind me, said hello, flung his gym bag on the mirrored green cabinet, and began to unpack combs, scissors, and various bottles. After donning a white smock, he was assigned a customer by the boss, and began to shave the man’s head. Black fuzz fell to the floor, and I thought how that might be fun for me too. I was handed over to a white man with a crew cut. But he couldn’t find a suitable comb.

The boss waved over an Indian woman. She had a larger comb and went right to work. A Japanese woman entered the shop and unpacked her bag in front of the mirror to our right. Her customer, whose Rastafarian locks were bound on top of his head like a sheaf of grain, wanted to have his head shaved up to ear level. I was enjoying the tickle at the back of my neck, the sense of being pampered, and lowered my head, turning it to the right, to the left — and saw my engineer from Bukhara enter. I made useless motions with my cape-covered hands and, I suppose, uttered some sort of sound. The Indian woman said, “Sorry,” and pressed her thumbs to my temples. The construction engineer stepped up behind us and showed off his trick of rapping his hand and sending a cigarette flying up to be caught in his lips. The boss greeted him, both whispered something to the Indian woman, who undid the bow of my cape and left her station.

Before I could get up, the engineer had thrown another cape over me and announced that he would now give me a haircut — free of charge, he immediately added. I said that unfortunately someone had just cut my hair, and rocked my head back and forth as if to prove it. But I would be glad to chat with him. “Just a trim,” he insisted. “It’s free,” and began tugging at my hair. All the while he had that same sad and serious look as the first time. I was careful about how I put my question. Why had he left Bukhara? He waved the question off. “That wasn’t a life anymore,” he said. And what had he hoped for from America? “America!” he said. Every question I put to him received only a curt answer. Finally I wanted to know why he had mentioned sudba. “Sudba?” He gazed at my reflection in the mirror. They had waited much too long — he only had to think about how far ahead they could have been by now. But next week his wife would be opening a beauty shop in Brighton Beach, and he had found a job as a mason and would show them what he could do. Even more important, his daughter had a good chance for a scholarship, and if she got it — he snapped his scissors triumphantly in the air and gave me a wink.

“Things are going great,” I said.

“Of course things are going great,” he replied, and snipped a big swatch of my hair. “If only we hadn’t waited so long!”

Then we fell silent. He snipped and snipped, and I thought about what I ought to write now.

“My, my, my!” went Mr. Neitherkorn as he entered the kitchen. “Were you attacked by wild animals?”

“They gave me two haircuts for the price of one,” I replied, giving my hair a tug.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” I responded. “In any case it wasn’t fate, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Will you finally get over that!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you have eyes in your head? Haven’t you had enough yet?”

I sat down in my chair. He shoved a cup of coffee my way, rummaged in his shopping bag, and pulled out some carrot cake. As always he cut it in two by slicing through the plastic wrap, laid my half next to my cup, and returning to his shopping bag, took out the milk and opened it.

“Thanks,” I said. We drank coffee and ate carrot cake. I was afraid to go to my room and sit down in front of my computer. “I have no idea what I ought to write,” I said after a while.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. His tongue was playing with his upper plate again. “I’ll tell you a story tomorrow. You can gussy it up a little.”

“What sort of story?” I asked.

“‘What sort of story?’” he repeated without looking up. “About a ‘Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About’ … and so forth.”

“Are you trying to play fate?” I asked.

“Oh no!” Mr. Neitherkorn cried, raising his arms with the palms turned heavenward, and held the position for a moment. “I’m just a barber,” he then remarked, lowering his hands again. “But there’s a lot to be learned there.…”

Writers and Transcendence

A few years ago, it was in February, I visited my mother in Dresden. We didn’t see each other that often but did talk a lot on the phone.

We were sitting over a light supper in the kitchen when the front doorbell rang. My mother fell silent. I set my cup down without making a sound. We didn’t even look at each other — whenever a disturbance threatens we play dead out of an instinctive reflex. We heard sobbing in the stairwell. “Christa dear,” a woman’s voice cried, “Christa dear.” Then only more sobs.

“My Pushkin!” our neighbor Henrietta cried as she entered the kitchen. She embraced me — her eye shadow was smeared, tears had left black tracks on her cheeks.

Ever since Henrietta found a photograph of me in a local Dresden paper, in which she claimed I bore a resemblance to Pushkin, she has called me “my Pushkin.” Henrietta came from Sverdlovsk in the Urals, which nowadays is once again called Yekaterinburg. She has been living in Dresden for thirty years. Henrietta used to be a dentist, then she was unemployed, and now she’s retired. Her husband has another wife, both daughters have long since left the nest.

In agitated tones Henrietta told us how our neighbor Frau X was demanding five hundred marks from her. The woman had been to see her just now, stomping about and screaming that she was owed the money for her table. Henrietta again broke into tears.

“What table is that?” my mother asked.

“Table from attic, from corner!” Henrietta cried.

It had always been the custom to store discarded furniture in Henrietta’s corner of the large attic. If she couldn’t use the items herself, she passed them on to Soviet officers and their families. A few weeks earlier, Henrietta had discovered what’s called a kidney table from the fifties in her corner, taken it to her own apartment, and since it was too high for her, had sawed off about a hand’s-breadth from each leg.

Setting out today in search of her vanished table, Frau X had rung Henrietta’s bell as well. All unsuspecting, Henrietta had invited her in. At the sight of her maimed table Frau X had been beside herself and had called Henrietta some very nasty names. She was now demanding five hundred marks for her ruined property. And Henrietta had better not get any ideas about moving out before making good on the damage, either.

“Lady X!” I said, interrupting Henrietta. “Lady X should cut the grandstanding!” Even before 1989 it had been clear to us that Frau X and Herr Y worked for State Security and “looked after” our building. Both my mother and Henrietta had come across Frau X’s reports in their files. That hadn’t altered life in the building. Just as in the days of the GDR, curt greetings were exchanged and each went his or her way.

My mother nodded, but then made a suggestion that shocked me. Henrietta, however, stopped crying.

Two days later, on Saturday, Henrietta went to the beauty salon, put on her long dark blue dress, adorning it with a gold chain that had been her mother’s, made coffee, and set the sawed-off table for two. Next to one setting she laid an envelope with five hundred marks and a folder with copies of documents. She lit a candle before an icon that had come into her possession a year before. From the record player came Russian choral music. Then Henrietta rang family X’s doorbell and invited Frau X upstairs. When both women were seated across from each other, Henrietta apologized for the cropped table. Before she handed over the five hundred marks, however, she did have one more question. She would like to know why Frau X had written reports about her, Henrietta, and her family.

Frau X smiled and asked how Henrietta dared spread such slander. Henrietta shoved the folder across to her.

Frau X opened the folder, paged through it, paged and paged, her thumbing growing more and more hectic. “This can’t be, this simply can’t be,” Frau X whispered. She had, she now exclaimed, written only a very few reports about Henrietta. Neighbor Y, Herr Y from the side entrance, he was responsible for this, and what she had passed on couldn’t even be compared to what Herr Y or for that matter Frau Z had done. “It was Frau Z who wrote the most reports.”

That was perfectly possible, Henrietta said, but her reports were the ones found in the file, after all, and nothing by Frau Z or Herr Y.

“A drink,” Frau X whispered, jumping to her feet. “I need some schnapps.” She tried to embrace Henrietta, begging her not to think too badly of her. She had been forced to write this stuff. “I didn’t do it voluntarily,” she cried. “I didn’t do anyone any harm.”

Frau X downed the vodka with a grimace, tears welling in her eyes. She heaved a sob and ran out. Henrietta poured herself a shot of vodka, picked up the envelope with the five hundred marks, and rang our doorbell.

Although my mother had not expected any other outcome, she found it remarkable that until now Frau X had evidently lived in the belief that we were still in the dark.

I admitted that I had already written off the five hundred marks my mother had provided. “I would’ve bet my life on it with someone like X.”

“No!” my mother exclaimed. “I’ve always believed that justice prevails in the end.”

A few weeks later I wrote up this story, intending to use it in place of a newspaper article I’d agreed to. Up till then, however, I’d never written a story based on real events. So that I found my plan a little eerie.

“I’ve written about you and Henrietta,” I told my mother on the phone. Maybe, I said, the story would work better than rambling explanations to demonstrate how the defunct system’s coordinates and behavioral patterns still shimmer through all our lives.

“Listen up,” my mother interrupted. “There’s more to it.”

“Has X turned up again?”

“Oh, this is a totally different story.”

Henrietta had moved out and been living in a high-rise in the center of Dresden for two weeks. For the move she treated herself to a new dressing table. In order to spare herself a delivery charge, she struggled her way home with the boxed item herself. Just short of her front door a young man offered her assistance, shouldered the heavy carton, maneuvered it onto the elevator, and up he went. Henrietta took the other elevator. When she got off on her floor she found neither her table nor the young man. She waited, returned to the ground floor, then back up again, and now ran up and down the stairs, calling out several times in the stairwell that her dressing table belonged on the eighth floor.

“What are you shouting about?” an astonished elderly lady inquired. Henrietta asked her if she’d seen a man with a big box, and told her tale of woe.

The woman gave Henrietta the once-over. Not to worry, she said at last, sent Henrietta back to her apartment, and took the elevator to the top floor, where she rang at a particular door and stepped inside. Two young men were busy assembling a dressing table. Go ahead and finish the job, the elderly lady said. Stealing from the mother-in-law of a mafioso, having his bodyguards show up, risking an ear or two — and all for a cheap piece of furniture. “Have fun!”

Ten minutes later Henrietta and her helpful neighbor unloaded the now assembled dressing table from the elevator. The glass tabletop had a few scratches, which Henrietta magnanimously overlooked.

I wrote the rest of my story just as my mother had told it to me. Of course neither Henrietta nor my mother knew what the neighbor lady had actually said, but the line of argument sounded credible.

I intended to end my story with the punch line that until 1990 a sign had stood atop the high-rise where Henrietta now lived, proclaiming: Socialism Triumphs!

“Are you going to show Henrietta the story?” my mother asked.

“Why should I?” Her name would be changed. And there was no chance Henrietta would ever read the newspaper for which the article was intended.

The next time I visited Dresden, I brought along the newspaper containing Henrietta’s story. My mother collected such things.

To be honest, I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic when my mother suggested I accompany her to see her former neighbor. Henrietta had just returned from Kiev; she’d been on a pilgrimage.

“Ultimately it’s her you have to thank for your story,” my mother said.

It wasn’t until we were in the car that she confessed that Henrietta beheld the hand of God in our visit. Henrietta felt she had been charged to play missionary to Germany. A man named Misha, a former officer in Afghanistan who was later assigned to the GDR, had convinced her of this. He had announced to Henrietta that she would have to contribute four thousand dollars to the church he worked for. If she did not, within six months Henrietta would be standing in her kitchen, go “Oy!”—and fall over dead.

The building’s entry and tiny elevator were filled with graffiti, top to bottom. Henrietta hugged and kissed me as well and gave us a tour of her two and a half rooms. We admired her dressing table — gilded frame, dark glass top — and gazed from her balcony to the slopes of Loschwitz above the Elbe.

The icon in her wall unit was flanked by a whole host of images of saints. In front of these lay, like a deck of cards, more gaudy portraits, each with an appropriate prayer on the back.

“If I do something right in life, then going to monastery,” Henrietta cried. She was wearing a brown dress with a plunging neckline and low-cut back adorned with the fastener of her pink bra.

Henrietta had stayed in Kiev with Mother Maria, a miracle worker who could heal crushed hands and swollen legs by channeling heavenly energy. After hours-long sessions, people had departed from her free of pain and crutches. Had she not seen it with her own eyes — and at this point Henrietta fixed her gaze on us — she wouldn’t have believed it herself.

With Maria, Misha, and other Kievites, she had traveled to Pochaev monastery in western Ukraine. Their small group had gathered at four in the morning to wait at the church door. This was followed by a kind of footrace, because each person wanted to touch the altar fence. I didn’t know what Henrietta meant by “altar fence,” but I didn’t want to interrupt her story and forgot to ask later.

A monk, tall and with dark eyes, had admonished the believers: No matter what might be happening around them, they were not to worry, but to stay right where they were and trust in God.

Gazing now far beyond us as she spoke, Henrietta resembled a child singing its song. With every sentence she became more and more animated, while more and more Russian words found their way into her tale as she unfolded the scene before our eyes.

People become restive, they sigh, moan, groan, whimper. Henrietta holds tighter to the fence. In the same moment that the monk removes the Bible from the altar fence, a few people begin screaming. They throw themselves to the floor. “They make sound like horses, like horses and wolves. Hoohoohoooo!” Her Misha’s hair is standing on end. “One makes sound like pig, makes like pig. Oink, oink, oink!”

When at last the monk begins touching the heads of the faithful with the Bible, the squeals and howls intensify to a deafening roar. A boy crows at the top of his voice, his mother pulls him back, a man thrashes about on the floor, oink, oink, oink!

“Fascinating,” my mother whispered. “Truly fascinating.”

All of a sudden everyone falls silent, no one stirs. A moment later, and they are brushing the dust from their clothes and looking furtively around. “They do not know what happen, devil driven from soul.”

Here Henrietta segued to the topic of demons and black magic. Sometimes just a nasty look suffices, and the devil has entered one’s body.

“And what happened to you?” my mother asked.

“No devil in me, but must cleanse myself anyway, everyone must do, you must do — you do too, when Maria comes, everyone invited to me.”

I was ready to return to Dresden the moment the opportunity to make the acquaintance of Mother Maria should arise. Misconstruing my interest, Henrietta poured her heart out to me. She was telling everyone about the cleansing. Her great worry was, however, that she was not up to the task.

Four weeks later we were ringing Henrietta’s doorbell again. Mother Maria was just finishing up the dishes. Before I report about the procedure she put me through, I should also mention that thanks to my mother’s good auspices, I now possessed additional material — I was working on the sequel to my first story — and the only thing I was uncertain about was where to include it. Henrietta had seven sisters and one brother. Her father had fallen in the Great Patriotic War. At age fourteen her brother had stolen a loaf of bread, was arrested at home, and had never returned. She had learned from Maria, however, that he had survived imprisonment in a camp, married, and stayed on in Siberia, where he had died only a few years previously, mourned by his children and grandchildren.

Before proceeding with the treatment we had coffee. Mother Maria was in her midsixties, had a beautiful face and several gold teeth. I would, she announced out of the blue, marry a woman with red hair, presumably a Russian, by whom I would have children.

“We’ll see,” I said, and laughed.

In stocking feet, pants, and undershirt I took up my position opposite her, my face to the window. The sunlight was blinding me. Maria regarded me with a smile, almost mockingly. I grinned back. She didn’t have to put on an act with me.

Maria stepped closer. Without so much as brushing against me, her miracle-working hands slid down from my shoulders and along my arms, then passed from neck to navel.

Translating Maria’s findings, Henrietta announced I had heart and liver trouble. “Yes,” I said. “That’s correct.”

“Fascinating,” my mother whispered.

Maria’s smile vanished. She fixed her eyes on me. It was not clear, however, whether she was inspecting my body or gazing right through me. She slowly lifted her arms. I was waiting to be scanned a third time when she ripped something out of me, ripped it out, wrapped it around her right hand, only in the next moment to shake it off like drops of water. I felt nothing. When she set to work the second time, evidently employing enormous strength in an attempt to tear out a tendon — rip! — I automatically flinched. But, as noted, I felt nothing. And on it went. Inch by inch Maria freed me of various evils and ailments, whereby, as per her diagnosis, there was an especial lot of work to do in the region around the heart and liver. At times it seemed as if the imaginary tendon or fish line from which my ailment hung would slip through her fingers. Then she grabbed hold again, sometimes with both hands. Her face contorted with effort, she squeezed her eyes tight. Meanwhile I was pondering whom Maria might have meant. But of the two redheaded Russian women I knew, I wouldn’t have either as my wife. Finally — it had already grown dark — Maria turned to the treatment of my head.

“Khorosho,” she said at last with a nod. We had not turned on any lights, and the only illumination in the room came from the streetlamps, but I could see how exhausted Maria was. She sank into the armchair my mother had just vacated, and closed her eyes.

I dressed and drank another cup of coffee. My mother gave Henrietta a hundred marks to pay for Maria’s trip home. Maria was not allowed to accept money. Money would rob her of her powers.

I was feeling a bit queasy. I pressed my mother for us to depart. As if observing a minute of tribute, we then stood silent before Maria, now asleep in the armchair.

In the elevator at last, and before I could say a word, my mother pulled two of Henrietta’s gaudy pictures of saints from her pocket and held them out to me. “Do you want this one or this one?”

In almost the same instant my mother’s mouth wrenched, she stared at me. Her eyes seemed suddenly to grow larger as if she had just donned a pair of thick-lensed glasses. She backed up against the wall of the elevator, but then immediately bent forward again. I was about to ask what in the devil was wrong with her. But suddenly her face was far away, my knees buckled, I fell backward, slid to the floor, heard a shrill cry that made me want to laugh, and let out another squeal. A foul odor assaulted my nose, I felt as if I were being crushed.

As the elevator door opened, an elderly couple recoiled in fright. They eyed me warily and only slowly approached again. I didn’t know how it could have happened or why I was still lying as if paralyzed at their feet. I had evidently stumbled, sending me sprawling. Mother helped me up. But because she was in far too great a hurry, I fell again. The couple didn’t budge. “Did you hear that?” the man asked. His wife nodded. They whispered and gawked at us. I understood “writer” and something else that I won’t repeat here.

“What a pig!” the woman suddenly cried — and loudly enough for the whole building to hear. “What a bunch of pigs!”

I wanted to reply that anyone could stumble and a little accident was no reason to insult me and be rude to my mother besides. They, both of them, needn’t act so highfalutin. The way this place looked, walls all smeared over, and the stench — well, thank you very much, but I wouldn’t want to spend a single night here. But instead I let out a disgusting belch.

“Pig!” the man shouted.

“Jackass!” I hissed.

“Pig!”

“Jackass!”

We stood toe to toe, sneered, and went on calling each other “Pig!”—“Jackass!”—“Pig!”—“Jackass!” until Mother dubbed my opponent a “limp pickle.” She said it softly, more as if to herself. She didn’t even say, “You limp pickle,” but simply “Limp pickle.”

“What, whaaat …?” the man said, whirling around.

“Limp pickle!” she said, and pulled me along with her, out to the parking lot.

“What, whaaat …?” he shouted, following us. But his voice now sounded so strangely drained that I looked back. He was in fact gasping for air, his eyes bugged out.

My mother quickly brushed the dirt from my pants and jacket, piloted me into the shotgun seat, and swung in behind the steering wheel. She made me spit on her handkerchief, which she used to scrub my right cheek. I hate handkerchiefy spits-and-scrubs, but this time I didn’t fight back, in fact I did what I could to help my mother’s efforts and pushed my hair out of my face. In the sun-visor mirror I watched the man brace himself against the car trunk. His blue-lipped fish mouth looked as if it were trying to continue to shout, “What? Whaaat …?”

“Limp pickle,” my mother said with satisfaction, started the engine, and drove off. The man vanished from the mirror. Exhausted by a surfeit of impressions and at a loss how to appropriately order or refine them, I closed my eyes.

Faith, Love, Hope Number 23

When Marek awoke he was alone in bed. There was a smell of coffee. If he opened his left eye, the sun burned a hole in the window casings. But with just his right eye, the room regained its clear contours: an old wardrobe, an unframed mirror, two chairs, and a clothes tree, with just one hanger, on which his jacket was draped. If he banished the posters and the big, smudged glass vase in the corner, the space looked like the hotel rooms in Osnabrück and Münster where as a ten-or eleven-year-old he had stayed with his father when the two of them had attended houseware trade fairs.

It had scarcely cooled off at all overnight. He heard music coming from a radio in the back courtyard. Marek heard the announcer, joined then by an incessantly clucking female voice. On the blue runner beside the bed lay Magda’s panties, blouse, his shirt and underwear. It was shortly before seven by the alarm clock. His tie hung on a nail beside the bed, along with necklaces and other glitzy baubles. Marek rolled over on his side, pressed his face against the pillow, and breathed in the fragrance.

He had held Magda in his arms for hours, guarding her slumber, and then he had watched as she sat up and pulled off her nightshirt. He had never realized that there could be so much love inside one body.

Not twelve hours before Marek had still been sitting in Knesebeck Strasse working on a brief that he had to deliver at ten on the dot today to Herr Dr. — an honorary degree — Strobonski, owner of Assmann-Schibock GmbH in Hamburg, one of Continental’s suppliers. He was supposed to evaluate the most elegant way — that had been the phrase — for Witold Strobonski to place the ownership of his firm in the hands of his three daughters.

Marek was accustomed to short nights. That’s why he had a six figure salary. Just as the theme music for the eight o’clock news struck up, Strobonski’s secretary had called and canceled the appointment. In the next instant Magda had appeared in the blue vest of a private courier service to hand him the piece of paper he’d been waiting for all his life — or so he had believed until yesterday at any rate. The order had been placed for new stationery, and after July 1 his name would appear on the letterhead of Baechler, Thompson & Partners.

In his cover letter Baechler had fudged by referring to “your name,” since he could hardly have written “Herr Marek.” In order to avoid his ostensibly unpronounceable last name, everyone called him Herr Marek. And now this Herr Marek would be a partner with Baechler, Thompson, and their twenty-two other partners.

To his dismay Marek heard the apartment door. He wanted to stay right here on his pillow and spare her the sight of a face strewed with red pimples. It was especially bad in the morning. Nobody at age thirty-four still had pimples like his.

“Well, sweet dreamer,” Magda said, stepped up to the bed, bent down, and kissed him on the mouth, spreading both arms wide as if to keep the bag of pastries and the milk out of his reach.

To him it seemed as if she had gone out shopping wearing only her nightshirt and jeans jacket. He heard her bustling around in the kitchen.

Magda had asked whether she could use the office restroom, and laid her clipboard on a visitor’s chair. Marek would have loved to sign his name again on the delivery form — larger, with a grand flourish, so that it didn’t look as if it had slipped from under his hand. A signature, as one learned in the seminars Baechler recommended, betrays a great many things, practically everything. Bad luck, he suddenly realized, was not about to be changed, not even by a signature.

“Do you always have to work so late?” Marek had just wanted to hold the girl back for a moment, to get a good look at her. He had said there was cause for celebration, and she had replied that she wanted to do some celebrating of her own now too. A deft brush-off — or so he thought. And if she hadn’t said, “Shall we go?” he would probably have stayed right there at his desk.

The coffee machine gurgled. Marek’s feet had no sooner touched the floor than Magda stepped through the door, holding a tray at her tummy.

“Well,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Get enough sleep?”

Marek made room for her. He was afraid she would start talking, and like a chess player planning his next moves, he could see it coming — he would have to ask whether he could visit her again. Just as he had yesterday evening, he wanted to brush a strand of hair back behind her ear. But she was already cuddling her cheek in his hand, yes, clamping his hand like a telephone between her shoulder and head.

“It’s so lovely here with you,” she said.

“It’s so lovely here with you,” he said. It was almost unreal the way she had pulled all those needles and clips from her hair and shaken her head in that way he had only seen in the movies, sending her hair cascading down over her shoulders and back. Like a waterfall — but he hadn’t said that, because that was a cliché.

“Are you coming back? Coming again this evening?”

“How can you ask?” Marek flared up, “how can you …?” He knelt beside her on the bed and embraced her. He held her in his arms just as he had held her all night. The nakedness of his body felt awkward now. She shouldn’t think that … And while he was thinking it and staring at the breakfast tray beside the bed, she whispered, “Lookie there, the curious young lawyer is back,” and grabbed his penis as if shaking hands. “Good morning, Mr. Lawyer,” she said.

The morning news at eight was coming from the courtyard when Magda carried the tray back to the kitchen, poured the cold coffee in the sink, and started to brew more.

“Why are you laughing?” she asked.

“I was going to ask you to give me your pillow.”

“My pillow?”

“Yes,” he said with a nod.

“But you’ll have to bring it back every evening,” she said in earnest.

“Yes,” he said. “Definitely.”

“But that’s such a lot of trouble.”

“But I don’t want to be separated from your bed ever again.”

Marek was afraid he’d said something wrong. Magda ran her hand through his hair. He closed his eyes. “Marek? Marek!” She waited until he laid his head to one side and opened his eyes. “It’s never been so beautiful as with you, Marek.”

He wanted to say that it had never been so beautiful as with you, but that would have sounded silly.

“Maybe I’m just dreaming,” he finally said. “I’m dreaming that you came to the office yesterday and looked at me as if we had seen each other before.”

“And you were sad,” she said. “You got up, buttoned your jacket, walked around your desk, and said, ‘Have a nice evening.’”

“And you smiled because I was so stiff, you were laughing at me.”

“Not at you! I was imagining what it would be like to have children with you.”

“Children?”

“You looked so respectable, respectable and sad.”

“Because I thought you were going to vanish again in the next moment.”

“That’s why you were sad?”

“That’s the only reason, only because of you.”

“And what were you thinking?”

Marek shook his head.

“What’s wrong?”

“I was just looking at you. I just wanted to go on looking at you, the way you were standing there, short, blond, and very tired …”

“‘Short and blond and very tired’?”

“I thought, She’s so beautiful she has to be tired.”

“Why’s that?”

Marek lowered his head beneath her gaze. In front of him lay a half-eaten roll smeared with liverwurst. When the commercial for Höffner Furniture was over, Marek said, “If someone is beautiful, then she has a boyfriend, maybe a couple. And they’re constantly wanting something from her. And so she doesn’t get enough sleep. I mean — oh, you know what I mean.”

“That in just one night I—?”

“No!”

“But you just said that I spend my nights with various men—”

“Boyfriends. I said ‘boyfriends’—”

“With various boyfriends—”

“I’m sorry. Please, I didn’t mean it that way. Please forgive me.”

Magda took a deep breath and sat up straight. She didn’t have to say another word, he knew he had ruined everything and that he should leave now.

“But if I hadn’t asked about the restroom? If I’d just taken off before you opened the envelope?”

“I wouldn’t have let you leave.”

“I usually give the doorman stuff like that.”

“I would have called the doorman to tell him to keep you there. I would have followed you, would have jumped out the window …”

Magda wrapped her hair around one hand and put it in some kind of knot. “So we’re both dreaming the same dream?”

“Yes.”

“Has this ever happened to you before?”

“No. Never.”

“And does it go on and on?”

“Of course. Once it’s happened, it’s happened, it can’t go on any other way.”

“That would be lovely,” she said.

Marek didn’t understand why she was suddenly so sad. “Are you tired?” Nothing and no one would ever be able to separate him from her again — nothing and no one. He reached for her hand and said, “You know, nobody is going to believe this. Not this kind of good luck. They’ll think I’m pulling their leg.”

She smiled. “You don’t have to tell them.”

“I’m not going to.”

“It’s not allowed, not during the first week. The first week is sacred.”

“Sacred,” he said, and it sounded far more serious than he had intended.

“I’ll be waiting for you from six o’clock on, and I’ll wait and wait and — wait.”

“I’ll be waiting for you,” he quickly said. “I’ll be counting the minutes.”

“I’m superstitious,” she said. The sun was shining on her feet.

“Because it’s the thirteenth? But it’s Wednesday, nothing happens on Wednesdays. Besides, thirteen is a lucky number.”

“Definitely not.”

“But what about us … this morning … it was already the thirteenth.”

“This morning?”

“And on the thirteenth they’ve made me a member of the firm, on June 13, 2001.”

“Okay, fine, then it’s a lucky number,” she said. The alarm clock rang at that same moment.

When Marek stood up from the table, Magda followed him. He opened the shower stall and turned on the water. She was still standing beside him. He grabbed her nightshirt, and like an obedient child she raised her arms to let him pull it over her head. There was a mosquito bite on each shoulder. They entered the shower holding hands. He soaped her and rinsed her off, and then she laid her head on his chest, right next to the spot where the jet of water struck him. He couldn’t understand what she said. But a moment later he heard it quite clearly: “The curious Mr. Lawyer.”

Their hair still damp, they stepped out onto Nauny Strasse, and it felt like he was onstage, because everyone was looking at him — that is, first at Magda, then at him. But that wasn’t the reason. It was the sun. It was already so high that except for a narrow strip along the right edge of the sidewalk it cast no shadows.

At Kottbusser Tor he waved good-bye to Magda, and although normally it would have embarrassed and upset him to turn around every few yards and raise his arm with total strangers looking on, he now even walked part of the way backward. Nothing, nothing should be different, he didn’t want to miss a thing, not even the mosquito bites on her shoulders.

Marek walked up the stairs to the U₁ el station. He looked about him like a tourist. Normally he took taxis. He didn’t have a car, not even a driver’s license. He had also never learned to swim, but nobody knew that.

Suddenly he had the feeling he had done everything right. Of course he regularly met with success, that was his job. But only through Magda had it all acquired meaning and significance.

Marek had been married once, as a student, but neither his marriage nor other relationships had lasted.

Marek found it depressing that he’d been unable to tell Magda anything other than that he loved her, that she was his lucky charm, and his darling, his one and only, and the most beautiful woman besides, and that he would love to have children with her — all statements he had used often before. He had wasted the words, abused them, worn them out, and now he could only repeat them for Magda, the only woman they were meant for.

As Marek came up out of the subway station at Uhland Strasse, a large Mercedes drove past. The guy on the passenger side was holding a Brazilian flag out the window.

He entered the building with its large-lettered rooftop sign: Baechler, Thompson & Partners. It was obvious that the letters had been braving wind and weather for three decades now.

“I thought you were in Hamburg?” cried Frau Ruth, the executive secretary, who looked at everyone as if she were gazing out over reading glasses. “Congratulations,” she said and went on sorting files.

“Thanks,” Marek said. The door to Baechler’s office was ajar, he cast a glance inside. Baechler was on the phone.

Marek still thought Baechler looked like Sky Dumont, and it had bothered him to watch Sky Dumont dance with Nicole Kidman in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut—as if he had caught Baechler cheating on his wife. Old man Baechler was so handsome it was like a cliché, just as he, Marek, was likewise a cliché—the opposite one. Marek knew that people here too called him crumb cake, pizza man, or just pimple face. Why should it be any different at Baechler’s, of all places, than it had been in school, in the army, in college, in law offices or restaurants? Strangely enough, after the first few iffy minutes, it proved an advantage with clients, as if someone who looked like him must be especially intelligent or talented to have been brought on board by the handsome Baechler.

Files clamped under her left elbow, Frau Ruth preceded him. She almost always wore a white blouse and something black to match her black or black-dyed hair. Marek’s father would have called her a woman who took good care of herself. But after being hired by Baechler, Thompson & Partners, Marek had barely been able to hide his astonishment upon learning that Frau Ruth’s daughter was only twelve. Marek considered Frau Ruth to be spiteful.

“Not in Hamburg?” Baechler exclaimed, leaning back in his chair but not offering him a seat. “Yes, my good man, hang together and get hanged together. Our heads are in the same noose now.”

“I wanted to thank you, Herr Doktor Baechler. I—”

“No need for that, none whatever.” Baechler waved his large liver-spotted hand adorned with a ring with a large black stone. “You know I’ve refused to do the same for my sons.”

“If only for that reason, Herr Doktor Baechler,” Marek said, who had been listening to him go on like this about his sons since day one. But even though — like everyone else — he joked about it, it never failed to impress him.

“What’s with our friend Strobonski?”

“Canceled late yesterday evening. Ten minutes earlier, and I would have missed the courier.”

“Even then, it would’ve arrived in time.”

“And once again, my warmest thanks,” Marek said and leaned across the desk to extend his hand to Baechler.

“Keep it in mind, Marek — our heads in the same noose.”

“Happy to,” Marek said. He was touched that Baechler had addressed him by his first name without the silly title “Herr.”

“Thank you,” Marek said turning to Frau Ruth, who gave him a startled look, as if noticing him only now.

In the elevator — his office was four floors down — Marek wondered if he should go directly to the subway at six or first go home and change. What he really wanted was to climb into a car right now and wave a Brazilian, or any other, flag. Ten minutes earlier, he reminded himself, and I would have missed her. The idea was so awful it seemed to protest his good luck. And if Strobonski hadn’t canceled? Marek tried to think about other things. About the mosquito bites on Magda’s shoulders or about how rattled he had been by the razor in the bathroom and how that had made her laugh. As if to make amends, to thank her for dyeing her hair for his sake, he had kissed the dark line of the part in Magda’s blond hair. Marek was still smiling as he stepped off the elevator and walked down the hall, where he ran into Elke, the intern. “You’re invited to join us, at one o’clock,” Marek called out, and it pleased him that Elke stopped in her tracks and asked, “Me?” “Yes, you,” he said. He would invite everyone who had the time, everyone — except Baechler, who was always served lunch by Frau Ruth in his office.

Around six he would first go home, pack his carry-on suitcase or gym bag and then — off to Magda’s! For a moment he imagined Magda at his place on Bamberger Strasse, and the thought didn’t sit well. He himself didn’t want to go back to that apartment, to his crypt. Marek looked out the hall window. And for the first time, or so it seemed to him, the blue sky was meant for him as well.

Marek walked over to the coffee dispenser. He wouldn’t get any work done today in any case, because a steady stream of people would be stopping by to congratulate him. He might just as well go on standing right here. Some would say they’d have to have a beer sometime, and others that they’d have to meet over coffee. And Karl-Heinz Södering, who was proud of having married a former Miss Nuremberg, would say that Marek definitely had to pay them a visit soon.

When Marek finally opened the top file to prepare for a Friday appointment, he was disappointed that everything was just as always. He loved his work. But today he wanted to celebrate, chew the fat, laugh. All he could think about anyway was Magda. There were moments when he actually believed he sensed her presence. And once he raised both hands to re-create the motion of his fingertips as they traced from her neck down to her breasts. Like a ski jumper, he had thought. But he had kept that to himself. Besides, both the gesture and the comparison belonged to another “body”—Silke, his ex-wife, had always used the English word “body.”

Shortly after noon he called Joachim, who had started with Baechler at the same time he had, but had been taken on as an equity partner one year earlier. Joachim briefly congratulated him — he was speaking with a client at the moment, with whom he’d be having lunch. Marek ran into Christopher Heincken in the washroom. At first Marek had been quite proud to have an office on the same floor as Chris — everyone called him Chris. His UMTS contracts had earned Chris the title of best horse in the stable; he was assumed to be Baechler’s crown prince. He clapped Marek on the back with a wet hand and, ripping away at one paper towel after another, said: “Now we both have our heads in the noose.” That was meant ironically, right?

At five after one Marek appeared at the front entrance. Elke, the intern, seemed less peeved at his being late than at having to have lunch with just him alone. It had been embarrassing to have to admit to her the reason for his invitation, and she was as surprised by that as he had once been by the age of Ruth’s daughter.

How had he ended up with Elke around his neck? Sven Schmidt, Frau Ruth’s pet — they both came from Wetzlar — had shown him Elke’s application, even though Marek no longer read applications, and he had underlined the phrase “career oriented” as if it were a stylistic gem, but Sven Schmidt had said that was a “must” nowadays. Elke’s attempts to engage him in conversation bothered him. And at the same time his old self-consciousness returned, his old life. Marek kept a good half stride ahead of Elke. When she suddenly halted he expected to be scolded for not being more considerate. But Elke just slipped out of her sling pumps, brushed her forearm across her brow, smiled, and, one shoe in each hand, hurried after him.

“I have an idea,” Marek said, offering Elke his arm. They crossed the street. Marek hailed a cab, passed ten euros up to the driver, and said, “KaDeWe.”

The driver explained the various flags and T-shirts for Elke and said that Sweden wouldn’t play for two days yet and that Germany, if everything went according to plan, would meet Sweden in the final eight — Sweden or England, but Sweden was better.

Marek rode with Elke up to the gourmet floor. While she was still inspecting displays of lobsters and oysters, he ordered a lobster tail for them to split and wine. “Marvelous, really marvelous,” Elke exclaimed.

When she was finished, she leaned over on her bar stool, laid her head on his shoulder, and whispered, “Awesome, just plain awesome, Herr Marek.” On the ride back they sat side by side not saying a word.

When after two more hours no one had stopped by to congratulate him, he was convinced people were avoiding him as a way of protesting Baechler’s decision. Of course all the partners had had to consent, but Baechler’s word was law.

Marek felt completely calm. He could handle clearly drawn front lines. Him against all the rest of them, that was nothing new. For a few minutes Marek managed to concentrate on his brief. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes. The universal snub had left him exhausted. He would open his own office, and Magda would work for him. Him and Magda, Magda and him. He would talk to her about it this evening. Suddenly he was afraid of seeing Magda again. A night like that, a morning like that — it could never be repeated. Maybe the bosses would rescind their decision, and then — Marek was certain of it — he and Magda would also come to a bad end.

When the phone rang it was accounting, a missing train ticket, and Marek promised to deal with it and to make a copy of his ticket in advance next time. He had turned that ticket in — he was certain of it. One pinprick of the thousands awaiting him.

It was five o’clock when Frau Ruth called. Would he be so kind as to come upstairs — yes, right away. She hung up without another word.

On his way in the elevator Marek decided the best thing would be for him to resign.

Baechler was standing with Heincken at the window of the reception room. They didn’t return Marek’s greeting. Frau Ruth stared at him with arched eyebrows, as if she had just asked him a question, and pointed to the conference-room door. It was ajar. “Dr. Baechler will be in soon,” she whispered, and bent over her desk again.

As if hitting a wall, he recoiled from the darkness in the conference room. The blinds had been lowered to keep out the summer sun. He groped for the light switch.… Someone shouted, “Three, four!”

Marek was aghast. Lights, faces, laughter. To the melody of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” they sang: “For he’s the twenty-third now, he is the twe-henty-third now, he’s the twe-henty-thi-hird now, and so he’s one of us.”

His partners stepped aside — a cake decorated with a “23.” And then they struck up their song again. He stared into Frau Ruth’s mouth, he saw Chris and he saw Baechler, who was pretending to conduct. Yes, he was number twenty-three, in collusion with twenty-two others. Corks popped, and three waitresses passed trays of glasses. Someone shouted, “Speech!” And then others: “Speech! Speech! Speech!”

He wanted to ask why, of all of them, he was the one to receive such a posh reception. But it occurred to him just in time that he had in fact never been present when someone was made equity partner. They always celebrated among themselves.

His speech failed miserably. Nothing occurred to him, not one thing that could have made the others laugh for real. He was literally overwhelmed, speechless, and touched — which was what they had wanted.

The first ones left around seven. Everyone said their goodbyes to Marek, invited him to join them for coffee or a beer or even to visit them at home, as soon as possible, while summer lasted, for a backyard barbecue. Wiener’s Party Service started removing platters.

The loveliest part, however, had not been the surprise, but that while he spoke with the others he could think of Magda and that he would now walk out on the street, climb into a taxi, and ride to her place. And he thought, this is what pure luck feels like — pure good luck.

Baechler repeated his thing about heads in a noose, and as he extended his hand to Marek he placed the other hand on his shoulder. Marek resisted the impulse to give Baechler a hug. “Thank you,” Marek said. “Thank you.”

The last stragglers were gathering at the end of the conference table, from where you could look out on Savigny Platz. Now they could finally drink beer.

Sven Schmidt opened two windows, a pleasant breeze flowed in. And Joachim asked what they should do to follow up. “Tonight’s my night out. I’m thinking a party at the very least, what with our heads in the same noose.”

Chris had reserved a table at Dicke Wirtin for ten to eight, in time for the game with Brazil. “Marek has to treat,” he shouted. “Marek needs to be fleeced. I forked out a couple thousand back in my day. An evening in front of the TV can’t hold a candle.”

“I can’t,” Marek said. And above the boos, he shouted, “Somebody’s expecting me!”

They called him names — penny pincher, wet blanket — but it didn’t sound like they meant it, and Marek was relieved.

“And it’s set in stone?” Sven Schmidt asked.

Marek nodded.

“Call and tell them what’s happened. A night like this comes once in a lifetime!”

“No,” Marek said. “It really won’t work. She’s been waiting since six.”

“She! Sex!” Sven Schmidt whistled through his teeth.

“How’s that, Marek, a lady?” Chris asked.

“Yes,” Marek said. And now that he had put it in words Magda no longer seemed to be a dream.

“Marek has a girlfriend!” Karl-Heinz Södering shouted. “Have her come along!”

“Congratulations,” Joachim said. “And? Is she the one?”

“Yes,” Marek said. “She’s the one.”

“Be careful,” Chris said. “Don’t go getting married tomorrow.” They laughed.

“Day after,” Marek said.

“A free night, and then look what happens,” Sven Schmidt said. “But you’re not going to slip away from us this easy, let me tell you. Not this easy.”

Joachim hugged Marek. Marek said his good-byes, shaking hands with the others.

“Can you tell us the name of the lovely lady?” Joachim asked.

“Magda,” Marek said in an almost toneless voice.

“Magda!” Sven Schmidt announced. “And she’s very beautiful?”

Marek nodded.

“Blond, long hair, slender, and with a nice perky pair?” Sven Schmidt held his hands before his chest, rippling his fingers and looking at Marek.

“Believe it or not, yes!” Marek said.

“And she loves you,” Joachim said. “And no night was ever so beautiful as with you?”

“Shut up,” Chris hissed. “Let him go.”

“She loves me and I love her, and no night was ever so beautiful,” Marek said.

“Congratulations,” Karl-Heinz Södering said. “Have a great evening, Mr. Lawyer.”

“Shut your trap!” Chris shouted.

“What’s with ‘Mr. Lawyer’?”

“‘The curious Mr. Lawyer’? Is that her name for it?” Joachim asked.

Marek looked at Chris, then back at Joachim.

“Damn it, Marek,” Joachim said. “It can’t be. You didn’t really fall for her?”

“I don’t know what you guys mean,” Marek said, looking from one to the other. “What do you mean by ‘Mr. Lawyer’?”

“Your dick,” Sven Schmidt said. “Svenya evidently hasn’t come up with anything new.”

“Her name’s not Svenya.”

“You’re right there,” Joachim said. “Her name’s not Svenya, or Johanna — and not Magda either, Marek.”

“Chris?” Marek asked. “Tell me what’s going on here.”

“Your new partners have said it all.” Chris removed his jacket from the back of the chair.

“Now don’t pass out on us,” Sven Schmidt said. “Do you think the old man would send you the news by courier service, when Miss Ruth would only have to take the elevator down a couple of floors? Or that our majestic doorman would let her in?”

“Her name’s not Svenya,” Marek said.

“Only the old man himself knows her name,” Joachim said. “So best leave her be.”

“Baechler?”

“Oh, Marek! Of course Baechler, surprise, surprise! Welcome to the club.”

“Baechler?”

“Do you suppose Miss Ruth does the job for him? A guy who loves it like he does?”

“Damn it, Marek. You Poles have got plenty of hot women, if anybody’s got classy women, then it’s you guys. You don’t have to get mixed up with someone like …” Sven Schmidt said.

“He’s really fallen for her,” Karl-Heinz Södering said. “He still hasn’t caught on.”

“Shut up, will you finally just shut up,” Chris said. “I’m sorry, Marek, but nobody here figured on this.”

Three hours later — the match with Brazil was already over — Marek was still sitting in Dicke Wirtin with Joachim, Karl-Heinz Södering, and Sven Schmidt.

Marek was tired. He was close to letting his head sink to the table. But not to sleep, no, not that. There was simply no room for sleep, not at this table or any other. There would be no spot where he could get some rest, no matter how long he looked. Sleep was out of the question.

When Magda was suddenly standing before him, his first thought was that she was drunk too. Something about her wasn’t right.

“Come,” she said. “Come on.” He was puzzled because she acted as if only he and she existed, as if they were all alone in the room. She knew Sven Schmidt and she knew Joachim, and she even knew Karl-Heinz Södering from Wetzlar, Frau Ruth’s favorite. Why didn’t she greet his colleagues too? They were all easy to recognize. Sitting here in suits — compared with everyone else they looked like a delegation. And then all the Swedes. The city was full of Swedes already. And of lawyers, four of them were sitting right here, four lawyers.

“Come on,” Magda said. “Come with me.”

Marek discovered you had to watch her lips to get what she was saying. Otherwise you could barely make it out. Something wasn’t right about her. He first held one eye closed, then the other. But at this distance that didn’t change anything. Marek saw what everyone saw. She was short, blond, and very, very tired. But maybe she knew some spot where you could sleep.

Estonia, Out in the Country

During that week of September 2000 that Tanya and I spent in Tallinn and Tartu, I was called upon several times to write something about Estonia. In every case I explained that while I was honored by such requests, writing a short story is not a matter of choosing a country and a topic and simply taking off from there. I knew nothing about Estonia, and our experiences of regime change were scarcely comparable. But I was talking to a brick wall. After all, I had written thirty-three stories about St. Petersburg, so surely I could come up with one about Estonia.

For a story set in a foreign country, I said, one needs to sense a certain affinity, a kinship of soul with how things developed there. But the more emphatic my arguments, the more I rubbed my hosts the wrong way. They were too polite to tell me straight-out that they regarded such arguments as mere evasion.

I was a guest of the Writers Union and had been invited to Käsmu, where the union has a guesthouse on the Baltic. Käsmu, as my hosts never wearied of assuring me, was a very special place. It was not only a spot for total relaxation, but it also inspired one to work as never before. What we needed was a trip to Käsmu.

I hope this introduction has not left the impression that we were treated inhospitably. On the contrary, ours was a royal reception. Never before had one of my readings been moderated by the chairman of a writers’ union. He greeted us like old friends and invited us to a café where we could make plans for the reading. On our way there, every few steps someone would block our path to shake the chairman’s hand, a steady stream of people rapped on the café window or stepped inside, until we could hardly exchange two connected sentences. When I inquired about the profession of a tall, handsome man who gave me a most cordial handshake and apologized for having to miss the reading that evening, the chairman said: That was the minister of culture. The minister’s wife — beautiful, young, clever, amiable — interviewed me for television. It was just that they had all studied in Tartu, she said, and were now all working in Tallinn. They couldn’t help knowing one another, right?

Tanya and I took our lunch and dinner in restaurants that were both upscale and empty, and despite a good number of beers we seldom paid more than twenty marks.

When we and a small group went looking for a restaurant after the reading, it was Tanya and I who could offer suggestions. My translator, on the other hand — who told us how she and the people of Tallinn, of the entire Baltic, had for so many years gathered to sing anthems in hope of independence — couldn’t recall the last time she’d been in a restaurant. She couldn’t imagine buying a book as expensive as mine — which converted at just short of seventeen marks.

Before I tell about our days in Käsmu I want to mention another episode that has nothing to do with my story, really. Between a reading for students in the German Department of Tartu University and the public reading that same evening of the translated version of my book, some students invited Tanya and me for a walk through town. Toward the end of our little tour we passed a kiosk that offered the same beverages we have at home. There were two wooden benches out in front, and we invited the students to join us for a drink. Tanya said she was amazed at how everyone here roundly cursed the Russians but almost revered the Germans. Was that simply a matter of hospitality?

That had nothing to do with hospitality, it was simply how they felt, after all they were German majors. I was about to ask a question myself, when the youngest and loveliest of the female students, who until this point had only listened, exclaimed, “Why are you amazed? Germans have never harmed Estonians.”

“Well maybe not Estonians—” Tanya said.

“I know what you’re getting at,” the student interrupted. “But surely you know that we Estonians had our own SS, and you only have to consider how many Estonians, how many people from the Baltic in general, the Russians killed and deported even after the war. Only bad things have come from Russia, and mostly good things from the Germans — people can’t help noticing that.”

Tanya said that one cannot limit memory to a particular span of years or to a single nationality, and that after all it had been the Hitler-Stalin pact that had robbed them of their sovereignty.

“That’s true, of course it’s true,” the student said. “But why are you amazed?”

“Why aren’t you amazed!” Tanya blurted out. After that we returned to the university and exchanged addresses.

On the drive to Käsmu in our rental car, Tanya asked me if she had come off as self-righteous. No, I said, just the opposite, but unfortunately I hadn’t been able to come up with anything better to say. Tanya said she couldn’t help being reminded of certain turns of phrase in those Estonian fairy tales we had been reading aloud to each other of an evening. Certain idioms kept popping up, like “She adorned herself in beautiful raiment, as if she were the proudest German child,” or “as happy as a pampered German child.”

We were looking forward to Käsmu. We had read in our guidebook that Lahemaa, Land of Bays, lies about twenty-five miles to the east of Tallinn, is bounded by the Gulf of Finland and the Tallinn-Narva highway, encompasses an area of 250 square miles, and was declared a national park in 1971. The guidebook also noted several endangered species to be found there: brown bears, lynx, mink, sea eagles, cranes, Arctic loons, mute swans, and even black storks.

We reported in to Arne, a gangly man with medium long hair and a beret, who runs a kind of marine museum. He greeted Tanya and me with a handshake: a signal, he said, to his two dogs — setters — that we now belonged to the village. Before handing over the keys, he gave a brief lecture about the especially favorable magnetic field of Käsmu. On the way to the guesthouse, however, Arne fell silent, as if to allow us to take in the view of tidy frame houses without any distraction and appreciate the peaceful setting to the full. The two setters bounded ahead of us, came back, circled us, and nudged against our knees.

When I think back on that week now, six years later, the first thing that comes to mind — quite apart from the incredible events I am about to recount — is the way the light turned every color brighter and paler at the same time.

The house had once belonged to Captain Christian Steen, who had been deported to Siberia in 1947 and has since been listed as missing. The entryway opened on a large, centrally located dining room, where, with one exception, we took all our meals alone at the huge table. At opposite ends of this space were the two guest rooms, and a third door led to the kitchen, which adjoined a winter garden. The dining room’s high windows looked directly out onto the sauna cabin and a moss-covered erratic deposited by the last ice age.

The finest quarters, the Epos Room, had been reserved for Tanya and me. The smaller Novel Room was unoccupied at first, while the two Novella Chambers under the roof were home to a married couple, both lyric poets. We, however, caught sight only of the wife, who, no sooner had she announced in English, “Käsmu is good for work and good for holiday,” scurried off again as if not to waste one second of her precious Käsmu sojourn.

Käsmu has a narrow beach. You walk through the woods, and suddenly there is the sea. Or you stroll out on the pier in the little harbor to watch children fishing and let your fantasy run free as you gaze at derelict cutters scraping garlands of car tires strung along on the sides of the pier. The town is nothing spectacular, but lovely for that very reason. Somewhere there must be a depot for wooden pallets, because pallets lie about everywhere, and once they have been chopped into firewood by the villagers, are stacked along the sides of their houses.

The one thing we had a knack for in Käsmu was sleeping. Käsmu is worth a trip simply for its silence. As we sat in the winter garden in the evening — sipping tea, eating the wild-berry marmalade we’d bought from an old local woman, listening to the sea and the birds — time seemed to stand still.

Käsmu’s peace and quiet were only disrupted of a morning, by two or three buses that came lumbering down the village street to deposit school classes at Arne’s museum. The children stood staring in amazement at whalebones, shark teeth, ships in bottles, fishhooks, and postcards of lighthouses around the world. They would picnic on the lawn in front of the building, run out on the pier, and then be driven away again.

Tanya and I had tried to engage Arne in conversation and intended to invite him to dinner, but Arne resisted all contact with us. Even when we paid a second visit to his museum, he simply greeted us with a brief nod and then shuffled away.

On the third day — it had been drizzling since early morning — we watched from the window of our Epos Room as schoolchildren got off their buses, jiggled at Arne’s front door, circled the building, peered in from the veranda, until finally their teachers, equally perplexed and upset, rounded them up and herded them back onto the buses, where we could see them eating their picnic lunch. That evening when we returned from our excursion to the high marshy moorland, the note we had left for Arne asking him to heat the sauna was still wedged in his door. The sky was clear and promised a beautiful sunset.

The fourth day was cold and so gusty we could hear the sea even with the windows shut, and we stayed indoors. Tanya made tea and crawled back into bed with Gustav Herling’s A World Apart. Resolved at last to make use of Käsmu’s favorable aura and do some work, I turned on my laptop and was staring at the file icons on my screen — when savage barking called us to the window.

A green Barkas van was standing beside the museum. Arne’s setters were going crazy. I don’t know where they had suddenly come from, but their baying didn’t sound exactly welcoming. Although the day before yesterday these same dogs had obeyed Arne’s every word, he now had to grab each by the nape of its neck and drag it into the house. But once inside they still didn’t calm down and kept leaping up at the windows to the veranda, yelping their hearts out.

Arne on the other hand looked somehow younger — his beret cocked back on his head.

“If you can keep a secret,” he called over, “I have something to show you.” With a wide swing of his arm, he directed us to take our place behind him, inserted the key in the rear door of the Barkas, and opened it a crack. He peered into the van and then with a clownish pantomime urged us to do the same. I assumed Arne’s daily encounters with schoolchildren were to blame for his exaggerated performance.

It was dark inside the van, and I recoiled from the foul odor. Tanya took more time. Then she glanced at me and said in a voice that sounded as if I had just asked her the time, “A bear, there’s a dead bear lying in there.”

Arne had dragged over one of those wooden pallets. Tanya opened the door till it caught in place, and Arne and I propped up the pallet to make a ramp. Arne took up his post beside it, Tanya and I retreated behind the opened door.

The bear didn’t stir.

We watched as Arne pulled a can from his jacket pocket and, after opening it with his fingernails, plunged a stick into it. He handed me the stick, nodded as if to thank me or as if we had agreed on some signal, clapped his hands three times, and cried, “Seryosha! Seryosha!” He clapped three more times, took back the stick, and held it out in front of him like a fishing pole.

I’m really not all that much of a wimp, but when, at no more than an arm’s length, the bear’s head emerged from the darkness, I had a sense of the aptness of the idiom “so scared I almost shit my pants.” “Let’s get out of here,” Tanya whispered. Arne, however, armed with just a honey-smeared stick, showed no sign of the jitters. He waited in front of the pallet with his legs astraddle, bending farther and farther forward — and given his height, it looked like some sort of gymnastics. The bear stretched its head out even farther but still refused to crawl down the pallet. Arne held the stick so close to Seryosha’s mouth that he could take a lick and bite off a piece. He crunched the stick as he dined, and growled. From childhood on we learn that bears growl. But when you actually hear that ursine rumble, without the protection of a moat or a fence, it leaves a lasting impression.

Strangely enough my confidence was boosted less by Arne’s honey-stick gambit than by the bear’s behavior. When you know how this story ends, that seems a facile observation, but from the start I had the impression that this bear had himself under control, that he knew what he was allowed and not allowed to do. He stuck out a paw and pushed the pallet away from the van, measured the distance between the edge of the van’s bed and the pallet lying below it, shifted his weight from one paw to the other, reached down farther with his right paw, and leaped out so quickly that Arne would have been knocked over if he hadn’t performed a reverse buckjump. At the same moment the Barkas bounced with a metallic squeak.

Arne made a few quick jabs at the can. The crunching sound resumed. And then it happened. At first I thought the bear was turning toward us. But then he kept going, spun around once in place, and then a second time, because Arne was applauding him. He turned and turned, swinging the rope around his neck with him. When we joined the applause, he suddenly stopped, lurched forward and backward as if dizzy, and ended with a somersault that was a little off kilter but still counted as a somersault. For his finale, the bear plopped down on his rear end and raised his paws, begging.

Whether Arne’s stick was now too short or whether he was following instructions, at any rate he pulled out a handkerchief, dipped it in the can of honey, and tossed it to Seryosha, who simultaneously tore it to shreds and stuffed it in his mouth. Smacking his lips and grunting, he lowered himself onto all fours and set off on a stroll across the lawn. Arne had removed a basket of fruit from the passenger seat. He now tossed Seryosha a couple of apples and strewed the rest over the bed of the van. Seryosha actually turned around and jumped up into the Barkas, which settled onto its rear axle with a squeak.

It wasn’t until weeks later, after we had told the story of Seryosha many times, that it struck me just how curious this little interlude outside Arne’s house actually was. Why, after all, had Arne enticed the bear out of the van? Had he wanted to play wild-animal trainer for us? Had his vanity gotten the better of him? Was that the reason he had risked discovery?

Arne invited us to accompany him. And so, for the first time since our hitchhiking days, Tanya and I found ourselves squeezing into a Barkas — but unlike back then, Tanya climbed in first.

What I ask myself now is: Why didn’t I jot down a single note while we were in Käsmu? Driving through the woods were an Estonian and a German writer, along with his one and only love, plus a bear in the back of their van — and it never once dawned on me that all I had to do to provide my hosts with the story they wanted was to write down what I was experiencing at that moment.

It would of course be an improvement if I could reproduce Arne’s speech in the original. His German was tinged with the now-defunct East Prussian dialect, but I’m simply unable to replicate its odd syntax and broad vowels. Chugging out of the village in second gear, we at first said nothing. Arne was apparently enjoying keeping us in suspense and pretended that his slalom course to avoid potholes demanded his full attention.

“What kind of bear is it?” Tanya finally asked. In her attempt to look Arne in the eye, she bent so far forward that her forehead almost touched the windshield. “What are you doing with a bear?”

Arne smiled — a pothole sent us lurching forward. Arne cursed.

“Did you hear that?” Tanya exclaimed. “He growled, he’s growling.”

A couple of slalom maneuvers later, Arne began to speak, but what he had to say apparently had nothing to do with Tanya’s question. He explained that the Writers Union was poor because its writers were poor. Except for one member, not a single writer in Estonia was able to live from his books, although of course the union also received a government subsidy. And for the quartermaster — that was in fact the term he used — for the quartermaster of a writers’ retreat there was really not much left over, and he couldn’t depend on the standard practice of tipping in their case either. Once in a while he let a few villagers use the sauna, but they paid, if at all, in produce. As far as his museum work went, all he got out of it was what he squeezed out of it himself. Even ten buses a day wouldn’t do the job. “So, chto delat?” he asked in Russian. What was Arne to do?

But why was he taking a trained bear for a joyride through the woods?

Arne was looking for a turnoff. We drove at a snail’s pace along the rutted path. Arne talked about the revolution, as he called it. They had achieved everything they had wanted: independence, democracy, a market economy, and soon the European Union. Except that by now all the islands and coastal properties had been sold to Finns and Swedes, some to Russians and Germans too, plus the finest houses in Tallinn. There was truly nothing left that hadn’t been privatized and incorporated into the market economy. So what now?

Whenever we drove over a root or through a deep puddle, we could hear Seryosha’s growls.

The only difference from the old days, Arne said, was that from time to time some Westerner might get lost and end up in Käsmu. And that there was nobody to tell him how to run his museum anymore.

Arne turned on his headlights because the fir trees had closed in over the path, so that it was like driving through a tunnel. After an eternity of two or three kilometers, a heather-covered clearing opened up before us. Arne stopped, turned off his lights, pulled the key out of the ignition, and leaned back with arms folded.

A friend of his in Lahti, who also ran a museum and to whom he had sold two old German telescopes at a friendly discount, had passed on an inquiry about whether he, Arne, could perhaps act as an agent to locate a house at a good price along the coast. Although he had not agreed to this arrangement, suddenly there stood Mika, along with his wife, a stunning Argentinean, and their three children. Nothing came of the house deal, but Mika had been wildly enthusiastic about the local forest — which Arne found surprising, since Finland had plenty of forests of its own. It turned out that Mika was a hunter, and he called this forest a Russian forest and suggested that surely there were bears in a Russian forest. He, Arne, had never seen a bear in Lahemaa, but, since the house deal had fallen through, he didn’t want to dash Mika’s hopes a second time, and so had promised to inquire about bears at the local game and forestry office. There were plenty of bears, so he learned, but it was forbidden to shoot animals in the national park. Unless — here Arne raised his right hand and began to rub his thumb against his first two fingers — unless the bear presented a serious threat to the life and limb of locals and tourists.

Arne had come to an agreement with the game warden as to how many Finnish markaa it would cost Mika to obtain the ruling. Mika agreed to the sum, half in advance, the rest on the hide of the bear. In March a family of bears actually turned up in Lahemaa. But to avoid additional difficulties, the game warden had requested the hunt be postponed until autumn.

But the family of bears vanished in May, and there had been no trace of them since. The game warden had telephoned him a week ago and confessed that unfortunately he was no longer in a position to pay back the advance. In lieu of the cash, the game warden gave him a hot tip: A once highly renowned circus from Soviet days was eking out a livelihood in a St. Petersburg suburb. They were trying to unload their animals because their upkeep was too expensive. And so yesterday, for a payment of three hundred marks, Arne had taken charge of Seryosha, whom his caretaker had smuggled across the border through the forest. And so now they had a bear.

In response to Tanya’s question of whether he had informed Seryosha’s caretaker what fate awaited her charge, Arne brusquely asked in return whether she would prefer that Seryosha starve. Thanks to his good work, the animal would at least die with a full tummy and the pleasure of having enjoyed a couple of hours in the wild.

The plan was to let Seryosha settle in at the edge of this clearing for a day or two. To ease the pain of separation, his caretaker had also given Arne a pair of her old shoes and a jacket. Arne pulled out a well-worn moccasin, like the ones I had worn as a child, and got out of the van.

I smiled, unable to suppress my suspicion that what Arne had told us was your basic cock-and-bear story. “You don’t believe me?” he asked. I shrugged. “Tomorrow,” Arne said, “Mika will be here. Maybe you’ll want to apologize then.” I apologized on the spot, and several times over, but to no avail. Arne had opened the van’s rear door, and now clapped three times, called Seryosha’s name, and with the shoes and jacket bundled under his arm and a sack of food thrown over his shoulder, set out across the heather.

Tanya and I stood beside the van. As he trotted alongside Arne, Seryosha was a beautiful sight to behold. It was not just his loping gait, which made it look as if he were dragging his paws behind him. Under that mass of fur moved a body no less supple than a tiger’s, except that Seryosha’s elegance was less obvious.

When we finally lost sight of them in the trees at the far side of the clearing, Tanya asked what I would do if Arne were to scream for help. “Certainly not run in his direction,” I said.

On the drive back each of us was lost in our own thoughts. Our good-byes were brief. Arne had enough to do calming down his setters — and a clutch of teachers and their students.

Tanya took it upon herself to walk over to Arne’s that evening to ask him about the sauna, but either Arne wasn’t there or he didn’t want to be disturbed.

As we drank our tea in the winter garden, we tried without success to imagine the hunt. Would Arne clap his hands three times and call out “Seryosha”? Should we or shouldn’t we hope that Seryosha had made his getaway? Did a circus bear have any chance at all in Lahemaa? Wouldn’t he seek out the company of people, so that sooner or later he’d be shot as a dangerous animal? Seryosha’s future didn’t look rosy, and there was nothing we could do about that.

The next day was warm, the sky cloudless, and we made an excursion to Palmse, once the estate of a German baron. Afterward we visited a forest chapel, which was set in the middle of an old cemetery. (I’ve rechecked my notebook. In point of fact there is not a single entry about Estonia. Although Tanya did use two pages to record the names on the wooden crosses and gravestones. I now remember how ashamed I felt that it was she who jotted down those names and not me.)

On the drive home the weather turned gloomy, it began to rain. But once we arrived home our mood immediately turned more cheerful — smoke was rising from the sauna cabin. Arne had in fact heated it and filled the basins in the entryway with fresh birch branches.

As we entered the steam room, each of us dressed in no more than a towel over one arm, we found three men already huddled in the small room. They neither responded to our greeting nor moved closer together to make room for us. Instead they ogled Tanya. From the corner of my eye I could see the one seated behind her trace a female silhouette in the air. We couldn’t understand what they were saying, of course, but their stifled childish giggles didn’t need an interpreter. Tanya left the sauna after a few minutes and returned to the house.

I was idiotic enough to believe I ought not yield the battleground to the Finns without a fight, so I was the first to go back inside and stretch out on the upper bench, leaving them to crowd together on the lower one. In the course of the next half hour I thought I could observe the other two brownnosing the guy with a blond mustache and a back sprinkled with moles. They held the door open for him and closed it behind him, let him be the first under the shower, the first to select a seat — and everything he said was met with a twofold echo.

Returning to the Epos Room, I immediately noticed something was up. I looked at Tanya — and she was already in mid-explosion. Our arguments always follow the same pattern. They begin with my failure to notice or notice too late what should be the appropriate response. In this case, since I had chosen not to take on those three louts directly, I ought to have at least followed Tanya out. But I was a man who could never forgo his pleasures, and by my behavior I had, whether intentionally or not, sided with them.

It is truly remarkable. Although I earn my daily bread by observing and describing situations and emotions, compared with Tanya I see myself as utterly tone deaf and dull witted.

The situation escalated when shortly thereafter the guy with the blond mustache sat down at the dining-room table to disassemble and clean two guns. While he worked he loudly whistled random melodies. I had to do something.

My suggestion that he could in fact tend to his weapons in his room was ignored with a grin. When I insisted, he cried, “Arne! Arne!” as if Arne had assigned him to his task. But when I picked up the barrel of one of the guns, he shouted in English, “Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it!” and snatched it away from me. The upshot was that we spread our evening meal over one half of the table — the lyric poetess from the Novella Chamber was impervious to our request that she join us in defending the dining room. The other half was occupied by the Finn, who was still busy oiling his weapons. For a while he kept up his mindless whistling, but much to our gratification was the first to beat a retreat.

We were already in bed when there was a knock at our door.

After apologizing for the disturbance, Arne begged for our help. “You’re from the East too, after all,” he said. One of the group, we learned from his explanation, was Mika’s boss, and Mika was in some kind of trouble. He didn’t know anything more than that himself, Arne said. He would be truly grateful if, once back in Tallinn, we wouldn’t mention the fact that the boss had been quartered in the union’s guesthouse. If everything went well, they would all be gone the day after tomorrow anyway.

“Day after tomorrow?” Tanya said, “That’s when we’re leaving too.”

“But you’ll be here tomorrow?” Arne asked. He needed us because the Finns had come from Tallinn in a taxi. Could we drive two of them to the hunt?

“Only if they sit in the backseat,” Tanya decreed.

Arne stepped closer and extended a hand to each of us. “Wake-up call at three thirty, breakfast at my place, departure at four thirty,” he said, and hurried off.

It was a long time before we fell asleep. Around three o’clock our sleep was interrupted by what we first took to be a barking seal — a sound evidently emanating from the boss Finn under the shower.

It’s a strange feeling to sit at a table with people you’ve first come to know in the buff. Their expensive outfits, which brought to mind an imminent polar expedition, looked to me like a crude attempt to conceal their true natures.

They politely offered us hard-boiled eggs and pickled herring — I bought something similar in Berlin a few days ago, where it’s marketed as “Swedish Snax.” Arne and the boss rode in the Barkas. Mika and the other fellow came with us. Both of them had small eyes and stringy hair — Mika’s was dark blond, the other guy was a towhead. They both fell asleep immediately. The alcohol on their breath was tolerable only with a window down.

After the turnoff we rolled the windows down all the way and inhaled the forest air. It was moist and piney and somehow swallowed up the exhaust of the Barkas ahead of us. Any second I expected to see Seryosha pop up in the narrow beam of our headlights. “Let’s hope, let’s hope he’s taken off!” Tanya whispered.

We halted just before the clearing and left it to the boss to shake his countrymen awake. Dawn was breaking by now, fog lay over the blanket of heather.

Arne assigned the hunters places every fifty meters. The boss was given a post on a low rise. Mika took a spot very close to us, the towhead stood farthest off. Arne passed out blankets. We could drive back home and get some sleep, he said, evidently worried about us, we didn’t need to be back here for another four or five hours. But we didn’t do Arne the favor.

How lovely it would be if I could describe what comes next in the style of a Leskov or Turgenev. But I know neither the names of the birds striking up their songs, nor of the beetles crawling under our collars or up our sleeves, nor can I make a name for myself by offering some observation that testifies to my dendrological expertise.

Freezing, we jogged up and down under the firs and dreamed of the sauna, which surely ought to await us — at a minimum — in reward for our cooperation. But we never moved too far away from the car. Once fired upon, even Seryosha might turn cranky.

Between seven and eight — the sun had now risen above the treetops — I noticed some movement. Evidently the hunters had spotted something. Everyone except us had binoculars, which is why I’m dependent here on Arne’s account. He would tell us later that it all began well enough, actually conditions were ideal, since Seryosha had been meandering along the opposite edge of the forest. For hunters who are good shots a distance of 200 to 250 meters is no problem, but Seryosha kept vanishing behind tree stumps and bushes. It makes sense that Arne advised against taking a shot, since he assumed that Seryosha could be lured closer.

In the real world, spectacular events always occur at great speed and usually almost coincidentally. And how can you be in the right place at the right time? To give truth its due, I ought to describe the finale with the brevity and speed with which in fact we experienced it.

Seryosha, then, had been spotted and was in the Finns’ crosshairs. I’m certain the argument that broke out among the hunters at that point — in which Arne somehow managed to get involved as well — would have sent any other bear packing for good and all. According to Arne’s subsequent report, the issue was who should fire first, the boss or the towhead, who was considered the better shot. The towhead had evidently lodged a protest, implying that his boss wouldn’t have much luck at that distance. At any rate the ensuing rhubarb was worthy of a soccer field — then suddenly, a shot. Followed at once by another. Silence. Tanya pressed her fists together and whispered, “Beat it, Seryosha, beat it!”

The next sound we heard was a screeching female voice. Which is to say, at first I took it to be the wail of an animal so accustomed to the company of humans that it mimics them in its pain. So it was with real relief that we saw a woman rise up amid the heather, a woman in a black headscarf, throwing her arms into the air and spinning in place. She evidently didn’t know what direction the shots had come from. We were standing next to Mika on the low rise, the towhead and the boss were a few steps to our right, with Arne behind them. Rooted to the spot, they stared through their binoculars. But even with the naked eye it was obvious the woman, whose screams now rose to savage yowls, was pointing to the far edge of the forest.

I have never used the following phrase, and will presumably never use it again, but in this case there is no avoiding it: I didn’t believe my eyes. No, not even when I saw what was happening right before them. It was Seryosha. But he wasn’t jumping or dancing or doing somersaults. Seryosha, if not with great skill, was riding a woman’s bicycle. It looked as if his paws kept slipping off the pedals, and every few yards I expected him to upend, or go flying over the handlebars. But that was more a matter of the uneven forest floor. Seryosha was perched on the seat, pumping for all he was worth. Unfortunately, given the situation, I was paying no attention to the people around me. It wasn’t until I heard a shot that I noticed an ashen-faced Arne, and saw the boss raise his gun and fire — followed by a second shot from the towhead, and finally one from Mika.

Now it was Arne who was screaming as he pushed the barrel of the boss’s gun down. Any shot was irresponsible, even though the wailing woman was not in the direct line of fire and had in the meantime dived into the heather — at the sight of her commandeered bicycle, as we would soon learn, she had fainted. I took advantage of the brief skirmish that followed to borrow Mika’s binoculars. Which is why I was presumably the last person to see Seryosha. He fled into the forest, soon breaking into an easy trot on all fours, and vanished among the fir trees.

I probably don’t need to describe what was taking place among the hunters. Fortunately their shouting match was less about the bear’s agility than about Arne’s interference and their own failure to maintain an established hierarchy. They even forgot about the woman. Only after she reemerged from the heather, still nervously prepared to duck and cover, did someone come to her aid.

She was younger than I had guessed. At the sight of her bicycle — an old Wanderer model — she raised a howl to curdle your blood. The front wheel was a figure eight with extruding spokes. One shot had shattered the bearings in the rear wheel. But there were no traces of blood to be found anywhere.

The woman had come to gather blueberries, and while she held out her hand one bill of Finnish currency after the other was thumbed out until she fell silent. Arne carried the heavy bicycle to the Barkas and drove her home. Without sliding her own seat forward so much as an inch, Tanya watched in the mirror on her sun visor as the boss was forced to squeeze into the backseat between Mika and his chief rival, the towheaded sharpshooter.

By the time we handed over the keys to the Epos Room to Arne the next morning, thanking him and saying our goodbyes, the Finns had already departed — in two taxis, Mika riding with his boss, whereas the towhead had to pay for his own taxi. Arne considered this a victory for Mika. Because, according to Arne, the open hostility that had erupted as a result of the hunting rivalry between the boss and his former right-hand man offered Mika a second chance, so that the bear hunt had paid off for him after all, if in unexpected ways. The woman gathering berries, Arne hoped, had received enough hush money. But if she still couldn’t keep her mouth shut, which he feared would be the case, her punishment would be that no one would believe her story.

Arne promised to let us know as soon as he learned anything about Seryosha’s fate. Sad to say, I’ve never heard another word from Arne.

Of course I ask myself why, after six years, I’m now writing about that memorable hunt. I’ve forgotten so many details in the meantime — from the names of the lyric poets at the writers’ retreat to the make of our rental car, from exact prices to the route we took, and so on and so on. Besides which it’s quite possible that things have changed drastically in Estonia over the last few years, so that my story has in some sense become past history. In any case, the fact is that not only my own life has changed. All our lives have taken a different course over the last few years. And that may perhaps — perhaps — be the reason I finally found myself in a position to venture a story about Estonia.

Incident in Cairo

“You picked up something while you where down there,” the doctor on emergency house call offered as a diagnosis. While the air drained from the blood-pressure cuff, he added, “Or it was already budding inside you.” I’m quite certain he used the word “budding,” although that sounds so metaphorical. At any rate, since my return on March 1st I had been lying in bed for two weeks — totally sapped of my strength, gulping down antibiotics, and expecting my head to burst the moment I attempted so much as an e-mail. My recovery was so slow that even in April I still had to be sparing of my energies.

Once we had landed at Tegel, I told Sheila I didn’t want to see her again. I said it even though between flights in Paris — where the drafty jet bridge had finished me off — she had bought a dark-skinned doll for my daughter, Anne, since I’d been unable to find a “brown” doll in either Cairo or Alexandria.

Sheila said that I shouldn’t act so childish, she would take care of me, and after I was healthy again, we could discuss the whole thing. My jealousy at any rate was as foolish as it was unfounded.

We could talk about it again at some point, I said, handing the cabdriver my suitcase, but first I wanted to get well, and having her around would be simply toxic.

I hadn’t intended to insult Sheila, but I wouldn’t have gotten rid of her otherwise.

I mention my illness and separation from Sheila because if I don’t, no one will understand why I didn’t give a thought to the incident in Cairo for quite some time, let alone tell anyone about it.

From a psychological viewpoint it’s easy to explain. My memory waited until I had recuperated and halfway overcome the separation from Sheila. At that point I began to talk about it, because I thought telling the story would help objectify it. By now I’ve told it often, quite often, blaming myself, admitting my guilt — all of which provides only short-term relief.

My story is about the next-to-last evening, when I joined Hoda and the other women to dine on squab or, far better, “pigeon”—for my sake we all had to speak English — and what a far more apt word “pigeon” is than the German Taube, because when you say “pigeon” you can literally feel the swollen, rubbery consistency of a stuffed squab as your lips touch it right before that first bite. I’ve never spent much time describing our little gathering, or the women, whom most locals took to be Christians since they were in European clothes, but who spoke Arabic. I’ve also never mentioned the vendors, the deaf-mute fortune-teller, the children, and a heavily made-up girl of thirteen or fourteen.

That evening, the whole absurd conference, the readings, my illness, the virus slinking its way inside me — it all probably belongs in the story, as well as a restaurant called the Fish Market and the fishermen in the harbor basin of Alexandria. I’ve never described the cabdriver, who was at least as much to blame as I was. But what good does it do me to cast aspersions on the cabbie? Above all I’ve never told about Sheila, about Sheila and Samir and the previous days.

By that next-to-last evening I was sick, tired, wounded — I wanted to get back to the hotel, I didn’t want to keep giving alms to beggars over and over, I wanted the cabdriver to finally pull away. But he took his time, chewing on his falafel. Luckily the cab doors were locked — a child to my left, a child to my right, children in a great swarm all around us, growing more and more brazen, spitting on the windshield — and then that loud bang as the taxi pulled away, as if they had all kicked it at once. The children were behind us now. The taxi zipped out onto the main road, I can’t say if we were doing thirty miles an hour or fifty or more. As far as I was concerned it couldn’t be too fast. And then, at some point, I see him, the boy, close to my shoulder, his eyes looking directly into mine, just a few inches away, wide-open eyes staring at me through the back windshield — with him hanging on my neck, so to speak. I don’t want him there, I want him to finally leave me in peace, I turn around again, look straight ahead.

It began, if it ever had something like a beginning, with a call in September or October 2004. The country code in the telephone display meant nothing to me. A deep female voice whispered: “We want to send you a fax.” At first I thought it was a call from Kiev, the accent was a match for that of a Russian or Ukrainian, because in early March I was supposed to tour Ukraine for a week. When I saw the page that came out of the fax machine, I had to laugh, and I mean a real guffaw. It annoys me now that I laughed, but at the time I found it completely absurd for someone to send me a fax in Arabic. What was I supposed to make of that calligraphy? At the bottom, however, I discovered an address written in tiny roman type.

I showed Sheila the fax, Sheila can manage a little Arabic, and with the help of a dictionary she finally figured it out.

“The purpose of this correspondence,” she said, “is to extend to you a very honorable invitation to an international writers’ conference.” Those were in fact her pathos-laden words. I was being invited to Cairo to deliver an address on “Literature and History,” flight and accommodations paid for by the organizers.

It was clear to me that I ought not accept any more invitations. For a year and a half I had been living off an advance and debts. I needed finally to finish the new book, and there was that trip to Ukraine besides.

My guess was that Gamal al-Ghitani and Edwar al-Charrat were behind the invitation. I didn’t want to disappoint them. But most of all I did it for Sheila. Sheila said it had always been a dream of hers to see Egypt.

Sheila’s father is Algerian, her mother comes from Kamenz near Dresden, the same town where Lessing was born. Sheila’s parents had both studied at the Technical University in Dresden. Sheila knows her father only from photographs. Sheila and I had met toward the end of 2003 at a reading in Koblenz. She had joined us afterward for dinner and, along with the bookstore owner, had accompanied me back to my hotel. Might she see my room and its view of the Rhine? she asked, as I was about to say good night. I had in fact enthusiastically recommended the view earlier.

I could get involved with Sheila with a clear conscience. But that was also the only advantage of having to live separated from the woman I loved, and my own daughter.

Sheila usually stands out because of her incredible hair and her vivacity, with its tinge of overexcitement. After flunking out of law school she worked in a notary’s office. A couple of weeks after my reading in Koblenz she had moved in with a girlfriend in Berlin and, against the odds, immediately found a job here. From then on we saw each other almost every day, and soon we were being invited everywhere as a couple. I did not, however, introduce Sheila to Anne, my daughter by Tanya.

Sheila was now reading nothing but Egyptian writers, and learning Arabic vocabulary every morning. I patched together a lecture from various texts, found the hook to hang it on in the relationship of the words “history/story” and Geschichte/Geschichten, and finished with the conversation between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, which implies that whoever has power also decides what words mean, which is why we storytellers, or so I planned to conclude, are so important. Because we …

I could see myself in a huge auditorium, with a horde of photographers thronging the space between the stage and the first row, heard myself say shokran—the word for “thank you” being the only word of Arabic I know — and felt myself being literally overwhelmed by the applause. I put my hand to my heart several times and bowed. Some people responded so enthusiastically they couldn’t stay in their seats.

With the help of Elisabeth, the librarian for the Goethe-Institut, who had smoothed the way for an Arabic translation of my Simple Stories, I arranged for readings at the university, the German high school, and the Goethe-Institut in both Cairo and Alexandria.

In early February — I hadn’t learned until the end of January that the conference would be held the last week of February — it dawned on me that there wouldn’t be much point in giving my speech in German. John Woods, who was sitting atop his packed possessions in San Diego, on the verge of a move to Berlin, translated the text in two days and wrote me a few encouraging words. Finally I spent an afternoon with Eleonore — nicknamed “Nörchen,” a friend of my mother’s who had grown up in South Africa — memorizing the correct pronunciation of the English words and a corresponding cadence for the sentences. The day before we were to depart I bought half a dozen German and Berlin calendars that I found on sale, as well as three smallish boxes of Mozart balls — prettily packaged chocolates are always well received. At KaDeWe I found three chunks of the Wall (the colorful ones) encased in Plexiglas for 6.90 euros apiece. People can laugh, or take this as a bit of self-irony on my part, but everyone who travels for business or an official tour knows how helpful such items are at that first encounter with one’s hosts. Nor do I wish to hide the fact that I have the occasional weak moment when I consider myself a good representative of my country — yes, why not, of Europe and the West.

On February 22 we flew Air France via Paris to Cairo. The music played in the plane before takeoff in both Berlin and Paris was, remarkably enough, an instrumental piece by Michaela Melian, the title track from a CD that I had given Sheila for Christmas. Sheila likewise thought that was a good omen. This was our first trip abroad together. Closing our eyes, we held hands on takeoff.

In Cairo, before we even reached passport control, we were greeted by two young men. Thanks to their presence as ambassadors of the conference, they claimed with some self-assurance, we would be able to have our passports checked right away, no visa necessary — which turned out not to be true. We had to go back and purchase a thirty-five-dollar visa that looked like a postage stamp — the pragmatism of a country with lots of tourists, said Elisabeth, who was waiting for us on the other side of passport control.

The warmth, of course, was a gift from heaven. After our edgy drowsiness on the plane, the few yards from the arrival hall to the parking lot sufficed to instill euphoria. The driver of a shiny silver VW bus, an older gentleman in a suit, opened the car doors for us, stowed our luggage, and then we glided out into the early evening traffic. Soldiers in dark blue uniforms and armed with shields and billy clubs stood in cordons along both curbs — awaiting President Mubarak. But we were soon driving along elevated roads, gazing down at Cairo, and getting used to the ubiquitous honking of car horns.

As darkness fell we arrived at our hotel. Sheila called our room a “suite,” since we had at our command both a living room and a bedroom, as well as a large bath. The view was blocked by the smoothly stuccoed wall of another high-rise, but far below we could see roofs with antennas. We left our bags unpacked and started off at once, made it hand in hand across a multilane road from which the hotel driveway diverged, and a minute later we were beside the Nile. We should walk along the Corniche, Elisabeth had suggested, to the Fish Market, a boat restaurant.

Not that I was unfamiliar with the term “corniche,” but all the same to my ears it sounded as remote and exotic as the words “Tuscany” or “Broadway” once had. And now I was leaning beside an energized Sheila on the railing of Cairo’s Corniche and watching the current as attentively as if a basket were floating there in the water. Neither the myriad boats draped with garlands of light, nor the hotel palaces on the far shore, and certainly not the streetlamps on the bridges and along the river-banks were able to illuminate the Nile. It flowed along wide and heavy under a gentle cover of darkness. We walked upstream, past a disco and restaurants with just a few customers. The young people strolling side by side — there was a good distance between streetlamps — never touched one another. When they spoke it looked as if they were explaining very serious matters, at least it didn’t look like chitchat. At one point Sheila stopped, hugged and kissed me, and said, “Thank you so much!”

We got the last available window table in the Fish Market. Silly of course, but it filled me with a certain pride to know that the river we were watching flow by beneath us was the Nile. And at the same time it seemed a kind of sacrilege, as if this were somehow presumptuous of us. Sheila pulled out her cell phone. “Mama,” she exclaimed. “Guess where I am?”

The buffet was an elongated mountain of ice cubes, in which lay the rarest and finest fish. You saw only the mouths of most of them, and the waiter in charge of the buffet had to dig deep and extract them for presentation to his guests. Sometimes he displayed the fish like a precious necklace draped between his hands, sometimes he held one in each hand like a balance scale. Once we had made our decision, the buffet waiter passed the “Egyptian fish” on to a chef and turned to his next guests. Sheila returned to the table. I waited a while but finally followed her — and was certain I had done something wrong. No one had given us a number or a chit. But no sooner had I taken my seat than our chosen fish were presented again for approval, our order was then repeated—“Yes, grilled, sir”—and served to us shortly thereafter, although we weren’t even close to having sampled all the appetizers.

On the way back to the hotel we bought mineral water in a little shop. A young man sitting on the steps smiled and pretended to tug at his hair, pointed then to my long hair, and called out, “Very nice, very nice!” I felt not just flattered but right at home.

The next morning began with a misunderstanding. We arrived at the foot of the hotel stairway at the agreed hour and kept an eye out for our silver VW bus. I waved off the offers of a steady stream of snail-paced taxis, and Sheila had to repeatedly assure the bellhops that we didn’t need one. When at twenty after ten still no VW bus had appeared, I called the Goethe-Institut. The driver, I learned, had also just phoned to ask where we were. Suddenly I heard my name being shouted from a battered old car, a Lada. We climbed in. The driver laid into us. He claimed he had been driving in circles for half an hour, that he wasn’t allowed to stop here — a no-parking zone. Sheila said he was lying, that we had been standing there for a good twenty minutes.

Our outraged glances met in the rearview mirror. I was offended by their having sent us a gypsy cab instead of the nice gentleman in the silver VW bus.

Sheila and I now slid deeper into our seats, because in an attempt to make up for lost time, the driver pursued a slalom path through the lanes of the road, with every stoplight a kind of course marker. At major intersections, with traffic spinning in a vortex, he kept so far to the right that he was always in the first or at least second starting lane.

When we stopped at the courtyard in front of the Goethe-Institut our eyes met again in the rearview mirror. I had no choice but to thank him for the ride. He gave a gloomy nod, got out, and vanished into the building.

It’s a great temptation to write about my readings at length. Given all the young women on the university campus, Sheila did not stand out. In the dean’s office I was presented the university’s shiny gold medal in a red-lined box. I returned the friendly gesture with Mozart balls and a colorful piece of the Wall in Plexiglas. The entire office was furnished like that of the director of a printing outfit in Leningrad in the eighties: bulky desks and cupboards, lacquered very dark and with numerous scrapes and scratches. A portrait of the president adorned one wall. The lecture hall was overflowing with women students, Sheila was seated somewhere in the middle, a few male students stood along the walls. All I could see of some women students was their glasses, the rest was swathed in black. Most of them, however, wore jeans and T-shirts or a long tunic and headscarf. I wasn’t sure if they had even understood what I read. They were in their third and fourth years of German. Breathless silence, but otherwise no reaction, brief applause at the end. To my left and right sat the college staff, professors, who were to moderate the discussion.

The questions, asked in German, were much like those at home. Why do you write? How autobiographical are your books? Are the East Germans being oppressed by the West Germans? Why are your characters unhappy? That I made a living writing my books required some explanation. I intentionally said my books, to avoid having to say two books. The question about Israel, about which I had been forewarned, was not posed either here or later. When the moderators overlooked a raised arm and I pointed this out to them, a professor asked me, “Which of them would you like to have?” He later assured me that it was just a joke, he had merely been teasing.

We had to wait for Sheila, who had by now been subjected to more than a dozen of my readings, because she was still chatting with some students and a translator — to be on the safe side, my speech for the conference was to be made available in Arabic as well. Once in the VW bus, Sheila announced how happy she was to experience the university from the inside and not have to walk through the city as just a tourist.

It all looked as if this would indeed be a successful trip.

But then came lunch, and we met Samir over lunch. Elisabeth had hired Samir as our city guide. He was tall and trim, with a profile like an ancient Egyptian bas-relief. He wore a long white robe and handsome leather sandals. In addition to Arabic Samir was a master of English, French, and Spanish. His German and Russian weren’t so good, he said — though his spoken German was close to fluent. He had beautiful hands with well-manicured nails, and wore a wide gold band with a black stone on his left hand. He walked with an easy grace. His voice on the other hand sounded high pitched to me. He seemed truly excited to meet a writer.

He had, Samir said, read two of my books, both of which were in the Goethe-Institut library and both of which — yes indeed, both of them — had been “a top-notch pleasure” to read. He planned to write novels someday, too, but the time for that had not yet come. (Samir looked to be in his mid-to late twenties.) He wished and hoped, however, that his book would then please me as much as mine had him. We toasted. When Sheila raised her glass — without the least hesitation Samir had ordered white wine — he looked at her for the first time.

Toward the end of the meal Elisabeth reminded me that we hadn’t much time for a translation of my text, she needed it as soon as possible.

I’ve often thought: If she had said that earlier, if I had not foolishly left my shoulder bag in her office, if I had not had to walk back across to the institute with Elisabeth — and so on and so forth. I am well aware of how pointless such thinking is.

When I returned to Sheila and Samir twenty minutes later, the die had been cast. Both had propped their elbows on the table, Sheila’s right barely a handbreadth from his left. Smiling dreamily to themselves, they both sat up startled as I approached the table.

Sheila began at once to tell me about Samir’s passion for the Pyramids. He had had to promise his father never to leave the Pyramids for any length of time. Samir knew everything a person could know about the Pyramids. He demurred, and I said that it would be nice to take a stroll through the city.

We let Samir walk between us, although most of the time the throngs forced us to move single file.

What couldn’t I write about the hours that followed, about the various markets or about how, after we had left the heart of town and were walking along a wide street, some young fellows blocked my path and indicated — or so I read their flurry of gestures — that I should check out a brush, a little plastic tub, and other housewares they were offering for sale. Their spiel grew more and more energetic, almost menacing, until Samir thrust them aside with a single motion of his arm and a few soft-spoken words. They fell silent, but as we moved on began shouting something that Sheila didn’t understand and that Samir refused to translate. Those weren’t real vendors, just poor crazy kids, he said.

I understood Sheila’s fascination, of course, and certainly ought to have reacted with greater discretion, but nothing could have saved me from the hurt I felt from the first moment on. It made no difference at all what I did. Every bit of attention Sheila gave me was purely diplomatic in nature, crumbs from the table. At first I thought it would be better for Sheila to take the lead. But watching her sashay ahead of Samir in her tight jeans, tossing her hair back, and once even coming to an abrupt halt for no good reason, so that Samir ran right into her … I knew very well just how resolute Sheila could be.

I first realized that I was in the way, that I was irritating Sheila, when we got to the Al-Azhar Mosque. I hesitated to follow Samir’s example and shove my best pair of loafers (for which I’d paid just shy of two hundred euros) into one of the pigeonholes, where anybody could grab them instead of his own shabby slippers and scram. “You’re nuts,” Sheila hissed, hurrying off in her stocking feet behind Samir. Suddenly the men sitting at the entrance and watching me remove my shoes were my enemies.

When he was tired, simply worn out and in need of sleep, that’s when he went to the mosque, Samir said. No place in the city was as pleasantly cool and quiet as this. I was entering a mosque for the first time and uncertain what was allowed and what wasn’t. Anyone watching us would have thought it was Sheila who was our guide. The sight of several men asleep on a red carpet with a yellow design was simultaneously both unsettling and comforting. Upon discovering my shoes again, I turned downright cheerful and was prepared to accept Sheila’s flirting with greater composure. That didn’t last long. When we stopped at a booth of perfumes and scents — it had turned dark by then — Sheila and Samir started conversing in Arabic. Samir had the vendor open practically every little flask for Sheila, and at one point even asked him to mix two or three scents — which had to have made him a real expert in Sheila’s eyes. She agreed with his opinion every time. Samir insisted on buying three flasks for her as a gift — they weren’t expensive, in fact — and filled in the tiny labels himself, both in Arabic and in roman script. They moved on without ever turning around to look for me. Samir corrected Sheila’s pronunciation and praised her extravagantly for the progress she was making.

I made several attempts to send Samir on his way. He had been so helpful the whole day now.… I wanted to go back to the hotel and then have dinner again at the Fish Market. Samir, however, had already reserved tickets for us, a performance of Sufi songs and dances — we didn’t dare miss it.

This tourist spectacle took place in an old fortress. I barely remember the space itself, but I do recall working my way to a niche as far forward as possible, in the firm belief that Samir and Sheila were right behind me. At first I thought the two had vanished. But then I spotted them directly across from me. Sheila was standing in front of Samir, but so close that it looked to me as if she were leaning against him.

Later, in a tiny restaurant, we ate pizza from tin plates and drank almost frozen beer. Samir told a legend about taking the measurement of the Pyramids, which Sheila had already heard in the Arabic version. It was truly pleasant when Samir gave you his full attention. And along with jealousy I likewise felt regret at how much I was missing because Sheila was thrusting herself between us. I was just about to ask him if there would soon be a book where I could read about his story, when Sheila announced that the following morning she would be visiting the Egyptian National Museum instead of accompanying me to the German school for girls.

The worst part was that Sheila was right, of course. Since I always read the same stuff and couldn’t always come up with new answers to the same old questions, Sheila’s presence in the audience had become more of a hindrance by now, turning me into a man of few words, which isn’t like me. Repetition leads to disenchantment, of course. All the same I regarded her decision as a betrayal.

The next morning, in the middle of breakfast, Sheila suddenly noticed Samir on the far side of the road, his gaze fixed on the hotel entrance. Although he had arrived an hour before the arranged time, Sheila ignored her hot pancakes, hastily downed her coffee, and moments later was bounding down the hotel stairway. It annoyed me that she kept pointing at me, until Samir spotted me too and offered the hint of a bow. I waved back.

I was angry at having to pack Sheila’s things for Alexandria, too; I was scheduled to read there that same evening.

Later I vented my anger on the German teacher at the girls’ school. It is really comical: Everyone makes fun of the question about what an author really means, and in the next moment someone asks that very question, and nobody notices.

At lunch — we had agreed upon the pizza place from the previous evening — I made the mistake of telling Sheila about one of the schoolgirls. She had worn a headscarf and had looked tired. Unlike her classmates she remained seated when she spoke. I left it to her to explain to the teacher what the relationship is between the written word and its meaning, and that whatever the writer himself may claim is irrelevant. Then she spoke about truth, and how truth is always an agreed-upon arrangement. What took place between the two of us wasn’t flirtation, but rather — or so it seemed to me at least — our amazement at an intimacy attached to her every word, an intimacy that seemed to come out of nowhere. I can still see her smiling and nodding when I laid into her teacher yet again. I told Sheila that I would have loved to get to know the girl, but that we didn’t even manage to say good-bye to each other because I hadn’t wanted to risk speaking with a schoolgirl.

“Why was that?” Sheila barked at me. “Why didn’t you try to meet her?”

“I was afraid it might arouse suspicion,” I said. “I didn’t want to embarrass her.”

“Oh pooh, ‘embarrass’!” Sheila exclaimed. “So what if it had aroused suspicion.”

I assumed the matter was behind us, but Sheila wouldn’t let it go. It was unsettling to watch her get worked up like that in front of Elisabeth and Samir.

I then had to leave for an interview at the Goethe-Institut library. Samir promised to get Sheila to the train station on time.

At two on the dot I said my good-byes to the journalist. Elisabeth came over and sat down beside me.

“The driver will let you know when he’s here,” she said with a smile. I nodded. We fell silent.

“I hope I didn’t make a mistake,” she said, “in introducing you two to Samir.”

I found her insinuation tactless. “We’ll see,” I said.

“Did Sheila tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Sheila’s not coming along,” Elisabeth said. “We’re trying to resell her train ticket. I thought …”

“That’s news to me,” I said as composed as possible and clicked my cell phone on. I had two messages in my mailbox, but I didn’t know the code I needed to listen to them. I had never learned it.

“Alexandria is very beautiful,” Elisabeth said. She sounded so sympathetic that I had to swallow hard.

Sheila let her cell phone ring. When she finally answered there was an infernal racket all around her. She had tried to tell me, she shouted, but my cell phone was off. She’d be spending the whole time sitting around anyway, on a train or at the reading. Besides, the most interesting part of Alexandria lay underwater. Since she was here, she wanted to see the Pyramids, too.

She could scramble up the Pyramids during the conference, I noted.

She definitely didn’t want to miss the conference, she replied.

“You don’t get to see Alexandria every day either,” I said as if to myself, pressed the red button, and went down to the courtyard.

The driver of the Lada flung open a door, bellowed at me, and pointed to his watch. My cell phone was ringing. I took a seat in the car, slammed the door, and shouted: “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” although this wasn’t my fault.

He threw me a hateful glance in the rearview mirror. My cell phone went on ringing.

Compared to this ride, our first one had been sheer dillydallying. Fine by me. I’d be exaggerating if I were to say I was hoping for an accident. But I was somehow strangely certain one would happen, and I waited for it as if it were a kind of liberation. I know how stupid that sounds, especially in light of what came later. But in those few minutes an accident seemed the easiest, the only possible way out of this screwed-up trip.

There were moments that left me cringing. At one point I actually did shut my eyes when a gaunt old man dressed all in white appeared before our hood as if dropped from heaven onto the multilane road. He wore a white cap, held a cane in one hand, and in the other — I no longer recall. To me he seemed like some mythical figure, an angel from beyond.

I could see him landing on the windshield, could hear the crash — and suddenly the car halted right before his knees, as if his conjuring outstretched arm had stopped us. The next miracle was that no one crashed into us from behind.

As it turned out, the driver of the Lada had been given the wrong time for the train’s departure. And all of a sudden we were friends. He explained to me with something close to cordiality how and where I would catch my train — finding a parking space here at the station was out of the question. He promised to pick me up and zoomed off. Sheila called several times, but as far as I was concerned everything had been said.

Only now as I write these lines do I realize how the later incident has pushed everything preceding it into the background, and how difficult it is for me to recapture those days and hours.

In saying, “You don’t get to see Alexandria every day either,” I had, I believed, separated from Sheila. It had happened quickly. Just as Sheila had linked up with me at the first best opportunity, so she had ditched me at the first best opportunity. I rode toward Alexandria alone, and free. Good thing, I thought, I don’t have to explain anything to Anne. I would write her a postcard from Alexandria and mention the train, which I hadn’t exactly imagined would be the Orient Express, but not quite this dingy and ragtag. Even in first class the upholstery and curtains were beyond shabby.

I dozed away as if in a pleasant dream that relieves us of reality for minutes or hours. On my lap lay the marble gray bilingual Insel edition of Cavafy’s poems, which I had carried around with me since army days. But I wasn’t in the mood to read. Strangely enough I kept picturing the green triangle of the delta as I knew it from maps and had actually seen from the airplane. I was riding through the Nile Delta, and I thought how it was a sin to leave even a square foot of it uncultivated.

Entering Alexandria, you pass by buildings as intimidating as a scene in a Fritz Lang movie. That impression quickly fled when I was greeted on the platform by Mahmud, a truly handsome man in an olive-hued suit, gray shirt, and glowing red tie.

By the time we drove through the shopping district, with stores familiar from Europe, and suddenly turned onto the Corniche, where, beneath the gentle glow of lanterns lining the shore, the harbor basin and the sea now lay before me, I realized that I missed Sheila. Or maybe it wasn’t Sheila I missed, it just seemed sad to experience this all alone.

In the three-quarters of an hour I had to spend in the lobby of the Windsor Hotel, because something wasn’t right with my reservation, I reveled in a, if not painful at least melancholy, sort of pleasure — a somber mood to which I gave way entirely when I was served a cup of tea and a liqueurlike drink I had never encountered before.

When I finally moved into my huge room on the top floor and got the door unstuck to step out onto the balcony, I saw how the arc of lights along the Corniche turned the harbor walls into an almost perfect ellipse. As I breathed in the sea breeze blended with the odor of horse-drawn carriages, I resolved for good and all to begin an affair. I would meet a woman here with whom I felt the same sense of accord as with the schoolgirl that morning in Cairo. This curious euphoria kept me going — despite how tired I was, if not to say exhausted.

The Goethe-Institut is located in the old villa of some industrialist. As my text was being read in Arabic, I had time to check out the audience. Not a single one of the women present ignited my fantasy. The reading seemed endless, the discussion a marathon. Each word, as if it were a step up a mountain, sapped my energies. But all the same, I was in Alexandria. And so I trudged through the conversation, which lasted well past eleven. Then we set out and landed — in the Fish Market. There is also one of these restaurants overlooking the sea on the Corniche of Alexandria. Suddenly I wished I had Sheila there with me, picking up her cell phone and asking, “Mama, guess where I am?”

We were the last guests to be let into the almost empty restaurant. The buffet, however, was still full of fish. I arrived at my hotel between one and two o’clock, slept a few minutes, and then, kept awake by a strange agitation, tossed and turned in bed until dawn. Around seven I fetched Sheila’s toiletry bag, spread her things out on the pillow beside me, sprayed some of her perfume, and dialed her number. As I waited for the ring tone, I pictured the room where Sheila was now sleeping. I was amazed she even had her cell phone on. I was sure I’d hear her mailbox intervene — where you heard her say a rather dejected, “Sheila Dietze”—when she answered. I asked if everything was okay.

“Yes, of course, everything’s okay,” she said. “And how about you?”

“I couldn’t sleep.…”

“And I couldn’t brush my teeth.”

“Your own fault,” I said.

“I’ll meet you at the train, good night,” Sheila said.

I would have loved to creep back into bed after breakfast, but the cleaning women were already in the adjoining room. While waiting in the lobby for more coffee and a cola with ice, I nodded off. But the fact was I had to be alert, had to explore the city, had to experience things Sheila would regret having missed.

Sitting in my easy chair at the Windsor and sipping at my cola as if it were medicine, I could watch a steady stream of children, couples, and a few dawdling loners stop along the parapet of the Corniche to observe something down on the jetty or in the water below. Soon they had formed quite a group of spectators, whom I then finally decided to join.

Before me I found a peculiar sight. At first I thought it was a rope that the five men were dragging. It was a fishnet. The man at the head of the towing line had thrown the end of the rope over his shoulder, the others held on to the net with both hands at their chests, hips, or — turning around backward — under one arm. At first I thought they were getting nowhere since they didn’t appear to budge, but then they moved a few steps forward. The net must have been cast far out in the harbor. Following the great arc that it traced on the surface of the water by sweeping your eye to the right — that is, eastward, in the direction of the library — after about two hundred meters your gaze returned to the Corniche and a second group pulling on the other end of the net and likewise moving in our direction.

Dressed in a brimmed cap and a frayed sport coat, a short, dainty old man with stubble on his chin glanced at me and whispered, “Hello.” “Hello,” I said. “Hello,” he repeated softly and pointed to a horse-drawn carriage right behind us. I shook my head, put a finger to my eye, and then pointed at the fishermen. “After, after,” he said, pointing at me and then the carriage. I rocked my head dubiously and went back to staring out to sea, when I felt a tug at my other sleeve. “Go! Go!” a man demanded and, presumably hoping I would follow him, took a couple of steps in the direction of his carriage — which riled the driver on my right. They began cursing each other, until the one who had first spotted me whispered, “After, after,” and gave me a soothing nod.

I held my shoulder bag to my chest under crossed arms and kept my eyes fixed on the fishermen. They were, as nearly as I could tell, all older men, barefoot, some with chests bared, some with a jacket but no shirt. The barely perceptible movement with which the net drew closer, the effort exerted by the old men, the rags wrapped around their hands, their vacant stares, their gaping or tight-lipped mouths, the sweat on their swollen necks, their concentration, which demanded neither orders nor instructions, the short steps that brought them closer and closer to one another, until the two groups finally met and, without stopping or looking up for even a moment, marched past each other, crossing as if in slow motion — there was a staged unreality about it all that fascinated me. This fishing operation was something I could tell Sheila about.

Whenever the driver beside me raised his scratchy voice, I could be certain that competition was approaching. If he got louder still, in the next moment I would feel a hand touch me, only to be instantly shooed away by the short driver. At one point he even smoothed the wrinkles from my sport coat. The whole time he kept reminding me of his presence with low “hellos” and a hand raised in greeting.

The groups working the net had stopped about fifty meters apart and now, leaning back and treading in place, hauled the net in.

Two men sprang into the water from a small boat that had followed the net at the point of its widest expanse — only now did I recognize them as part of the operation — and where the ends of the net crossed began to stomp about and slap the water in hope of blocking the last escape route.

The groups working the net approached each other again, moving sideways until at last they merged into a single unit. The water in front of them began to stir; I thought it was the roiling of the fish, but it was only the stomping and splashing of the two swimmers. I joined everyone else and scrambled up onto the parapet. We were all staring at the net.

Because the driver was tugging at my pants leg, I missed the moment when the net was heaved onshore. What I now saw, however, as the men ran to deposit their catch in an assortment of basins, was devastating. Next to nothing — at best a dozen fish, none any larger than each of us had dined on the night before. The muddle of men and children swarming around the basins made it impossible to tell how the catch was divided up.

Tired and wanting to get out of the blazing sun, I gave in to the short driver and boarded his carriage. Sheila, of that I was certain, would never have ridden in a tourist carriage. And yet it really was better for the driver to earn ten euros rather than not to earn them — and after all, carriages are in fact made to transport people. Besides, in my present condition, Fort Qaitbey, which I believed I was duty bound to visit, was too far for me to have risked the long march along the Corniche. The fort, which crowns the western arm of the harbor basin, was erected atop the ruins of Pharos, there where the great lighthouse of antiquity once stood.

The relief I felt plumping down onto the leather seat removed my last doubt.

I sat leaning back in the carriage — the pedestrians we passed couldn’t see me — staring at the driver’s bent back, the horse’s rear end, and, just above it, the knots of a whip swinging back and forth.

Now that all this is coming back to me hour by hour, I see the numerous details — which for anyone else would fit nicely into a normal travelogue — as a chain of clues, as evidence. All of it, or almost all, pointing toward the denouement.

I had him drop me off at the fort, followed all the paths like a good tourist, gazed out at the sea, surveyed the shore promenade and the library, and put up with schoolboys mocking my long hair — which evidently met with general disapproval here — even after their fourth or fifth barrage of Luti, luti, which I found merely disgusting.

My driver greeted me with a loud “Hello!” and suggested we take a detour past a long row of waiting carriages, past a real fish market in its own hall, outside which a couple of women were hawking small fish while repeatedly pouring water over them. We drove to a palace my driver thought I ought to see and, standing up in the carriage, I gawked at it through a massive grated gate. Three schoolgirls ran alongside us, giggling, calling out something, falling back, only to reappear beside me. I could come up with nothing better than a grin. They kept up their game until the old man jumped down from his box, shooed the girls off, and then resumed my dandified jaunt in the direction of the Library of Alexandria. I wanted to give the driver fifteen euros instead of the ten agreed upon, he had driven out of his way, after all. He, however, protested and demanded thirty. He began to bombard me with loud explanations. I gave him the thirty and took off, had a cup of coffee in the library, pictured Sheila swooning beneath Samir and whispering wondrous sweet nothings in his ear, and then dragged myself through the city streets. I had a headache, couldn’t stop yawning, and cringed at the sudden blaring of a voice. Loudspeakers were hung on lampposts and facades. A moment later I was surrounded by kneeling men. Although it looked to me to be a normal business district, they were praying in the middle of the street and on the sidewalks. And I, the guy with the long hair, was the only one still standing. The voice from the loudspeakers sounded so menacing that it felt like it was directed solely at me. I fled in the direction of the Corniche.

Outside the famous Hotel Cecil I was greeted by a familiar “Hello!” My driver waved and patted his horse, which was feeding from its nose bag.

I had an appointment at one o’clock with Hosni Hassan, an Egyptian colleague, whom I had come to know through Edwar al-Charrat in Berlin six months before. Hosni has curly red hair, one of the reasons he’s occasionally taken for a foreigner.

He led me to an eatery that had once been honored by the presence of the queen of England — documented by photographs on the wall — but that was now a favorite spot for families. Food is served on tin plates, and you sit at long tables. During the meal Hosni kept shoving new dishes my way, but I wasn’t the least bit hungry, on the contrary, along with my headache I was feeling a little queasy. I dissolved two aspirin tablets in my glass, which was evidently considered impolite. At any rate people turned to look at me, and my host seemed somewhat perturbed.

Hosni asked why I hadn’t brought Sheila along. It was probably due to my poor English that Hosni understood me to say she had fallen in love with the city of Cairo. I simply didn’t have the energy, however, to clear up the misunderstanding. I preferred listening to him — he was quite optimistic. Within the next few months, he said, things would take a turn for the better in Egypt.

I was interested in what Hosni had to say, above all about his two years as cultural attaché in Khartoum. I also enjoyed his civility but was glad all the same to no longer have to carry on a conversation and instead spend the time until my train departed dozing in the lobby of the Windsor and drinking ice-cold cola. Mahmud, the amiable driver, who wore a snow white shirt to bid me farewell, brought me back to the train station and was so firm in his refusal of a tip that I actually pocketed it again.

On the trip back I practically froze because the entire first class was filled with military cadets who kept leaving the car to smoke, setting up a nasty draft each time. I huddled up but soon began to sneeze. I searched without success for a handkerchief. I was likewise depressed by the thought of having to confront Sheila and Samir again. I didn’t want to fight, to argue, I just wanted a warm bed and peace and quiet.

A happy trio was waiting for me on the platform in Cairo. Sheila was standing between Samir and the driver of the Lada. She asked what had happened — I looked so ill. Nevertheless she pressed me to join her, Samir, and the driver for a meal at the Fish Market. It was her treat, we were her guests.

I said that except for a couple of aspirin I wanted nothing so much as sleep. I sneezed, and both Samir and the Lada driver pulled out tissues, which I accepted with a gratitude befitting a miracle.

Sheila commiserated but was dogged in her resolve to treat her companions to dinner. I encouraged her in fact. I wouldn’t be fun company today in any case. She had, Sheila remarked once we were in the car, solved the riddle of the two dissimilar drivers. Our Lada driver had previously been engaged by the embassy of the GDR. Along with the building itself, he and his vehicle had been put to new use. The driver of the silver VW bus had always worked for the Goethe-Institut.

We stopped at a pharmacy, where Samir recommended a remedy that would vanquish my sniffles within a day. With the motor still running, the driver got out at the hotel and carried my bag all the way to the elevator. We bade each other a hearty farewell.

I spent a dreadful night, drifting back and forth between wakefulness and a sleep filled with disquieting dreams that exhausted me even more. Maybe I had just drunk too much cola. I had a voracious thirst for ice-cold cola. But once the cola had flowed down my esophagus, it seemed to gum up my works and ward off sleep. Even after I turned on the light and got up, I fell back into that state of dream-haunted wakefulness. Sheila arrived around two, fell asleep right off, and awoke at nine fully refreshed.

And right on time for the opening of the conference I was feeling really lousy. I had a craving for fruit, but otherwise wanted only ice-cold cola. At the breakfast buffet I piled half the melon slices on my plate and pillaged the grapes from the cheese platter.

Sheila went on and on about the Pyramids. The whole time they had done nothing but gaze at the Pyramids, watching the progress of their shadows. And Samir had told her everything that you could possibly want to know about the Pyramids. She was now addicted to viewing the Pyramids. There was nothing in the world to compare with them. For her, viewing the Pyramids was the best medicine — no, the best religion there was.

I didn’t want to squander what little strength I had left on sarcastic remarks. I wasn’t listening all that closely to Sheila anyway. But the longer she spoke, the more indisputable it seemed to me was the change she had undergone. I had encountered this same phenomenon only among the children of my friends, who at some point were no longer children and suddenly responded to me with either greater attention or detachment. Something of the sort had happened with Sheila. Despite her chattiness she seemed calmer, no longer so nervous and overexcited, more mature in fact. Suddenly I desired her again. Yes, it wouldn’t have taken much, and I would have proposed to her.

While we were waiting for the bus, Samir appeared beside us unannounced. He would love to come along, he was very interested in the conference. I said I didn’t know if it was all that easy to do. If I had no objection, he said, there wouldn’t be any problem at all. I shrugged.

At that same moment a gray-haired man with a large nose and a mouth far too wide for his narrow face stepped up to us. As if by way of a greeting he ran his hand through his hair and addressed me in French. I don’t speak French. As if by pre-arrangement, Samir soon interrupted our amiable colleague to provide a translation. The only thing I understood was très bien, très bien, which in Samir’s version became “wonderful, simply fantastic.” That pleased me, and I grinned like the Cheshire cat.

It turned out that a different Samir, that is Samir Grees, had sent his Arabic translation of Simple Stories to several authors, and this amiable gentleman standing here before me had evidently been one of the recipients.

Instead of thanking him directly, I requested our Samir to ask the man his name and then whether his own work had been translated into German or English. Samir hesitated briefly, supplied the name of my vis-à-vis, and then passed on my question about translations. After a firm “Non, non, non,” my Arabic colleague said, “Au revoir,” turned around, and strode off.

The conference opened in a large auditorium that I recall as being rather dark. I had asked Samir to inquire about earphones for me, but in vain, although meanwhile I kept an eye out for interpreter booths. Of the few writers whom I knew, I saw no one except Edwar al-Charrat, and he had more than enough to do greeting the many colleagues encircling him. A half hour later Dr. Bassalama, the signer of the invitations, entered in procession with his entourage. Had everyone risen from their seats and applauded, the staging would have been perfect.

I understood not a word of any of the speeches, of course, but did notice that Dr. Bassalama was mentioned repeatedly. The more frequently his name occurred, the more it sounded like an invocation. An earnest Samir sat ramrod straight beside Sheila and applauded enthusiastically after each speech.

An hour and a half later, as the participants of the conference streamed out into the lobby, I finally caught on: There were no interpreter booths and thus no earphones either. Samir confirmed my observation at once: “Only Arabic is spoken here.” Then what, I asked Samir, was I doing here? He didn’t know either. I grew even more upset when a few minutes later I tried and failed to find something to drink at a buffet table that was grazed clean within a few minutes. Only a few dirty glasses were left, and the container of orange juice had already been tipped forward so that a gentleman could dribble the last of it into his glass.

Sheila and Samir both declared their desire to stay. I rode back to the hotel, bought five cans of ice-cold cola, and dozed the afternoon away in my bed.

Sheila did not even appear for dinner, for which I was joined by Hoda Barakat. We had become acquainted in Yemen the year before and exchanged addresses. Hoda had fled with both her children to Paris from Beirut in 1989. I pumped her for details about Beirut, and she replied half in English, half in French. I needed the information for a character in my New Lives, the novel I was working on. While we spoke I spotted Sheila returning to the hotel. Around ten o’clock Hoda wrote down an address for me, the same one I later used for Vera Türmer: Beirut — Starco area — Wadi aboujmil, the building next to Alliance College — fourth floor.

When I returned to our room, Sheila had already departed again. She came back long past midnight. She asked where I had been and why I couldn’t finally get into the habit of leaving my cell phone on.

The next afternoon — until then I had gone downstairs only for breakfast, and upon spotting Samir out on the street had retreated to my bed again — I was sitting with two colleagues whom I did not know on a podium in a space not much larger than an ordinary classroom, with very high-set windows revealing a white sky outside. After I was greeted and congratulated for something or other, I listened to my neighbor’s lecture and finally to a very beautiful woman who read my speech in Arabic. I had plenty of time to keep count of the audience, which was in constant flux. Although I could perfectly understand such a steady ebb and flow during the long, droning contributions of my colleagues, I was amazed nonetheless when the first listeners stood up to leave while my text was being read. There were never more than eighteen people in the room at any one time. Samir and Sheila sat stock-still side by side in the first row. Trying to keep from watching them the whole time was the greatest effort of all. At the end Samir once again applauded enthusiastically. There were two questions, neither related to my text.

“What am I going to do with you?” Sheila exclaimed when I announced I’d be returning to the hotel. I said that if Samir had time, she should have dinner with him, and climbed into a taxi.

On the hotel stairway I ran into Hassan Dawud. A few of his books have also been translated into German. He’s the publisher of a newspaper in Beirut. We had likewise become acquainted in Yemen. Hassan asked me for my speech, he wanted to print it. I said he should first take a look at it. No, he laughed, that I was the author was enough for him. For a moment the pressure eased in my head, and I thought the worst might be over. Two minutes later I fell into bed.

The telephone rang. It was Hoda. She invited me to join her and a couple of her friends for dinner. No, she wouldn’t hear of it, I was to come to along, it would do me good.

Just showering and dressing were Herculean labors, the walk down the hall to the elevator finished me off.

In the lobby Hassan Dawud waved me down, asked me to wait while he rummaged in his briefcase, held out a few pages to me — my lecture, it was incomprehensible, sorry to say. That might possibly be the translation, I said. Possibly, he said. I amazed myself with how calmly I took the news. But as I came down the hotel stairway I was on the verge of bursting into sobs.

How had I ended up in this farce? This conference could rot in hell. I felt deceived and humiliated. I hated Sheila, I hated Samir. I wanted out.

No one had come to the conference to hear lectures, Hoda said. The invitation was like a gift, you flew to Cairo, met some friends, enjoyed yourself — it was really a great time. It didn’t matter in the least — she laughed — whether there were any interpreter booths or not. And I had the best deal of all. I didn’t even need to have a twinge of conscience for playing hooky, I was a free man! Whereas since arriving in Cairo she herself had had to race from interview to interview — Hariri had been assassinated only a few days before.

Hoda introduced me to four women, including Leila, a writer from Kuwait, who gave me the once-over from behind dark glasses, as if suspecting me of being a spy. Finally she stomped her cigarette out and squeezed in beside me. Hoda shared the front passenger seat with a professor of French and Arabic literature from Cairo. The owner of the car had slid her seat so far forward that she was literally being pressed against the steering wheel.

Actually all I remember now is the women’s laughter. And that I envied them, because I had probably never laughed so hard in my life as they did during our ride. None of the women, not even skeptical Leila, could bring a sentence to an end without being overwhelmed by her own laughter. To this day I don’t know what they were laughing about. At one point Hoda slipped between the seats and fell against my knee, unleashing another salvo of laughter. She kept trying to explain something to me in English about the huge throngs at Nasser’s funeral, but what was so terribly funny about that? There were brief pauses when they had to catch their breath, but the very next word was a spark that ignited a new explosion. Even the policeman standing beside a stoplight in a vast square grinned when he saw five people crammed together, holding their hands to their mouths and laughing to the point of tears.

A grated barricade in front of the Al-Azhar Mosque slid back and we were directed to a parking place. Passing begging women and children, we walked through an underpass and arrived at the square outside the entrance to the souk frequented by tourists. We were stormed by several waiters who tried to thrust menus at us and steer us to specific chairs at specific tables in a sea of tables and chairs. In the company of these women the waiters, as well as the beggars, vendors, and roving children, no longer seemed an annoyance.

Just the opposite — they were part of the scene and prompted new topics for a conversation that branched off now and then into English for my sake. Even a carpet vendor I was certain would be rebuffed — who would be buying a carpet at this hour? — had to fulfill his role. The price fell from 160 Egyptian pounds to 70, then to 60, to 55. At which point the vendor imitated strangling himself and, cursing and shaking his head, left our table, only to hail us cordially from a distance shortly thereafter — and was soon standing again before us. Because they were such wonderful ladies — for that was what they were—45 pounds. Hoda explained that 20 would have been plenty, and she could have had it for 20, but he had been unwilling to haggle. Leila waved over a heavily made-up girl who was screeching wildly as she fought off a waiter trying to ban her from his tables. Leila had the girl approach very close, gave her a talking-to, and when she tried to run off, swiftly grabbed her by the arm, held it tight, and went on talking until the girl gave several nods and said something in response. Only then did Leila let her go. Ten minutes later the girl returned, and Leila pressed a couple of bills into her hand. A beggar slinking up from behind suddenly bent down and gave Leila a loud smooch on the cheek. Leila screamed. But then, instead of being outraged, she laughed and rubbed the kiss from her cheek with a handkerchief.

Even now, after darkness had fallen, one tourist bus after another pulled up. One guide after the other hoisted a little flag, and one group after the other climbed out and vanished in the direction of the souk. A few of these mostly elderly ladies and gentlemen — whose flipped-up sunglasses made them look a little like insects — gazed wistfully our way, took a few snapshots, and straggled after their flags.

First the sense of exhaustion returned, then the pressure inside my head. I noticed our food being served, pigeons with their tiny drumsticks bound together. While we ate — pigeons don’t offer much to gnaw at, the stuffing’s the important thing — other pigeons searched for bread crumbs at our feet. One bite and I felt an aversion, something close to nausea. I couldn’t take another, I wanted to but simply couldn’t. I had to stop, my energies were exhausted. It’s a miracle I was still able to sit upright in my chair.

After I had persuaded the women not to accompany me, they called the waiter, and the waiter called over a boy, and the boy went to fetch a cabbie. A price was settled on, and Hoda instructed me on no account to pay more than the fifteen pounds.

All I had to do was stand up and walk a few steps behind the driver — and they were all around me, a whole pack of boys. The youngest were maybe eight, the oldest maybe twelve or thirteen. But I’ve already told about that, probably far too often.

The worst part wasn’t the kids. The moment I said good-bye to the women and began to walk away, memories flooded in. Or to put it another way, everything collapsed in on me. Sheila and Samir, the conference, my failed speech, my disappointed colleagues, the hotel room with its sweat-drenched pillow. The hour and a half I had spent with the women already seemed like some pleasant movie. Now I was leaving the theater and returning to reality.

I got into the taxi. Even now I can hear the boy leaping onto the car. I just thought — Well, there’s another dent, as if this sort of damage was a normal risk in the business of transporting tourists. I didn’t want to see anything else, hear anything else. I wanted the farce I had wandered into to come to an end.

I have no idea how he was able to hang on. With his fingernails in a crack somewhere? Or with the palms of his hands, his feet on the bumper? The driver of a car that passed us pointed to the boy on our trunk and shook his head.

I wasn’t about to be blackmailed, I was determined to have my way in this.

Did it take me one minute, two minutes, before I shouted: “Stop, please, stop!”?

The taxi slowed down until we were moving at a walking pace, the boy jumped off, and the driver said, “Good idea,” as he nodded to me in the mirror but filled the silence that had reigned until now with complaints that fifteen pounds wasn’t enough.

I don’t know if it was while I was still in the taxi that I tried to imagine what it would have sounded like if the boy had slipped off. With the windows rolled up, we probably wouldn’t have heard a thing.

The cabbie wanted ten euros instead of fifteen pounds. I gave him thirty pounds, just to get away quickly.

Sheila and Samir were sitting in the hotel lobby. I think her hand was on his knee. But I didn’t care about that now. Yes, I even found it annoying when she arrived in the room ten minutes later. I heard her use the bathroom, heard her lie down, turn on her nightstand light, turn it off again soon after, and fall asleep.

The next day she was never more than twenty feet from my side, about the distance from our breakfast table to the buffet, or from the lectern to the first row at the Goethe-Institut that evening. Over breakfast — Samir was nowhere to be seen — I told Hoda, whom I had no choice but to introduce to Sheila, about the boy at the rear windshield. Hoda scowled. It was a game, a way of testing their courage. If something went wrong it wasn’t the taxi driver they went after, but the person with the wherewithal.

I scarcely remember that last day. I tried to cancel the interview before the reading because I simply couldn’t utter another word — but for some strange reason it went okay in English. My head almost exploded during the reading.

It was still dark the next morning as we rode through empty streets to the airport. I had no idea how I would manage the long trek to check-in, then on to passport control, security, and finally the gate, with drafts blowing from all sides. And then came changing planes in Paris and standing for long minutes in the February wind of an open jet bridge, Sheila with the brown doll under her arm.

After landing in Berlin, as we waited for our luggage I listened to my mailbox. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe the Sheila beside me had nothing to do with the Sheila I heard on the mailbox. But I didn’t have the strength to separate one from the other.

As I said, I’ve told the story often, very often, and have even written it all down now, but despite my expectations, it has lost none of its dreadfulness — on the contrary, sometimes I think it’s worse. Nothing happened, I tell myself, nothing happened, I was lucky, everybody says so. But I live in the fear that I missed the one chance I had of breaking out of that moment, and that I am caught up in it now, for as long — oh, I don’t know — for as long perhaps as it takes for a miracle to happen and, without a moment’s hesitation, for me to shout “Stop, stop, stop!”

Not Literature, or, Epiphany on a Sunday Evening

Maybe I had had a little too much to drink. That would be the simplest explanation, of course, but any other explanation … well, what can I say.…

I can only provide you with bits and pieces of the context, but as for the heart of the matter — you’re going to think I’m loony. Either you recognize it, or …

From the outside looking in things often seem so simple.

It’s been several weeks now, anyway. It was on a Sunday. To escape the heat for one day at least, we had driven out to our dacha near Prieros. It’s always three or four degrees cooler under the pines than in Berlin. Clara and Franziska can run around naked, we can wear shorts, everybody doing their own thing, and it’s just a stone’s throw to the lake.

Around noon my mother arrived, with a big bowl of potato salad in the trunk — I’ve known that ivory-colored bowl ever since I can remember. That bowl has, so to speak, always been there. And shortly after my mother’s arrival, M. and E. showed up — two girlfriends who weren’t supposed to arrive till later in the afternoon. It was a little embarrassing to have them catch me raking up pinecones and needles between the terrace and the shed. But believe me, it’s very pleasant to walk over the moss barefoot. Besides, it would be pretty obvious if there were twigs, cones, and needles only at our place. Raking is just part of the routine for a rental property like this.

The heat meant that the electric grill was the only possible solution. The sausages and shashlik were from the supermarket, but they have very good meats. I seldom drink beer in the middle of the day, I’m a person who generally doesn’t drink much at all. But what’s grilling without beer? It was hot and I was thirsty, and the beer, left in the cellar from the time before, was cooled just right. I drank one or two bottles while I worked the grill and then one or two at the table. Everyone was drinking beer, except for the kids of course. The case was empty in no time. M. and E., agreeing as a couple, made fun of our diet potato salad, as well as the crumbly shortcake, the glaze was the only thing holding the strawberries together. But they polished off the potato salad all the same, and the sausages too. Natalia and I enjoyed the shortcake just as it was.

In the hope that the children would nap, Natalia and I set out on a tour with the double stroller, but the neighbors’ dogs started barking, and Franziska kept going “Bowwow! Bowwow!” and Clara copied her. We gave up trying to get them to nap, packed up our swim things, and headed for the lake. Natalia and I swam to the far shore, while M. and E. sunbathed and my mother sat in a tied-up boat with Clara and Franziska and sailed off to America, back and forth, back and forth. In America, said E., whose son lives in California, we wouldn’t be allowed to let the kids run around naked like this. Perfectly possible it would soon be like America here too, I thought. First the States, then here.

Before M. and E. took off we drank the prosecco they had brought — prosecco is their favorite drink — because it was finally chilled enough, and ate the rest of the shortcake along with what whipped cream was left. Then M. and E. drove off. We stood in the wooded lane and waved good-bye, and they waved from both sides of the car. The sun was shining through the pines and the dust they kicked up, and Natalia said we should stay the night — it would work if we drove back to Berlin early the next morning.

“We should have thought about that earlier,” I said, as if we hadn’t had a real Sunday. “Come on, kids,” my mother said. “It’s time for us to settle in nice and cozy now.”

No one wanted to clear the table or do dishes. My mother just set the milk in the fridge. “Ah, there’s still another bottle of prosecco,” she called from inside.

“We’ll drink it as our reward,” I said. I have no idea what sort of reward I had in mind, but it was hot and it was really good prosecco.

I can well imagine how all this sounds to strangers’ ears — pigging out and boozing.

Clara and Franziska strewed the old plastic containers they’d found in the shed across their sandbox. My mother was lying in the hammock and brooding over tricky solutions for the sudoku in the Tagesspiegel that, after a long discussion as a couple, M. and E. had left behind for her. Leaning back, legs crossed, Natalia was sitting at the table and attempting to read the rest of the paper in her lap. But Clara kept asking: “What does the Wicked Queen say when no kids will play with her? Is she sad because Sleeping Beauty is prettier than she is?” This can go on for hours.

Instead of getting into the car and turning on the radio, I called our friend S. to ask her how the game between England and Ecuador had turned out, and who would be playing that evening. She wanted me to tell her why so many writers think using the German genitive is pretentious and so no longer use it. I had no explanation for her but decided to make a note of her turn of phrase, “jeopardizing good taste.”

With a still unread volume of stories by Ayala in one hand and a bottle with what was left of the now almost tepid prosecco in the other, I lay down on a blanket that had been hung out to air.

Suddenly I decided I wanted to be lying in a porch swing. I actually gave some thought as to where you could buy a porch swing and what one might go for, and figured that having it delivered out here would probably cost as much as the swing itself.

My sunglasses turned the sky as blue as in Italy, and our local pines had become stone pines. Now and then there was a sough of wind. To me it always sounds like a train moving through the forest, the way trains crossing the Dresden Heath used to. Then I tried picturing the sky as water and the pines as underwater plants. I must have nodded off for a few seconds — and woke up when Franziska came running by close to my head. She was laughing, almost hooting. She ran so fast I thought she’d go sprawling any moment, and since I hadn’t swept the woods she was barreling toward, I was afraid she might hurt herself. I immediately thought of how last year a fox had risked getting as close as our garbage pit to watch us — a rabid fox.

Franziska pulled up short, bent her torso forward, held out one arm, and cried, “’T’s that, ’T’s that?”

It was in fact very beautiful — a large perfectly unblemished piece of orange peel that someone had tossed over our fence. “An orange peel,” I said. “What?” she asked. “An orange peel,” I repeated. “What?” “An orange peel,” I shouted. “ ’T’s that?” An orange peel, and one more time, an orange peel. And suddenly I got it. An orange peel! Franziska understood me at once. By the tone of my voice or whatever, she realized I had finally given her the right answer. We both gazed at the orange peel and, along with it, the miracle that there are orange peels and us and everyone and everything, the whole miracle of it. There’s nothing more for me to say. We understood the miracle that we exist. Period. Should I say I saw us in the womb of the universe? But I saw not just us, but everyone and everything. Each man, each woman, each child, each thing, but not as some sort of panorama, but each man, each woman, each child, each thing up close. We were all at the mercy of horrors and of all things human, of every ugliness and every beauty. I wasn’t standing apart from it, there was nothing in between — between me, us, and everything else.

I’m not loony, and I won’t claim I saw electron clouds or Einsteinian space. But all the same, it was something like that.

As soon as I put it into words, however, it turns to nonsense. A bat of an eye, during which I understood everything. Nothing, nothing had ever been lost. I saw it and in the next breath knew that I saw it no more, that the curtain had fallen.

Ants were scrambling on the backside of the orange peel, setting Franziska laughing again, with renewed cries of “ ‘T’s that?” and “What?” “Those are ants,” I said, “ants,” and turned away. After a few steps I looked around. “Ants,” I said and walked back, intending to take the orange out of her hand. “No, no!” she screamed. And so I left her with the orange peel and the ants, and stretched out on my blanket again.

I can’t say that I was agitated or happy or sad. I merely thought about how truly lovely it would be if in fact just before death we do see our life repeat at fast forward again, because this moment would be part of it, this moment and this afternoon.

But as I’ve said, maybe I simply had had too much to drink; it had been a really hot day. But when around ten o’clock I took a last look at the thermometer, the blue column of mercury was still showing twenty-nine degrees Celsius. Think of that — twenty-nine degrees Celsius at ten in the evening!