Seven Years

Sonia stood in the middle of the brightly lit space; she liked to be at the center of things. Her head was slightly lowered, and she kept her arms close to her sides. She was smiling with her lips, but her eyes were narrowed, as though she were dazzled or in pain. Like the paintings on the walls, to which no one paid any attention but that were supposed to be the occasion for the presence of all these people, she seemed somehow not there, or only superficially there.

I was smoking a cigarillo, and watched through the plate glass gallery window as a good-looking man went up to Sonia and spoke to her. It was as though she woke up from her slumbers. She broke into a smile and touched glasses with him. His lips moved, and I could see an almost childlike astonishment come over her, then she smiled again, but even from where I was I could see she wasn’t listening to the man, she was thinking about something else.

Then Sophie was standing next to me. She seemed to have something on her mind as well. She said, Mama is the most beautiful woman in the world. Yes, I said, and I stroked her hair. She is, your mama is the most beautiful woman in the world.

It had been snowing since morning, but the snow melted as soon as it touched the ground. I’m cold, said Sophie, and she slipped back into the gallery, through the door that someone had just opened. A tall bald man had come out, with a cigarette between his lips. He stood far too close to me — as though we knew each other — and lit it. Ghastly pictures, he said. When I didn’t reply, he turned and took a couple of steps away. Suddenly he seemed a little uncertain and awkward.

I kept watching through the gallery window. Sophie had run in to Sonia, whose face brightened. The good-looking man, who was still next to her, looked sternly, almost offended, at the girl. Sonia bent down to Sophie, and the two of them had a short conversation, and Sophie pointed outside. Sonia shielded her eyes with her hand and peered in my direction with a strained smile, creasing her brow. I was pretty sure she couldn’t make me out in the darkness. She said something to Sophie and gave her a little push toward the door. I felt a momentary impulse to run away, to merge with the crowds getting off work and striding through the light that poured out of the gallery. The passersby glanced cursorily at the elegant, nicely dressed people within, and then hurried on their way, heading home with the rest of the crowd.

I hadn’t seen Antje for almost twenty years, and even so I recognized her right away. She must be about sixty, but her face was still youthful. Well, she said, and kissed me on both cheeks. Before I could say anything a young man with a silly-looking ornamental beard appeared by her side, whispered into her ear, and pulled her away from me. I saw him lead her to a man in a dark suit whose face was familiar, maybe from the newspapers. Sophie had collared the man who a moment ago had approached Sonia, and was flirting with him, to his evident embarrassment. Sonia listened with an amused expression, but once more I had the feeling her thoughts were elsewhere. I went over to her and laid my arm around her waist. I enjoyed the man’s jealous look. He was asking Sophie how old she was. Guess, she said. He pretended to think. Twelve? She’s ten, said Sonia, and Sophie said, you’re mean. You’re very much like your mother, said the man. Sophie thanked him with a curtsey. She’s the most beautiful woman in the world, she said. She seemed to know just exactly what was going on.

Do you mind if I take Sophie home now? Sonia asked. Antje will probably have to stay till the end. I offered to take Sophie home myself so she could stay, but she shook her head and said she was really tired. She and Antje had the whole weekend to look forward to anyway.

Sophie had asked her beau to fetch her a glass of orange juice. He asked if he could get anyone else a drink. Will you stop ordering other people around? I said. I wonder who she gets it from, Sonia said. She bit her lip and looked down at the ground and then into my eyes, but I pretended I hadn’t heard. We’re out of here, she said, and kissed me quickly on the mouth. Try not to make any noise when you get home.

The gallery started to empty, but it was a long time until the last of the visitors had gone. In the end, there was only Antje and me, and an elderly gentleman whom she didn’t introduce. The two of them were standing side by side in front of one of the pictures, talking together in such quiet voices that I instinctively left them alone. I flipped through the price list and kept glancing at the two of them. Finally Antje put her arms around the man, kissed him on the forehead, and walked him to the door. That was Georg, she said, I used to be crazy about him. She laughed. Weird, isn’t it? That was a hundred years ago. She went to the bar and came back with two glasses of red wine. She held one out to me, but I shook my head. I’ve given it up. She smiled doubtfully, emptied her glass in a single swallow, and said, well in that case, I’m all set.

The gallery owner had left the keys with Antje. She spent ages flicking the light switches until it was completely dark. Once outside, she slipped her arm through mine and asked if the car was parked nearby. It was still just snowing. What weather, she said. Next time we should meet in Marseilles. She asked me if I liked the paintings. You’ve gotten a little calmer, I said. Subtler, I hope, said Antje. I don’t understand art, I said, but unlike before, I could imagine having a painting of yours up on the wall at home. Antje said she wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not.

I asked her if she had invited Sonia’s parents to the opening. I had expected them to be there. Antje didn’t reply. If you want to visit them, I can loan you the car, it’s just a hop and a skip to Starnberg anyway. Antje still didn’t say a word. Not until we got to the car did she answer that she hardly had any time, and she was too tired to go driving around the countryside. Getting the show ready had really taken it out of her. I asked her if there was anything the matter. She hesitated. No, she said, or maybe there is. They’ve gotten old and narrow-minded. Surely they always were, I replied. Antje shook her head. Of course Sonia’s parents were conservative, she said, but her father at least used to be genuinely interested in art. She had had many conversations with him about it. Of late, he had become more and more inaccessible, perhaps it was an age thing. He didn’t have any use for anything new, and had turned bitter. He doesn’t need to agree with me, she said, but I wish he would at least listen to what I have to say. The last time we met, we had a huge argument about Gursky. Since then I haven’t felt like seeing him.

I wondered whether there might not be other reasons for Antje not to see Sonia’s father. I often suspected there might have been something between them. When I ran it by Sonia once, she reacted indignantly, and said her parents had a good marriage. Just like us, I thought, and said nothing more.

Even though there wasn’t much in the way of traffic, it still took us a long while to get clear of the city. Antje didn’t speak. I looked across to her and saw she had closed her eyes. I thought she was asleep when she suddenly said she sometimes wondered if she had done me a favor back then. How do you mean? What with? Sonia wasn’t sure, Antje said. For a while neither of us spoke, and then Antje said Sonia wasn’t sure whether we were a good match. You mean if I was good enough for her? I asked. You had potential, Antje said, I think that was her word. The other boy … Rüdiger, I said. Yes, Rüdiger was fun to be with, but he wasn’t focused enough. And then there was someone else. She tried to recall the name. The one who later married the musician. Ferdy? I said. Maybe, said Antje.

I couldn’t imagine Sonia ever being interested in Ferdy. It didn’t last long, Antje said. Did she really have a thing with him? We were stuck at a light, and I turned to Antje. She smiled apologetically. I don’t think she slept with him, if that’s what you mean. Didn’t she tell you?

Sonia never did talk much. It often felt as though she’d had no previous life, or whatever it was had left no traces except in the photograph albums on her bookshelf, which she never took out. When I looked at the pictures, I had the sense that they came from another life. Now and then I asked Sonia about her time with Rüdiger, and she gave me monosyllabic replies. She said she never asked me what I’d done before either. It doesn’t bother me, I said. After all, you’re mine now. But Sonia was stubbornly silent. Sometimes I wondered if it wasn’t that there was just nothing to say.

Antje’s smile had changed, she looked a little mocking now. You men like to make conquests, she said. Try and see it in a positive light. She checked through her possibilities, and chose you.

A car honked behind me, and I accelerated so fast the tires squealed. And what was your part in the whole thing? I asked. Can you remember the first night the two of you stayed at my place? asked Antje. Sonia went to bed early, and we sat up and looked at my pictures together. I had half a mind to seduce you. I liked you, clean-cut little college kid. But instead I just led you up the garden path, and told you Sonia was in love with you. And the next day I gave her a spiel. What did you do that for? Antje shrugged her shoulders. Are you annoyed? Her question sounded serious. It was for fun, she said finally, I put in a good word for you. There was something with another woman, a foreigner, if I remember. Ivona, I said, and I sighed. That’s a long story.

I’d been sitting for hours with Ferdy and Rüdiger in a beer garden near the English Garden. It was a hot July afternoon, and the sunlight was a dazzling white. We’d handed in our final thesis projects ten days before, and in another week we had to go and defend them. We didn’t have much else to do except while away the time and give each other courage. All three of us had chosen the design of a modern museum on a site bordering the Hofgarten, and we were sketching out our plans and pushing notepads back and forth. Our voices were loud and excited, and we didn’t care that the other customers kept turning around to look at us. Rüdiger said my plans reminded him of Aldo Rossi. I was offended, and said what did he know? There are worse people to imitate than the old masters, said Ferdy, but Alex tries to reinvent the wheel every time he draws something. Then tell me where Rossi fits in, I said, and pushed my plan across the table. But Rüdiger had already moved on. He was talking about Deconstructivism, saying the architect was the psychotherapist of pure form, and more bullshit of that type.

A couple of girls were sitting at our table. They were wearing light summer dresses and were attractive enough in an uninteresting way. After a while we got talking. One of them worked for an advertising agency, and the other was studying art history or ethnology or something like that. It was a flip sort of conversation, made up of one-liners, jokes and comebacks, all going nowhere. When the girls paid to leave, Ferdy suggested we all go to the English Garden together. They hesitated briefly, and conferred in whispers, then the advertising girl said they had other plans, but we might meet up later at Monopteros. As they left, they had their heads together, and after a couple of steps, they turned and waved and laughed at us.

I’m having the blonde, said Ferdy. The brunette is much prettier, said Rüdiger. But the blonde is really stacked, said Ferdy. There you go, deconstructing again, said Rüdiger. Two women between three guys doesn’t work. Ferdy looked at me. You’d better find yourself a girl. Why me? I protested. Ferdy grinned. You’re the best-looking of the three of us. That girl over there has hardly taken her eyes off of us.

I saw a woman reading a couple of tables away in the shadow of a big linden tree. She was probably our age, but she was completely unattractive. Her face was puffy, and she wore her midlength hair loose. Presumably she had gotten a perm some time ago, but it had grown out, and her hair was hanging in her face. Her clothing looked cheap and worn. She had on a brown corduroy skirt, a patterned blouse in wishy-washy pastel colors, and a scarf around her neck. Her nose was reddened, and a few crumpled-up tissues were on the table in front of her. While I was still taking her in, she looked up and our glances met. Her face twisted into an anxious smile, and in a sort of reflex I smiled back. She lowered her eyes, but even her shyness seemed inappropriate and disagreeably flirtatious.

Women are helpless in the face of his charms, said Ferdy. He’ll never get her, said Rüdiger. You wanna bet? Before I could answer, he went on. I bet you don’t get her. There was something sad about his eyes now. I said I wouldn’t even take her if she was offered. Well, we’ll just have to see about that, said Ferdy, getting to his feet. The woman was watching us again. When she saw Ferdy making straight for her, her expression changed to a mixture of dread and expectation. He’s mad, I groaned, and turned away. The whole thing was embarrassing to me already. I looked around for the waitress. Surely you won’t bail at this stage, said Rüdiger, come on, be a man. What’s the sense of this, I said, and stretched my legs. My good mood was gone, I felt useless and rotten, and was angry at myself. It was as though the voices and laughter faded into the background, and through the sound I heard the approach of steps across the gravel.

Meet Ivona, said Ferdy. She’s from Poland. This is Rüdiger, and this—is Alexander. He was standing behind me, I had to look almost vertically up at him. Have a seat, said Ferdy. The woman put her glass down on the table, and next to it her tissues and her book, which was a romance novel with a brightly colored cover showing a man and a woman on horseback. She sat down between me and Rüdiger. She sat there with her hands folded in her lap and a very straight back. She looked restlessly between us. There was something stiff about her posture, but her whole appearance was somehow sagging and feeble. She seemed to have given up all hope of ever pleasing anyone, even herself.

Isn’t the weather lovely, said Rüdiger, and giggled foolishly. Yes, said Ivona. But it’s hot, said Ferdy. Ivona nodded. I asked her if she had a cold. She said she had hay fever. She was allergic to all kinds of pollen. All kinds of Poles? asked Ferdy, and Rüdiger laughed like a drain. No, grass, dust, said Ivona, not batting an eyelid. And so it went on. Ferdy and Rüdiger asked her stupid questions, and she answered them seemingly unaware that she was being made fun of. On the contrary, she seemed to enjoy their interest in her, and smiled after each one of her monosyllabic replies. She came from Posen. I thought you were from Poland, said Rüdiger. Posen is a town in Poland, Ivona replied patiently. Her German was almost accentless, but she spoke slowly and cautiously, as if not quite sure of herself. She said she worked in a bookstore. She was trying to improve her German, and supporting her parents back home. Her father was an invalid and her mother’s earnings weren’t enough for them both.

From the very outset, Ivona was disagreeable to me. I felt sorry for her, and at the same time I was irritated by her docile and long-suffering manner. Instead of holding Ferdy and Rüdiger back, I was closer to joining in their mean games. Ivona gave the impression of a natural-born victim. When Ferdy said we had arranged to meet up with two girls in the English Garden, and didn’t Ivona want to join us, I felt like protesting, but what would have been the use? Ivona hesitated. Four o’clock at Monopteros, said Ferdy, turning to us. Shall we go?

We were there in good time. The two girls arrived shortly after us, only there was no sign of Ivona. She’s not coming, I said, thank God. Who’s not coming? asked one of the girls. Alex’s girlfriend, said Ferdy, and he turned to me and said, you can wait here for her, you know where we’re going.

Rüdiger said quietly he’d keep me company. We sat down on the steps of the little temple, and he passed me a cigarette. The ugly ones are the hardest to pull, he said. Because they never get a man, they think they’re something special. I shook my head. Nonsense. Ivona reminded him of a girl he’d gone out with in the early years of high school, Rüdiger said. Subsequently, he’d not been able to tell himself why. In fact he’d already been in love with Sonia at the time, but she’d been too much for him, with her looks and everything. I must have gone for the other girl because of fear, said Rüdiger, or else I was trying to get a rise out of Sonia. Brigitte wasn’t a looker, and she was really hard work, and most of the time she was in a bad mood. I wasn’t allowed to do more than kiss her and grope a little bit. But somehow I wasn’t able to break up with her. She manipulated me, I never quite understood how. He went on talking, but I stopped listening. My own mood hadn’t improved. I was tired from the beer, and sweaty, and I felt unwell. I asked myself what I was doing waiting for Ivona if her company was so unpleasant to me. Perhaps some remnant of manners, perhaps curiosity, or perhaps just because heading off would have needed a decision on my part, and my lack of initiative was crippling me.

Ivona arrived twenty minutes late. She was wearing the same outfit as at lunchtime, plus a little beige cardigan, even though it was still warm. She didn’t apologize and didn’t say what had made her late. All right then, said Rüdiger, and he stood up.

We met the others at a place by the lake where we often went. The girls said hi to Ivona, but more or less ignored her after that. We had brought blankets, and Ferdy had a couple of lukewarm bottles of beer. We lay there torpidly, passing bottles around, and talking about all kinds of things. Ivona didn’t drink anything, and she didn’t contribute to the conversation. She just sometimes blew her nose and smiled a stupid-looking smile. Once or twice she made as if to speak, but one of the others got in first, and she gave up. I noticed that she was watching me. Each time I looked across to her, she looked away, as though I’d caught her in the act. Again I felt like hurting her, being rude to her. Her ugliness and pokiness were a provocation to me, her desire to belong exposed us and made us laughable. I wondered how I might shake her off. Shall we go cool down? I finally asked. We grabbed our things. Ivona hadn’t said anything, but she trotted along behind us to the Eisbach. The greater part of the meadow was already in shadow, and the few people who were still there clustered in the last patches of sunshine. I had expected the presence of nudity to deter Ivona, but she showed no reaction, and silently sat down on one of the blankets, as though she was entitled to it. Ferdy said he was going for more beer, and took off.

The girls were wearing bikinis under their dresses, and Rüdiger and I stripped and ran naked down to the water and jumped in. When we returned a little later, the girls were lying side by side, talking together softly. The blonde had her top off, and turned onto her stomach as we approached. Ivona was sitting in the shade, she hadn’t even taken her cardigan off. She looked at me in surprise, and my nakedness embarrassed me, and I pulled on shorts and pants. Then I played Frisbee with Rüdiger. The girls seemed to have no interest in us, presumably they were talking about what they were going to do that night and we didn’t figure in their plans. And that’s what happened, Ferdy returned finally, and they said they had to go. Ferdy half-heartedly tried to keep them, but I think basically we were all relieved when they went. Only Ivona made no move to leave.

By now the whole meadow was in shadow. The last of the bathers had dressed and gone, and were probably drifting through the bars and beer gardens of the city. I was seized by a mixture of melancholy and expectation, it felt as though the present moment had shrunk to something infinitesimally small, separate both from the past and from whatever lay ahead, which felt distant and notional. Rüdiger and Ferdy started talking architecture again, but it wasn’t like before. Ivona sat off to one side, her arms clasping her pale legs. She didn’t say anything, but she was still getting in the way. Ferdy, who was sitting with his back to her, made choking motions with his hands, and leaned forward to me and whispered, I think we have to throw her in the water or else we’ll never get rid of her. Rüdiger heard Ferdy and said half aloud, you asked her, she’s on your watch. She’s Alex’s responsibility, said Ferdy. I didn’t know if Ivona could hear what we were saying, but she didn’t react anyway. She had rested her head on her arms and was looking into the trees. It’s no use, said Rüdiger, and stood up.

We cleared our stuff. Ivona got to her feet awkwardly and watched as we rolled up the blankets. When we left, she followed us, without our having asked her to. She was always a couple of feet behind. At the count of three, let’s run, said Ferdy, and he sprinted off, but after a few steps he stopped and waited for us to catch up to him.

We went back to the beer garden where we’d been for lunch. We had to sit at a table with strangers. Ivona sat next to me. Again, she didn’t say a word, she didn’t even seem to be listening to our conversation. Later on, a couple of friends of ours came by, and we had to squeeze together. Ivona was pressed against me, and I felt the softness and warmth of her hips and thighs.

Eventually, my head was reeling with alcohol and noise, I dropped my hand on Ivona’s thigh and absentmindedly started stroking her. I wasn’t caressing her exactly, it was more like an animal lying next to another animal for shared warmth. When I got up shortly after and waved good night, she got up too, and followed me like a dog following its master. As we left the beer garden, she said she had to go to the ladies’ room for a moment. I thought about making a break for it, but by now I was turned on by the idea of being with her. It wasn’t the usual back-and-forth, the game of trying to seduce a woman. I had the feeling Ivona was giving herself to me, and I had absolute power over her, and could do whatever I liked with her. I felt utterly indifferent to her. I had nothing to lose and nothing to be afraid of.

It was a long time before Ivona emerged from the restroom. I asked if I should walk her home. She said it wasn’t far. We went through a small park. The air felt cooler, and there was a smell of wet earth and dogshit. At the darkest point, I grabbed hold of Ivona and kissed her. She let me, and she didn’t resist when I groped her breasts and bottom. When I tried to undo her belt, she turned away and took my hand.

She lived in a student residence hall for women. She walked up the stairs ahead of me. I was feeling a little more sober than before, and it slowly dawned on me what an idiotic thing I was doing, but I was too excited, and it didn’t seem possible to turn back now. Ivona unlocked her room and switched on the light. No sooner had she closed the door behind us than I embraced her again, and dragged her over to the narrow single bed. I tried to undress her, but she wouldn’t let me. She twisted and struggled with surprising agility. I kissed her and touched her all over, and pushed my hand down the front of her skirt, but her belt was so tight, I could hardly move my fingers. My hand was pressed flat against Ivona’s belly, and I could feel her woolly pubic hair. Ivona was whimpering, I couldn’t tell if it was desire or fear or both. I hadn’t been so excited in ages, maybe because I so completely didn’t care what Ivona thought about me. I tried to undo her belt with my free hand. Again she struggled. I said some stupid nonsense or other. She murmured no, and please no. Her voice sounded dark and soft.

When I woke up, I was muzzy and hardly knew where I was. It was brightening outside, the room was in twilight. My head hurt, and I needed to pee. I was shirtless, Ivona had all her clothes on, only the top buttons on her blouse were undone.

While I pissed into the sink, I opened the mirror cabinet, which was stuffed with shampoo samples and unfamiliar medicines. I turned and saw that Ivona was awake and watching me. I said, I’m going now. Then she got up and came over to me and whispered into my ear, I love you. It didn’t sound like a declaration of love, more like the statement of an immutable fact. I reached for my shirt and T-shirt. Ivona watched me dress with something like entitlement, her eyes were full of pride. I walked out without another word.

I stopped outside the dormitory to get my bearings. I couldn’t remember which way we’d gone the night before. The birds in the trees were fantastically loud, and for a moment I had the ridiculous idea that they might attack me. I asked myself what I was doing here, and how things had ever gotten so far. The whole business was embarrassing to me, and I hoped no one had seen me leave with Ivona. At the same time, though, I felt strangely exhilarated. Everything I’d previously experienced with women struck me as a sort of game in comparison to the night I’d just been through. I had felt grown up with Ivona, and responsible, and perfectly free.

I lived in one of the bungalows in the Olympic Village. It was a tiny place, but my friends in shared apartments or student dorms were all jealous of me. There were hundreds of these bungalows along narrow lanes surrounded by towering apartment buildings, and they really were like a sort of village. They had been built for competitors at the Olympics. After the games, the area was handed over to students. I paid three hundred marks a month for a little house that was roughly 250 square feet. Downstairs there was a walk-in closet, a kitchenette, and the legendary “Nice” shower, a plastic bath unit where you felt you were in a spacecraft. Upstairs was the bedroom and study. One wall of the study was glass, and there was a little veranda outside. To save space, a bunk bed was installed at the top of the stairs. The village was full of stories of couples falling out in the course of wild nights, but presumably that was just student talk.

The bungalows had been run up quickly and weren’t in good condition. The windows were poorly insulated, and even so you had to air out the space all the time, because otherwise you got mold in the walls. The student union had provided us with paint for the facades. Some people had made proper works of art, others had scrawled political slogans on the walls. Some of the paintings looked like children’s drawings.

There were always parties in the village, and spontaneous barbecues. It was noisy, especially in summer, which made it hard to concentrate on your work. You could hear everything from the bungalows on either side. I had a German lit student next to me. I barely knew his name, but I knew all about his sex life, and I heard every quarrel and every reconciliation with his girlfriend. Sonia, who was taking the same courses as me, sometimes came to visit. She was interested in the architecture of the village, and later on she would come and study with me. One hot summer afternoon, when we were both cramming architecture history, we could hear shouting from next door. I was about to knock on the door to complain when it got quiet. Shortly after that, there were the loud shrieks of pleasure of a woman. Sonia didn’t understand at first, and said shouldn’t we check up on what was happening. I don’t think they need help, I said laughing. Only then did the shoe drop. I said I should have studied German, where you didn’t have to work so much, and had time for other things. Sonia blushed, and said she was going to the bathroom. When she returned, the noise still hadn’t stopped, and after a few more minutes, she said she had to leave, she had a date. From then on we did all our cramming in the library.

It was before seven a.m. when I got home. Everything was peaceful in the village, and the paths were deserted. I put on the coffee machine and took a shower, then I set off for nowhere in particular. I felt euphoric and needed exercise. I headed for the city center and thought about the future. Everything seemed possible, nothing was going to get in my way. I would find a position in a big architecture firm, in time I would set up on my own, and realize big projects all over the world. I walked through the city, staring at the windows of car dealerships, and already pictured myself at the wheel of some luxury model, going on tours of inspection from building site to site.

I went to the library and read a long newspaper article about a wave of refugees from East Germany, and somehow that went with my feeling of freedom and adventure. Everything seemed possible, even if the commentator urged caution and doubted the imminent collapse of the GDR. At noon I had a sandwich, then I moved on. I bummed around the city, bought myself a pair of pants and a couple of white T-shirts. When I returned to the student village in the evening, I was tired and satisfied, as if at the end of a long day at work.

I went to bed early, and even so I didn’t wake up until noon the following day. It was the telephone that woke me. It was Sonia. She asked me if I was doing anything. No, I said, just recovering from the strains and stresses of the final project. We agreed to meet for lunch near the library.

My relationship with Sonia wasn’t altogether straightforward. She had caught my eye on the very first day of school, but I had only got to meet her through Rüdiger. We got along well, and sometime we started doing our drafting together. She was more gifted than me, and had more application. But she was generous-spirited, and would never have trashed someone else’s work, the way Ferdy and I did. She wasn’t uncritical, but she was always fair, and whatever her critique might be, it always seemed to be positive. She was just as popular with the professors as with the students. She was able to admire people, and maybe that’s why she was admired herself by others. She and Rüdiger seemed to be a dream couple. They could have been married, the way they planned parties and asked us to their parents’ homes, as though they had already come into their own. At one of those parties, I met Alice, and we had been going out for several months now. Then Sonia and I broke up with our partners at about the same time, in the middle of exam pressures — maybe that brought us closer to one another. My breakup with Alice was rough, and Sonia, who was a friend of Alice’s, had spent nights hearing all about what a son of a bitch I was, and how badly I had treated her. Remarkably, none of that seemed to affect us in any way. Quite the contrary, it was at that time that we grew really close. First I thought it was Sonia’s intention to bring Alice and me back together, until one day she said Alice mustn’t hear about us meeting, because it would wreck their friendship. Rüdiger knowing didn’t matter, they had ended it amicably and with no bad feelings. When you saw the two of them, you might have been forgiven for thinking they were still an item. I asked Sonia what had caused their split. Oh, she said, and made a vaguely deprecating gesture.

Sometimes I entertained the idea of falling in love with Sonia myself, but however plausible it was as an idea, it didn’t seem at all appropriate. Perhaps we knew each other too well, and our friendship was too cemented. One time I tried to hint at something. Wouldn’t it be perfect, I said, if Alice started going out with Rüdiger, and the two of us … What an idea! said Sonia laughing. And she was right. I couldn’t picture her as my girlfriend, not in bed, not even naked. She was certainly very beautiful, but there was something unapproachable about her. She was like one of those dolls whose clothes are sewn onto their bodies. Although, Sonia said, Rüdiger and Alice would make a good couple. So would we, though. It would finish Alice, said Sonia. Anyway, I don’t have time for a relationship at the moment. She first had to concentrate on getting a job. She wanted to go abroad, and a serious relationship would just get in the way. I’d like to see you head over heels in love, I said, so badly that it hurts! She laughed. Trust me to say something like that.

I got to the café before Sonia, and watched through the window as she crossed the street toward me. She was wearing white pants and a white sleeveless T-shirt, and she was tanned. When she walked into the café, the whole place turned to stare. She came up to my table and brushed a kiss on my cheek. As she sat down, she looked briefly around, as though searching for someone. The waiter was at hand before I could even call him.

Sonia talked about a competition she wanted to enter, a day care for a big industrial company. She put on her glasses, which I liked her even better in, and showed me her sketches. I made a couple of suggestions, which she turned down. I’d had better ideas before, she said. I told her I hadn’t been sleeping well. She looked at me with mock sympathy, and went on talking about her project and integration and shelter and the personality of the children and their uniqueness and potential. My client is the child, she said, and pushed her glasses up over her hair, and laughed.

Sonia was the absolute opposite of Ivona. She was lovely and smart and talkative and charming and sure of herself. I always found her presence somewhat intimidating, and I had the feeling of having to try to be better than I actually was. With Ivona, the time went by incredibly slowly, full of painful silences. She gave monosyllabic replies to my questions, and it was a constant struggle to prolong the conversation. Sonia on the other hand was the perfect socialite. She came from a well-off background, and I couldn’t imagine her doing or saying something unconsidered. She was bound to have a successful career. She would find a niche in the design of social housing, and get a seat on various boards, and bring up two or three children on the side, who would be clean and just as well-behaved and presentable as she was. But Sonia would never say to a man that she loved him, the way that Ivona had said it to me, as if there was no other possibility. Ivona’s declaration had been embarrassing, just like the idea of being seen in public with her, but even so the thought of her love had something ennobling about it. It was as though Ivona was the only person who took me seriously and to whom I really meant something. She was the only woman who saw me as something other than a good-looking kid or a rising young architect. Ever since waking up, I kept thinking of her, and I was sure I would have to see her again, if only to free myself from her. She had told me she worked in a Christian bookstore. It couldn’t be all that hard to find her.

Sonia was talking about a torchlight parade that she had gone on, for the victims of the Tiananmen massacre. The night I had spent with Ivona she and a few like-minded people had marched from Goetheplatz to Marienplatz, and had marked the Chinese sign for sorrow in lighted candles on the square. According to Buddhist beliefs, the souls of the deceased would go looking for a new body at the end of forty-nine days, she said. It was so moving, I cried. She seemed to be surprised by her own emotional outburst. I only hope your soul doesn’t find a new body for itself, I said, that would be a shame. Sonia looked at me as if I’d personally shot down the Chinese students. I’ve got to go, I said. She asked me if I planned on going to Rüdiger’s farewell party. I couldn’t say yet.

I found three Christian bookstores listed in the phone book. I went to the first of them, but they said they didn’t give out information about people who worked there. I took a look around the place. When I didn’t see Ivona anywhere, I went to the next place. The manager here wasn’t so cagey. He said he didn’t have any Polish girls working for him, and there wouldn’t be any at the Claudius bookstore, the third one on my list, either, because that was Protestant. He thought about it for a moment. The parish church of St. Joseph in Schwabing had a small shop attached to it, where they sold books and knickknacks. Maybe my girlfriend worked there. She’s not my girlfriend, I said.

I had to go once around the church before I saw the store. It was in an adjacent building, in a small recess. A couple of steps led up to the door next to a display window with a few candles and a couple of yellowed-looking pamphlets. Jesus and TV, I Lift Up Mine Eyes to Thee, The Everlasting Bond, things like that.

I looked through the glass door but saw no one. When I walked in, I set off a little bell. It took a moment, and then the velvet curtain parted at the far end. The back room was in bright sunlight, and for an instant Ivona looked like an apparition, bathed in light. Then the curtain fell shut behind her, and the room was once again in dimness.

Ivona looked at me attentively, and without a trace of recognition. She sat down on a chair behind the counter and busied herself by straightening some stacks of miniature saints’ pictures. I looked at the books, which were arranged by theme on a couple of shelves: Mission, Help through Faith, Marriage and Family, Sects and Other Religions. There was even a category called Witty and Provocative. I pulled down a book of clerical jokes. On the cover there was a drawing of a lion kneeling down before a priest, paws folded in prayer. I put it back and turned to Ivona. She still wasn’t noticing me. I went over to the counter and stared at her until she raised her eyes. My image of her had changed in memory, and seeing her in front of me now, I wondered how I could possibly have wanted her so much yesterday. Her expression was anxious, almost submissive, and I felt disgusted by her again. Without a word I left the shop. After a few feet, I turned and looked back. Ivona was standing pressed against the glass door, she looked satisfied, or perhaps just apathetic, as though she really didn’t care whether I stayed or left, as though she knew for sure that I would be back.

I went home and took out my thesis again. In three days’ time I would have to defend it, and I had the feeling I had forgotten everything I had pondered over the last few months. I leafed through the drawings and sketches. Rüdiger was right, my design was derivative, it lacked originality and force. While I’d been working on it I’d been conscious of a vague energy, a creativity, but I hadn’t known in which direction to take it. And then, without my really knowing it, I’d followed my idol. It wasn’t even Rossi’s buildings that impressed me so much as his polemics against modernism, his melancholy which maybe wasn’t anything more than cowardice. Sonia had often poked fun at my old-fashioned taste. She said Rossi’s buildings looked as if he’d taken out his children’s building blocks and played with them.

My work looked shallow and unimaginative to me. Even so, I felt pretty sure I would pass. But it bothered me just being mediocre, and to have to admit to myself that I wasn’t the genius I always dreamed of being. Feeling rather disgusted with myself, I put away the papers. I thought of Ivona and tried to sketch her face from memory, but it was more than I could do. I called Sonia, but there was no answer. I ate a snack, and then took myself for a walk. I avoided those places I normally went to with Rüdiger and Ferdy, I didn’t feel like running into them in case they asked me some uncomfortable questions. I walked through the city, feeling very much alone. I was shocked to realize that there was only one person I wanted to see, and that was Ivona.

It took me a while to find the student residence. The doorbells only had numbers next to them, no names, and I had no idea what Ivona’s number was. I stood in front of the residence, smoking. Finally a young woman came out, and I managed to wedge my foot discreetly in the door before it snapped shut. I stood there while she unlocked her bicycle and rode away.

The buildings must have been from the fifties, the floors were tiled gray, the white on the walls had yellowed, and the banisters’ plastic insulation had been worn away in places, showing the metal below. Even though I’d been pretty drunk on the occasion of my first visit, I found Ivona’s room without much trouble. On the door was a little number plate, like in a hotel. Below that, Ivona had put her own name, with a difficult surname written out in a childish hand, which I forgot right away and don’t know how to spell to this day. I knocked, and Ivona let me in. She didn’t say anything, but she stepped aside and let me in, as though she’d been waiting for me. The TV was on, some historical costume drama with romantic music. I shut the door behind me and went up to Ivona, who shrank back, with a sort of cunning expression on her face. When she reached the window she couldn’t go any farther, and I seized her hands and kissed her palms and her soft whitish arms. Ivona squirmed a little, then she seemed to give in, and dragged me away from the window. She moved to the bed and fell back into it without taking her eyes off me. Her expression was vacant, like an animal’s. I lay down on top of her and went on kissing and embracing her and felt through her thin top for her breasts. She let it happen, only when I tried to undress her she resisted, just as determinedly as the first time. In the background, the music swelled to some sort of crescendo, the film was reaching its high point, or perhaps it was just over. I was very turned on, but it wasn’t the standard feeling of being with a girl, not a physical excitement, but excitement of feeling, a warm, dark sensation, a kind of overwhelming safety. I felt no shame as I pulled off my clothes, even though I guessed how ridiculous we must look, a naked man rubbing himself against a woman in ugly old-fashioned clothes. I couldn’t care less. Ivona was breathing deeply in and out, her hands were clasped across my back, as though to hold me to her. Without anything happening, I had the feeling she was giving herself to me.

This time I didn’t stay overnight, though again when I left it felt like a sort of flight. Ivona had said nothing most of the time, she didn’t say she loved me, only from time to time emitted a little gasping sound I was familiar with. When I took her hands and tried to lead them to me, she pulled away. When I finally gave up, tired and unsatisfied and still aroused, and we were lying together side by side in the half-darkness, I naked, she with creased, loose clothes, I asked, what are we doing here? What’s happening? Then she said she’d prayed that I would come to her. Her voice was the voice of a little girl who was completely convinced her prayer could change the world. I don’t believe in God, I said. That doesn’t make any difference, Ivona said. I laughed. Do you really think God’s got nothing better to do than attend to your love life? She didn’t respond, but when I looked at her, she again had that proud and rather simple expression on her face that she had had that afternoon at the door of the bookstore. I was mad with her, I could see myself tearing the clothes off her body, holding her by the hair, and taking her against her will. Her expression didn’t change. It was the self-complacency of the saints in the little pictures in the shop, which seemed to be saying any wrong you do me will only tie you to me even more tightly.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes, full of shame at what I was thinking. When Ivona touched my back, I jumped. She said she had prayed that I would talk to her. She had sat close to me a couple of times in the beer garden, but I hadn’t noticed her. I shuddered. The notion of being Ivona’s chosen one had something eerie about it. Why me? She gave no reply. I have to go, I said, and quickly got dressed. I tied my laces on the stairs.

For the next few days I avoided Ivona. I should have been preparing my defense, but instead I started again from scratch. I got up early in the morning and made a new set of sketches. At first they weren’t up to much, but in spite of my continual failure, I got the feeling my thoughts were getting sharper, I was starting to understand something that was more important than form or style or structural engineering, and against all reason I felt optimistic, and was enjoying my work. It was as though I had the answer in my brain, and just needed to lay it bare, clear away all the debris of my training and find the single gesture, the single line that was true to me.

My original blueprint had been elaborated from the geometry of the floor plan, I had worked it up from the space afforded by the size of the plot and the permitted height of a building, the way a sculptor might conceive a figure from a block of stone. The result was a purist construction, not without some appeal as a model, but completely unoriginal and unthought-out as to its interior. This time I tried to work from the inside, from the exhibition space, not the front elevation. I pictured myself as a visitor to the museum, and developed the structure of the building in an imaginary tour of the rooms. I was proceeding not from construction so much as from intuition, trying on the different rooms like clothes. Often I would stand in my study with eyes shut, pushing the walls this way and that, checking the angle and the quantity of the light, groping my way forward. If someone had seen me, they would surely have thought I was crazy. But over time what evolved was a system of rooms, corridors, and entrances that was more like a living creature than a building. Only after that did I turn to the shell of the structure, which really was pretty much just that: a shell.

It was very hot in the bungalow, and I spent whole days in my underwear behind closed blinds. I drank great quantities of coffee till I broke out in cold sweats, and didn’t eat till I felt almost sick with hunger. In the evenings I would go out to get a couple of bottles of beer and to pick up a kebab, which I had wrapped and took home with me. In the student village there was loads going on just as the term was ending, every night there was loud music and the sound of festive parties from nearby bungalows and the central plaza. I kept out of everything, sat on my little terrace, looked at the sky, and thought of Ivona. I pictured her in front of me, standing in the communal kitchen of the student lodgings, making herself a simple dinner, scrambled eggs maybe, or boiled potatoes, and taking them to her room and eating alone at her little desk. When she was finished, she went back to the kitchen and cleaned up, maybe she exchanged a few words with another Polish girl she knew to talk to. But before long she said she was tired, and she went back to her room and sponged herself down with a washcloth. That was the most erotic vision I had of her, standing at her sink and washing her belly with brisk movements, her shoulders, her soft pendulous breasts. Even though the room was hot, the cool washcloth gave her goose bumps. She pulled on a thin oversize T-shirt that showed the impress of her nipples. I wondered whether she would kneel down to pray or slip straight into bed. She lay there in the dark, on her back, as if dead, and listened to the sounds of the other students, the flush of a toilet, the ringing of a telephone in the corridor, and then a voice calling out someone’s name, and after that another voice, just a murmur, and maybe music or traffic from outside. She lay there awake, thinking of me thinking of her. The thought made me strangely happy. It was as though we were guarding each other in a world full of strangeness and danger.

The next day I went on working. I didn’t answer the telephone, I already had half a dozen messages on the machine. There was Sonia, telling me her presentation had gone really well, and wishing me good luck for Thursday; there was Rüdiger, Ferdy, my mother, all of them wishing me good luck.

The day before the examination I had worked long into the night on my new project. On Thursday morning I got up early and took a last look at my old blueprint, which I would have to defend in a few hours’ time; it didn’t look possible to me.

On the way to the train, I saw a kite being attacked by a crow. The bird of prey was calmly tracing its circles, while the crow flapped around, then climbed higher and dropped onto the larger bird. With a minimal adjustment of its tail the kite altered its course. I stood there fascinated for a long time, watching. One time the kite appeared to give up, headed off in a different direction, and disappeared behind some trees, but then it was back again, and the crow continued to harass it. What have I got to be afraid of, I thought, it’s just an exam. If worst comes to worst, I’ll just have to retake it next year.

I was glad I had an early slot. It was still cool in the hall and there was hardly anyone there. Sonia had offered to come, but I said I’d rather she didn’t, she would only make me nervous. In one of the rows at the back I saw my parents. They waved to me when I walked down to the front.

During the presentation I stumbled once or twice and mixed things up; I spoke of my debt to Aldo Rossi, as if that might take the wind out of the sails of my critics. To my surprise, the first expert on the panel expressed a fairly positive view of my work, even if, as he said, my debt to certain models was pretty obvious. The second examiner spent a long time on one detail, the staircases, which in his view were too narrow, but he closed with a few words praising the overall design. The other professors declined to comment, I had the feeling either they were bored or they were saving themselves for the students who were following me. After a quarter of an hour it was all over, and I left the room, followed by a couple of assistants who carried out the presentation table with my blueprints and model. The next candidates were already lining up outside, among them Rüdiger. There was a gleam in his eyes that made him look drugged. I patted him on the back and wished him good luck. He smiled uncertainly and said nothing.

My parents came out of the hall shortly after I did. They stood off to the side, beaming with pride. I talked to some other students for a bit, and then I went and joined them. That seemed to go all right, said my father, with a questioning rise in his voice, and my mother nodded, even though I was sure she couldn’t have understood the half of what was said. Unlike me, they had dressed up, and they insisted on taking me out to lunch. I could feel their uncertainty. They seemed much older to me here than when I saw them at home in the familiar surroundings, and I felt a bit sorry for them. We went to a moderately priced restaurant. When we said good-bye after lunch, all three of us seemed relieved somehow to have gotten through it.

On Friday I got my grade, 2.0, which was better than I’d expected. Ferdy got the same, Sonia got a 1.0, while Rüdiger had lost his way in the course of his presentation, and when he realized, petitioned the committee to retake his finals next year, which had been granted.

The evening after we received our grades, there was a great big party. We danced into the wee hours, and I had much too much to drink. It was getting light already as I crawled home. For a long time I was unable to sleep, all sorts of things were racing through my head; I was relieved and at the same time felt apprehensive. From now on no one was going to tell me what I had to do and what not. I thought about my new blueprint. It must be possible to create space that would allow feelings, that would enable and communicate the sort of freedom and openness I was thinking of. I envisaged lofty transparent halls, open staircases, the play of light and shade. I wasn’t quite sure whether I was awake or dreaming, but all at once I saw everything before me, very clear and distinct.

I woke up in the early afternoon, still reeling from so much alcohol. I hadn’t said I would show up to Rüdiger’s party, and come evening I dithered over whether to go or not. I didn’t feel that great, and I was afraid I’d run into Alice. In the end I went.

Rüdiger’s parents had a house in Possenhofen, right on Lake Starnberg. His father was a business lawyer who worked in the automobile industry; so far as I knew his grandfather already had had money. Rüdiger never boasted about how well off his family were, but you could feel it in the casual way he treated people and objects. At the time I was impressed; later on I felt sorry for him.

When I arrived, the sun was already low in the sky, and Rüdiger was just lighting some wax tapers that were dotted around the garden. He greeted me exuberantly. Hey, haven’t seen you in ages, he said, thumping me on the back. He seemed perfectly relaxed, even though he was the only one of us who’d been tripped up in the exams. On the lawn between the house and the lake was a long trestle table with a white cloth, but the guests were down on the shore, a few still in the water. If you want a swim, you’d better get a move on, said Rüdiger, I’m just starting the grill. He left me, and I looked out to the others. I had the sun behind me, and everything was gleaming darkly. The scene overpowered me with a sort of timeless meditative quality it had. There was actually someone playing a guitar, and if it hadn’t all been so exquisite, it would have seemed preposterous. I strolled down to the water’s edge and was greeted by cheers. Sonia was lying on a blanket on the grass, she held out her hand to me and I pulled her up. She was wearing a white swimsuit with a light blue man’s shirt thrown over it. She hugged me, and kissed me on both cheeks, more warmly than usual, I got the feeling. With her hand still resting on my shoulder, she whispered into my ear, look, and nodded her head to the side. Only then did I see Alice, with her head pillowed on Ferdy’s belly. He was toying with her bikini top.

Those two? I asked. Do you feel bad? Sonia asked, and took me by the hand. Come on, let’s go for a walk. At first I didn’t know what she meant. It didn’t feel bad at all to see Alice with Ferdy, quite the opposite, I was glad she had someone. Even if I didn’t think Ferdy was right for her. I had been anxious about seeing Alice, been afraid of her sad face and her reproachful looks. Now I felt relieved. I walked through the grounds with Sonia, and she told me the story of how Alice and Ferdy had gotten together. That old pimp Rüdiger had a part in it. He brought you and her together too, remember. I never noticed, I said. Anyway, I’m glad she’s not alone anymore. Me too, said Sonia, and she looped her arm through mine. Now we just need to find someone for you. And for you, I said. Sonia laughed and shook her head. I don’t have time for things like that. I said I didn’t believe a word of it, and she laughed again, and lowered her eyes, as though she’d spotted something in the grass. Are you all right? she asked. Yes, I said, I think I am.

Rüdiger came out of the house carrying an enormous platter of meat, followed by his mother carrying a basket full of rolls. Sonia ran over to them and asked if she could help, and the three went back into the house. I imagined what it would be like, being here with Ivona. She would sit around stolidly, and not open her mouth, or just say bland things, like in the English Garden. I would feel ashamed by her, that was for sure. Even the notion of being alone with her by the lakeside had nothing really tempting about it. Ivona bored me, we had nothing to say to each other. It was only in bed that I liked being with her, when she lay there heavy and soft in her ugly clothes, and I felt completely free and uninhibited.

The buffet was ready. Rüdiger’s mother stood in front of it. She had her hand up shielding her eyes, looking into the sun and in my direction. She waved to me, and I went to her, and she greeted me with a faint kiss on the cheek. How nice of you to come, she said. I’ve missed you.

I didn’t know her well, but even the last time I was here, I’d been struck by her warm and easygoing nature. Don’t worry, she said, I’ll leave you to yourselves soon enough. Stay and eat with us, Mom, said Rüdiger. She laughed and shook her head. I’ll go to bed early. I just wanted to say hello to this young man here.

She asked me a couple of questions regarding my blueprint, and listened attentively when I told her about the revised version I’d begun, and made a couple of remarks that I thought made a lot of sense. Why don’t you do mine for me, said Rüdiger. Rüdiger’s mother said she had studied art history. She had always had a soft spot for architecture. Back then after the war, so many heinous things had been perpetrated. Then she went back inside, and Rüdiger called the others and put steaks and sausages on the grill.

We were a small group, just over a dozen men and women. Half of us had studied with Rüdiger, Alice and one of her friends were attending the conservatory, one of Rüdiger’s friends was just embarking on a career in the diplomatic service. There was Birgit, a med student, who shared an apartment with Sonia and another woman. I had seen her once or twice when I’d visited Sonia, but never exchanged more than a few words with her. A few of the guests I didn’t know at all. One of them was a veterinarian, there was something agricultural about him, he didn’t speak much and put away astonishing quantities of meat.

Rüdiger had drawn up a seating chart, and pointed us to our chairs. Obviously he’d been sure I would come. I was between Sonia and a woman I didn’t know. Ferdy and Alice sat at the other end of the table. When I ran into Ferdy at the buffet, he seemed to think he owed me an explanation. You’re not mad at me, are you? he said. I shook my head and looked astonished. Why should I be? I’m glad she’s in good hands. He grinned and raised his hands, and waggled his fingers. How’s your little Polska chick? I pretended not to know what he was talking about. Did you have your foul way with her? I said I didn’t know what he meant, and went back to my seat. Ferdy’s remark had spoiled my mood. Everything felt artificial to me, the conversations of the others bored me, their big ideas, Ferdy’s bullshit about Deconstructivism and the suppressed impurity of form. He had always been better at talking than drawing, and he changed his idols like other people changed their shirts. One day Gehry was the greatest, the next it was Libeskind or Koolhaas. His drafts changed accordingly, they had no individual idiom, they were tame, popularized versions of others’ great ideas. He was bound to be successful, and make a lot of money running up second-class buildings in medium-sized cities, which his employers would take for great architecture.

Sonia started to argue with him. She worshipped Le Corbusier and loathed Deconstructivism. She talked about machines for living, and social function zones. Her naive love of the lower class must have something to do with her bourgeois background, I said. I saw that I’d offended her, but I didn’t care. Rüdiger took little part in the discussion. He was probably the most gifted, certainly the most imaginative among us, only he could have failed so spectacularly. His ideas were striking and completely original, but he didn’t have the energy to think them through, or if he did, he was so sloppy that the teachers couldn’t be blamed for giving him bad grades. Even so, they all respected him. He had “potential.” Whenever there was talk of Rüdiger, you heard that. He listened to us and then made some comment that none of us understood. He tried to explain it, and made even less sense, and then finally gave up with an enchanting smile. Then, apropos of nothing, Alice launched into an account of a concert she had gone to. Her self-promotion was even more pitiful than that of the others, she talked with a kind of artificial gush and showed off like a little girl. All the people she met were geniuses, all the books she read were masterpieces, all the music she heard or played was fantastic.

After a while I couldn’t stand any more of her nonsense, and I went down to the lake. On either side of the swimming spot were old trees, which looked like living beings in the flickering light of the torches. I could make out the lights on the opposite side, glinting and multiplying on the surfaces of the water. I lit a cigarette, and heard footsteps behind me. It was the veterinary med student. He was holding a sausage in one hand; with his mouth full, he said, we haven’t met yet, and held out his other hand. His name was Jakob. He had a strong regional accent, and said he was from some place in the Bayerischer Wald, called Oberkashof. Had I come across it? It wouldn’t be anywhere near Unterkashof, I asked, and he laughed deafeningly and smacked me on the back. You’ll do, he said. Then he started raving about Sonia, whom he called an attractive hussy. I don’t know how he got onto the subject of folkloric costume, and how he thought the dirndl was the perfect garment for the female body. It supported the bosom and emphasized the waist, and covered the less pleasing aspect of the hips. Imagine Sonia in a dirndl, he said lasciviously. I had to laugh. Suddenly he was talking about eunuchs. Early and late castrates, family eunuchoidism, reeds and silver tubes and Chinese castration chairs with slanted armrests. A eunuch’s physique was distorted by the absence of male hormones and the disrupted assimilation of protein. I said I would get myself something to drink.

When I passed the table, I heard Alice talking about the death of Karajan. He had managed to conduct one rehearsal of Un ballo in maschera, she said, her voice growing shrill. She shook her head and rolled her eyes like a lunatic.

Lass uns ihn gerettet sehen, ew’ger Gott!

O lass uns ihn, lass uns ihn gerettet sehn!

Er stirbt! — Er stirbt! —

O grauenvolle Nacht!*

I took the subway back into the city with Sonia. As I said good-bye to Rüdiger, he had asked me about Ivona too. I motioned dismissively with my hand, that business was embarrassing to me, not least with Sonia standing next to me. On the train she started asking me about her. Wow, she said, with an ironic smile, a Polish girl, eh. It’s nothing, I said, Ferdy talked to her, and then we couldn’t get rid of her all evening. Poles are spirited women, said Sonia, you should watch yourself. You should see her, I said, she’s not attractive, she’s boring, she doesn’t talk, and if she does say something it’s just a platitude. Sonia looked at me in surprise. Don’t be so defensive. And anyway, she’s a devout Catholic, I added. The woman doesn’t interest me, is that so hard to understand? But you walked her home. That was politeness. The way you talk about her isn’t especially polite. I rolled my eyes. When women get sisterly with each other, it’s best not to say anything. Sonia didn’t speak for a while either. She seemed to be thinking. Then she said she was going to Marseilles the following week, to see Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse, and would I like to go with her. She was going to drive there, and we could stay with a friend of hers, a German painter who lived in the city, on account of the light.

I thought a couple of days off would do me good after the stresses of the exam, and the trip wouldn’t cost much. Maybe I would finally be able to shake off Ivona if I went. I wouldn’t have to be thinking about her all the time if I was with Sonia. Sure, I said, I’d like that. Even though it’s not my scene. Sonia laughed. I know you don’t like any other architect except yourself, that’s the presumption of genius. I looked at her with mock condescension. I knew she was making fun of me, but even so I liked it when she called me a genius.

We were going to leave on Monday. If we set off early, Sonia said, then we could do the drive in a day. So I just had Sunday to make my preparations. I got up early and went to the laundromat, which was in the basement of one of the buildings. When I stepped outside my house, I looked around. I was probably scared Ivona would get wind of my plans. I felt I was betraying her in getting ready to go on a trip with another girl. There was no one to be seen. I didn’t think Ivona knew where I lived. She was probably in church, busy praying for me. That threw me into a rage, and for a moment I thought of sending her a note telling her to leave me alone, and that I never wanted to see her again. But what could I hold against her? It wasn’t her doing that I had to think about her all the time, that she had some power over me, a thought that simultaneously fascinated and infuriated me. I was almost certain her hold would only last as long as she kept me at a distance. If I really wanted to get free I would have to sleep with her.

I put the laundry in a washer and slid in the coins. Back in the bungalow, it was baking hot. I lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. I was in the sort of feverish mood I often got into when there was a trip ahead, and I couldn’t face doing anything, and could only sit around and wait. Maybe that was why I got further and further into something till I couldn’t think straight anymore.

I walked rapidly through the almost empty streets, where the heat bounced off the pavement and walls. I broke into a sweat, and the few sounds I heard reached me as though through a filter. The thought churned around and around in my brain, I’ve got to have her, I kept thinking, she wants it too, she’s waiting for me. Outside the student residence, I stood under the projecting shade of the roof for a moment. My T-shirt was sweated through, and I was out of breath from walking so fast. I could still turn back, I thought, and nothing would have changed. For one disembodied moment, time seemed to stand still, but it wasn’t hesitation, it was more the moment at the start of a race, a moment of maximum stillness and absolute concentration. Then I saw my finger press Ivona’s bell, and I imagined I could hear the shrill of it tearing the silence. A minute later, I saw Ivona through the glass door as she came downstairs. She was wearing a dark blue skirt and a white blouse, her church clothes, I guessed, her Sunday best. When she saw me, she paused for a moment, then hurriedly took the remaining steps and unlocked the door. I took her hand, and she stood there, twisting a little, something that would have been appropriate in a little girl but looked ridiculous when she did it. I followed her upstairs and into her room. I was still very calm, but Ivona must have sensed there was something amiss. She backed up toward the window, and I followed her. This time she didn’t turn to the bed, but stayed where she was. I started to unbutton her blouse. She placed her hands over mine, and held them, but I freed myself with a sudden movement. I took off her blouse and her skirt, slip and tights, which she wore in spite of the heat. At first she resisted a bit, but I was the stronger, and eventually she gave up any resistance. When I pulled down her panties, she said, no, but she stepped out of them, first one foot then the other. She stood there awkwardly, both feet on the floor, and trying to cover herself up, but I held her hands and knelt down in front of her, kissing her. Her white untouched flesh had something vegetable about it, the pleats in her skin which was thickly sown with moles, her black, crisp pubic hair. I was almost beside myself with lust. Then she turned around and took another step forward to the window, so that she could have been seen from the street. I got up and, while I quickly stripped, looked outside with her. There was no one in sight, no witness, I thought. Come, I said, and made to pull her over to the bed. Then she started crying. Her crying got more and more violent, until her whole body was cramped up and shaking. She collapsed into herself, and sat hunkered on the floor, still crying softly. It was as though I woke up. I sat down on the bed and stared at her. I remember something Aldo Rossi had said, that every room contains an abyss. The abyss was between me and Ivona. I stretched out my hand to hold her, and hold her to me, but she shrank back. She looked deep into my eyes, her expression was full of fear and sadness. I quickly got dressed and left.

* Let us see him safe, Almighty God! / Let us see him safe and well! / He dies! — He dies! — / O dreadful night!

That’s not a nice story, said Antje. Her voice sounded low and serious. I know, I said, and you’re the first person I’ve told it to. Why me?

Instead of taking the road via Traubing as I usually did, I drove along the lakefront, even though it was night, and there wasn’t much to see. There was a time I was bored by this landscape, but the longer I lived here, the more I saw its beauty. Sometimes, when Sonia was in bed already, I would go for a walk down to the Academy, and sit by the shore and think about my life, and how it could have been different. Then I would have the feeling it had all happened automatically, without any input from me, as though it had to be this way. I admired people like Antje who seemed to have their lives in their hands, and set themselves goals, and made decisions.

I parked outside the house, but Antje made no move. I don’t really feel like going in there with you, she said quietly. It’s almost twenty years ago, I said. You’re sitting here in your house, with your beautiful wife and your sweet little girl. Don’t you feel any shame? I haven’t gotten to the end of the story yet, I said. Well, I’ve heard enough for today, said Antje, and she climbed out.

I showed her to the guest bedroom, which was right beside the front door, and facing the office on the lower ground floor. Sonia had everything ready. There were towels laid out on the freshly made bed and flowers on the table by the window. She had even written a welcome card and propped it against the vase. Antje read it and set it down with a smile. Mathilda, our cat, walked in. Sophie had been pestering us for ages, and finally for her tenth birthday she was allowed to have the kitten her grandparents had promised her long before. But now, half a year later, her interest had let up noticeably, and we continually needed to remind her to look after her pet. Mathilda strolled through my legs and looked up at Antje, who was taking her toiletries from her overnight bag. You have your own bathroom, I said, here on the right. Will you remove the cat, please? said Antje. I asked her if she didn’t like animals. I like wild animals, not pets.

I said good night and turned to leave. Wait, said Antje, and dropped onto her bed. You didn’t answer my question. Why tell me all this? We hardly know each other. Maybe that’s the reason, I said. Do you remember when you showed me your paintings back then? Antje made a doubtful face. You didn’t like them. Actually, no one liked them, not even me. You said I was too young for them, I said, but that wasn’t true. I recognized myself in your copulating chimeras. I felt trapped, maybe that’s why I didn’t want to see your pictures. Aren’t you making things a teeny bit simple for yourself? asked Antje. You behave like a swine, and then you blame your inner beast. I’m not buying that. Maybe I thought, because you’re an artist, you’d understand, I said. Antje stopped to think. She had some understanding for craziness, but she couldn’t understand what I’d done. You had to be able to tell the difference between fiction and reality. Imagine someone doing that to your daughter. I said that wasn’t fair, Sophie was still a child. That’s not the point, said Antje.

Finally we said good night, and I went upstairs to Sophie’s room. The only light was from a small blue night-light, in which Sophie’s face looked very calm. While I gazed at her, she quickly furrowed her brow, and I wondered what was going on in her head, what she could have been dreaming about. Sometimes she came into our room, I would wake up for some reason to find her standing by our bed and staring at me with a frightened expression. When I sent her back she would say she’d had a bad dream. Then she would tell exotic stories about wild animals and wicked men, and sometimes great big destructive machines, and I would tell her to try and think of something else, something pretty. I can’t, she would say.

I went into the bathroom and got changed. When I lay down, Sonia woke briefly, gave me a kiss, and went straight back to sleep. I thought of the pictures I’d taken of her asleep, and that she’d seen later. That was the first time we’d kissed, on that little island in front of the port at Marseilles. It all seemed terribly long ago.

When I got to the parking lot, Sonia was already there. She got out, said hello, and opened the trunk. There was hardly any room for my duffle bag next to her huge wheeled suitcase. I asked her what she’d packed, I’d thought we were only going for a couple of days. Things I need, she said, and a few books and my Rolleiflex. Did you bring a camera? I don’t need a camera, I’ve got eyes in my head and a good memory. You’re just lazy, Sonia said.

It was a cool morning, everything felt clean and fresh. It was due to get hot again by noon, but by then we’d be in the mountains, Sonia promised. She’d thought of everything, she had all the necessary maps with her, and water and a thermos of coffee. Some sandwiches were in a picnic basket on the back seat. We’re going to go via the San Bernardino Pass, said Sonia, past Milan and along the Ligurian coast. It’s a pretty route. I said I’d be glad to take turns driving. We’ll see, she said.

It really was a lovely drive. We had never spent so much time together, and we got on like a house on fire. Sonia talked about Le Corbusier, she knew everything about him and his work. She asked me what I had against him. Nothing, I said, I just don’t like him. There’s something conceited about his buildings. I always get the feeling they’re out to turn me into an ideal man. Have you ever been inside any of his buildings? No, I said, but I’ve seen loads of pictures. Sonia said, pictures weren’t enough, the essence of Le Corbusier wasn’t in the facades, but in the rooms. Anyway, what could be bad about a building that improved the people who lived in it? I said, people have a history that you have to respect. Attempts to create a better man were at best misguided and at worst had led to atrocious crimes. What did Le Corbusier do in the war, by the way? Sonia said she wasn’t exactly sure, but he certainly hadn’t been a fascist. In twenty years’ time no one will speak about Deconstructivism anymore, but Le Corbusier will still be around.

Later we talked about our final projects, and when I told Sonia I’d started mine all over again, she looked at me in amazement. I told her about my new ideas. That the structure should emerge from the paths and grow, like a plant, that the halls shouldn’t just be the empty space between walls, but atmospheric bodies, sculptures of light and shade. While I spoke, I got the feeling I hadn’t done so badly over the last week. Of course it’s a waste of time, now that I’ve got my degree in my pocket. Sonia asked me if I’d like to work with her on the day-care design for the contest. That surprised me, because a day or two earlier she’d rejected all my suggestions, and basically we had completely different ideas about architecture. Do you really think we’d make a good team? You make a more interesting class of mistake, said Sonia, and laughed.

At lunchtime we were at the pass. We parked the car and ate our sandwiches. Then we lay in the sun, until Sonia said we’d better get going. I asked if she wanted me to take over, but she shook her head, maybe later, she didn’t feel tired yet. I wasn’t too unhappy about that, because I wasn’t an experienced driver, and I enjoyed sitting idly next to Sonia and staring out the window at the passing scenery.

Somehow we came to speak about Rüdiger. I asked Sonia why she’d broken up with him. He broke up with me. That I don’t understand, I said, how anyone could leave a woman like you. Sonia quickly turned to look at me, and smiled ironically. Tell him that.

They had been together since high school, she said, and had grown up only a mile or two apart. Rüdiger had decided to go into architecture for her sake. He could just as well have done something completely different. You know him, he can do anything and does nothing.

When she started university, Sonia had found a room in a communal apartment, but Rüdiger continued to travel into the city from his parents’ house at Possenhofen every day. We had a good time, but it bugged me that he was still at his parents’. But his mother’s nice, I said. Yes, she is, and so’s his father too, but Rüdiger somehow can’t get free of them. Eventually I gave him an ultimatum. He decided in favor of his parents. Sonia laughed. She could easily imagine Rüdiger never getting married, he wasn’t really interested in women. Do you think he’s gay? No, said Sonia, he’s not interested in men either. What’s left? She shrugged her shoulders. I don’t know. She said she didn’t hold anything against Rüdiger, quite the contrary, at seventeen she’d been quite relieved to have a boyfriend who wasn’t pressuring her into this and that. I didn’t respond. It’s the same with work, said Sonia, perhaps that bothered me more. He’s just got no energy. It’s typical of him to have bailed before his final. Now he can go on being a student for another year. I wouldn’t be surprised if he never receives his degree.

We were out of the mountains and crossing a huge flat plain. The nearer we got to Milan, the denser the traffic. Sonia was silent now, she had to concentrate. Then we were in open country again, and the traffic was lighter. What do you look to a woman for? she asked. I don’t look for anything in particular. When I’ve fallen in love with her, I just have to take her the way she is. Sonia laughed. I must be a hopeless romantic. That’s why women have to be sensible and choose their men. Is that what you do? I asked. She didn’t say anything for a moment, and then she replied, sure I do that.

The air was hazy, and the car got very hot. We rolled the windows down and listened to the radio, and then later to cassettes. Every so often I would offer to take over the driving, but each time she shook her head and said, I can do it. Two or three times she stopped, without consulting me, at a service station, and we drank lukewarm coffee from the thermos, and peed, and then we drove on.

It was late afternoon when we got to the coast, and about an hour later we were in France. Not much farther now, said Sonia.

We reached Marseilles at eight in the evening, after driving for twelve hours. Unfortunately it took us another half an hour to find the house where Sonia’s friend lived. It wasn’t far from the old harbor, but the quarter was a tangle of one-way streets, and we drove around in endless circles, sometimes following signs to CENTRE VILLE, and sometimes TOUTES DIRECTIONS. Isn’t that great, I said, wherever you want to get to there’s only one way. Sonia didn’t say anything. She looked tired and stressed out.

Finally we found the house, a five-story Art Nouveau building with a grimy facade, and not too far away from it, an empty parking spot. Sonia switched the engine off and sat still. She said she was a bit tired now. Shall I carry you upstairs? She said Antje lived on the fifth floor.

Sonia went ahead while I lugged her suitcase and my bag up the steps. Above me I could hear the two friends greeting each other. This is Alexander, said Sonia, once I reached the door, and this is Antje. Alex, I said, and shook hands with the painter. She wore capri pants and a sleeveless top. Her hair was as blond as Sonia’s. She had small strong hands and must have been quite a bit older than us, around forty, I guessed.

So did you manage to snaffle him after all? she said with a naughty grin. Antje! cried Sonia with a show of horror, and laughed. We’re just buddies, as you know perfectly well. Antje asked us in, she had some food ready. She led the way down a dark hallway. From the outside, the building had looked a bit dilapidated, but the apartment was in a good state, the rooms were bright and had high ceilings and old creaky floorboards. The walls were covered with small old paintings of animals, meerkats and birds, ungulates and rodents. There was something disturbing about them, they were eerie and seemed to be observing us, lying in wait. Antje led the way out onto the balcony, and a table laid with bread and cheese, raw ham, olives, and a large bowl of salad, all in the light of an oil lamp and a few candles.

We ate and drank wine and talked. At eleven, Antje asked us if we felt like going out, but Sonia said she was dog tired. You can choose, said Antje, either you can sleep with your nice buddy in the guest room, or you can share the master bed with me. Sonia was sheepish, I hadn’t seen that in her before, it was quite moving. After her brief hesitation, she said, I’ll sleep with you. That’s what I was afraid of, said Antje. Come on, I’ll show you the room. The two women disappeared together. I stayed on the balcony, looking down onto the street, from where there was noisy shouting. A delivery truck was in the middle of the road and the driver of a car was leaning out of the window cursing the truck driver, who was taking all the time in the world to unload some large boxes and pile them up on the sidewalk.

Sonia says to wish you a good night, said Antje, when she came back. Do you mind if I have a cigarette? I asked if the paintings in the apartment were all by her. There was something disconcerting about them. Come, said Antje, and she took a couple of hurried drags, and put out her cigarette. She took me into the sitting room and switched on the light. Look at them closely. Once again I had the feeling I was being watched, but it took me a while to understand the cause of it. The animals had human eyes. I’ll show you my new ones, said Antje. She led me to a large room at the end of the hallway. The parquet floor was covered by large pieces of cardboard, on the walls were a few dark pictures, but in the half-light it was difficult to make out what they were. Antje walked through the room and bent down. A construction light on a tripod flared up, so bright that for a moment I was dazzled. Then I saw the strange beings in the paintings, a man with a fish head and an enormous cock he was holding in both hands, a bull mounting a cow, both with human heads, two dogs with human privates, licking each other. In the background were sketched in cityscapes, half-decayed high-rise apartments, deserted pedestrian walkways, a gray industrial park. The paintings were done in oil, in dark shades, and they had something old masterly about them. The one of the two dogs was still unfinished, the background was just outlined in charcoal on the primed canvas. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t find the paintings beautiful, they were even more disquieting than the small ones in the other rooms, but they were undeniably powerful and unsettling. They didn’t seem to me to go with my idea of Antje, who in her conversation was pretty conventional, the way she talked to Sonia about clothes and going out and Munich compared to Marseilles. Antje didn’t seem to be interested at all in my opinion. Welcome to the zoo, she said with a mocking expression. She unplugged the light, and it was dark, but a different dark now that I knew what terrifying beings were concealed in it. We went back out to the balcony. Antje filled our glasses and looked at me directly. The silence was difficult, I had the feeling I had to say something. You’re unsettling. Yes, said Antje. It wasn’t a confirmation, more a sort of prompt, as though expecting me to carry on. I felt as if I was being tested. What’s the name of the painter who did The Garden of Earthly Delights? That’s what it reminds me of. Don’t trouble yourself, said Antje. Sonia doesn’t like them either. Perhaps you’re both just too young and cosseted. She asked me what my animal was. I thought about it, but I couldn’t think of one. A bird? I suggested. That’s what they all say. Antje shook her head. A gazelle. That would fit Sonia better than me, I said. Antje twisted her mouth. No, Sonia is domesticated. She’s a sheep, or maybe a guinea pig, yes, that’s right, a guinea pig. I laughed. You’re not very nice, are you. I’m most like a dog, said Antje, a stray dog, that’s not very flattering either. I wondered what sort of animal Ivona might be. Perhaps a dog as well, I thought, but Ivona wasn’t domesticated, under her quiet, long-suffering manner there was still something wild, a resolve that I’d rarely come across in a human being.

And how do you like your guinea pig? asked Antje. We’re just classmates, I said. At the most, we might enter a competition together one day. Didn’t you notice that Sonia wants more from you? I shook my head. She’s got no time for a relationship. And you believe her when she says that? asked Antje with an ambiguous smile. I don’t think she’s in love with me. Nor do I, said Antje. It would be wrong to expect too much of her.

We went on drinking and talking. Antje seemed to get a kick out of unsettling me. Her boyfriend lived in Munich, she said, and that was fine by her. She couldn’t stand having a man around her all the time, it would interfere with her work. I expect you want to get married and start a family? I don’t know, I said. If you want to get married, Sonia’s the perfect wife. She’s beautiful, intelligent, cultivated, and she’s a good sort. That’s not enough, I said. I don’t think you’re cut out for a great love, said Antje. Nor am I, by the way, either.

She had only really fallen in love once, she said, when she was twenty, with a man fifteen years older. Georg was Antje’s teacher at art school. He lived in Hamburg, and only traveled down to Munich every other week, to look at his students’ work. He had a wife and four children, as he’d told Antje right at the start. To begin with, their relationship wasn’t much more than an affair.

But then over time I got to become more and more of a second wife to him, said Antje, he took me along to openings, introduced me to important people, and helped to find me a gallery. She was the only student who had had a gallery before she graduated. She liked being the lover of a prominent painter, and Georg had treated her well, taking her to expensive restaurants and giving her presents.

After graduation, Antje fell into a hole, she couldn’t deal with her newly won freedom, and had no more ideas. She worked like a lunatic and got nowhere. Georg was her last connection to the art scene. When he came to Munich, she perked up for a few days, touring the galleries with him, staying up all night. But he had new students, young talents, who were more of an inspiration to him than she was. I was just the one he fucked, she said. The more Georg turned away from her, the more she clung to him. She was getting nowhere with her painting, so she devoted all her energies to jealousy.

He had one very talented student, said Antje, I don’t think there was anything between them, but I couldn’t think straight anymore. I trailed him from the Academy once, and followed him when he went out drinking with his class. I sat down at the next table, so he could see me. Then I wrote him interminable letters, embarrassing letters, I hope to God he’s thrown them away. Sometimes I was aggressive, sometimes submissive, sometimes both at the same time. I’d call him at home in Hamburg, until he changed his number. He threatened he would end my career. I was besotted with him, that’s the only way I can describe it. I had physical symptoms, migraine attacks, stomach cramps. Once when I saw him going to an opening with that student I mentioned, I spent the night puking. At four a.m. I called his hotel. Of course the night receptionist didn’t put me through. I was sure Georg was with the new student. It never crossed my mind that he might just be sleeping.

I can laugh about it now, said Antje, but at the time I was on the verge of insanity. When it was over I swore I would never fall in love like that again. And I stuck to it. Whatever the novels say, amour fou is an inferior form of love. If a cultivated person starts acting like a madman, that is humiliating and a sign of immaturity. She filled our glasses. Those are stories that everyone enjoys listening to, but if they happen to you, you just wish it would end. She asked me what I had to find fault with in Sonia. Nothing. She likes you, said Antje. When she called to tell me that you were coming, she raved about you. I asked her if you two were an item. No, she said, not yet.

I emptied my glass and said I was tired and was going to bed. Come on, said Antje, and she took my arm. Her voice wasn’t slurred or anything, but I could tell by her movements that she was drunk. She showed me the guest room and bathroom. Outside her bedroom, she pressed her finger to her lips and took my hand. She opened the door softly and led me up to the bed. I had never seen Sonia asleep before. While I looked at her, something strange happened. Her features seemed to change, it was as though I was seeing the face of the old woman she would one day become. Antje bent down over her, kissed her on the brow, and said, good night, little guinea pig.

The next morning, when I came into the kitchen, Sonia and Antje were already sitting there, drinking coffee. They stopped talking and smiled. I was sure they’d been talking about me. Antje stood up to get me a cup. Sonia called me a sleepyhead.

After breakfast we went to the Cité Radieuse and had a tour of that rather run-down building. Sonia pointed out every detail to me, and tiptoed down the dark corridors, as though we were in a church. She was right — only now that I was actually inside the building did I notice its quality. The rooms and stairwells were surprisingly small, and even though the building was eighteen stories high, because it was supported on concrete pillars it seemed extraordinarily light. It was the first building Le Corbusier had built using the Modulor, his invented system of measurements, Sonia told me. I vaguely remembered it coming up at school. Sonia showed me an illustration from her guidebook, a muscular, asexual being with big hands and small head, and a hole in place of its navel. Does he live here then? I asked. The ideal inhabitant of the ideal house.

We took the elevator up to the roof terrace. Up there it was hot, and I sat down in the shade of the superstructure and read the guidebook while Sonia scouted everything.

We took the bus back into the city. Sonia’s eyes were shining, and she was enthusing about the “unit for living.” There was no sense that we’d just seen it together. The building had impressed me, but I felt like contradicting Sonia. Be honest, would you want to live there? In a second she said, wouldn’t you? I’m not sure, machine for living, I mean, the very expression. You might as well say battery farm. The individuality comes through the inhabitants, said Sonia, the building is just a container. My critique seemed to annoy her. Her face was a little flushed, which suited her. Shall we go to the sea? I asked. Maybe later, she said, I’d like to jot down a few notes first.

Antje had gone out. She wasn’t going to be back until tonight, she said at breakfast. We had a bite to eat from the fridge, and then Sonia disappeared into Antje’s room, and I took a seat in the living room and browsed through some coffee-table books about animals that I found on the sofa. In Brehm’s animal encyclopedia I read the article about guinea pigs. According to Brehm, they were easy to keep, harmless, cheerful, and undemanding. If you just gave them something to eat, they’d be happy pretty much anywhere. On the other hand, they weren’t truly affectionate, just friendly to anyone who treated them well.

It was hot in the apartment, but a breeze came in through the open balcony door carrying the sounds of the city, which sounded surprisingly near. I stretched out on the sofa and imagined what it would be like to live with Sonia in the Cité Radieuse. We would have two kids, a girl and a boy. We would eat breakfast as a family, and then take the children downstairs to the day care, and go to our studio, where we both worked on social housing projects. It was an open, brightly lit space in the city center, with large tables with blueprints on them, and white cardboard models of machines for living scattered about. Then we went on site. Sonia looked lovely in beige pants and a white linen shirt and white plastic helmet. Huge red cranes stood around, but no one seemed to be working. The sky was blue, and you could see the sea in the distance and sense the nearness of Africa just across the water. It was a scene from a French movie of the fifties or sixties, our whole life was a film put together from distance shots, wide angles under white light, with little people moving through it, all very aesthetic and intellectual and cool.

I got up and went out into the hallway. I knocked gently on the door of Antje’s room and said quietly, Sonia? No reply. The door was half-open, and I went inside. Sonia was lying on the bed asleep, one arm curled over her head on the pillow. There was a small dark sweat stain in her armpit, the one flaw in an otherwise perfect picture. I stroked it with my finger, I didn’t dare any other touch. The Rolleiflex was on the desk. I picked it up and started to take pictures of Sonia. The image in the frame was reversed, and it took me a while to get used to the fact that every move I made had the reverse effect. Slowly I circled the bed, looking for the perfect setup, moving in and then back again. I took a couple of shots, once, when I was really near, Sonia’s brow creased at the sound of the shutter, and I was afraid she’d wake up, but her face relaxed again, and I went on taking pictures. Then the film was full, and I took it out, sealed it, and laid it with the other rolls that Sonia had shot that morning. As I was about to leave the room, I heard Sonia’s drowsy voice call my name. I turned around and went back to her. I must have gone to sleep, she said. I said I’d dozed off as well.

Sonia said she was going to take the films to be developed, would I like to go with her. We went to the photo shop down the street and then we had a drink in a bistro in the old harbor.

The next day Sonia wanted to take a look at the Château d’If. Antje had told us that boats went from there to a couple of small islands where you could bathe in the sea. We packed our swimming things, bought a few sandwiches, and picked up the prints in the photo shop.

The boat left from the old harbor. Even though it was early in the morning, bathers thronged the jetty. When the ship left port, it crossed various little fishing boats and farther out an enormous ferry that was probably coming from Corsica or from North Africa. The light and the salt smell and the ships reminded me of family holidays, and I felt a bit like I used to then, at once lost and full of expectation.

Not many passengers got off at the Château d’If, most of them were staying on till the bathing islands. The fortress fascinated me right away with its monumentality and its deployment of simple forms. It consisted of a quadratic central structure, with three massive towers at the corners. It had been built five hundred years ago, and had been used, almost from the start, as a prison. The central keep had a small inner courtyard with a well and galleries, from which you gained access to the cells. The cells were dark, with very little light reaching them through the narrow, low-set archery slits. Sonia said the walls were ten or twelve feet thick in places, and she began copying some of the details into her sketchbook. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be imprisoned here. Oddly, I had a sensation of shelter and protection rather than confinement.

On the castle roof, the light was dazzlingly bright and threw sharp black shadows onto the reddish stone. You could see the city in the distance, but the land was already so hazy that you could only make out the outlines of the buildings. After an hour we took the boat out to the islands. It was full of tanned young people in plastic flip-flops and bathing suits and not much more.

The ship docked at Frioul, the first of the islands. At the jetty a little train stood by to transport the visitors to the beach, but Sonia first wanted to look at the ruins of the German fort on a cliff overlooking the harbor. We climbed the rocky path. The heat was stifling, and when we got to the top, I was in a lather of sweat, and took off my T-shirt. Sonia seemed unaffected by the heat, she still looked fresh as a daisy. Paul Virilio compared these bunkers to grave sites, she said, while she walked among the ruins. He said it was as though the men went freely to their graves, to protect themselves from death. We had reached the highest point, and on the horizon there was a collection of concrete crosses. As we approached, we saw that they weren’t part of some military cemetery, but supports that must once have sustained something heavy, like a roof or antiaircraft artillery. Even so, the crosses lent a sort of morbid aspect to the place. Virilio calls the bunkers temples without religion, said Sonia.

On the way downhill, she asked me if I was religious. She wasn’t happy with my reply, my views were too diffuse and frivolous for her liking. You had to have a standpoint. She believed in people and humanity and progress. You’re just a child of the modern age, I said, and Sonia laughed and said, that to her was a compliment. I thought of something Le Corbusier had said, that I’d seen in a vitrine in the Cité Radieuse: Everything is different. Everything is new. Everything is beautiful. And for a moment I thought I could believe in that.

The little beach at the foot of the hill was too crowded for us, but not far off we found a bay with fewer people. The rocks were jagged, and we searched for a while before we found a flat spot where we could spread our towels. It was sheltered, and the air carried a faint smell of mold. Fifty yards offshore a couple of yachts rode at anchor, with no one to be seen on them. I put on my swimming trunks, Sonia sat down without changing. Won’t you come for a swim? I asked. She shook her head and said she preferred swimming pools, she was afraid of jellyfish and sea urchins and various other sea creatures.

I had to clamber over some rocks to get to the water, which seemed surprisingly cool for the time of year. I swam out a few yards. Looking back, I saw Sonia taking the photograph envelopes out of her bag. I swam as far as the yachts, rounded them, and turned back. Sonia was sitting there just as before, staring out to sea. When I dropped onto the towel next to her, she took the pictures that had been in her lap and handed them to me without a word. I dried my hands and looked through them, photos of the Cité Radieuse, other buildings, and places in the inner city. Then there were the pictures I had taken of Sonia asleep. They weren’t as good as I had hoped they would be, but Sonia still looked very good in them, almost like a statue. I turned to her. She had lain down and shut her eyes, it was almost as though she was imitating the pictures, but her attitude had something stiff about it. She had drawn up her legs and was pressing her knees together, and she seemed very young. I think she was waiting for me to kiss her, at any rate it didn’t seem to surprise her when I did. She put her arms around my neck and pulled me down to her.

We walked hand in hand back to the jetty, not saying a word. Sometimes I stopped and pulled Sonia toward me and kissed her. My mood was a mixture of formal and light-hearted. I had thought a lot about Sonia, and she probably had about me. We hadn’t kissed out of some whim, and it was clear to me from that moment on that the kiss was a decision we had come to together. On the boat back, Sonia asked me what my plans were, and whether I wanted to do a training course abroad, and later start my own architectural firm and family. We spoke lightly, but under everything there was the seriousness with which only young people talk about life. I didn’t feel so much in love as happy and confident and maybe proud.

Outside the apartment Sonia kissed me again, a short, concluding kiss, as if to make it clear to me that our relationship was to be kept secret from Antje. But in the course of the evening, we gave up our discretion. We had dinner on the balcony again, and were sitting there talking about architecture and Marseilles. Sonia said she hadn’t just come here for Le Corbusier. She also wanted to look for an internship. She had a couple of addresses of firms that interested her, and was going to go around and look at them. If you don’t mind, she said, taking my hand. Antje raised her eyebrows and smirked. Well, at least I’ll have my bed to myself tonight, she said. She looked at Sonia. Or won’t I? No one said anything, and I think even Antje was a little embarrassed by the silence. Maybe Sonia and I were too well acquainted to become lovers just like that. When going swimming I had often enough changed in her presence, but now when I thought about sleeping in the same bed with her, I felt a little bashful. With a quiet, uncertain voice, she said if it was okay with Antje, she would like to stay in her room. She got up, kissed me — as if by way of compensation — quickly on the mouth, and disappeared into the apartment. After she had been gone a little while, I followed her inside. I found her in Antje’s room. She was sitting on the bed, crying. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her, and asked her what the matter was. I’m so happy, she said, but I’m embarrassed. Embarrassed with me? No, silly, not you, in front of Antje. I was pretty sure she felt embarrassed in front of me as well, and maybe even with herself too. It doesn’t matter, I said. We’ve got all the time in the world.

In the morning Sonia was the same as always. When I went into the kitchen, she was just fixing coffee. I reached around her waist and she kissed me, as though we’d been going out for years, and then she turned away and fished the milk and butter out of the fridge. Today I’m going to visit architects’ studios, she said cheerfully, do you want some orange juice? I asked her if she didn’t want to call ahead to set up interviews, but she shook her head. The best thing was just to drop by, once people saw you they had more trouble saying no to you. You mean your beauty will win them over? She looked at me furiously. That’s mean, I can’t help the way I look. I said it could be worse, and laid my hands on her shoulders and pulled her against me, and now she hugged me and kissed me properly. She asked if I’d slept well. I said, I dreamed about you. That’s not true, admit it.

Sonia spent the next days traipsing around various architect firms in Marseilles. I went with her and waited nearby in a bistro, drank a cup of coffee, and read until she came out. She shook her head, and before we got out the door she unfolded her list, put a line through the entry, and looked for the next one. So many rejections didn’t seem to affect her self-confidence in the least, she was tough, I’d noticed that at school. Whereas I reacted aggressively to criticism and referred to the professors as idiots, she listened carefully and tried to do better.

We were out all day, I’d already switched from coffee to Pernod, and had stopped reading and instead just watched the people in the cafés, when I saw Sonia emerging from a building she’d gone into a half an hour before. A good-looking man of middle age held the door open for her, and the two of them walked down the street together. I paid at the bar and followed them, but even before I’d caught up, the man opened the door of a white minivan and showed Sonia in. I looked for a taxi. Of course there were none to be seen. I stood there for a while not knowing what to do, before finally setting off back to Antje’s apartment.

Antje was sitting in the living room reading. She asked me what I’d done with Sonia. Nothing, she climbed into a car with a man and drove off. Sounds promising, said Antje, would you like a mint tea, I’ve just made some.

In the kitchen I asked Antje how she met Sonia in the first place. She was friends with Sonia’s parents, Antje said, she’d known Sonia from when she was a little girl. Was she like that then? Antje nodded. A bit precocious and terribly serious. She had a way about her that commanded respect, even when she was just little. Basically everyone did what she said, often without realizing it. She always seemed to be thinking of other people. It never occurred to you that it might be to her advantage too. One of my professors introduced Sonia’s parents to me. They used to go to every opening back then. I had a problem with an unwanted pregnancy, and Sonia’s father helped. Afterward he treated me free of charge for many years. I gave him the occasional picture by way of thanks, but I think he only took it so as not to give me the feeling of owing him. He never put any of them up on his walls, that’s for sure. Maybe his wife didn’t like them. He’s a very cultivated man, said Antje, did you get to meet him ever? Only briefly, at an end-of-semester presentation. Sonia introduced me to both of them. But she was still going out with Rüdiger at the time. Antje laughed. She brought him to visit me once too. I was at the Villa Massimo in Rome at the time. He was classy. How do you mean? Antje shrugged her shoulders. Oh, she said, I don’t know, he was something special, crazy guy. We turned Rome upside down, me and him. Sonia spent the whole day touring cultural sites and went to bed early. I asked her when that was. Last year. Antje looked at me, laughed, and said, there wasn’t anything. You didn’t think that, did you? No, he’s not that type. We just hit it off together. But even then I sensed that their relationship was rocky.

She said she was very fond of Sonia, initially on her parents’ account, but she struck her as being a bit earnest. I recalled that Ferdy had once said Sonia was the most humorless person he’d ever come across, she would ask to be excused when she laughed. At the time I’d contradicted him, just as I contradicted Antje now, but presumably they were right and I wasn’t.

Sonia turned up an hour later. She asked where I’d gone, she’d been looking for me in the café. She was too excited to be upset about my disappearance, but I was angry. I saw you drive off with a man, I said, the least you could do was tell me where you were going. Or are you ashamed of me? I was standing there like a piece of trash. Sonia hugged and kissed me. You poor thing, that was Albert, he says I can do my internship at his firm. And I suppose you had to go and celebrate that together right away, I said, still irritated. He showed me a construction site, he had to go anyway and just took me with him. I didn’t know it would take so long.

Maybe Sonia did have a bad conscience after all. That evening she was especially sweet to me. This time we went out to eat, in a little bar in the old harbor, where Antje claimed they served the best fish in Marseilles. We drank a lot of wine, Sonia drank more than she usually did, and we toasted all kinds of things, Sonia’s internship, the future, architecture, Sonia and me. Afterward we went to a club where it was so loud that most of the time we just sat there and looked at each other helplessly and shook our heads and laughed. Antje ran into someone she knew and motioned to him to join us. She laughed even more than before, and put her hand on the man’s thigh, and kept leaning across to him, and yelled things in his ear that he seemed to find very droll. After about an hour we left. Outside, Antje introduced the man to us and said he was a photographer. The two of them decided to go on to some other place together. Sonia said she was tired, and I didn’t feel like going along either. I wondered if Antje hadn’t hooked up with the photographer so as to leave us alone in the apartment, at any rate it wasn’t until much later that I heard her come home.

I kissed Sonia on the stairs, and then we kissed in the hallway. She was a bit drunk, and kept bursting out laughing while I was kissing her, also her hands were busy, now clasping behind my neck, my shoulders, my back, running through my hair. Probably we were more nervous than stimulated. I couldn’t manage to undo Sonia’s belt. She giggled nervously and said she had to go to the bathroom quickly. She turned the key in the lock, and I heard the toilet flush, and her brushing her teeth, but when she finally came out she was still dressed. I’ve got to go too, I said, and disappeared.

Sonia lay in my bed, with the covers pulled up to her chin. She had hung her clothes over the back of a chair. I started to undress, then she turned out the light, and I had to cross the room in darkness, and banged my foot against the chair with her clothes on it, which fell over with a loud crash. I swore and slipped into bed. Hello, said Sonia in a silly voice, and put out her hands toward me, as though to push me away. I said I wanted to be able to look at her, and leaned across to switch on the bedside lamp, but she clasped me around the neck and began kissing me. I felt for her body. She was in her underwear. When I went to pull off her panties, she grabbed my hands and asked me if I had condoms. Aren’t you on the pill? I asked. No, she whispered. I’m sure Antje’ll have some, I said, and got up, don’t go away. In the darkness I stumbled over the upset chair. I didn’t find any condoms, neither in the bathroom nor in Antje’s bedroom. I went back to Sonia. This time I switched on the overhead light. She blinked and turned away from the light. No luck, I said, and slipped under the covers, I’ll be careful, promise. Sonia said that was too risky for her, couldn’t I go out to the night pharmacy and buy some. She lay there as stiffly as she had on the beach the first time I’d kissed her. I stroked her hair. Go on, she said, be quick. When I returned half an hour later with the condoms, the light was out and Sonia was asleep.

We woke early in the morning, I don’t know which of us awoke first. Silently we started caressing each other, it was as though our bodies were reaching for each other, while the rest of us was still half asleep. Sonia kissed me, she shoved her tongue in my mouth, it seemed very big to me, and I got the taste of her sleep. She had pulled off her underwear and laid herself on top of me. I still remember my surprise at her weight and warmth. We moved slowly together like two sleepy desirous animals trying to become one.

We stayed in bed all morning making love, almost without a word. Once Antje knocked on the door, put her head around the corner, and asked us what our plans were, and if we meant to have breakfast any time. When we said no, she went out without a word. Later, Sonia asked me to get her a glass of water. I pulled on my shorts. In the hallway I ran into the photographer, and we said hello. It didn’t feel embarrassing at all, on the contrary, I felt a kind of satisfaction. Are you getting up at last? called Antje from the kitchen. I didn’t reply, and disappeared into the guest bedroom. Sonia had gotten dressed and pulled up the blinds, and was looking out the window. I stood behind her and embraced her. She took the glass from my hand and drank it in slow sips.

Our remaining days in Marseilles were perhaps the happiest in our entire relationship. We strolled hand in hand through the city, looked at old buildings, and stopped in front of construction sites to watch the work. At noon the sun was vertical, and in the sea of light the shadows of the trees were like little islands where we took refuge. When the heat became unbearable, we went back to the apartment. Sonia sketched, and I would read or flick through Antje’s collection of antique illustrated books on all sorts of subjects.

I think Antje was a tad jealous of us, anyway she passed occasional remarks about young love, and said it prevented her from working if we hung around necking all the time. She had a show coming up in the fall, and she wasn’t happy with what she’d done so far this year. At night she stayed out on the balcony with a half-bottle of wine, while Sonia and I disappeared to bed. Sonia used the bathroom first and then waited for me under the sheets, and we would kiss and embrace. Then she would turn out the lights and we would make love. When I woke up in the morning, she had pulled on her pajamas, and when I hugged her, she got up and said she didn’t want to waste the day in bed. I had the feeling of her withdrawing from me, perhaps our nocturnal pleasures were embarrassing. She went to the bathroom, and when she returned, she was freshly showered and dressed. I was still lying in bed, and she sat down on the bedside, and sometimes let me pull her back in, but she fought off my caresses and gave me only brief kisses, and said laughingly I was a lazybones, and would never amount to much.

Wouldn’t it be nice to live here? she asked once. Yes, I said, either to do her a kindness or because at that moment I really believed it, forgetting that I could hardly speak a word of French, and would never land a proper job in this city. I didn’t think about Munich, or of the future; time seemed to stand still, as though there was only the sea and the city and the heat. When a wind picked up, I thought about Africa. I had been looking at a picture book on the Kalahari Desert, and was sitting there dreamily. I saw great expanses of veldt full of animals, herds of animals moving over the plain, quickly and aimlessly. They trotted, galloped, and grazed. They ran across the expanse, following some invisible routes, always the same routes since the year one. They reached a water hole, a pasture, they disappeared into the distance, the wind blew away their traces.

Once there was a trivial quarrel with Antje. I had left a couple of dirty cups in the sink, and she accused us of using her apartment like a hotel. She wasn’t some chambermaid, with nothing better to do than tidy up after us. Sonia felt bad, though it wasn’t her fault. We quickly patched things up with Antje, but the atmosphere wasn’t the same. Two days later we left.

Antje didn’t get up until we had had breakfast. I made her some coffee. Sonia said she was going shopping in town. Antje asked Sonia to take her along, she had to check in on the gallery and run a couple of errands besides. I asked her if she wasn’t tired. No, she said roughly, and drank her coffee standing up.

Sophie wanted to watch a movie. Just this once, said Sonia, although it was really a very common occurrence. Sonia had distinct notions of how to raise a child, and even though she kept having to make compromises, she wasn’t prepared to abandon her ideal line. That way, Sophie’s upbringing presented itself as a sequence of exceptions. Sophie had learned how to live with that. Each of her appeals ended in “just this once.” And since Sonia and I were generally overworked and felt guilty for not spending enough time with Sophie, we rarely denied her. But only once you’ve fed Mathilda and changed her litter, said Sonia. Why is it always me who has to do that, groaned Sophie. You wanted a cat, said Sonia, now you have to look after her.

The two women set off. I put in a DVD for Sophie and went out to the garden. The fog had lifted a little and the sun was peeping through, but the air was still chilly. We had a few vegetable beds where we grew lettuces and vegetables in summer, but this year had been so rainy that we hardly harvested anything, and had neglected the garden out of annoyance. The tomato plants had rotted away, their fruits had gone black and fell off at the slightest touch and splattered on the ground. A few tiny cabbage heads lost themselves in the rampant grass, the cucumber that I’d once trained up a wooden stake had been attacked by mildew and was dried out. I ripped everything up and tossed it in the compost bin. I wanted to hoe the beds, but the ground was frozen. Instead I started to rake up the leaves that had dropped from our neighbor’s great sugar maple onto our tiny patch of lawn and onto the front yard. Once Sophie came out of the house and watched me, then she disappeared inside again. Shortly before noon, Antje and Sonia returned with bulging shopping bags. Half an hour later Sonia called me in to lunch.

After our meal we pulled on our coats and sat down outside to drink our coffee. Sonia talked to Antje about her time as in intern. Antje said Marseilles had changed, even since Sonia’s latest visit. The city was much cleaner than before, but it had gotten a bit boring too. Which is fine by me, she said, I’m not twenty anymore. Sonia said she had found it hard to settle in there, if Antje hadn’t introduced her to a few people, she would probably have spent the entire six months alone. You had so many visitors, said Antje. That’s not true, said Sonia, I did nothing but work all the time. Even so, it was perhaps the time of her life. Albert had trusted her, and she had learned an incredible amount. Do you remember the silly fellow who visited you? asked Antje. The one who went on and on about udders? Jakob? I asked. He didn’t visit me, Sonia said, he just turned up one day. Anyway, he came and stayed with us, said Antje. You thought he was so frightful, didn’t you? I said. He just wrote to me a couple of times, said Sonia. He got the address from my parents. He called them and said he was an old friend, and they had no reason not to believe him.

Jakob had written Sonia long, wild letters that she didn’t answer. Then, in spring, shortly before she was due to return to Munich, he had gone to Marseilles and rung Antje’s doorbell.

And I let him in, said Antje. How was I to know that he and Sonia hardly knew each other? When she got back that evening, she was in for a shock. Why didn’t you just throw him out? I asked. He was all right, said Antje. And he cooked for us too.

Jakob had come with veal sausages from his village butcher, and pretzels and beer, a whole little barrel from a local brewery. Sonia laughed, Antje had asked a few friends over, and they celebrated a proper bierfest, bang in the middle of Marseilles. We taught the French German songs, said Antje. “Annchen von Tharau.” Remember that? She started to hum the melody, and Sonia recited the words.

Würdest du gleich einmal von mir getrennt,

Lebtest, da wo man die Sonne kaum kennt;

Ich will dir folgen durch Wälder, durch Meer,

Eisen und Kerker und feindliches Heer.*

German chansons, said Antje laughing. After that we clearly couldn’t throw him out anymore.

Jakob stayed a whole week with the two women. He cooked for them every night and entertained them with his strange stories. How we used to laugh, said Antje. His village must be populated entirely by idiots. He wasn’t always like that, said Sonia. He seriously tried to convert me to Catholicism. We sat up whole nights arguing. You never told me about that, I said. You don’t tell me everything either, said Sonia. Antje shot me a dark look. No one spoke. Then Sonia told us about how one night Jakob declared his love for her. Seriously? I said, and had to laugh. It wasn’t funny at all, said Sonia. He cried when I told him I was going to marry you. But he took it like an absolute gentleman. To this day, he sends me a card every birthday. And we exchange the occasional e-mail. Jakob was still living on his own, she said. He was a vet, and lived in his parents’ house in the Bayerischer Wald. When we were going through our rough patch, she had often called him on the phone, and he had been very helpful. He urged me to stay with you, she said. For Sophie’s sake. He respects the institution of marriage and family. I wanted to say something, but when I caught the look in Sonia’s eye, I just said, I’m going for a walk.

I walked through the village down to the lake. On the grounds of the Academy, I sat down on the shore. I sat in the shadow of a tree and looked out onto the water. A steamer went by, it had to be a charter tour, because the regular passenger steamers had stopped a month ago for the winter. There was no one to be seen on deck, but I could make out some shadowy shapes behind the tinted windows.

Sonia and I had chartered a boat when we got married. Her father paid for everything. There must have been eighty guests, loads of family on Sonia’s side, and friends and people who stood in some relation to her and her parents. I would have been quite happy if things had been more modest, but Sonia said her parents would be disappointed if we didn’t have a proper celebration. We almost argued when I said, whose wedding was this anyway? Sonia had spoken against me. A wedding was a social occasion, she said. And that’s what it was. If I hadn’t happened to be the groom, I’d have enjoyed it, I think. Everything was perfectly organized, the food was excellent, and the speeches were funny and suited the occasion. Only my father’s speech was a bit embarrassing. He wasn’t used to public speaking, and he was inhibited. In spite of that, he still seemed to feel it his duty to say something. He hadn’t prepared anything and lost his way. When I saw the smug, sympathetic looks on the faces of Sonia’s family, I hated her for a moment. Then my father managed to finish, and there was warm applause. Sonia hugged him, and her mother, evidently moved, went over and toasted with him. I had too much to drink that evening, and when Sonia and I were finally able to get away and disappeared into our hotel room, we were both so tired we collapsed into bed. Even so, I was unable to sleep for a long time. I could hear people talking and laughing outside long into the night, and felt slightly sorry for myself. I lay there in that grotesque four-poster bed with canopy and heart-shaped pillows, and could think of nothing but how much I was missing my friends.

A few bigger waves slapped against the shore, and then the lake was calm again. It was a strange notion, that Jakob had made a declaration of love to Sonia a matter of weeks before our wedding. I talked to her often on the phone that spring, to discuss the wedding and the honeymoon, but she never mentioned Jakob’s visit. I wondered if she had any feelings at all for him. I could remember her criticizing him after Rüdiger’s New Year’s party. That was the night I had proposed to her. Jakob had been unlucky and too late. Probably he loved her more than I had ever done. Maybe that’s why she chose me.

* If you were ever sundered from me / and lived somewhere that’s always winter / I will go through forests and seas for you / and brave prisons and chains and enemy armies.

We got back from Marseilles in a day as well. North of the Alps the weather was changeable. The sky was cloudy, and there were lots of showers.

Sonia dropped me off at the Olympic Village. She got out of the car with me, but when I tried to kiss her, it seemed to embarrass her. Shall we have a drink? I asked her, but she said she was too tired, she was going straight home. When shall we see each other? I don’t know, said Sonia, I’ve got a lot going on in the next few days. In the end we made a date for Saturday.

Sonia had left me by the subway station. I got myself a cup of coffee from the stand there. The rain had stopped. The sound of the evening rush-hour traffic on the wet roads surrounded me like an invisible space. I walked to the tennis courts, where it was quieter. After the long drive, I felt like being outside, but I was tired, and all the benches were wet from the rain. My coffee had gotten cold, and I dumped the half-full cup in a bin. I was relieved to be on my own again. In my recollection, the past few days appeared more real than they had to me while I was living them. It was as though it was only just dawning on me now that Sonia and I were going out together. I felt like talking to someone, to convince myself, but I didn’t know who. In the end I went to the bungalow and called my parents. I told my mother about the trip, but not about Sonia. She was only half-listening, I could hear the TV on in the background.

When I called Sonia a couple of days later, to fix a time and place, she said she had arranged to go to the cinema with Birgit, one of her roommates. They were going to see Rain Man. I said I thought we had a date. Would it bother you if she came along? said Sonia.

After the film, we had a glass of wine in a bar, and argued about Dustin Hoffman, whom I’d never liked, and who the girls thought was amazing. We didn’t agree about the film either. I said I couldn’t understand how Sonia could fall for such kitsch. She was hurt. She had treated me like a stranger the whole evening, and our difference of opinion didn’t help things. When I tried to kiss her, she turned her head away, and when I tried to take her hand she withdrew it. Fairly early on, she said she had to go to bed, she was tired. I walked the two of them home. I had hoped to spend the night at Sonia’s, but she said good night outside the door so emphatically, I didn’t want to say anything. I’ll give you a call, she said.

A couple of days later, she visited me. The weather had picked up, and we ate in the beer garden of the Olympic Village, and after that we walked in the park. For a long time we sat by the lake and discussed the competition entry Sonia was working on. She’d stopped asking me if I wanted to participate, and that was fine by me. The project didn’t interest me, Sonia’s ideas were all too practical for me; I didn’t listen to her, and watched the girls jogging by alone or in little groups, and thought about other stuff. When Sonia paused, I cut in to ask her if we were actually an item still or not. Of course we are, she said in astonishment. I said I thought she had treated me like a stranger on Saturday. She said she was tired. Anyway, her roommates didn’t know about us yet. Are you ashamed of me? Oh nonsense, said Sonia, and shook her head.

She went back to the bungalow with me that evening, and we slept together, but I had the sense she was doing me a favor. The bed over the steps wasn’t especially solid, and it creaked so loud that Sonia finally asked if I was sure it would hold up. Do you think your neighbors are in? Never mind them, I said. I’ve heard them at it often enough. But the thought that someone might be listening to us bothered Sonia so much that she stiffened and grabbed hold of me. Not so hard, she said, or we’ll crash. She kissed me mechanically a couple of times, then she said she’d better go home, she had something in the morning she didn’t want to be late for.

We were now seeing each other regularly. Sonia invited me back to her place, and told Birgit and Tania about us. She did it in such a weirdly formal way, it felt like I was being introduced to her parents. In spite of that, I didn’t really have the feeling Sonia was my girlfriend. I would occasionally spend the night with her, but when we made love, I could feel her anxiousness. The least noise made her flinch. You know this isn’t a crime, I said. You don’t understand, said Sonia.

My internship started in September and Sonia’s in October. After she had sent in her competition entry, we had a couple of days free and drove to Stuttgart, to look at Mies van der Rohe’s Weissenhof Estate. She had been there once before, with the class, but I’d been low on funds and hadn’t been able to go with them. Now Sonia showed me around like a tour guide. She talked about stereometric form and the absence of ornament as a sign of spiritual force. To my mind the buildings were superficial and uninteresting. In their naive functionalism they were somehow of no particular period. Living isn’t just eating, sleeping, and reading the paper, I said. A living room is first and foremost a place of refuge. It has to offer protection from the elements, the sun, hostile people, and wild animals. Sonia laughed and said, well, I might just as well go to the nearest cave in that case.

We spent the night in a pretty basic hotel. On the staircase there was a vending machine for drinks, and we took a couple of bottles of beer up to our room. The floor in the hallway was linoleum, but the room was carpeted, with thick curtains in the windows, reeking of cigarette smoke. We sat down side by side on the bed, drinking our beer. Suddenly Sonia started laughing. I asked her what the matter was. She said this place was so awful, you had to laugh or cry. And she preferred the former. That night we made love. Sonia was much less inhibited than in Munich, perhaps the ugliness of our surroundings had a liberating effect on her. When I stood by the window later, smoking, she came up to me and took the cigarette from my hand, and had a puff. You’re cute when you smoke, I said, clasping her waist. Kiss me. Once in a blue moon, she said, pressing herself against me.

Sonia insisted on paying for the room, her father had given her money when she graduated. But surely not to keep a fancy man on, I said. Do they even know about me? Sonia hesitated, and I noticed that the subject was difficult for her. I had told my parents about Sonia, albeit in a casual way, and they hadn’t asked me any further questions.

Then my internship began, and now it was me who never had any time. The firm was on the edge of the city, and I rarely got back from work before nine or ten. I was so exhausted then that I didn’t feel like going out afterward. Sonia called me every day, but it didn’t seem to bother her that we only saw each other on weekends.

At the end of the month I had to move out of my bungalow in the Olympic Village. Birgit and Tania were fine with me staying in Sonia’s room until further notice. Before I could offer Sonia my help, she had already carted her things back to her parents’ house and tidied the room. I didn’t have a lot of stuff. A tabletop on two sawhorses, a mattress, and a couple of cardboard boxes full of books and records. I bequeathed the rest of my stuff to the person moving in after me. Rüdiger and Sonia helped me move, then we went for a meal together, and then they took the train back to Lake Starnberg. I had asked her to stay with me, but she wanted to spend her last few days in Germany with her parents. On the eve of her departure we met up one more time. Sonia was nervous and eager to get home. We said good-bye without making any promises. Be good, was all Sonia said as she got into her car. You too, I replied, and waved to her till she turned the corner.

We were a good match, so everyone said, but we both knew that plenty could happen in six months. Sonia had said she didn’t want to commit herself in any way. She was right at the beginning of her career. Maybe she’d stay in Marseilles, or she’d accept an offer to go somewhere else. She would love to work in a big bureau in London or New York. We’ll see, I said. Maybe it’ll be good for us to be separated for a while, Sonia said, and if we’re still together come the spring, well then, so much the better.

Sonia wrote me every week, so regularly that it seemed to me to express a duty rather than a need. She wrote to say she was fine, and she asked when I could visit. I replied that I had a lot on my plate, and wouldn’t be able to get away from Munich very easily. Maybe over the holidays. But she’d be in Starnberg with her parents then, she wrote. I got the sense she didn’t really mind conducting a long-distance relationship. She could use it to keep other men away, and give herself wholly to her work. Her boss was a genius, she wrote. She always referred to him by his first name, as though they were old friends, and after a very short time, it was all “we” and “us.” We’re building a day care. We’re entering a competition to build a conference center. We think architecture should appeal to all the senses, it wants to be seen, touched, smelled, and felt. I resisted the temptation to tell her to cut the crap. Presumably I was just jealous. The office where I was an intern specialized in unimaginative office buildings. The company motto was the customer knows best, or maybe money doesn’t stink. In one of her letters, Sonia quoted Hermann Hesse. So that the possible can come into being, the impossible has to be attempted again and again. I pictured her walking along the beach with her Albert, the mistral playing in her hair, and her appealing to all the senses of her boss. She was gazing at him adoringly and he was quoting Hermann Hesse to her. Every beginning has its magic. I felt good in my jealousy, even though I was sure that Sonia was faithful to me, and that she took our relationship seriously, maybe more seriously than I did. When we talked on the phone, occasionally we made plans, we discussed founding a firm one day, after we’d accumulated some experience. But I wasn’t accumulating any experience, my work consisted principally of constructing models and filling in work schedules. For months I sat in a windowless office, sketching identical staircases. Even though I was kept busy, I was bored. Boredom had a seductive charm. Secretly I enjoyed having no responsibility and nothing to aim for. I didn’t go looking for a better job, ordered no competition guidelines, and read no architectural journals. Instead I immersed myself in books by dead authors. I read Poe and Joseph von Eichendorff, Mircea Eliade and Giambattista Vico, and it was as though their writings contained a truth that I could at least sense, though it could never be proved. By way of Aldo Rossi I came across Étienne-Louis Boullée, a pre-Revolutionary French architect who designed melancholy monumental structures not one of which had been built. I became fascinated by his way with light, which in his drawings wasn’t a given, but more like a substance. It looked as though the buildings were pushing back against a stream of light, against the stream of time.

I filled notebooks with confused thoughts and designs for enormous purposeless constructions, archives, cenotaphs, fortresses half sunk into the ground, almost windowless rooms that light barely penetrated.

When, quoting Aldo Rossi, I said in a letter to Sonia that every summer felt like my last, she shot back that to her, this summer had felt like her first. She had never cared for Rossi’s melancholy and fixation on the past. She believed the world could be transformed by architecture, and when I objected that all the great things had already been built, she mocked me and said I was just trying to excuse my lack of ambition.

Our shared apartment was on the second floor of a tenement building on a narrow street. As long as Sonia had lived there, I had always enjoyed visiting, but since she moved out, I felt rather ill at ease in the rooms. The arrangement of space was somehow inharmonious, and it didn’t get enough light. My room was long and narrow and disproportionally high. I had set up my table in front of the window, but even so, whenever I sat down to work, I felt simultaneously exposed and jammed in. The only heating in the apartment was an oil-burning stove in the living room, and when I closed my door for privacy, I noticed the room got cold very quickly. So when I was at home, I spent most of my time lying on my mattress, which was in one corner of the floor, and read or dozed.

My living with Birgit and Tania turned out to be problematic. Sonia had talked them into taking me in, but actually neither of them wanted to share with a man. In the case of Birgit, who was just gearing up for her thesis, I had often had the feeling before that she resented me, but when I raised it with Sonia, she only laughed and shook her head, and said Birgit had grown up with two sisters, she just wasn’t used to encountering a man outside the bathroom door every morning. Tania, my other roommate, worked as a medical assistant at the hospital in Bogenhausen. To begin with, we had gotten along rather well, but lately she’d gotten into discussions about drugs and upbringing and expressed arch-conservative views that I hadn’t expected in her. She was away for weeks on end at congresses or courses, and each time she returned, she had a new pet theme, feminism or antiauthoritarian rearing or homosexuality, which she would proceed to blame for the approaching end of the world. Shortly after Sonia left, Tania started talking obsessively about AIDS, and developed an absurd preoccupation with hygiene. She brought back bottles of disinfectant spray and left them out in the kitchen and bathroom, and each of us got his own individual shelf in the fridge, and there was no more sharing of food. Then Tania started bringing home people who were put up in the living room, and who tried to convert Birgit and me to their opinions. It turned out that they were all members of a dubious anthroposophical society. Birgit would often argue with them, while I retreated to my room or demonstratively switched on the TV and turned the volume so high that it wasn’t possible to conduct a conversation over it. The atmosphere in the apartment deteriorated. Even so, I was only halfhearted about looking for a new place to live.

Most of the people I knew from college had moved away. Ferdy had found a job in Berlin and Alice had gone with him, Rüdiger was touring Latin America and sending back postcards from Buenos Aires and Brasília. I envied him, not so much the trip itself as the energy to have undertaken it in the first place. I had the feeling of being the last person left in the city. That’s the only way I can explain the fact that at the end of October, I started seeing Ivona again.

It was very simple. I told them in the office that I had a dentist’s appointment, and went to the bookstore just before closing time. Ivona came out from the back of the store, just as on the occasion of my first visit. She stood silently behind the counter and straightened the saints’ pictures and the little books compiled from nature photos and quotations from Scripture. She wore beige knickerbockers and a sort of folksy embroidered blouse. I could feel her eyes on me, but when I looked over, she looked away. I felt an incredible desire to sleep with her, in the midst of this Christian kitsch and self-help and inspirational literature. Are you on your own? I asked. She didn’t reply. I lifted the curtain and peered into the back room. In spite of the drawn curtains, the space was murky this time. The window opened onto a tiny yard that probably caught the sun only for an hour or two in the middle of the day. In the center of the room stood massive old oak desks, and on the walls were shelves containing cardboard boxes and stacks of plastic-sealed books. There was a smell of dust and paper, and more faintly of candle wax and human sweat. I sat down on one of the desks. Ivona followed me, and stopped in the entry. Come on, I said. She said she was closing in five minutes. The bell chimed in the shop, and Ivona disappeared. I heard her speaking, and couldn’t understand a word, it must have been Polish. I looked through a chink in the curtain and saw a pretty blond woman roughly Ivona’s age. The two of them clasped hands, and the blond woman was laughingly trying to persuade Ivona of something, who shook her head, and seemed to be explaining. I sat down on the desk again, and waited. Shortly afterward, the bell went again, and then I heard the key turn in the lock.

I had expected Ivona would complain to me about what had transpired at our last meeting, or that I hadn’t been in touch for such a long time, but she stopped an arm’s length in front of me, and stared into space. I stood up, took a step toward her, and embraced her. She didn’t resist, just freed herself quickly to switch off the light, and pull the curtain across.

I took off her pants and underwear, and kissed and stroked her. She moaned and turned her head from side to side. She almost looked to me as though she was faking, but I didn’t care. I got undressed, and we lay on the bare floor, and Ivona started kissing and stroking me back. Only when I tried to enter her did she refuse me. When I finally turned away from her, she whispered something in Polish. I didn’t ask what she was saying, I could imagine it well enough, and I didn’t want to hear it. Don’t go yet, she said. I’ve got lots of things to do, I said. Do you want something to eat? she asked. I said I didn’t have the time, and got up. Will you come again? Yes, I said, and I went.

I went back to the office to finish a couple of things. My boss had already left. At eight I called Sonia. She wasn’t home. Two hours later, after I was finally finished with my work, I tried again. This time, Sonia picked up, and I asked her if she was so busy. But I wasn’t jealous, and I listened patiently as she told me about some new project she was working on. Then I talked to her about my work. Sonia said she hadn’t heard me in such a good mood for ages. And it was true, I was perfectly calm, and made jokes, and told her I missed her. I miss you too, said Sonia. We’ll see each other at Christmas. I was astonished not to feel guilty at all — on the contrary, I felt more connected to Sonia than I had in a long time.

When I turned up in the shop the next time, Ivona asked me to go back to the student residency with her. It was one of the few times she ever asked me for anything.

From then on, I only saw her in the dorm. Her room seemed like it might belong to an old woman or a little girl. It was stuffed full of junk, faked memories of a life that hadn’t happened. At the head of the bed was a small plastic crucifix, the walls were covered with postcards and framed Bible sayings. On the bed were any number of soft toys in garish colors, the kind you can buy at railway station kiosks. On the floor were piles of romance novels, Christian manuals, and Polish magazines. In amongst them were scattered clothes and tights, clipped recipes, and cheap costume jewelry. The pokiness, the untidiness, and the absence of any aesthetic value only seemed to intensify my desire. There was nothing there to inhibit me, by reminding me of my life and my world. It was as though I became someone else in that room, an object in Ivona’s chaotic collection of treasured and neglected knickknacks.

I turned up whenever it suited me and whenever I could. Ivona was there every evening, she didn’t seem to have anything to do but wait or hope for me to come. Usually the TV was going, and when she made to turn it off, I said no, and we undressed and kissed and embraced to the soundtrack of some schlocky film or other. Usually I was gone before the film was even over. I never spent the night there, for fear Tania or Birgit might tell Sonia about it. Anyway, I couldn’t imagine waking up beside Ivona, I could only stand her company when I was aroused.

My third or fourth meeting with Ivona was the day after the Wall came down. I had sat up half the night in front of the television and was tired when I went to her place the next evening. I asked her what she thought about it all. She shrugged her shoulders. I said I wasn’t sure I agreed with reunification, and totted up the pluses and minuses as though the future of Germany were somehow mine to give. Ivona listened to me hold forth with an apathetic expression, as though it was all no concern of hers. She seemed to live in her own little world, not registering what was going on around her.

I noticed that Ivona took steps to make herself prettier. She started to apply makeup and did her hair, and took trouble with her clothes. When I said I didn’t like her dolling herself up, she stopped. She seemed to take it as proof of love that I noticed her appearance and bothered to comment on it. Sometimes she showed me two outfits and asked me, which do you like best? I pointed to one of them, even though I was completely indifferent, and then she disappeared behind the closet door to put it on, and I followed her to watch and pulled her back to bed, still in her underwear. When she went to the toilet too, I sometimes followed her, her sense of shame provoked me until she had completely lost it and accepted everything I did, and did everything I demanded of her. With one sole exception.

When I stayed longer, Ivona would start to talk. She had an inexhaustible supply of abstruse stories, featuring the Black Virgin of Czestochowa or some other sacred figure performing miracles in the lives of ordinary people. It would start with a lost bunch of keys, and end up with a miracle cure or a surprise late pregnancy. She talked hastily and not looking at me, it was as though she was talking to herself, an endless litany. At those moments, I got a glimpse of what a terribly lonely person she was. Sometimes she would talk about her Pope, whom she revered, and who was something approaching a saint in her eyes. When I criticized him, she wouldn’t say anything, and when I’d said my piece, she would resume where she’d left off. My words seemed not to have reached her.

Our encounters always followed the same pattern, rarely lasting for longer than an hour and sometimes a lot less. Ivona wasn’t a sophisticated lover, she had no experience and no imagination. When she touched me she was either too hesitant or too rough, when I touched her she barely reacted, or faked a reaction. The thing that kept me fascinated with her was her utter devotion. Her unconditional love for me, however purely random, drew me irresistibly to her and, by the same token, repulsed me the instant I was satisfied. Then I would feel the need to hurt her, as though that was my only way of breaking free.

Do you think your Holy Father would approve of what you’re doing? I asked her one time, do you not think it’s a sin even if we don’t technically make love? I accused her of bigotry. She didn’t understand the word, I had to explain it to her.

I don’t know how I can excuse my behavior, I can’t remember how I justified it to myself at the time. All I know is that I got to be more and more dependent on Ivona, and that while I continued to think I had power over her, her power over me became ever greater. She never demanded anything from me, was never hurt when I stayed away for days on end because I was busy in the office or didn’t feel like visiting her. Sometimes I’d tell Ivona about other women to get her upset, but she took it, and listened, expressionless, while I raved about the beauty, the wit, and the intelligence of other women. Perhaps she didn’t know she had power over me. Perhaps she mistook my submissiveness for love.

The situation in the apartment had deteriorated to the point where we only communicated by means of little notes that we stuck on the fridge door. Tania had come up with a roster of household duties, which Birgit and I strenuously ignored. The whole apartment reeked of disinfectant, and it was often cold, because Tania would turn down the heat to keep the germs from multiplying so quickly, as she explained. Her visitors stayed longer and longer, and began to take a hand in our business. When I returned from a weekend with my parents once, my bed had been stripped. I brought it up with Tania, and she said a friend of hers had spent the night in my room, surely I had no objection? I stood by silently while she sprayed my bed with disinfectant and put on new sheets. From that day on, I locked my door when I went out, and belatedly became serious about looking for somewhere else to live.

Finding a new place wasn’t easy. I was on three thousand marks a month, which wasn’t bad for an intern, but that sort of money didn’t buy you much. I looked at all sorts of apartments without being able to decide. Over time, I started to take pleasure in inspecting places that were obviously hopeless. When I told the landlords that I was an architect, they treated me with respect and left me all sorts of time. A few of the apartments were still occupied, and it was fascinating to see the different ways people arranged themselves, and how much you could infer about their lives from a few objects. It was always embarrassing being taken around by tenants, peering into closets that were stuffed with junk and inspecting kitchens full of dirty, food-encrusted plates and withered herbs on the windowsill. One tenant had locked himself in the bathroom. The super took me around and knocked on the bathroom door, but the tenant didn’t make any noise. He’s been given his notice, said the super, and I can promise you he’ll be out by the end of the year, even if it means calling the cops.

In the end I found a small three-room apartment on the top floor of an old building in Schwabing. I’d fallen in love with it on the spot. It was unrehabbed, and just had an old oil-fired stove, but the layout was good, and the rooms were light and had the sort of attention to detail that you don’t often find in newly built homes. I told Birgit about it that same evening. She wasn’t too thrilled about the prospect of having to deal with Tania and her loopy friends on her own. She said if she could afford it, she would move out tomorrow.

The holidays came nearer. Lots of my friends were going to spend Christmas with their families, and had announced their visits. Ferdy and Alice were coming, Rüdiger wrote from São Paulo, the last stop on his South American tour, even Jakob the vet called. He had accepted a job as an assistant in Stuttgart, and said he would be in Munich briefly on his way to the Bayerischer Wald, and did I feel like going out for a beer with him. Sonia would be the last to return, she still had lots of work to finish, and booked her flight for the morning of the twenty-fourth.

I made a date with Jakob. Before I saw him, I went to Ivona’s. As we sat on the bed and got dressed, on some whim I asked her if she felt like going out and having a beer with me. I don’t know what got into me. It was risky, I had to consider the possibility of Jakob running into Sonia on one of the days after Christmas. Perhaps it was a similar impulse to the one that prompts people to show off their scars, some absurd pride in damage.

Not since that first evening had I gone anywhere in public with Ivona. The notion of being seen together by one of my acquaintances was at once terrifying and beguiling. Whether I walked fast or slow, Ivona always trailed a couple of paces behind me. On the bus, she didn’t sit down, but stood in front of me at my seat. When we reached our stop, I got out without a word and just glanced back quickly to see if she was following me.

I had arranged to meet Jakob in a bar we would never have gone to as students, one of those soulless beer halls in the inner city, beloved of tourists. Ivona sat on the bench along the wall, and after a short hesitation I sat down next to her. Jakob was a quarter of an hour late. We shook hands and I introduced the two of them. Ivona’s from Poland, I said. I looked Jakob in the eye but saw no reaction. He just smiled, and shook hands with Ivona. Then he started talking about his dissertation, which was something about morbid changes to cow udders. It was bizarre watching this peasanty guy drinking beer and simultaneously holding forth about some complex diagnostic procedures that I was a long way from understanding. He asked me about my work. I kept my answers short. Then he asked Ivona what it was she did, and she said she worked in a bookstore. He asked where in Poland she came from, and why she had come to Germany, and whether she intended to go home ever, now that the East was opening up. Ivona said she didn’t know. I was waiting the whole time for Jakob to make some remark, or give me some look, but he talked to Ivona as though it was the most natural thing in the world. He even tried out a couple of Polish phrases he had picked up on his parents’ farm from migrant agricultural workers: left and right, and watch out, and postage stamp.

What was strange was that I felt a kind of jealousy when I heard the two of them talking together so easily. It wasn’t that I was scared of Jakob taking Ivona away from me, but I sensed a sort of harmonious understanding between them that I couldn’t account for. Jakob wasn’t even especially attentive toward Ivona, he just treated her normally. She seemed to blossom in his company, whereas she was clumsy and inhibited when she was with me. I started to stroke the inside of her thigh under the table. She moved slightly away from me, but I didn’t stop, and did little to hide what I was doing from Jakob. It was childish, but I couldn’t stop till Jakob finally got up and smilingly said he didn’t want to impose on us anymore.

When we said good-bye outside, he asked if I had any news of Sonia, the blonde who had studied with me. Immediately I understood that she was the reason why he wanted to see me. She’s in Marseilles, I said. Are you in touch with her still? Sure, I said, and nodded. I looked at Ivona as I said it, but she had turned aside and was facing the other way. Maybe he’d be back after Christmas, he said, when he was with his parents he got a little stir-crazy at times. How about the four of us doing something together? I said he had my number, he could give me a call when he was next in the city.

A few days later I met Ferdy and Alice for lunch. Alice was pregnant, and they were getting married in the spring. Ferdy said he wanted to start his own architectural firm, he was going to try his luck in the East, there would be a lot of work there, it promised to be a sort of El Dorado for architects. He had made a couple of important acquaintances. Alice fussed when he lit a cigarette, and he meekly put it out. He had gotten fatter, and when he ordered pig’s trotters, she said he shouldn’t eat such heavy things, and pinched him in the gut. She kept on at him the whole time. It didn’t seem to bother him at all, on the contrary, he seemed extraordinarily pleased with himself, as if all this was exactly what he’d always wanted. Alice asked me if I was going to Rüdiger’s New Year’s party. Rüdiger had asked Sonia and me, but I didn’t want to accept until I talked with her. I said yes, we would probably go.

When Alice went off to powder her nose, Ferdy asked after Ivona. He had talked to Jakob on the phone, who had told him about seeing me and her together. He grinned unpleasantly. He’d never thought I was the type. But why in God’s name didn’t I get myself a better-looking lover while I was at it? Who says she’s my lover? Ferdy laughed. He couldn’t imagine what else Ivona could be good for. And frankly, he didn’t think she’d be particularly good for that either. But maybe she had hidden talents? Alice came back from the ladies’ room and said she was feeling sick and wanted to leave, and the two of them headed out.

That evening I went to Ivona’s. I told her to take her clothes off, and I sat and watched her. When she was completely naked, she lay down on the bed, like a patient on a doctor’s table. I stood by the bedside and looked down at her, and asked her when she was going back to Poland. She tried to cover herself up, but I pulled the blanket away. She wasn’t going back, she said, and she looked at me as though she expected me to be overjoyed about it. I can’t see you anymore, I said, I’ve got a girlfriend. Since when? I told her I’d been with Sonia since the summer. Before me? Shortly after actually, I said. That seemed to please her, for the first time I caught a sort of flash in her eyes that seemed to say, I was first, I’m in the right. But she didn’t say anything. We don’t belong together, I said, reasoning with her, surely you must see that. You have different interests, you come from a different country, another world, really. That might not seem to matter to you, but in the long run those are the things that matter in a relationship. You wouldn’t get along with my friends. What would you talk to them about? Do you understand? Ivona was stubbornly silent the whole time. When I was done, she said in a quiet, firm voice: I love you. Well, I don’t love you, I said.

Before I left, Ivona had pushed a parcel into my hands, wrapped in gift paper. I didn’t unpack it until I got home. It was a knitted sweater with a hideous geometrical pattern.

A few days later my new landlord called me. He had had the walls painted, he said, and I could move in any time. Ferdy helped me with my things, and went to IKEA with me, where I picked up a bed, a bookshelf, a rag rug, and a so-called starter set for the kitchen. We spent the evening assembling the furniture.

Ferdy told me about Alice. He seemed to be very enthusiastic about life as a couple. The hunt is over. I laughed. You of all people. Student life had never been his thing, he said, even if he had enjoyed it. He always longed to settle down somewhere, earn money, get some stability. It didn’t mean stumbling blindly through life.

Isn’t this fun, he said, holding up two pieces of wood that seemed to fit together. Yes, as long as you’ve got a screw, but there’s always a screw missing in these things. Ferdy said that was a matter of attitude, and he kept on working. When the bed was finally done, he said, you see, there’s no screw missing at all.

Furnishing the apartment was enjoyable, and gave me something to do to distract me from my introspection. I found an old cherrywood table in a junk shop, and four chairs with straw seats and backrests. I hung up some lamps, put a few posters on the walls, and moved my books onto the shelves. The day before Sonia’s arrival, the place looked really cozy. There were flowers on the table and the fridge was stocked. I’d even screwed in a nameplate.

Up until now I’d always taken care to own as little stuff as possible, so as to be mobile and unencumbered, but the more I bought, the more pleasure I took in my possessions. I walked through my apartment and ran my hands over the new things, picked up all the unused items and turned them over in my hands as if they promised me a different life. I switched the lamps on and off, pulled books down from the shelf, and put an LP on. In the bedroom was the sweater that Ivona had given me. I tried it on. The fit was perfect, but the pattern hurt to look at. I wondered whether I should throw it away on the spot, but I couldn’t decide, and draped it over a chair in the living room.

The next morning I went to the airport to pick up Sonia. It was almost three months since the last time we’d seen each other. I was there before the plane landed, and had to wait a long time before Sonia finally came through customs. Even though I kept a picture of her on my desk, I was still astonished to see her, as I always was every time I saw her. She had gotten her hair cut really short, and was wearing a blue-and-white-striped sailor’s jersey. She was tanned, and with her supple upright posture, she stood out a mile from the ruck of other passengers. When she caught sight of me, she beamed. She put down her bags and ran up to me, then stopped not quite sure what to do, till I took her in my arms and kissed her.

On the way into the city Sonia didn’t talk about anything except her work. She said she had done some sketches on the flight, and showed me her notebook. She had learned a lot in those three months, that was obvious from the confidence of the drawing, her resolute and unwavering line. Altogether Sonia struck me as having grown up. She spoke more quickly and she laughed a lot, and when the taxi stopped, she paid the driver before I even had time to get my wallet out.

She seemed to approve of the apartment. She rapped on the walls and opened the windows and flushed the toilet. Well? I said. I’ll take it, she said. We stood next to each other in the bathroom and looked at ourselves in the mirror. Two beautiful people in a beautiful apartment, said Sonia, and laughed. I turned and kissed her, and thought of the beautiful couple in the mirror kissing as well, and that excited me more than the actual kiss itself. I reached into Sonia’s short hair with my hand and rubbed her shaved neck. You look like a boy. She laughed and asked if I’d gone off her? I stepped behind her and placed my hands over her breasts, and said, luckily there were still a few points of difference. When I tried to pull the sweater over her head, she turned to face me and kissed me again and said, not now. I had the feeling she was blushing under her tan. Come on, she said, let’s not be late, my parents are waiting.

While we’d been students, I’d been out to Sonia’s a couple of times, but either her parents weren’t home at the time or else they just gave us a cursory greeting. Presumably they had no recollection of me at all. I hadn’t seen them since I’d started going out with Sonia, and was accordingly nervous. Sonia’s mother met us at the door; she kissed Sonia on both cheeks and gave me her hand and called me by my surname. He goes by Alexander, said Sonia. Alex, I said. But she disappeared into the kitchen even as we were still taking off our coats. In the living room Sonia’s father was decorating an enormous Christmas tree. Ah, there you are already, he said, shaking hands with both of us. Can I get you both a drink? He was perfectly at ease, but even so I felt a little tense. Sonia said she would take me on a tour of the house.

The house had been built in the seventies. It had rough whitewashed walls, high ceilings angled in the upstairs part, and wood paneling. The staircase was open to the living room, a very large space with ceramic floor tiles and a fireplace. Sonia showed me her old room and her sister Carla’s room, who was away in America studying, and who for the first time wouldn’t be home for Christmas. You’ll be sleeping here, Sonia said, pointing to Carla’s narrow bed. I looked at her in speechless astonishment. She lowered her eyes without saying anything and led me back downstairs.

Her parents were standing at the foot of the steps, looking expectantly up at us. Under the Christmas tree there were now a couple of presents. Sonia’s father gave us all a glass of champagne, and we toasted each other. Conversation was sticky. We talked about Antje, and I wondered what use these people could possibly have for Antje’s paintings. Only when Carla called long distance did the atmosphere relax a little. The three of them clustered around the phone, and each of them had a brief conversation with her. The weather in California was fine, it felt weird to be celebrating Christmas under palm trees, the Americans were incredibly hospitable. After everyone had said their Merry Christmases and the call was over, we talked about America and the Americans. I was the only one not to have been to the United States, but that didn’t keep me from joining in the conversation, only to have my contributions corrected by the others. I had a completely wrong sense of the States, said Sonia’s father. I contradicted him, and presumably we would have had an argument if Sonia’s mother hadn’t changed the subject.

The evening was full of traditions, which I failed to understand. Sonia’s parents weren’t religious, but the course of the evening followed a rigid plan. The candles were lit on the tree, and Sonia’s mother put on a record with kitschy American Christmas songs, and turned off the main light. For a while we sat on the lounge suite, gazing at the tree. Then the lights came on again, and the presents were unwrapped. Sonia carried on like a little girl, which bugged me. Her parents had bought me a horrible espresso machine from Alessi. For the new apartment, said Sonia’s mother — the design is by Aldo Rossi. Sonia told us you’re a great admirer of his work. Sonia handed me a very light box. This is from me, she said, and she watched me unwrap it. It was a cardboard model of a single-family house, very carefully done. In front of the house stood two little human figures, a man and a woman. Someday, said Sonia. I wanted to kiss her on the mouth, but she turned her head away, and I kissed her on the cheek. Here are the plans. She passed me a black-bound book of sketches and rough designs for the house. You’ll have to do a lot of work to afford something like that, said Sonia’s father.

Soon after dinner was over, Sonia said she was tired and was going to bed. When I stood up too, she said I could stay if I liked. It probably took two hours before I finally broke free of Sonia’s father. He had an unpleasantly instructional way about him, and imparted his completely unoriginal views as if they were pieces of extraordinary wisdom. Even when we talked about architecture, he didn’t hesitate to correct me. In the middle of one of his lectures, I got up and said I was going to bed. I walked up the stairs. I hesitated outside the bedroom doors. Sonia’s father had followed me up the stairs and motioned to Carla’s door with a frosty smile.

On the morning of Christmas Day we drove out to my parents’ in Garching. There was another round of gift giving and another big meal. I hadn’t seen my parents in a long time and expected they would ask me lots of questions, but they just talked about the neighbors, and the recent autumn holidays, and the garden, it was the same topics of conversation as for twenty years.

We got back late to my apartment and went straight to bed. When I kissed Sonia, she said she needed to get used to me first. There’s no hurry, I said, and turned over.

For the next few days it was very cold, but the sun shone. We wrapped up warm and strolled through the city, and met people and sat in cafés. Sonia had let all her friends know she was back for the holidays, and I had to listen to the same stories half a dozen times, and drank innumerable lattes.

We met Birgit, and she told us Tania had completely lost it. Her sanitary neurosis had gotten out of control, she wore silicone gloves in the kitchen, and wouldn’t touch a doorknob that she hadn’t previously wiped clean. She was forever talking about Christian-humanist values, and bombarded the newspapers with letters urging a tougher stance on drugs and some anti-AIDS claptrap. We wouldn’t happen to have a spare room, would we? Sonia looked at me inquiringly. No, I said, sorry. On the way home, she asked me why I’d said no. She doesn’t like me. You’re imagining that. Anyway, I don’t feel like having roommates anymore. What do you want? asked Sonia. Perhaps she was expecting me to ask her to move in with me when she returned from Marseilles. But I missed my opportunity, if it was one.

When we were at home, Sonia worked and I read and enjoyed the feeling of being together. Sometimes I looked in on her and remained standing in the doorway of the office, and when she asked me what the matter was, I said, nothing, I’d just wanted to see if she was still there. She smiled in bewilderment. Of course I’m still here. That’s good, I said, and I went back to the living room and whatever I was reading.

At dinner I kept complaining about my job. Why don’t you find another one? said Sonia. It would do you good to go abroad for a change. I said I didn’t fancy it, I didn’t think it was my thing. She furrowed her brow and said she didn’t know if she was coming back to Munich or not. Everything was so complicated, and the old buildings everywhere depressed her. Why don’t we go somewhere where they’re still building properly? Eastern Europe or America. I said my English wasn’t up to it. You can learn that. If you learned French, we could move to Marseilles together. They’re doing so much building, the city is really going places. I don’t know, I said, and I shrugged my shoulders. Sonia didn’t say anything, but for the first time since we’d been together, I had the feeling I might lose her, which made me feel relieved and afraid at the same time.

Sonia had no inhibitions wandering around the flat, but she got terribly bashful when it was bedtime. She never undressed in front of me, and when I crept into bed beside her, naked, she turned away, and talked about something or other, until I lost the desire to sleep with her. When I asked her what the matter was, she said again that she had to get used to me. Nonsense, I said. You seem to be so far away, she said. I asked what she meant by that, but she just said, hold me.

On New Year’s Eve we traveled out to Possenhofen, for Rüdiger’s party. When we walked from the station to his parents’ house, Sonia said she’d like to live here one day, not now, but later, when she had children and her own firm. It’s just a matter of finding some property on the lakefront then, I said, you’ve already designed the house. Sonia ignored me. And she wanted an apartment in Marseilles as well, she said. Then she would spend half the year here and the other half there. Nice plan, I said. So that the possible can come into being, the impossible has to be attempted again and again, Sonia said. It took me a moment to remember where I’d heard that before. I said that was an idiotic saying. But I have to admit, I liked the idea of living here with Sonia. I could see myself standing at a big picture window with a glass of wine in my hand, gazing down at the lake. Sonia was standing next to me in a casual pose, and we were talking about a project we were working on together. We could have a motorboat, I said. A yacht on the Med, said Sonia.

Rüdiger’s mother opened the door and welcomed us warmly. She took us into the living room and vanished again. By the window Rüdiger and Jakob were talking together softly. It was exactly the same situation in which I’d just pictured myself with Sonia. Rüdiger turned and came toward us to say hello.

In the middle of the room was a big laid table, decorated with paper snakes. I read the names on the cards. Most of them were familiar enough. I’m splitting you up, said Rüdiger, you don’t mind, do you? Sonia and Jakob were over by the window. I went over and threw my arm around Sonia. Jakob didn’t bat an eyelid. He was telling Sonia about his dissertation in exactly the same words he’d used with me two weeks before. He asked her if she knew the Bayerischer Wald. When she shook her head, he said he would take her there one day and show her the area. The doorbell rang and Ferdy and Alice walked in, and from upstairs came a young woman I didn’t know.

It was almost the same group as at the summer party, but the feeling was far starchier than it had been then. Everyone had put on good clothes and brought presents. We stood around in small groups, sipping champagne and talking terribly seriously about work and our future plans. It seemed a little bit as though we were pretending to be grown-ups.

I talked to the woman who had come down the stairs. She was one of the very few people who weren’t half of a couple. She said she was from Switzerland. I’d never have guessed, I said. From the Rhine Valley, she said, laughing, did I know where that was?

She was staying with Ferdy for the moment, she was going to apply to the Academy of Arts. She was an artist. The young woman was like a simple peasant girl, she had red cheeks and she wore a handmade sweater and wide pants with some African pattern. I asked her what sort of things she did. She shrugged her shoulders. All kinds of things, for the moment she was thinking about bread. What do you mean, thinking about bread? You know, bread, she said. What bread means. Bread, I said. Yes, she said, bread. Her father was a baker, her name was Elsbeth.

He’s so awful, said Sonia in the taxi, the way he kept going on and on to me. What did he talk about? I asked. Cow udders and folkloric costume had been Jakob’s subjects of choice. He had said in all seriousness that a dirndl was the ideal outfit for the female body. And stared at her the whole night as though he had X-ray vision. It wouldn’t be a bad life, you know, I said, married to a vet in the Bayerischer Wald. Sonia made a face. You would give him eight children, and you would hold on to the cows while he injected the semen into them, and look after his ancient parents. The arrogance of it, she said, with proper indignation. He’s obviously crazy about you, I said, it’s not his fault. It’s not mine either, she said. I always get these madmen coming on to me. If only it was someone with money for a change, or good-looking. You’ve got me, haven’t you? I said. She was silent for a moment, and I could tell she was thinking about a question in her head. Then she took a deep breath, made a skeptical face, and asked: Are you still seeing that Polish girl? From time to time, I said. Did she knit you that vile sweater that’s in the apartment? I nodded. You’d tell me if it was anything, wouldn’t you? I didn’t answer right away, and then I slowly said, it was something. What do you mean? It started before we got together, I said. What started? asked Sonia. What are you talking about?

The taxi driver didn’t seem to be interested in our conversation, he had his radio on and was listening to electro music. Even so, I spoke very softly. I could easily have talked my way out of it, after all, I’d never slept with Ivona. But I didn’t. I said I’d had an affair, I didn’t quite understand it myself. It’s finished now, I said, I ended it. Perhaps I really believed that just then, I wanted to believe it. The thing with Ivona had been really stupid, I had risked my relationship with Sonia for nothing at all. Sonia still didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about. She looked at me like a stranger. I hadn’t seen her cry before, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Her face seemed to melt away, her mouth was contorted, her whole posture dissolved. I tried to take her in my arms, but she slid away from me and looked out the window. She said something I didn’t understand. What did you say? I asked. Why? I don’t know why. She’s not good-looking, she’s boring and uneducated. I have no idea.

That night we made love for the first time since Sonia’s return. She had gone into the bedroom without first going to the bathroom. I went after her, and watched her get undressed with awkward movements. There was something broken about her, only now did it occur to me that she might have had too much to drink. She sat down on the side of the bed, her shoulders hanging down. Her hair was tousled, and when she turned toward me, I could see her eyes were shining. In bed she pressed her back against me, and I noticed that she even smelled differently than usual, perhaps because, unlike the other nights, she hadn’t showered. Her body felt softer, more relaxed, and very warm, almost fevered. After a while, she turned toward me and held me tightly and started kissing me, very quickly and frenziedly, all over my face.

Late that night, we were lying exhaustedly side by side, not touching. I asked Sonia to marry me. Yes, she said, tenderly, and without any great surprise or excitement. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.

If we hadn’t slept together that night, I probably wouldn’t have asked Sonia to marry me, and she would have left just as uncertain and undecided as she’d been when she arrived. Perhaps then she would have stayed in Marseilles, or gone to England or America. I sometimes wondered afterward what would have happened to us if we hadn’t gotten married, but Sonia never seemed to quarrel with destiny, not even at the worst of times, when everything seemed about to go up in smoke. She had made her decision that night, or maybe even earlier, and she stuck to it and accepted the consequences.

I got up and walked along the lakefront. I asked myself if Antje was right when she said passion was an inferior form of love. It wasn’t for nothing that it didn’t last. What connected me and Sonia was more than a brief intoxication. We had after all stayed together for eighteen years. Maybe our relationship worked precisely because we’d never gotten really close. Even so, I wasn’t sure if I wouldn’t one day find myself in a situation where I’d be willing once more to risk everything for nothing.

I went home. Sonia and Antje were still sitting on the terrace, talking. Sonia said they were going to go to the movies, they wanted to see The Lives of Others. We’ve seen that already. Yes, but Antje hasn’t, said Sonia. You’ll have to stay here anyway and watch Sophie. I didn’t understand what Sonia thought was so great about the film. When we went to see it, she cried. The last time she’d done that was for Schindler’s List, and I couldn’t understand that either.

I sat down at the table with the two women, even though I could sense I was intruding. Are you still talking about old times? It’s an inexhaustible subject, said Antje. Sonia was just telling me how her family reacted when she brought you back to meet them for the very first time. That was on Christmas Eve of ’89, I said. I remember because we argued about the fall of the Berlin Wall. I expect you were against it, said Antje. I wasn’t against it, I said, what I was against was prompt reunification. I think most of us at the time hoped that something of the GDR would be preserved, and that the West would be changed in some respect as well. Then Sonia’s father trotted out his war experiences. That wasn’t it at all, said Sonia, he was just a kid in the war. And then her parents asked me all kinds of questions about my family, I said. I was surprised they didn’t ask how much my old man made. Rüdiger would have suited them better. Antje laughed. That’s what Sonia just said too. They thought you were a bit rude, said Sonia, and my father had the feeling you were a socialist. He still does, I said. In Bavaria, it doesn’t take much to be thought of as a socialist. I think I just wasn’t good enough for them, they would rather their daughter married someone from their own circle.

Alex had to sleep in my sister’s room, Sonia laughed. And you slipped in to be with him? Antje asked. Did I? asked Sonia. No, I said. To this day you behave like a little girl when you’re with your parents. Sonia protested. Probably she was just too tired. Antje said she could remember Sonia arriving back in Marseilles after Christmas, and telling her she was going to get married. I looked at Sonia. She creased her brow thoughtfully. It’s a long time ago, she said, and stood up with a sigh. I’m getting chilly out here.

Sonia and Antje left at six, they wanted to get something to eat before the film. I stuck a frozen pizza in the oven for Sophie. When we began to eat, Mathilda meowed plaintively next to my chair. She hopped onto my lap. I grabbed hold of her and dropped her on the floor again. Didn’t you feed her? I asked. Sophie made no reply. Did you hear me? Sophie looked at me furiously, and said Mathilda isn’t getting anything to eat today, she pooped on my bed, and that’s her punishment. I tried to explain to Sophie that you couldn’t treat a cat like a human being, but she acted deaf. I lost my temper, and said if she didn’t give Mathilda something to eat right away, she wouldn’t get anything either. I took her plate away from her, and she got up seething with rage and ran upstairs. I ate, still furious at Sophie’s behavior. Then I gave the cat some food and went up to see Sophie, but she didn’t respond to my knock, and I didn’t feel like giving in. When I looked in on her an hour later, she was lying on her bed, fully dressed and asleep.

I went up to the attic to look for the model that Sonia had given me back then, the house she had created for the two of us. I was pretty sure it was in one of the boxes of my student stuff, but it took me a long time to find it. It was in a shoebox, along with the plans for it. It was much smaller than I’d remembered it. The cardboard was yellowed, and the glue had come off in one or two places, the two figures that represented Sonia and me had fallen off. I found them at the bottom of the box. They were plastic figurines of the sort you can get in any model shop. I looked at the plans and sketches. Le Corbusier’s influence could clearly be seen. The house occupied a relatively small area, but it was three stories and had a roof terrace. The rooms were generously cut. Light came in through a wall of windows, and through skylights on the top floor. I imagined what it would be like to live in that house, asked myself how it would have changed our lives. The house we were in now was much cozier, but there was something small-scale about it, with its narrow staircase and saddle roof. It was conventional in every way, and emanated a modesty and unobtrusiveness that might have suited me but that certainly didn’t express Sonia’s nature. It’s absurd, she said to me once, we think about beautiful buildings all day long, but we’ll never be able to afford one for ourselves. And the people we build for have no appreciation of quality. I took the model downstairs to the living room and put it on the sideboard.

Sonia and Antje weren’t back until almost midnight. Antje wasn’t wild about the film, but Sonia had cried again. I made myself some tea, the two women drank wine. Presumably they had had something to drink in the city, at any rate they both talked fast and volubly, and I could hardly get a word in edgewise. They talked about the film, but I got the impression the real subject was something else. Antje was aggressive, while Sonia defended herself to the best of her ability. She seemed unhappy, something was bothering her. After a while she got up and said she was going to bed. On the way to the door she noticed the model. She picked it up and turned to face us, as if to speak. For a moment she stood there with half-open mouth, and then she clumsily set the model down and quickly left the room.

Antje had settled herself comfortably on the couch. She leaned back and looked at me expressionlessly. Why should I give a damn? she finally said. I asked her what she was talking about, and she gestured dismissively. If I hadn’t brought you together, you would have found some other way. What you made of it is your affair. You’re free individuals.

I wondered what Sonia had told her, what they had discussed. Strange as it may seem, I said, the only one of us not to have compromised at all is Ivona. She’s the only one who knew what she wanted from the get-go, and who followed her path to the end. Didn’t exactly make her happy, did it? said Antje. Who can tell? I said. You didn’t get to the end of the story, she said. I don’t know if I can tell you the end of the story, I said, but I can at least tell you how it goes on. Antje poured herself some more wine and looked expectantly at me.

I told her how I had started seeing Ivona again during Sonia’s internship. I know about that, Antje said, Sonia told me. I was lonely, I said, all my friends had left the city, the office I was working in was staffed by idiots, and I was living with these two crazy women. I think the worst thing for Sonia was that it had to be the Polish girl, Antje said, she didn’t understand that. She still doesn’t understand it. She loved me, I said, she loves me to this day. It was as though that absolved me of all questions. You told me in Marseilles that I mustn’t demand too much from Sonia. I could ask for everything from Ivona. The more I asked of her, the more she loved me. Then why did you ask Sonia to marry you? asked Antje. I don’t know, I said, maybe I couldn’t stand the responsibility. Antje groaned aloud. After I split up with Ivona, I didn’t hear from her for years, I said, and I couldn’t say I missed her. They were difficult years. We opened our firm and took every job we were offered, renovations, little things that brought in neither money nor fame. At the same time we entered loads of competitions, were up against two hundred other firms. We worked for eighty hours a week, basically we did nothing but work. But it wasn’t a bad time, for all that. We knew what we wanted. We were still living in the three-room apartment in Schwabing, we had one of the rooms equipped as an office. Sometimes we didn’t go outside for days on end. I slept badly, and often I was half dead with exhaustion. Sonia’s parents offered to support us, but we didn’t want that. Then we won a contest to build a school in Chemnitz. Our project got some attention, and soon we got more contracts. We were able to start employing people, and move into bigger premises. Sonia was the creative brains of the enterprise. She did most of the designs, while I took on the organizational and managerial tasks. I hardly gave Ivona a thought. I assumed she was back in Poland, when one day I got a letter from her.

The letter came at the worst possible moment. I had a thousand things on my mind, a building that was supposed to be finished and was going wrong in every way, a builder who kept calling me about some guarantee or other, a contest jury that I needed to prepare myself for. Sonia had been home all that week, she had a migraine and was bedridden, and only got up for a short time in the evenings when I came home, and we had something to eat together, and then she went back to bed.

The mail had been on my desk since lunchtime, but I only got around to looking at it in the evening. The envelope was made out by hand in a clumsy writing that I couldn’t recognize; there was no return address. I pulled out two pieces of paper, saw the signature, Ivona, and immediately had a bad feeling. The secretary had already left for the day, so I went to the kitchen to get a coffee. Then I sat down at my desk and began to read.

Dear Alexander, perhaps you still remember me. After everything that had happened between us, I thought it was absurd, Ivona addressing me formally. Of course I remembered her. I sometimes used to wonder what had become of her, but never made any effort to find out. She wrote to say she thought about me every day, and the lovely time we had together. She had often meant to write to me, to ask to see me again, but then she had learned that I was married now, and she didn’t want to interfere. She was sure I had lots to do, she sometimes saw my name in the papers, and was proud of knowing me.

For a brief moment I had the absurd thought that Ivona wanted to blackmail me, but she had nothing on me. Sonia knew about our affair, and after that night when I told her about it, I hadn’t seen Ivona again, I just stopped going, and she’d never tried to get in touch. Sure, I’d behaved badly toward her, but that wasn’t a crime.

The reason she was writing, I read on, was that she was in dire straits. She was still illegally in Germany, getting by on badly paid jobs off the books, cleaning and child minding and occasional little bits of translation work for a Christian publisher in Poland. The money had always been enough, Ivona wrote, she had even been able to support her parents on it, who had had a hard time after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, but a few months ago, she had gotten sick, some abdominal condition. She never had health insurance, she had just been lucky enough to stay well. Now she was facing expenses that dwarfed her income. She had turned to God for advice, and one night in her dreams she had seen me as her rescuer. Even then she had hesitated for a long time before asking me for help. If I wasn’t able to give her anything, she wouldn’t bother me anymore. I owed her nothing, she would see any help as a charitable act, and try to pay me back as soon as possible.

The letter was cumbersomely expressed. I was pretty sure someone must have helped Ivona write it. Even so, the formulations were full of that blend of submissiveness and impertinence that had struck me about her from the start. I could picture her face before me, the expression of humility that made me wild with lust and rage. Ivona had signed with first and last names. Below her signature was an address in Perlach and a phone number. I pocketed the letter, shut down the computer, and went home.

The lakeside house of Sonia’s dreams turned out to be beyond our means. Instead we lived in a row house in Tutzing, away from the lake. We had been able to buy the house after an aunt of Sonia’s had died and left her a small inheritance. The first time we looked at it, we wandered into a small room under the eaves with a slanting ceiling and Sonia said, this is the nursery. I didn’t say anything, and we talked about a couple of modifications. But that same evening, Sonia brought up the subject again. She said she didn’t have that much time left in which to get pregnant, after thirty-five things got critical. We had a very objective conversation about the pros and cons of having children of our own, and in the end decided that Sonia would come off the pill.

After some years at the planning stage, the building work finally began on the school in Chemnitz. I rented a room there, and often stayed away all week. It was only on Sonia’s fertile days that I absolutely had to be in Munich.

In spite of, or maybe even because of her beauty, Sonia was pretty inhibited. She was incapable of passion, and I sometimes got the feeling she was watching herself while we made love, to make sure she kept her dignity. Initially, synchronizing our nights to her ovulation had a positive effect on our sex life. On those evenings Sonia was nervous, she blushed easily and upset glasses and knocked things over. Then she would disappear into the bathroom for a long time, and when she came out and joined me on the sofa in her silk wrap, it felt as though she was offering herself to me, which was a thought that stimulated me. Sometimes we made love on the couch, and I thought Sonia was turned on as well, and forgot herself at least for a little while. But when she didn’t get pregnant, my feeling of failure got more pronounced, and I lost all pleasure in this game.

Birgit, who had been Sonia’s roommate in their student days, had opened her own practice by now. She was Sonia’s gynecologist, and ran all kinds of tests, and sent us to specialists. Finally she told us that medically everything was okay, and she urged Sonia to work less, but we couldn’t afford to take advice like that. It’ll be all right, said Birgit. Don’t think about it so much, then it’ll just happen naturally.

After the appointment, the three of us went for a drink together. Conversation turned to Tania. She and Birgit had continued to live in the apartment together for two years after I moved out. Tania’s hygiene neurosis had gradually abated, but she’d gotten crazier in other ways. She subscribed to German nationalist papers, Birgit told us, and expressed extreme right-wing views. I couldn’t invite anyone back to the apartment anymore, I would have been ashamed if they’d seen who I was living with. Also, Tania had grown increasingly suspicious. She had developed a thoroughgoing paranoia. She ended up marrying a Swiss guy who was also a member of the organization she had joined, and she had gone to live with him in Switzerland.

But it was so nice at the beginning, said Sonia, do you remember? How we used to cook meals together? She was always a bit uptight, said Birgit. She took everything so fantastically seriously, and had theories and views about everything. She couldn’t allow things just to be. Like any true believer, in other words, I said. Sonia said that was a mean thing to say. It’s not the worst people who end up in sects, said Birgit. It’s the seekers, the ones who are missing something, and can’t live without it anymore. Then they go and hang their hearts on some guru or some idea that’s in the air just at that time. Something that gives them security. A relationship can give you just as much security, said Sonia. Money gives you security, said Birgit. I said I hoped to be able to endure insecurity. Birgit laughed. If you expect a certain standard of living, there’s only the appearance of freedom for you anyway. Who said that? I asked. Birgit shrugged her shoulders. Me? No idea. The only alternative is sainthood.

The office did better than we could have dreamed, we had taken on more staff, but somehow there wasn’t any less work for the two of us to do. You can’t plan everything, said Birgit. We’ve got time, said Sonia, and if it’s not meant to be, then it’s not to be. I knew how much she wanted a baby, and I felt bad that I couldn’t make it happen for her. We stopped talking about it, only sometimes Sonia would say she was fertile just then, and I would feel sorry for her, which didn’t make me perform any better. When we moved into the house, we used the room under the eaves as a storage room, but Sonia didn’t stop referring to it as the nursery.

On the day Ivona’s letter arrived I happened not to have my car with me. I had belatedly taken it to the mechanic that morning to have summer tires put on, and had gone to work by subway. It was a fine day, and after work I went to the station on foot, and was thinking about Ivona. The thought that she was still living in Munich was somehow disagreeable to me. I hadn’t seen her for almost seven years. It was surprising that we’d never bumped into each other in all that time, on the street or on a bus or in a store. I was sure I would recognize her instantly if I did happen to see her. Perhaps she was observing me, the way she did back then in the beer garden. I stopped with a jolt and spun around. A man who was following hard on my heels brushed past me and muttered, asshole. Not a trace of Ivona.

It had been my intention to tell Sonia about the letter and ask for her advice, but when I got home I saw that she still had her migraine, and I decided not to. She would only worry herself needlessly, or get all suspicious or something. I would call Ivona, meet her somewhere if it wasn’t possible otherwise, and lend her the money, provided the amount she needed wasn’t too much. And that would be an end to the matter.