The Atlas

IT'S TOO DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN

She sat next to me at the table, utterly trapped in silence while the laughs burst around her like shells. Finally I asked her why she was so unhappy.

It's too difficult to explain, she said.

Try.

You have only a few words. I have only a few words.

So it's not the war, then, I said. I think you were always unhappy.

She leaned toward me. — Yes, she said.

Me too, I said.

She smiled. She laid her pale hand down on my hand. I felt a violent tenderness for her.

Come, she said. I must cook for these people. You can be with me.

As we went out together, the others all shouted with glee at the conquest they were sure I had made. The host, wounded twice since he'd volunteered a month before, was very drunk. His was one of those apartments still intact (or perhaps refurbished by means of that special liquidity which property acquires in wartime), with carpets, glass cabinets and windows (astounding to see them unbroken), fur rugs, and all the Ballantines and vodka you could drink. He had pulled out his pistol in the middle of the party and announced that he would test my bulletproof vest, which I was wearing. His eyes gleamed with desperate laughter and the barrel wavered. — May I finish my drink first? I asked. — I like your style, James Bond! he shouted. He strode to the window and fired three times, roaring. Maybe he killed one of the neighbors and maybe the bullets went nowhere. And I remember how she shivered with sorrow and despair, trembling as the shots went off. — You know, I have a pathological fear, she said to me. I want to go with you, but I cannot. I have a fear of going anywhere. This street is in the center of town. It is one of the worst for snipers. And every morning I must go to work, and I must go to the doctor for my mother. I must always run. And I cannot sleep at night. The sounds of the artillery terrify me. — At that moment I would have died for her if doing that would have helped her, but nothing could help her. So we went to the door together, and the others laughed.

Outside the candle-lit apartment it was night-dark, of course. We felt our way down the two flights of stairs to the landing where the stove was, and she bent over it. — No good, she said. She put my hand on it, and I found that it was cold. Nothing would be cooked today.

So we came back to the party, and the others stared at us. They thought that we must have quarrelled.

She said to me: What I don't understand is why we have to live. Life is nothing but sadness.

But you said you liked music. Don't you have moments of happiness?

Happiness? Oh, yes, in brief flashes. And sadness for yean and years.

What would make you happy?

Not to work. To live entirely alone. But I cannot, because I have no money. And I don't understand why there must be money to live.

How much money would you need to be happy?

I don't know. It's impossible anyway.

A hundred thousand deutsche marks a month?

No, no, that's too much.

How much?

Maybe two hundred.*

A month?

Yes.

So if I gave you two hundred deutsche marks you could be happy for one month?

She smiled for the second time. She thought I was joking, but she liked the joke. — Yes. You are a good man. .

When it was time to go I got out the money and gave it to her. I had to kneel down in front of the single candle in the middle of the room to read the denominations, so everyone was watching me and I could hear their laughter hiss down eerily into nothingness. The shadow of my hand and of the bills trembled monstrous on the sniper curtain. It smeared their faces with darkness.

She wouldn't take it. — You understand nothing, she kept saying. Please, please.

So I understand nothing, I said. Take it. I can live without it.

No, no. Please.

Finally I gave up. But as I went out, preparing to descend with the other guests those cold and utterly dark flights of stairs, remembering the rotten bannister at the bottom and then the terrible danger when we had to open the front door and run out into the open street; as the militiaman shouted in rage and pain because he'd gotten drunk and done something to break open the wound in his arm where the bullet still lay grinding against the bone and which was now bleeding through his sleeve; as the host called to me, laughing: She wants to kiss you, James!; as the driver slipped a round into the chamber of his gun; as the women tucked up their dresses so that they could run, she came to me and squeezed my hand.

* In 1992, 200 DM would have been about U.S. $120.