“I sat on the floor, leaning back against the bed, with my arm resting on Reinhardt’s bare knees. I closed my eyes and heard Elsa whispering to him about a certain dress she would have to buy before their marriage, about the furniture they would need, about their honeymoon trip to Switzerland. She was afraid that Reinhardt had not worked out their itinerary well enough and she made him repeat its timetable: Lucerne, Lake of Thun, Wengen, the Jungfrau. Ruby, carrying her stockings and wooden shoes, which she put down with a clump, sat beside me. I felt her warm hand take mine. Very softly she said to me, ‘And you, aren’t you going to go anywhere during the vacation?’ It was true: we were really on vacation now. I had known it and celebrated it, but it was only now, feeling Ruby’s hand and the breath of her voice in my ear, that I really grasped that another year had gone by and ahead of me lay a time of freedom to be enjoyed, lazy idle reading, unhurried long walks. Ruby put her legs across my knees and asked me to rub her feet. In a voice even softer than hers, as if I were speaking only to myself, Lisbeth, I told her, ‘I don’t know if I will go anywhere this year. Next year, yes, when I take my degree, I want to take a long slow trip to all those places I have never seen. From city to city, just looking.’ ‘Where?’ said Ruby, who had bent until her head was resting on her knees and I could smell the perfume of her hair each time I breathed. ‘To Treves to see the ruins of the baths and the basilicas. To Aix-la-Chapelle to see the chapel of Charlemagne. Then down the Rhine. The cathedrals at Worms and Mainz, the abbey at Laach. And Cologne, St. Mary in the Capitol, the Holy Apostles … I want to see it all and feel it all, Ruby, because I believe that it has to be preserved, that man is his building, his stone, his love for what he has constructed.’ I stopped. ‘Why am I talking like this to you, little mocker? You’ll be laughing at me.’ ‘No, I’m not laughing. Take me with you.’ Ruby raised her face until she touched her nose to my cheek, like this, Lisbeth, so lightly I could hardly feel it. I took her hand like this, between my hands, in the darkness that gave us freedom and daring and let us speak the truth, as if it were carnival time. ‘Ruby … Lisbeth … I want to build. I want to make buildings by instinct.… I don’t want the old Greek Valhallas that at school they insist we admire. Still less, glass boxes. I don’t know. Do you understand me? I want to make a building as a bear finds its cave or an eagle builds its nest, that naturally. Buildings like placentas, warm and humid, without vertices, without … No, I don’t know. Do you understand me, Ruby? Lisbeth? Something new and free and natural, no longer slave to the old models, to the old prestigious.… Do you understand?’ Ruby kissed me. Like this. And I took her in my arms, like this. And we were silent now, listening to silence, our eyes closed, a little dizzy from the beer and wine. And listening also, willy-nilly, to the voices of Elsa and Reinhardt on the bed behind us:
“‘Is what Elizabeth said true?’
“‘What?’
“‘That if you were tempted enough, you would love someone else.’
“‘You are the only girl I love, Elsa.’
“‘But maybe … some day…’
“‘No, Elsa. I understand my duties and responsibilities.’
“‘And I’m sure that I can love only once in my life.’
“‘Yes. Nothing will ever separate us.’
“‘Nothing, Reinhardt. And when we have children, we’ll be even closer.’
“‘How many shall we have?’
“‘As many as God sends us.’
“‘I believe I’ve chosen well. Without a woman to give us; breath, we can’t do anything in life.’
“‘I want to see you honored, respected by everyone. You’re going to be a great architect, Reinhardt.’
“I couldn’t take it any longer, Lisbeth. I had to cover my mouth. I pushed Ruby away and opened my eyes. Everything was spinning. I tried to look at Elsa and Reinhardt and I saw four of them. The couples talking in whispers seemed very near yet very far and my own body was enormous yet at the same time tiny, as if my knees were heavy mountains yet also feathers in the wind. I leaned forward vomiting. Elsa gave a little cry. Reinhardt knelt over me. ‘Hey, Franz is sick. A glass of water.’ The ceiling light came on, white and cold again. I closed my eyes and then opened them immediately and looked toward the refrigerator, our piece of furniture that was as cold and colorless as the light. Lorenz, the blackclad Russian monk, was moving toward the refrigerator with a clean glass in his hand. I shouted, ‘No, Lorenz, please!’ Lorenz opened the refrigerator. ‘Close it, Lorenz, please, close it! You’re drunk, it isn’t true, you haven’t seen anything!’ Lorenz let the glass drop to the floor. Lya, standing behind him, screamed, screamed, bit her nails and screamed, her face as pale as flour. Herr Urs von Schnepelbrücke, lightly covered with frost, had arrived at our party.”
Franz stopped.
“Well, what happened?”
“Nothing. Reinhardt married Elsa. He was killed shortly afterward, right at the beginning, in Poland.”
“And the dwarf?”