“You know what my name is, Violet.”
“Of course. But when other people see this, they’ll certainly want to know what you’re called.”
“Most other people know that I’m Frederick Arkadiusz Driajes.”
“And who gave you that name?”
“Mama.”
“Can you remember her well?”
“I can remember everything.”
“Good, then … what did she say, when Albert was still a baby?”
“Mama said, Albert is a Most Beloved Possession.”
“I already know that.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Never mind. Fred, do you know a woman who has red hair, like Albert?”
“Mama says, Nature says that red means danger.”
“How so?”
“What?”
“Why is red dangerous?”
“Because red is the littlest color, of course. You mustn’t touch red, or eat it, or drink it.”
“Fred, did you touch red once?”
“I never, ever touch red! Green is much more ambrosial. I have green eyes.”
“But everyone needs a little bit of red sometimes. Strawberries, for instance, who doesn’t like strawberries?”
“Mama says strawberries make my skin red and steal my breath.”
“Well, she’s right. But you like Albert. And he’s pretty red.”
“Yes.”
“Well …?”
“…”
“Do you understand what I’m getting at?”
“I always understand everything.”
“Fred, there are times when it’s just fine to touch red. Everyone does it.”
“Mama says everyone who touches red says that touching red is okay.”
Door slam. Footsteps.
“Albert!”
Violet’s voice from off camera: “I thought you were going shopping.”
“They’d already closed … is that thing on?!”
“Violet’s doing an interview!”
“I asked you not to.”
“We’ve only been chatting a bit.”
“I have to talk a lot. Violet doesn’t know that red is dangerous.”
“Fred, can you please go to your room?”
“But we aren’t done yet!”
“Yes, I think you are.”
“It’s okay, Fred. We’re done.”
For the first time Fred looks into the camera, as if he’s seeing something that he hadn’t noticed before. Then he goes. Shadows flit across the green-brown clouds.
“I don’t think this is working out.”
“Albert, you’re overreacting.”
“We’re just too different.”
“That could be to our advantage.”
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“I love you.”
“I thought that’s a concept you aren’t convinced by.”
“At least take a little time before you make a decision. Don’t do it for me. Do it for us.”
March 4, 2002
“Is the camera running?”
“Of course not.”
“The red light’s on.”
“It’s off. Don’t you believe me?”
Albert in a coat and hat on a park bench. A torn-open envelope in his left hand.
“Violet, what is this?”
“Tickets.”
“I can see that.”
Violet’s reddened hand moves toward Albert. He flinches. The sound of crows cawing.
“I want to apologize.”
“With first-class tickets?”
“You don’t return my calls. Fred says you were in Königsdorf the other day. You could have told me.”
“You told me to take some time.” He slips the tickets back into the envelope. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“Why not? One of my father’s friends is putting his house in Newfoundland at our disposal, right on the east coast, you know, there should be tons of blueberries, we can hike the East Coast Trail and look for whales. And we’d be far away from here.”
“And what about the camera?”
“I could leave the camera here.”
“You could.”
“Really!”
“And Fred?”
“You could tell him you’re at Helena.” Her hand reaches for his. “So, what do you think?”
March 7, 2002
A curtain covers the only window in the room. A knock on the door. An older man’s voice from off camera: “Are you okay?”
Violet: “Yes.”
“Why don’t you come on out for a while?”
“Go away!”
Footsteps fading. Violet’s hand, with gnawed fingernails, reaches for the camera. Her pale face appears.
“I eat rice pudding with too much sugar. I cocoon myself in the bedsheets. I don’t go to the bathroom for so long that my belly hurts. The cell phone has grown into my hand. The ‘redial’ button is sticking. I press it every few minutes. Even though you never answer, I think every time that you’re going to, you’re going to explain that you were out, that you’re sorry you canceled the trip, that now it’s clear to you how wrong it was, and you want to make up for it, and that you’re already on your way to me, with two new tickets.”
She weeps.
Two Fingers
Violet had sent Albert these seven recordings after their breakup. And he’d made the mistake of watching them. It was with difficulty that he prevented himself from calling Violet and apologizing. That would only have unnecessarily extended the separation phase, thought Albert again, as he finally approached the airfield. He waited beside the only barn in sight and watched a prop plane with a glider in tow take off. The hill on which the church with its onion dome rose from among the farmhouses of Königsdorf was surrounded by a flat plane of moorland, where the glider airfield had been built back in the fifties.
The street he’d come down, still damp with dew, ran past the barn into town. From the opposite direction, a new Beetle, solar yellow, was approaching — it slowed, and finally drew to a stop a few steps away from him. The engine cut off, but the driver’s-side door didn’t open. It made Albert think of a scene from some sort of Upper Bavarian mafia flick. Violet clearly wanted him to come to her. He obliged. She had her head turned away, he had to knock on the window, and then she took her time rolling it down, and turned her face only halfway toward him, as if she hadn’t come out of her way to Königsdorf just to see him, as if she got up early every Saturday morning and drove out across the foggy moor to the airstrip, as if she hadn’t lain awake all night wondering what could be so important that he couldn’t tell her about it over the phone.
“Hello, Albert,” she said, looking at him and then away again.
Albert couldn’t explain it, but now, seeing her again after so long, he doubted whether he’d made the right decision back then, not answering her calls anymore. To his own surprise he realized he wasn’t just glad but happy to see her; he wanted to give her a hug.
“Hello,” he greeted her, uncertain whether he ought even to ask her to get out of the car, because he didn’t believe she’d do it. From where he was standing, all he could see of her was her smooth, white left cheek.
“Albert,” she said, clutching the wheel, “why am I here?”
He laid his hand on the side panel of the Beetle. Maybe this was a beginning: “It’s nice that you’re here.”
“You think it’s nice here?” She pointed at the airstrip. “It reminds me that I gave you two tickets once. Tickets we never used.”
“Shit. I hadn’t thought of that.” Albert withdrew his hand. “How’ve you been?”
Violet looked at him again, but didn’t turn away this time: “Totally great!”
He read the real answer in her red-rimmed eyes.
The previous day, fifteen minutes before his call had reached her, Violet had been on her way to the office. Stuck in traffic in the firm’s car, a Jeep Cherokee, still umpteen one-way streets distant from the production company’s parking lot, on a Friday evening. It was one of those lonely situations in which thoughts of Albert resurfaced, thoughts she did her best to chase off by saying “Violet!” loudly to herself. But it didn’t help, and so she edged the Jeep to the right of the Munich ring road, turned off without using her blinker, and stopped at a gas station. She didn’t get out; the tank was two-thirds full. Her right hand gripped the engaged emergency brake. The cinnamon bubblegum scent from the car’s last cleaning filled her nose, and she rolled down the window to replace it with the odor of gas. For the hundredth time, she read, on a label affixed to the visor, K&P Commercial—a commercial advertising agency her father had a good relationship with, and which had allowed her to snag, without even having to go through an interview, one of those internships that every other media and communication studies student yearned for. Though she couldn’t understand why they did. She spent most of her time ferrying actors, camera operators, directors, and friends of the producers, or rattling stacks of film cans across Munich. This was supposed to help her make “contacts,” so-called. Since she’d had her license for only half a year, she had her hands full simultaneously studying the Google driving directions, shifting gears, steering, and obeying traffic signs and one-way streets, which had a way of funneling inexperienced drivers to the most remote corners of the city in no time at all. Violet had already had to call the office two times, with a lump in her throat, begging for help. And alongside all that, she was supposed to make “contacts”?