“Love you back,” she calls, and although it sounds fake, I know it’s true.
Being distracted, I take the first step of the stair with my left foot. Such a thing should never happen; in this house of all places I cannot afford to be careless. From the beginning, even the very first time we looked at it, I didn’t feel good here.
Do not think about the attic, not right now. I have to pretend I’ve forgotten it’s even there. Everything about it is repellant: the slope of the roof meets the floor at a particularly hideous angle, mud-brown rectangles are printed on the wallpaper, because of the blobs of dirt in the glass shade the old lamp casts a most horrible pentangle on the floorboards, and behind the narrow table, put there by someone, who knows who, many years ago, is an awkward gap. You only have to spend a few minutes up in it to know someone died there.
There’s nothing too unusual about that. In an old house someone will have croaked in almost every room. But what happened in this attic was a particularly hard way to die. It was long and drawn out, and it was extremely painful. Ghosts appeared and demons made themselves visible, attracted by the death throes. But how could I have explained all that to Laura? Seven and a half million. She fell in love with the house at first sight. Moorish tiles on the terrace, five bathrooms, a media room. What was I supposed to do?
So one night I went up there. It’s possible: people can confront fear, until it submits and retreats. I lasted almost three hours. The table, the shadows, the lamp, me. And someone else.
Then I ran. Down the stairs, across the hall, into the garden. A half-moon in the night sky was surrounded by shimmering clouds. I must have lain in the grass for a good hour, and when I slipped back into bed, Laura woke up and told me about her dream, some brightly colored bird, a friendly mailman, and a locomotive. And I stared up at the ceiling and thought about how there will be that room up there for as long as we live. Even when we no longer live here, when other people have replaced us for the longest time, it will still be there.
I open the front door. My God, it’s hot. The car is waiting, with the engine running, Knut sitting sullenly at the wheel. He hates waiting. I have no idea how someone like him became a chauffeur. Besides which I’m baffled about why he’s called Knut. He’s Greek and looks it: stubble, black hair, brown skin. On a long journey once he told me the story of his name, but I didn’t listen, and if I asked again now, he’d be offended. I get in. Knut drives off without so much as a hello.
I close my eyes. Already I hear him honking the horn.
He yells, “Idiot!” and honks again. “Did you see that, boss?”
I open my eyes. The street is completely empty.
“Smack at us from the left!” he yells.
“Unbelievable.”
“Idiot!”
While he bangs on the steering wheel, curses, and points this way and that, I ask myself for the thousandth time how I can get rid of him. Unfortunately he knows too much about me; I’m sure that the day after he was fired, he would be writing anonymous letters to Laura, to the police, to anyone that occurred to him, what do I know? The only possibility would be a discreet assassination. But if I really did want to kill someone, he’d be the only person I’d know to ask for help. He’s one tricky customer. I pull out the telephone and look at the market. Prices of raw commodities have fallen, the euro hasn’t recovered against the dollar, and the IT papers, which were overvalued, are exactly where they were yesterday. I don’t get it.
“Hot!” cries Knut. “So hot, so hot!”
I was convinced that IT stocks would fall. On the other hand I’ve seen the opposite coming — not out of some insight into the market, but because in the meantime I’ve accustomed myself to the knowledge that everything that happens is the opposite of what I expect. But what should I follow: my insight, or the knowledge that I’m always wrong?
“March, April!” cries Knut. “Always rain. May — rain. Always! — and now this!”
But losses don’t frighten me anymore. If the market had developed the way I said it would, nothing would have changed. Rising share prices won’t save me anymore. It would take a miracle.
The phone vibrates, the screen says, Are you coming today?
Of course, I type.
As I’m hitting the Send button, I’m thinking about what excuse I could use in case she writes back that I should come at once. I have no time. Adolf Kluessen has checked in; he’s my most important client. But she’s usually working during the day, and if she writes that I shouldn’t come until the evening, she’ll feel guilty and that’s helpful, it’s something I can build on.
I stare at the phone. The screen with the gray face stares back. No answer.
And still no answer.
I close my eyes and count slowly to ten — Knut talks and I pay no attention. When I reach seven I lose patience, open my eyes, and look at the screen.
No answer.
Okay, forget it. I don’t need her, I get on better without her! And perhaps this is her revenge for last Sunday.
We met outside the entrance, it was an art movie house, they were showing Orson Welles’s last film, she absolutely wanted to see it, I wasn’t interested, but so what, no other film would have interested me either. The lobby stank of frying fat, and as we stood in the line for tickets we ran out of things to say. We were just taking our seats when a man jumped up in the row right in front of me and yelled my name.
It was such a shock that I didn’t recognize him right away. The first things to organize themselves were his features: mouth, nose, eyes. Then the ears resumed their usual places, and the entity became Dr. Uebelkron, the husband of Laura’s best friend, who was a fixture at all of our garden parties.
I hugged him like a long-lost brother. Then I hit him on the shoulder a couple of times and began to ask him questions like how his wife was doing, and his daughter, and his mother, and what were we all supposed to be making of this heat wave. The film had already started. People around us were shushing and clearly even Dr. Uebelkron wanted to leave things be, but I kept on talking, asking questions, didn’t give him time to answer, and kept manipulating his shoulder mercilessly. When I finally let go of him, he sank into his seat exhausted, without managing to ask who the woman with me was. I checked the time, waited exactly four minutes, pulled out my phone, cried, “Oh no,” “Oh God,” and “Coming right away,” leapt up, and ran out. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the taxi that I realized Sibylle was still in the cinema.
The phone vibrates. Good. Come!
When?
Three seconds later: Now!
Can’t, I type. Important client. It’s habit, so it feels like an excuse, but it’s the truth. I hit the Send button and wait.
Nothing.
So what’s going on, why isn’t she answering? Mobilizing my entire willpower I put the phone away. We’re here.
As always I get out on the street and leave Knut to drive into the underground garage. I can’t go down there, it’s simply not possible. Quickly through the blazing heat, the glass doors are opening already, and I’m in the lobby. The elevator takes me to the twelfth floor. I hurry through the open-plan office, full of identical faces in front of identical screens. Some of them I know, some I don’t, I’m glad that none of them speaks to me. Recently I’ve been forgetting too many names.