I send a message to Knut — the address, and instructions to set off at once. Then I open Sibylle’s front door, run up three flights of stairs, want to wait outside her apartment door to get my breath back, but am too impatient for that, and knock. I could also ring the bell, but after she snubbed me like that, I need to make a more impressive entrance.
She opens the door. I’m immediately struck by how good she looks. She isn’t as beautiful as Laura, but she’s more exciting: the long hair, the delicate neck, the bare arms with their colorful bangles. She was my therapist, but she stopped treating me six months ago because, she said, it would be a breach of professional ethics. It doesn’t matter anyway, the therapy was totally pointless, I told her nothing but lies.
“Is the bell broken?”
I walk across the hall and into the living room. There I catch my breath, search for words, and fail to find any.
“Poor guy. Come here.”
I clench my fists, inhale, open my mouth, but can’t say a word.
“Poor guy,” she says again, and already we’re on the carpet. I want to protest and get the two of us to pull ourselves together, for that’s what matters most, knowing how to pull yourself together, but it doesn’t help, because I suddenly realize that I don’t want us to pull ourselves together, what I want is what is going on right here, in her and over her and on her, and why not, because without this, what else is there in the world?
“But—”
“It’s all right,” she whispers in my ear. “It’s all right.”
It’s hot, she has no air-conditioning, she thinks it makes you sick. It seems to me as if I were on my feet and taking a step back so as to watch the two of us: a trifle strange, the whole thing, more foolish than awkward, and I wonder if people who love to discourse on human dignity have ever actually observed this with a sober eye. But at the same time I’m still the man on the carpet and I feel that the moment is about to arrive when I am no longer divided but a single entity, and only for a few fractions of a second do I form the thought that I’m setting myself up for blackmail if there’s a camera in this room, and then I have an image of Laura, whom I’m deceiving again and to whom I’m doing an injustice with my continual lies, but a moment later the image is gone again and all I know is that every person must do what will save him, and everything is finally what it is, and nothing else, and everything is good.
We lie on our backs, her head on my chest. I don’t want to be anywhere else, nothing is bothering me. It won’t last very long.
“How is she?” asks Sibylle.
I have to think to figure out who she means. I cradle her head, and stroke her silky hair. Very soon everything that is bearing down on me will become real again.
“Perhaps I could help her.”
I pull my hand away.
“I mean, I could recommend a colleague. Ancillary talk therapy. When she’s recovered, we can all get on with our lives. She with hers. And the two of us with ours. Together.”
At the beginning I didn’t have any specific plan, it was one of many tales that I spun, but later it turned out to be helpfuclass="underline" no one leaves a wife who has cancer, no one can demand it of anyone else. And sometimes I feel this version is actually true, as if it were playing out in a parallel universe exactly as I’ve told it to Sibylle. I could talk about it with a therapist, but Sibylle doesn’t want to treat me anymore and I wouldn’t want to try it with anyone else, I’ve got enough problems already.
“I have to leave right away,” I say.
How peculiar that I spend all day thinking about her and yet want only to disappear as soon as I’m with her. Gently I push her head to one side, stand up, and start gathering my clothes together.
“You’re always in a hurry.” She laughs sadly. “You leave me sitting in the cinema and then you write such messages! My therapist asked why I do it to myself. Because you’re good-looking? I said he’s not that good-looking, but then she wanted to see a photo and I couldn’t lie about it. Or is it because of this?” She points at the carpet. “Yes, it’s good, it’s really good, but it’s also a kind of transference. My therapist thinks I show reactions that are triggered quite automatically by the collision of regression and aggression. What can I do?”
I clear my throat in an empathetic sort of way, climb into my trousers, button my shirt, tie my tie without using a mirror, and manage to look as though I knew what she’s talking about.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “You’ll make it. You’re stronger than you think.”
“I know.”
She smiles, as if she’d made some enigmatic joke. I smile too and go out of the room. I rush down the stairs and run along the street. There’s an office building on the other side, I take the back entrance, ride up to the second floor, go into Starbucks, and get a soy milk cappuccino with extra froth, so that Knut will see I really have been in the building. Then I ride down again and leave by the other exit. I see Knut immediately.
He’s having an argument with a street sweeper and it looks serious. The man has lifted his broom to use as a weapon, Knut is making fists, and both are emitting an uninterrupted torrent of curses. It’s the heat, everyone is on edge today. Interested, I listen.
“Pig!” roars Knut.
“Son of a bitch!” roars the street sweeper.
“Shithead!”
“Son of a pig!”
“Pig, pig, pig!”
I’m enjoying this, but I don’t have time. So I swallow a mouthful of coffee, put the container on the ground, and approach Knut.
“Lousy, old, greasy, fat pig!” screams Knut. “Baldy! Pig shit!”
I push him at the driver’s door, then get into the backseat.
It’s blissfully cool in the car. As Knut starts to drive, still cursing quietly, my phone vibrates. I see the number and take the call, apprehensively.
“Mother?”
“Be quiet and listen. I—”
“How’s the practice?”
“Far too successful. The whole country wants to have me as their doctor. All because of the broadcast. I—”
“It’s a very interesting program.” I’ve only seen it once. “We never miss a follow-up.”
“I’m an eye doctor. I understand absolutely nothing about all these illnesses. All I do is tell people they should go and see their doctor.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“I wanted to propose an investment to you.”
“A … aha.”
“It’s about some property. My — below our house. Someone wants to buy it, to build on. We have to beat them to it. It would ruin the view.”
“Ah.”
“It would be a good investment.”
“I don’t know.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
I try to think about the previous minutes on the carpet. About Sibylle’s breath next to my ear, about her body in my arms, her hair, her smell. But none of it helps. I have to be back with her again immediately, naked on the carpet again immediately, and probably not even that would suffice.
“Why don’t you say something?” Mother asks. “Why is it impossible to have a normal conversation with you?”
“I can’t hear you anymore!” I call. “Bad connection!”
“I hear you perfectly well.”
“What are you saying?” I hit the Disconnect button.
“Bad connection,” I say to Knut. “It’s become impossible to have a telephone call these days.”
“They should all be locked up!”
“Why?”
“They’re all nuts!”
“Who?”
“All locked up, I said. Nuts, all of them!”
The phone vibrates. I put my thumb on the Disconnect button, but then I answer anyway.