“I’ve been thinking.”
“Yes?”
“I must concentrate on myself.”
She stops, evidently to give me the chance to reply. But what do I say?
“It’s only for a while, Eric. To begin with. We’re not separating yet. Everything will sort itself out.”
She looks at me. I look at her.
“Eric, what is it?”
She pushes her hair off her face and waits. Apparently it’s up to me to say something, but what does she want to hear, what’s she talking about?
“I would move out, but it’s impractical. I have to look after Marie, and I also need Ligurna. It’s better if you look and find somewhere else. Then you wouldn’t have such a long journey to the office.”
“To the office?”
“Besides which the house is close to school. I won’t be able to be home much while they’re shooting. Of course you can see Marie whenever you want.”
I nod, because now I understand what she’s saying, even if it makes no sense. The words have a meaning, apparently the sentences do too, but when you put them together, they’re so empty that she could be talking pure nonsense.
“Eric, I can’t get caught up in your games right now.”
I nod as if I understand. Luckily I don’t have to say anything at first, for she stands up and keeps talking. Through a fog I hear her voice speaking about long, lonely hours and how I’m perpetually busy and how money and cold rationality don’t take precedence over everything else. After a while she stops, sits down again, and waits. I look at her helplessly.
“Don’t try that with me,” she says. “Your tricks. Your negotiating tricks. All your tricks. I know you. It doesn’t work with me.”
I open my mouth, take a breath, shut it again.
She talks on. Her arms are so fine, her hands delicate and elegant, again and again the desk lamp catches the diamond ring on her middle finger so that it flashes sparks. Now she’s saying I mustn’t think that it has anything to do with another man, there is no other man, if I thought any such thing I’d be wrong, because there most certainly isn’t another man and I shouldn’t think anything else.
I concentrate on continuing to look at her attentively, and not letting myself get distressed by the fact that the color has drained out of everything and my face feels as if it’s made of cotton wool.
“Answer me, Eric! Stop it! Say something!”
But when I try to search for a reply, everything just retreats still further. I’m back in the cellar, way down, even deeper than I was, and something is coming up the stairs, someone is speaking. Words put themselves together, it’s dark, and there’s a hundredweight pressing down on me. The voice seems somehow not unfamiliar, and from somewhere a crack of light comes in. The window by the desk. I feel as if much time has passed, but Laura is still sitting there talking.
“To begin with everything can go on like normal,” she says. “We can behave as if nothing had happened. We’d fly to Sicily. Next week we’ll go together to the party at the Lohnenkovens’. In the meantime you can look for an apartment. We don’t have to make it hard for ourselves.”
I clear my throat. Did I really pass out here at my desk in front of her eyes, without noticing? Who the hell are the Lohnenkovens?
“I’m not talking about a divorce just yet. It doesn’t have to go that far. But if it does, we have to be sensible. Of course you have good lawyers. That’s the same for me. I spoke to Papa. He’s behind me.”
I nod. But who are they, who are the Lohnenkovens?
“Okay.” She gets to her feet, pushes her hair back off her face, and leaves.
I open the drawer and pick three, four, five pills out of the plastic packet. As I leave the room, my legs seem to belong to someone else, as if I were a marionette, being manipulated by a not-very-skilled puppet master.
In the dining room, they’re all still sitting at the table.
“All done, your call?” My father-in-law smiles at me.
Next to him, Laura smiles too. Her mother smiles, her sister smiles, her daughters smile, only Marie yawns. I have no idea what call he’s talking about.
“Laura,” I say slowly, “did we just … have you …” It could be the effect of the pills. They’re strong, and I took a lot of them. I could have imagined the whole thing.
Or? I took the pills precisely because of Laura. If she hadn’t come to me, I wouldn’t have swallowed so many. So the pills can’t be the reason that I’m imagining Laura said things that made me take the pills. Or?
“Bad news?” My father-in-law is still smiling.
“You should lie down,” says Laura.
“Yes,” says my mother-in-law. “You’re pale. Better go to bed.”
I wait, but no one says anything more. They all smile. I leave the room unsteadily.
Right foot down the first step. I avoid looking in the direction of the cellar door, because I know that if the bolt isn’t fully closed or the door is actually open, my heart will stop. I go through the hall and open the front door.
It’s dark, but the air is still very hot. To my right, pressed against the wall, crouches a shaggy-coated creature that stares at me. Its smell is acrid and biting. As I stop, it bounds away on cloven feet and disappears into the blackness of the hedge.
I haul up the garage door. Knut is already off duty, I have to drive myself. Perhaps I shouldn’t be doing this, given the state I’m in, but I’ll manage it somehow. The engine rumbles into life and the car rolls onto the street. I see my house in the rearview mirror. A pale glow of light is emanating from the attic. Who could be up there?
But I’ve already rounded the corner.
Please no accident now, not after all the pills. This time I’m not calling Sibylle, I want to surprise her.
And if she isn’t alone?
The thought cuts through my daze. The car swerves into the middle of the street, horns blare, but I get it under control again. If there’s a man with her, I’ll have to kill him! I turn the steering wheel and a yellow plastic garbage container gets in my way. I dodge, but it hits the right side of the car so hard that the lid flies off and cardboard boxes go sailing all over the street. I brake, and the car stops. Pedestrians are staring at me. A car stops on the other side of the street; two men get out and come toward me.
I’m ready to step on the gas and run them over, but that’s what they intend: I’m supposed to lose control of myself. I get out, fists clenched.
“Do you need help?” one of them asks.
“Are you hurt?” asks the other.
I start to run. I run through a narrow alley, jump over the fence surrounding a building site, clamber over an excavator shovel and another fence, and keep running until I lose my breath and look around with a pounding heart. No one seems to be following me. But how can I be sure? They’re so cunning.
A pedestrian zone. I detour around two women, a policeman, and two youths, Adolf Kluessen, and two more women. Kluessen? Yes, I saw him quite clearly, either it was Kluessen himself or they sent someone who looks just like him. For a moment Maria Gudschmid’s face surfaces under a streetlight, but this at least means nothing, because all sorts of women look just like her. I leave the pedestrian zone, cross a street, walk up a narrow ramp, and reach the front door of Sibylle’s building. It’s locked. I press the buzzer.
“Yes?” It’s her voice in the loudspeaker, and it comes so quickly that she must have been waiting at the door — but not for me, she didn’t know I’m coming, so who’s she waiting for?
“It’s me,” I say into the microphone.
“Who?”
If she doesn’t let me in now, if she doesn’t open the door at once, if she makes me stand out here on the street, it’s over.