Deep in thought, I switched off the phone in case it suddenly rang. No reception, I’d say, it was always plausible; and God knows network outages were always happening, I knew this, it was my job, my expertise. Then I made a fist, banged on Paul’s door, and yelled, “Open Up, Young Man!”
How long can it keep going? I would have said three weeks, maybe a month of danger, freedom, and playing a double game. But the month passed, more weeks went by, and I still wasn’t unmasked.
How did it happen in the old days? How did you lie and deceive, how did you have affairs, how did you get away and manipulate and organize your secret activities without the help of ultra-sophisticated technology? I had lived in those times. Yet I could no longer imagine it.
I sent Hannah messages supposedly emanating from Paris and Madrid, Berlin, Chicago, and even, one memorable day, Caracas: I described air yellow with pollution and streets crawling with cars in a hectically charged paragraph which I composed on my laptop in Luzia’s kitchen while she stood barefoot and in panties in front of the stove and the autumn rain drummed its fingers against the glass. She dropped a cup of coffee, shards exploded all over the floor, the black liquid formed a Rorschach image.
“What are you writing?”
“An audit report for Longrolf.”
And when I told her about poor Longrolf (three children, four wives, alcohol problems, I was now a habitual liar and invented things for no reason at all), I saw myself four days later in my dining room with the little one crawling around on the carpet while Hannah organized holiday photos on the PC which I never used for safety reasons, pictures of the four of us on some overcast beach—having to write Luzia a report on my meeting with the aforesaid Longrolf: the dreariness of the corporate floor, the interoffice intrigues, Longrolf’s look of perpetual malice, and Smetana’s porcine face, the sheer misery of the whole thing and oh my darling I wish I were back with you. After which I’d slip out to the front of the house (“I’m taking out the garbage!”) to prop myself against the wall in the lee of the wind and use my cell phone to call her and tell her how I’d managed to sneak out into the stairwell for a moment just to hear her voice.
A lie? Of course, but hadn’t I truly been thinking about her all the time, wasn’t I eating my heart out with longing to be near her, while I played with the children or had the same old conversation with Hannah about taxes and the water bill and kindergarten and the mortgage, wasn’t I obsessing about her body, her face, and her slightly hoarse voice? What difference did it make whether it was Longrolf who was keeping me away from her or a more or less alienated companion with two noisy children who regarded me as a stranger, and whose existence for as long as I was with them struck me as the product of some confused dream? And conversely, when I locked myself in Luzia’s bathroom to run the taps while I talked to Hannah and then the boy (“That noise? It’s a bad connection!”), my distant family seemed closer and more dear to me than ever, and Luzia out there in bed a sudden weighty encumbrance like the Congress I’d just claimed to be attending on the phone. I loved them both! And most of all I always loved the one I wasn’t with at that moment, the one I couldn’t be with, from whom the other one was keeping me separate.
I began to wonder if I was crazy. I woke up in the middle of the night, listened to the breathing of the woman next to me, and wondered for several anxious seconds not so much which one she was, but who I was at this moment and what labyrinth I’d strayed into. Only one step at a time, none of them a large step, none of them difficult, but without realizing it I’d gone so far into it that I could no longer see the way out. I closed my eyes and lay still and surrendered to the cold rush of panic. But when day dawned and I got up and donned each of my roles as if I had no other, everything seemed easy and almost back to normal again.
. . .
Two days before the Congress of European Telecommunications Providers, I sat in my office on the phone with the babysitter we’d arranged for. Hannah and I wanted to go together, finally we were making time for each other. My presentation was to be short and didn’t require any preparation, and the hotel promised luxury and a spa. As I hung up, I saw that an e-mail had just arrived from Luzia. Just one line: your congress. I’m coming too.
I rubbed my eyes and thought, as I had every hour of every day, that sooner or later everything was going to explode and a flaming catastrophe was bearing down on me.
“Better not,” I wrote, “a lot of work, dreadful people.”
That’s when I realized.
If Luzia knew about the Congress, for I had said nothing about it, that meant she knew someone who was also going to be there. Then I couldn’t go with Hannah; far too big a risk that Luzia would hear about it.
And conversely. What if I took Luzia? Hannah didn’t know many of my colleagues. She almost never came to this city, and my job had never interested her. But the risk was too great. For a moment I hated both of them.
I called Hannah.
“Oh, what a pity!” She sounded as if her mind were elsewhere, something was preoccupying her completely. I saw her in front of me: buried in a book, eyes bright but dreaming, and the situation—that I wasn’t there with her, that I had another woman, that nothing was the way it was supposed to be—brought tears to my eyes.
“It’s not going to work,” I said. “Have to stay. Too much going on in the office.”
“Whatever you think.”
“Another time, yes? Soon.”
She cleared her throat distractedly. In the background I heard the burble of music on the radio. “Yes, yes, fine.”
Luzia’s reply popped up on my screen: ridiculous, it’s going to be fun. I need to get out from time to time as well. If you’re going, I’m going too. End of discussion!
“Don’t be sad,” I said.
“I understand,” said Hannah. “I understand.”
I hung up. With Luzia it was going to be more difficult, because she was always wanting to know things about my work. Why, when I didn’t want to know them myself! But the department had to be represented there: if I went alone, Luzia would come, if I went with Luzia, Hannah would hear about it, if I went with Hannah, Luzia would hear about it; there was only one answer. I summoned Lobenmeier.
Impossible, he said. Trip to Paris. Long planned. Wife’s idea. Wedding anniversary.
I called for Schlick.
Impossible! Parents, birthday, big party, only son, had to be there. Besides which, family farm. Outbreak of foot-and-mouth just diagnosed.