He was sorry, said Lobenmeier, but the situation was too serious. It could—
Would, said Schlick.
Lobenmeier nodded. Would cost several people their jobs.
I pressed several buttons, but there were no messages. Could I have dreamed it? Had I erased it by mistake? I had to be sure, it was critical that I not make a mistake.
“Be right back,” I cried, and ran out down the corridor to the elevator, which took me noisily downstairs, then through the main hall and into the street. That’s it, I thought, that’s what’s happening to me. You don’t founder because of circumstances, you don’t founder because of bad luck, you founder because of your nerves. You founder because you can’t take the pressure. That’s how, sooner or later, the truth comes out. I turned around slowly. I noticed that passersby were looking in my direction, that a child on the other side of the street was pointing at me, only to be dragged along by its mother. Pull yourself together, I thought, just pull yourself together, if you don’t give up it can work, but you have to pull yourself together. I forced myself to stand there calmly. I glanced at my watch and tried to look like someone mentally checking the day’s appointments. Turn around, I told myself, and go back inside. Get in the elevator. They’re waiting for you. Sit down behind your desk. Save what can be saved. Do something—defend yourself, don’t run away. You’re not going to fall apart. Not yet.
“A problem, dear sir?”
Standing next to me was a startlingly thin man with greasy hair, horn-rim glasses, and a bright red cap.
“Excuse me?”
“Life is hard?” he said with an ingratiating smile. It sounded more like a question than a statement. “Every decision is hard, even organizing the everyday things is so complicated that it can drive even the strongest of us mad. You agree, dear sir?”
“What?”
“So many things are not subject to our will, but some things can be made a little easier. I have a taxi at my disposal.” He pointed to a black Mercedes standing next to us with the door open. “And here’s my suggestion: if there’s someone you would like to see in the next hour, call them. Life is over so quickly. That’s what these little phones are for, that’s why we have all that electrical gadgetry in our pockets. Don’t you agree, dear sir?”
I didn’t understand what he wanted from me. His appearance was repulsive, but his words had a calming effect on me. “That’s a taxi?”
“Dear sir, get in, give me the address, and, you’ll see, it’ll become one.”
I hesitated, but then nodded and let myself sink into the soft leather of the backseat. He got behind the wheel, took some time adjusting the driver’s seat, as if this were not the car he’d come in, repositioned the rearview mirror, and slowly fingered the ignition. “Your address,” he said softly. “Please. I know many things but not everything.”
I gave it to him.
“We’ll be there in a flash.” He turned on the engine and steered out into the traffic. “Are you sure you want to go home? Not somewhere else? No one you’d like to visit?”
I shook my head, pulled out my phone, and dialed Luzia’s number. “Come to me!”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“What are you doing here anyway? I thought you had to be in Zurich for the whole week! Did something happen?”
I rubbed my forehead. Right, I had said that, so that I could get away the next day and spend the weekend with Hannah. “It didn’t come off.”
“Mollwitz again?”
“Mollwitz again.”
“I’m on my way.”
I disconnected and stared at the phone’s tiny screen. And if Hannah really was on her way here? Then I’d done the exact wrong thing, and Luzia couldn’t come anywhere near my apartment. I’d have to call right away—but which one of them? Why were things slipping away from me already? The thin man stared at me in the rearview mirror. I felt faint, and closed my eyes.
“You’re asking yourself why so many things aren’t doable, dear sir? Because a man wishes to be many things. In the literal sense of the word. He wishes to be multiple. Diverse. He’d like to have several lives. But only superficially, not deep down. The ultimate aspiration, dear friend, is to become one. One with oneself, one with the universe.”
I opened my eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t say a word. And if I had, it wouldn’t be anything you don’t already know.”
“Is this even your car?”
“Should that really be your most pressing concern?”
I fell silent until he halted outside my apartment building. For some reason I’d assumed he wouldn’t take any money, but he named a wildly high fare. I paid and got out; when I looked back, the car was already gone.
Luzia was waiting in the corridor outside the door of my apartment. She must have set off immediately. You could really rely on her. “What is it?” she asked. “What?” She was looking at me attentively.
I opened my mouth and shut it again.
She put her hands on my shoulders. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
I didn’t move. We were still standing in the corridor. I took a deep breath and didn’t say a thing.
We went inside. Through the hallway, through my untidy living room, and then, as always, into the bedroom.
Seconds later we were lying there and I felt the firmness of her limbs, saw close up the darkness of her eyes. Her hands fumbled with my belt, my hands slid under her blouse, all of their own accord, without hesitation or reflection, it seemed to happen without our intervention. Then the covers and the nakedness and the panting and her strong hands, her clutching me and me clutching her and then we were already apart again, lying exhausted beside each other, out of breath. There was a thin coating of sweat on her skin. The sight made me melt, to such a degree that I was on the point of saying things that I would have needed to take back a few minutes later. Was she really carrying my child? But I already had two, and they were difficult and disconcerting enough, they looked at me suspiciously and asked questions to which I had no answers, and I wasn’t a good father to them.
“It can’t go on like this,” she said.
My stomach went into spasm. “What?”
“This Mollwitz. You’re too nice. You have to do something.”
I slid my hand under her neck. How soft her hair was. The golden fuzz on her arms. The soft curve of her breast. I would have done anything for her and abandoned anything.
Anything?
Anything except the other one who would call me in a few minutes or perhaps next week or next month or sometime this year at the most inconvenient moment, to tell me that she was coming for a surprise visit and was already in town, on my street or already in the building, on the stairs, right in front of my door. If this were a story, I thought, there would be no point in delaying things, and it would happen right now.
The doorbell rang. I sat up with a jerk.
“What is it?” asked Luzia.
“The bell.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
I stroked her head in silence. I can still confess everything, I thought, I haven’t yet been convicted of anything. Would you forgive me? But I knew she wouldn’t.
Without pulling on my clothes, I went out into the hallway. If I opened the door now and Hannah was standing outside, what should I do? Maybe there was a way to fake my way out of it. In films and stage farces there’s always one, just as everything looks hopeless. The leading actors find the most brilliant subterfuges, open and slam doors, push one woman into one room and the other into another, they maneuver whole groups of people around the smallest spaces without anyone bumping into anyone else. An entire genre specialized in nothing else. Anyone with sufficient determination could surely do the same thing. Almost anything could be accomplished with the necessary strength of mind. Even a double life. But who has it, I asked myself as I stood there naked in the hallway; who has that kind of strength?