Seven Years, page 20
After some time Antje came back upstairs and said she was hungry, and should she fix some spaghetti for us. When she got no reply, she left and came back with Sophie, who was carrying her cat in her arms and looking apprehensively at us. The two of us are going out for lunch, said Antje with a show of jolly determination. Only when the front door closed did Sonia and I continue talking.
What about Sophie?, I asked. There’s always a solution, Sonia said. You must think I’m a selfish bitch. No, I said, I don’t at all. She doesn’t want to go to Marseilles. Sonia nodded, I know, maybe it’s better if she stays with you. She hesitated. We’re going to have to tell her I’m not her mother. I looked at her doubtfully. She has a right to know, said Sonia. And what if she wants to meet her mother?, I asked. Well, perhaps it doesn’t have to be right away, said Sonia. She said she had felt from the start that what we were doing was wrong. Why didn’t you say anything?, I asked. I was afraid to lose you, said Sonia. And now I’m losing you, I said. Sonia shook her head. She said we would stay friends. Not much would change. She hesitated. Then she asked whether I intended to move in with Ivona. I think it was the first time she said the name. No, I said, that’s over. I wanted to add that I’d never loved Ivona, that she was never any competition for Sonia, but I wasn’t sure if it was true, so I didn’t say it. Who knows, said Sonia, smiling, as if she didn’t believe me. I asked her when she wanted to leave. She said there was no hurry. We hadn’t quarreled, and there was no other man in the picture, and she had to organize everything anyway, an apartment, a job. Are we having Christmas together?, I asked, and with that I suddenly broke down and wept. I didn’t know you could do that, said Sonia, and put her arm around me, and held me close. There, there, she said.
I was surprised that Sonia didn’t insist on taking Antje to the airport. Maybe she wanted to talk to Sophie while I was away, or she hoped Antje would be able to explain it to me, where she had failed. But Antje stayed off the subject and talked about other things. Only when I brought it up, she unwillingly gave me information. She said she had had no idea that Sonia wanted to leave me. On the contrary, she had the feeling that things with us were going better. That’s what I thought too, I said. Maybe she stopped fighting it, said Antje.
I asked her about Sonia’s time in Marseilles. No, said Antje, Sonia hadn’t gone out much. The evening I couldn’t catch her on the phone, she’d gone to the cinema, by herself. If there’d been an affair, she, Antje, would have known. That would make it easier, wouldn’t it? That would have been a reason at least. I asked Antje what she would do in my shoes. Let her go. You mean, she might come back to me sometime, when she’s ready? Antje said nothing. And what if I agreed to go to Marseilles? It’s too late, said Antje.
I had to think of the Frenchman I’d met when I was down in the dumps. He too had kept saying, it’s too late. It’s too late, he said, just as well. Three years ago Sonia had decided to leave me, three years she had stuck it out with me, she had gotten through the probationary period with me, always knowing she would escape me, that she would start afresh when the worst was over. I racked my memory for clues, I asked myself if there wasn’t something that would have told me. But Sonia had remained discreet. She must have been terribly lonely during that whole time.
I dropped Antje outside the departure hall. Do you mind if I don’t come in with you?, I asked. She shook her head and picked up her bag off the back seat. I watched her go, striding into the terminal building. I imagined her taking a taxi in Marseilles, and coming home to an empty apartment, how she would look in the fridge, and then go and eat something in a bistro. Back home, she would switch on the TV and open a bottle of wine, or look through her mail from the last few days, maybe she had messages on her answering machine.
I imagined Sonia in a small apartment in Marseilles. She was working late, and got home tired but somehow still buzzing. Then she went out again, and met a man. I imagined the photographer that Antje had brought home with her. He sat next to Sonia in a club, she put her hand on his thigh and shouted something in his ear. The two of them laughed, it seemed to me they were making fun of me. I’m sure you’ll find someone else soon, Sonia said, you’re not a bad match. But I didn’t want to find anyone. The thought of hanging around in bars and restaurants and going on dates with women, and starting over, was pretty repugnant to me.
I thought about Ivona. I hadn’t seen her since that last night three years before, the only night we’d really spent together. I’d never called Eva, and she’d never gotten in touch with me either.
Presumably they were still both living in the same apartment. I was free to go there and see them, but what would have been the point? Sometimes I would suddenly think about Ivona, something would remind me of her, a smell, a woman on the street, sometimes I wouldn’t even know what the precise trigger was. Then I would get out Sonia’s photo album at home and look at the picture where I could just see her in the background, her out-of-focus, fingernail-sized face, the only picture I had of her. Then I would wish to possess her again, as I had never possessed a human being before or since.
I drove to the parking lot and walked across to the check-in building. Since the opening of the new airport, I’d flown from here a couple of times, but for the first time the ugliness of the building struck me, the way it was erected without the least sense of human proportions. The handful of passengers who were around at this hour seemed to disappear in the cavernous spaces. They darted nervously about, like cockroaches intimidated by the light. It was as though the building was its be-all and end-all, there only to celebrate its own size.
I sat down in a café from where you could look across the hall. At the next table were two young women with little children who hopped around on the leather seats and were fed cookies by their mothers. I listened to their conversation. They were obviously regulars here, and seemed to feel at ease in this sterile place that could have been just about anywhere in the world. Maybe they thought nothing would happen to them here.
I went to the spectators’ gallery. I had once been there with Sophie, but the airplanes hadn’t interested her, and as soon as we got there, she wanted to go home again. The only other people besides me on the terrace were a man with two children, who eyed me suspiciously. Then he turned to his children and said, she’s gone now, and one of the children, a boy of ten or so, asked, where did she go? I don’t see her. There, said the father, pointing into the air, that’s where she is. But there was nothing to be seen where he was pointing except the overcast sky. Come on, he said, and then something else that I didn’t hear.
Way below, a couple of men in blue overalls and yellow luminous vests were loading baggage into a plane. I looked at my watch. Antje’s plane was leaving in half an hour. Slowly it started getting dark, and the colored lights on the runways began to flicker in the cold air. It smelled of jet fuel. Everything, the smell, the noise, the dimming light, gave me an overpowering wanderlust, a desire to leave and never come back, to begin again somewhere, in Berlin or Austria or Switzerland. It was that mixture of trepidation and liberation that I’d only otherwise known with Ivona, and then only for moments at a time. I wasn’t happy exactly, but for the first time in a long while, I felt very light and alert, as though I’d come around after a long period of unconsciousness. I rested my back against the glass and tipped my head back and looked up at the empty sky overhead, that seemed so inexplicably beautiful.
Peter Stamm, Seven Years
