Stella

by Siegfried Lenz

  What you said, Stella, didn’t seem to be addressed to me personally at first. It was as if you wanted to express something as a matter of principle to anyone who might be concerned. “Animal Farm is a fable, an allegory, the story says one thing and also tells us another. Behind what we see going on in the foreground there’s a wider truth; you could describe it as the story of the miseries of revolution.” She stopped in front of the bookshelves and went on speaking as she looked at them. “The animals aren’t so much thinking of the classic demands of revolutionaries—more bread, more freedom. Their aim is to end the domination of human beings, a limited and concrete aim, and they achieve it. But then, with the founding of a new civilization, misery begins. It begins with the formation of social classes and certain individuals’ aspirations to wield power.”

  Now Stella turned back to me. “And as we’re on the subject, Christian, you gave an adequate account of the early chapters, the commandments, the slogans that you compared to the Tablets of the Law, all correct, perfectly accurate, and you quoted that terrible basic principle: ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ But you didn’t mention the outcome of the revolution, or maybe you overlooked it, the outcome typical of so many revolutions. You didn’t spot the power struggles in the ruling class, you missed the dreadful terror that set in after the conquest, and finally, Christian, you didn’t notice that the whole thing is a portrayal of human behavior. There’s a book title—no reason why you should know it, but it says a great deal: Revolution Eats Its Children. In short, you named the causes of the revolution, but you hardly mentioned any of the reasons why it failed.”

  I didn’t try to defend myself, I didn’t do anything like that because I could see you knew more than I did, and everything you held against me was true. But there was one thing I thought I ought to know: what grade you had given me, or were going to give me. When I asked, “If I didn’t write a good essay I suppose I can’t expect a very good grade,” you shrugged your shoulders and said, in a tone with a touch of reproof in it, “I don’t think this is the place to talk about that.”

  Stella was letting me see that we should keep things separate, and for all her affection for me and all her understanding of what we had done, she wasn’t ready to give up authority in her own field. We were not to talk about grades, she had said, so firmly that I made no attempt to persuade her to change her mind, nor did I venture to put my hands on her hips and pull her down on my lap.

  When the telephone rang you didn’t want me to leave your study, you looked at me as you spoke, you were amused, and relieved, this was the call you had been waiting for. It seemed that Stella’s friends, who had been going to take her aboard their yacht ages ago, were ringing again to say they were on their way. As far as I could make out, they didn’t yet know what day they would arrive; the wind was against them. But when I suggested going out to show her the underwater stone fields again, she said no.

  “Later,” she said. “When I come back.”

  And when we parted she said it had been a very surprising visit, certainly intending to suggest that she would rather do without such surprises in the future. In her front garden, I turned to look back, and they were both waving to me, Stella and the old radio operator.

  Alone now, alone in my classroom, I sat in front of the open drawer and looked at Stella’s picture. I decided to tell her everything she didn’t yet know about me, including the near accident by the breakwater that happened when I was checking the stones and saw a huge boulder coming down at me; it would have hit me but for the pressure wave that flung me out of its way.

  The door opened, so quietly that I didn’t even hear it. “There you are,” said Heiner Thomsen, quickly coming over to me. He had a message from Principal Block; the principal wanted to speak to me at once.

  “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “No idea.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Same place as usual.”

  I closed the drawer and slowly went downstairs to Block’s office on the ground floor. He did not come forward to meet me; sitting at his desk, he signaled for me to approach. The way he was looking at me—that penetrating, questioning look—told me at once that he expected something special of me. I felt it was humiliating to be left standing there so long in silence. His narrow lips moved, he seemed to be tasting something; finally he said, “You obviously wanted to conclude our hour of remembrance in your own way.”

  “Me?”

  “You took Ms. Petersen’s photograph away.”

  “Who says so?”

  “A number of people saw you. They were watching when you picked it up, put it under your sweater, and took it away.”

  “They must be wrong.”

  “No, Christian, they are not wrong, and now please will you tell me why you did it? Ms. Petersen was your English teacher.”

  I was prepared to admit that I’d taken Stella’s picture, but standing there in front of his desk I couldn’t think of any reason to offer him, least of all the only reason why I did it. After a moment I said, “All right, I’ll admit I took the photograph. I didn’t want it to get lost. Maybe I wanted to keep it as a memento of my teacher. We all liked her in my class.”

  “But, Christian, you wanted to keep the photograph for yourself, didn’t you?”

  “It ought to be in our classroom,” I said.

  He listened to me with an ironic smile, and then repeated, “In your classroom. I see. Why not in the school hall, on the board with pictures of several other former members of our staff? Why not there?”

  “I can put it there if you like,” I said. “I’ll do that right away.”

  Now Block was looking at me gravely, and I was inclined to think he knew more than I’d assumed, although I couldn’t guess how far his knowledge went. Nothing annoys me so much as being suspected of something and not knowing what. To put a stop to this conversation, I suggested doing what he wanted here and now. “If it’s all right, then, Dr. Block, I’ll go and put the photograph where you want it to be.”

  He nodded. I was dismissed. I was already at the door when he called me back again. He did not meet my eyes as he said, “What we do not say, Christian, sometimes has more consequences than what we do say. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Yes, I understand,” I said, and I made haste to put Stella’s photo where he wanted it.

  Once again, Stella, I carried your photo under my sweater. On my way to the hall I didn’t speak to anyone I passed, I avoided bumping into anyone. The board wasn’t quite full; six photos of former teachers were up there, all of them old men. There was only one who looked as if he might have a sense of humor, a teacher in naval uniform with two crossed flags in front of his chest. He was said to have taught biology, long before my time. I put Stella’s photo between him and a man with a craggy face. I didn’t bother to assess the company she’d keep. You had your place, Stella, and that was enough for me just then.

  Looking at you brought me back something I needed, or thought I needed: the sudden happiness of a touch, the joy that demanded a repeat performance. I was sure, at that moment, I had needed that photograph of you all for myself. The brightness on the beach, the dazzling brightness that Sunday when I was waiting for Stella in the Volkswagen Beetle that Claus Bultjohan had lent me. It was a cabriolet and belonged to his father, who was away in Scandinavia on a TV assignment, making a film about the culture of the Samis who, as nomads, astonishingly had the right to cross the Russian border.

  After my visit to her home, I hadn’t even tried to make a date to meet Stella. Knowing that in this spell of fair weather she would come to the beach on her own to read or sunbathe, I decided to wait for her at a suitable distance from her house. I listened to Benny Goodman in the car. I drove very slowly after her as she walked along, wearing her brightly colored blue-and-yellow beach dress, with her beach bag hanging from a strap over her shoulder. She walked fast and confidently; I stopped suddenly beside her ju
st before she reached the kiosk where she bought smoked fish and magazines. I saw the displeasure in her face, but that expression immediately gave way to surprise and amazement. “Oh, Christian,” was all she said. I opened the car door, and after a moment’s hesitation she got in.

  She promptly sat down on my camera, which I had put on the passenger seat, “Good heavens, what’s that?”

  “Won it in a competition,” I said. “I came in fifth.”

  “Where are you taking it?” she asked, to which I replied, “Anywhere there’s something worth seeing.”

  We stopped at the place where the navigation marks had been brought in for their new coat of paint, though they still had to be cleaned of rust first. How cheerfully you agreed to my idea of taking some photographs here, sitting on the navigation marks, riding on them, clutching them, you played along in almost exuberant spirits, and seemed to be caressing them. Only when I asked you be a car model did you dismiss the idea. I thought of you sitting on the hood, just like those pretty girls in car showrooms, when the breeze lifted your beach dress, and your pale blue panties showed. You quickly waved to me to stop and said, “Not that, Christian, let’s not go as far as that,” and then you asked where I was going to have the film developed. I promised to keep the photos to myself and not show them to anyone.

  Stella photographed me just once that Sunday. We were sitting in the fish restaurant beside the casino; almost all the places on the terrace in the sun were taken. Stella read the menu several times, and her way of coming to a decision amused me: no sooner had she closed the leather-bound menu than she reached for it again, read it, shook her head, and changed her mind. It didn’t escape her that all this amused me, because before she ordered she said, “I sometimes like not being sure, I like to be able to choose.” We ordered plaice wrapped in bacon and fried, with potato salad on the side.

  She admired my skill in cutting the fish, particularly the long incision with which I separated the back fillet from the underside, and tried to copy me, but she failed, and I pulled her plate toward me and did it for her. Stella watched, interested, as I then picked up the skeleton of the fish, carefully licked it clean, with relish, and held it up in front of my face. Stella laughed out loud, turned away, looked back at me, smiling, and said, “Wonderful, Christian, stay just like that, we have to put this on record.” Asking me to open my mouth and put the bones against my lips, she took a photo, and then took another shot. When I suggested that we could take a picture of both of us together she hesitated for a moment, as I had expected. Finally she agreed, and after lunch we went down to the beach and found a place among abandoned sand castles. There we photographed ourselves with the timer. Neither Stella nor I thought that what the photo showed, or rather would show, was anything to worry about. We were sitting on the beach in summer clothes, close together, we were taking care to look happy, or at least pleased with ourselves. I didn’t say so, but I was thinking: I love Stella. And I was also thinking: I’d like to know more about her. You can never know enough when you realize you love someone.

  When you took Faulkner’s Light in August out of your beach bag, stretched out, and told me, as if by way of apology, that you really had to read this, I asked, “Why? Why do you have to read it? It’s not going to be one of our class books, is it?”

  “He’s my favorite author,” you said. “Well, one of my favorite authors this summer.”

  “What do you see in him that’s so special?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “I want to know everything about you,” I said.

  Without stopping to think much about it you initiated me into the world of Faulkner, his celebration of the Mississippi wilderness where bear and stag reigned supreme, the opossum and the water moccasin were at home, before the land was transformed by the saw and the coming of cotton mills. But you also told me about his characters: the masters and the scoundrels who imposed their own law on the wilderness, contributing to the fate of the South.

  I liked listening to her. She didn’t speak as she did in class, she was more hesitant, not playing the teacher. Her way of talking flattered me. I could almost have been her colleague. Naturally I made up my mind to read her favorite author at the first chance I got, or at least try to read him. We lay there side by side in silence for some time; I turned toward her and looked at her face. Her eyes were closed. Stella’s face was even more beautiful than it had been on the pillow, and now and then I detected the hint of a smile. Although I’d have liked to know what she was thinking about, I asked no questions. Just once, I did ask her who that man Colin was, and she said briefly a fellow student from her teacher training college who was now teaching at a school in Bremen. But once I thought I did know what she was thinking of, when an expectant expression appeared on her face. I suspected she was thinking of me, and she confirmed that by putting her hand on my stomach. You can think of someone even if he’s there beside you.

  Who spotted us I’m not sure. Maybe it was Heiner Thomsen or one of his gang coming down to the beach to play volleyball. Their voices announced their arrival. But suddenly the voices died away, and the next moment I saw several figures searching for cover behind the sand castles, ducking low as they crept up to us. They wanted to see anything there was to see, anything they could talk about at school. I didn’t need to point out my classmates to Stella; she had noticed them already, and she just winked at me, stood, and strolled toward the sand castles. One of them jumped up, then two more of them, and three, they stood there looking awkward, as if caught in the act of doing something wrong. One of them managed to say hello. Stella inspected them cheerfully, and said, as if she didn’t take offense at the way they had crept up in secret, “Sometimes it’s nice to spend an hour on the beach. Anyone who wants to join in is welcome.” No one wanted to join in.

  I admired you so much at that moment, Stella, and I could have hugged you when you accepted their invitation to play volleyball with them. They clapped, delighted, and both teams wanted to have you on their side. Only you, all I could do was watch you, and I instinctively thought about sharing a pillow with you again, or feeling your breasts on my back as we embraced. Although you were the mainstay of your team—no one served as well as you did, no one smashed the ball so precisely—it was defeated.

  They tried to persuade Stella to play in the next round too, but she declined in a friendly way, saying she had to go home.

  My classmates stood around the car, watching as Stella put her seat belt on and giving me ironic advice, and one or two of them whistled after us as we drove off. We went straight to her house. The old radio operator wasn’t sitting on the garden seat; two windows were open. I switched off the engine, expecting her to ask me in. As she said nothing, I suggested taking our inflatable out to the stone fields. Stella drew me to her and kissed me. She said, “My friends have arrived; they’re going to pick me up and take me sailing.”

  “When?”

  “It could be tomorrow. I hope so, anyway. I need a few days to myself.”

  “Later, then?”

  “Yes, Christian, later.”

  Before she got out of the car, she kissed me again, and waved to me from the front door, not fleetingly, not casually, but slowly and as if she were telling me to resign myself to our parting. Maybe she wanted to console me too. That was when I first thought of living with Stella. It was a sudden bold idea, and today I know that in many ways it was inappropriate, an idea born only from the fear that my time with her might come to an end. How naturally such a longing for something to last arises.

  Hirtshafen seemed to me a dreary place from the day your friends took you on board their two-master. Sonja had been watching, and I learned from her that they sent a dinghy out to the beach to pick you up and take you over to the Pole Star. Apparently the owner hadn’t been able to think of a more original name for his yacht. You left. I wandered around and sat on the rusting navigation marks for some time, I sat by the three pines and on the wooden bridge, and I
went into the Seaview Hotel without knowing what I would do there. One afternoon I thought of going to see Stella’s father, but I couldn’t think of a reason for any such visit. I just wanted to be around him because I hoped to feel near Stella. Then her letter came.

  I had been cleaning our Katarina, I’d come home tired from working on her, when my father said, “There’s a letter for you, Christian. From Denmark.” I went straight up to my room; I wanted to be alone with it. The sender’s address was written with a flourish and as if to conceal something; it read only: Stella P., Ærø Island. I realized from this vague phrasing that no answer was expected. I didn’t read her letter from the start; first I had to know how she signed it, and I was happy when I read, in English: “Hope to see you soon, best wishes, Stella.” I was so happy that the first thing I did was to think where I would keep her letter.

  You wrote about calm seas, about a good time swimming in a quiet bay, and your party’s visit to a museum of oceanography on another island. There had been so much to see: the skeleton of a stingray, the skeleton of a whale—a huge blue whale that had been stranded on the shore—and several aquariums full of parrotfish and corals and little rosefish. You had particularly liked—and I couldn’t help grinning when I read this bit—a couple of king crabs eating a filleted herring. You called them the most lethargic feeders in all creation; it was a real test of patience to watch them having their dinner. You mentioned the sea horses as well, and how they looked to you like contented little creatures. In the end I couldn’t think of anywhere better to hide Stella’s letter than in my English grammar textbook. As I folded it and put it inside, I thought ahead, without knowing what would happen I thought of some indefinite day, and imagined ourselves looking back and asking, “Do you remember?” Then, sitting side by side, we would read her letter together, perhaps surprised to find how much cause for cheerfulness it gave us.