by Herman Koch
“Can we stay here?” Julia asked.
“Stay here?” I said. “What do you mean, stay here?” I tried to make eye contact with Judith, but she had just put two bottles of white wine on the table and was handing the corkscrew to Stanley. I felt my face grow warm. My heart began to pound. “Do you mean you want to stay over here? I don’t think there’s enough space.”
“No, I mean all of us,” Julia said, and she squeezed my shoulders a little harder. “That all of us stay over here. And not at that stupid campground anymore.”
Judith stepped aside, away from the table, to just behind my wife. She looked at me.
“We invited you on the evening of the party,” she said. “But then Stanley and Emmanuelle dropped in from America and now there’s really no more space in the house. But I figured, you have a tent. Why don’t you pitch it here in the yard?”
I looked back. The way she stood there, her face just out of range of the candlelight, I couldn’t see her eyes clearly.
“Please?” Julia said quietly in my ear. “Please?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Where would we do that? I mean, it seems like way too much bother for you. You already have guests. That would be an awful lot of people all of a sudden.”
“Nonsense!” That was Ralph. “Many hands make the merrier …” He laughed loudly. “Or however it goes. There’s enough room here.”
“I was thinking of over there, at the side of the house,” Judith said. “Where the Ping-Pong table is. There’s enough room there for a tent. And you can all shower inside and everything.”
There was a loud pop. We all looked at Stanley, who had pulled the cork out of the bottle. “Sorry,” he said. “No, I also mean sorry that we got here before you did. We didn’t know you’d been invited.”
“It doesn’t seem like a good idea to me,” Caroline said. “The ground back there is hard as a rock. You can’t pitch a tent there. We’ll just go back to the campground later on.” She looked at me, then spoke to Julia. “You two can come over here whenever you like. And we can meet up at the beach. But at the campground we have more room. It’s more relaxed for everyone.”
“I think that campground is dumb,” Julia said.
“Listen, the ground isn’t much of a problem,” Judith said. “And you’re out of the wind there. There’s a pile of bricks in the garage—you wouldn’t even have to use tent pegs. Not much danger of getting blown away here.”
“Can we, Daddy?” Julia said. She squeezed my shoulders so hard now that it almost hurt. “Can we, please?”
It was almost midnight by the time we drove back to the campground. Caroline didn’t say a word the whole way, but after we’d said good night to the girls, she announced that she was going to sit outside the tent and smoke a cigarette.
I was tired. I’d had too much white wine. What I felt like doing was crawling into my own sleeping bag, beside my two daughters. But Caroline had stopped smoking two years ago. She hadn’t answered me earlier in the evening, when I’d asked what she thought about moving our tent to the yard at the summer house. She had simply tapped a cigarette out of Emmanuelle’s pack and lit it in silence. Later, she had smoked a few more. I didn’t count them. More than five, I reckoned. When we said good-bye, Emmanuelle had handed her the almost-empty pack.
It seemed to me like a good idea, in other words, to join my wife outside the tent for a while.
“So tell me, what was I supposed to say?” she asked, only moments after I had sunk down into my folding chair. She tried to whisper, but it sounded louder than a whisper. She spat the words out. I thought I even felt saliva hit my cheek. “If you just sit there and say that it sounds good to you, to camp out in those people’s yard? And then, only after that, do you ask what I think about it?! With the kids standing there? What was I supposed to say? The only thing I can do is ruin it for Lisa and Julia. Which makes me the nagging mother who always ruins things again. And it makes you the fun daddy who always thinks everything is okay. Damn it, Marc, I could have curled up in a ball and died!”
I didn’t say anything. I saw the tip of her cigarette flare up in the darkness. Flare up in a rage. When we met we were both still smokers. In bed we lit each other’s cigarettes. I had quit a couple of years before she did. After the children were born, we had only smoked in the yard, anyway.
“I say to you that when I’m on vacation I don’t feel like having other people around. Especially not during the first week. And you say okay, that’s fine, we can leave tomorrow if you want. And we sit there for one evening eating fish and listening to all that la-di-dah about expensive TV series and you make a complete about-face.”
“It was because of Julia,” I said. “I know. I’m a spineless softy. I can’t say no. But it’s just that I saw how much fun they were having in the pool and with that Ping-Pong table. The boys are nice. That’s something we have to take into consideration, isn’t it? I find it more relaxing, with just the four of us on vacation, too. But it can’t hurt, every once in a while, to look at it from their perspective. How much fun is it for our girls to be off alone with their parents?”
“Marc, that’s not the point! Don’t start acting like you’re the only one who thinks about how to make the vacation fun for the girls, too. I can see that they have fun with those boys. But that doesn’t mean we have to turn around and give up all our privacy just like that. What really gets me is the way it went. The way you put it, there was no way I could say no.”
I sensed an opening. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. A curtain slipped aside: Outside the window, day was dawning. During a normal argument I would have stubbornly kept insisting that she couldn’t whine about her own privacy when we were on vacation with two teenage girls. That as a mother she shouldn’t always try to worm her way into the role of victim. But this was no normal argument.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t really realize that. I should have asked in a different way. Or at another moment. I’m sorry.”
Then neither of us said a word. For a few seconds there I thought she was crying. But it was her lips sucking on the cigarette filter.
I leaned over and found her wrist in the darkness. I wrapped my fingers around it gently.
“How many cigarettes do you have left?” I asked.
“Marc, please. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“No, really. How much can it hurt, one cigarette? Tonight I feel like smoking a cigarette. Here, outside. With you.”
“You know what it is? Lately, sometimes, I’m really worried. About you. About how you view your patients.” I fished around in the dark, trying to locate the pack of cigarettes. At last I found it, amid the pine needles under my wife’s chair. “You always used to talk about them in a way that made it clear that you stood above all that. Above all those artists and wannabes. You considered yourself better than them. And rightly so. You hated those opening nights and vernissages and book launches just as much as I did. All that hollow rubbish from people who think they’re superior to the rest of mankind just because they do something with art. So-called painters who never sell a painting, directors who make movies that sell maybe a hundred tickets. But who meanwhile look down on people who can make their own living. Even on people who can heal other people. Like you.”
“Caroline …”
“No, wait, I’m not finished yet. That’s what hurts me the most. The way they look at you. I sometimes wonder whether you even notice it yourself. I do. They look down on you, Marc. Deep down in their hearts they think you’re just a dead-average, dumb little doctor. A doctor who doesn’t amount to anything because he can’t paint some stupid fucking painting that no one wants to buy. Who refuses to beg for money to produce another disgusting play or some dismal film that no one wants to see. I see it in everything they do. Even in the way they look at me. In their eyes, of course, I’m even lower than you are. The doctor’s wife. The scum of the earth. How much lower can you get? That’s what I see them thinking. And then they l
ook around to find more interesting company to talk to. The faster they can ditch this dumb, boring doctor’s wife, the better.”
“Caroline, you shouldn’t —”
“Shut up. I’m not finished yet. I want you to just listen to me. After this I’ll never talk about it again. Never. I promise.”
I took Caroline’s cigarette from between her fingers and used it to light mine.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“I can’t take it anymore. Or rather, I could still take it, as long as you knew deep in your heart that you stand above them. But is that still true? Do you still feel like you’re above all that, Marc?”
I thought about it. I thought about what I felt deep in my heart and I knew the answer. I’d fantasized about it often enough, at moments when it all became too much. What would be lost, really, if I just gave them all an injection? I fantasized from time to time. Which films that “absolutely needed to be made,” as a patient once put it, would then remain unmade? Which paintings would remain unpainted? Which books unwritten? Would it really be such a loss? Would anyone even notice?
Sometimes, in between patients, I would spend thirty seconds sitting alone at my desk. Then I would imagine how it might go. I would call them in, one by one. Left arm? Right arm? Could you roll up your sleeve? It’s just a little pinprick, done in no time. Within a week I could finish the job. The film-production schedules would be shelved. The performances canceled. The books would remain unwritten. Would anything really be lost? Or would a sense of relief soon gain the upper hand?
“What are you laughing about?” Caroline asked.
“No, I was thinking what it would be like if they weren’t around anymore,” I said. “My patients. I mean, if I were to set up my practice all over again. A sign on the door: As from today we accept only normal patients. Patients who work from nine to five.”
I drew on my cigarette and sucked in the smoke. It felt good. It felt like the first time. The first time on the playground. And just like the first time, I had a coughing fit.
“Careful, Marc,” Caroline said. “You’re not used to it anymore.”
“But what do you mean exactly, about me no longer standing above it? Why do you think that?”
“I don’t know, but I think it started after you met this Ralph Meier. It’s like … it’s almost as though you admire him. You never did that before, admire a patient. You hated all of it. All those opening nights you had to go to. You thought it was all a waste of time—that’s what you always said.”
I took a second drag on my cigarette. A bit more carefully this time, to keep from having another fit.
“Well, maybe ‘admire’ is putting it too strongly, but you have to admit: Ralph’s got talent. Anyway, he’s different from those so-called artists who find themselves so interesting. He really can act. I mean, you thought he was good, too. In Richard II.”
“Sure, I thought he was very good, despite his loathsome personality. You have to be able to keep those things separate, as far as I’m concerned. A person’s talent and what they get up to in private. But I’m talking about something else. It’s not so much that you admire his talent, it’s more like you think that their lives are interesting. I noticed that back at that garden party. And now there’s this. All the trouble you went to, to find a campground near them. And how enthusiastic you were about the idea of setting up our tent in their yard. It’s as though, consciously or not, you’re overly eager to be around them. I think that’s weird. You’re not like that, Marc. You weren’t like that. That’s not the Marc I know. And it’s not the Marc I admire … or used to admire. The Marc who would never, ever consider spending his vacation at the summer house of one of his patients. Not even if it that patient was a famous actor. Especially not if he was a famous actor.”
I heard the sound of the tent being unzipped. Then Lisa was standing there, in her pajamas. She was rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Are you two fighting?”
I reached out and pulled her to me. “No, sweetheart. We’re not fighting. What makes you think that?”
“I hear you talking all the time. I can’t sleep.”
I had my arm around her waist and pressed her against me. And Lisa placed her hand on the top of my head and ran her fingers through my hair.
“Daddy!”
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“You’re smoking!”
By reflex, I made a move to stub the cigarette out on the ground, but that would only have made me look even more guilty.
“You never smoke, do you?” Lisa asked.
“No,” I said.
“So why are you doing it now?”
In the dark I saw the glowing tip of Caroline’s cigarette dive for the ground and then go out.
“Listen, it’s just once. Only for really special—”
“But you mustn’t smoke! Smoking is so bad for you. If you smoke, you die. I don’t want you to smoke, Daddy. I don’t want you to die.”
“I’m not going to die, sweetheart. Look, I’m already putting it out.”
I crushed the cigarette firmly into the ground.
“You two never smoke,” Lisa said. “Mom never smokes. So why do you smoke?”
I took a deep breath. I felt my eyes stinging, but it wasn’t from the smoke.
“Daddy never smokes, either,” Caroline said. “He just wanted to try it, to see how filthy it used to taste.”
None of us spoke. I pulled my daughter up tighter against me and ran my hand up and down her back.
“Are we going to that pool tomorrow?” Lisa asked.
I didn’t say a word. In the darkness, I counted the seconds. One, two, three … I heard Caroline sigh deeply.
“Yes, darling,” she said. “Tomorrow we’re going back to that pool.”
That was how our stay at the Meiers’ summer house began. Next to the summer house, I should say. Beside the summer house. In the end, the earth turned out not to be too hard for the tent pegs. Once I had unrolled the groundsheet, as I started putting the poles together, I looked questioningly at Caroline.
“No, love,” she said. “This time you get to do it all by yourself.”
Then she walked off to the pool.
We had thin, self-inflating air mattresses. The ground wasn’t as hard as everyone had thought, but it was hard. Through the air mattresses you could feel every bump and every stone I’d overlooked while setting up the tent. And our site was more or less next to the Ping-Pong table. I went to sleep at night and woke in the morning to the ticktock of the balls. Alex and Thomas didn’t have to go to bed at a fixed time. When they weren’t playing Ping-Pong, you would hear them bouncing off the diving board until long after midnight.
Caroline didn’t say anything. She didn’t say, “So, are you happy now? This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” She just looked at me. And then she smiled.
We went along with the Meiers to the local markets. Markets where Ralph haggled loudly over the prices of fish, meat, and fruit. “They all know me,” he said. “They know I’m not just your average tourist. You don’t have to tell me what two pounds of prawns are supposed to cost.” We went to restaurants where he always made a point of waving away the menu. “At places like this, you don’t order from the menu. You ask them what’s fresh.” Which he then did. He patted the waiters on the back and pinched their bellies chummily. “You won’t get this anywhere else,” he told us. Platters of marine animals were set before us. Always marine animals. In all shapes and sizes. Marine animals, some of which I didn’t even know existed. Marine animals, some of which left you having to guess which end you were supposed to start eating first. I’m a meat-eater myself. Ralph didn’t even give me time to look at the menu. A few times I succeeded in catching a waiter’s eye and pointing to a dish I’d seen on a neighboring table. A meat dish. A dish smothered in a dark-brown sauce, with bones sticking out of it. “What have you gone and ordered now?” Ralph would cry, shaking his head. “When you’re here, you e
at fish. Tomorrow we’ll buy meat for the barbecue. We’ve got a farm where they sell fresh lamb and pork right from the barnyard. The meat here comes from the supermarket. This is a fish restaurant. So bon appétit!”
On days when we weren’t hanging around the pool, we went to the beach. Or, more precisely, we went to little beaches. The normal beach where we’d run into one another the first time wasn’t good enough. “Everyone goes there,” Ralph said, without bothering to explain what was wrong with that. The little beaches Ralph took us to were above all hard to get to. From where we parked the cars it was usually an hour’s scramble over almost impassably rocky paths, overgrown with thistles and thorns that left your bare legs scratched and bloody. Insects with abdomens striped red and yellow buzzed through the shimmering hot air and bit you in the calf or neck. Far below you could see the blue sea. “Nobody ever comes here!” Ralph would cry. “Just wait and see. It’s a paradise!” We always went loaded down with things. Ralph and Judith took everything along: deck chairs, umbrellas, a cooler with cold white wine and cans of beer, a picnic basket full of French bread, tomatoes, olive oil, sausages, cheeses, canned tuna, sardines, and the inevitable array of squid. Once at the beach, Ralph would immediately take off all his clothes and plunge into the water among the rocks. “Jesus Christ, isn’t this lovely!” he would splutter. “Alex, toss me those goggles and a snorkel! I think there are crabs here. And sea urchins. Ow! Damn it! Can you look for me, Judith? I think my flip-flops are in that blue bag. Marc, what are you waiting for?”
Indeed, what was I waiting for? I’ve already explained where I stand with regard to naked bodies. The naked bodies of my daily practice. A naked body in a doctor’s office is something different from a naked body out of doors. I looked at Ralph when he emerged from the water and slid his feet into the flip-flops Judith had taken from the blue bag. I looked at the drops of water falling from his body. He shook his head like a wet dog, and even more water flew from his hair. Loudly he blew his nose on his fingers, then wiped them on his thigh. Long ago the first animals had come onto dry land. After that, most of them had gone farther inland. Only something less than two hundred years ago did humans, at first only in small numbers, begin returning to the beach. I looked at Ralph’s hairy groin, from which so much water dripped that you couldn’t tell whether it was seawater or if he was simply pissing unashamedly where he stood. “Marc, come on in, man. You can see all the way to the bottom here.” He rested his hands on his hips and looked around contentedly, at “his little beach,” the existence of which only he was aware. For a few seconds he blocked out the sun with his enormous bulk. Then he turned and, with a few giant steps, the flip-flops slapping loudly against his heels, went back into the sea.
