Summer House with Swimming Pool: A Novel

by Herman Koch

  “You can put your pants back on,” I said. “I’ll write you a prescription. For more of those pills you had before. We all have trouble sometimes getting back into the swing of things after a long vacation.”

  At the door of my office, I held out my hand.

  “Oh yeah,” Ralph said. “I almost forgot. Your tent. Judith gave me your tent to give to you. It’s in the car. Can you come out and get it?”

  We stood beside the open trunk. I was holding our tent in my arms.

  “I have to go out on a shoot soon,” Ralph said. “You know, that series Stanley was talking about? Augustus? They’re about to start filming.”

  “How is Stanley?”

  He didn’t seem to hear my question. Right above his nose, between his eyebrows, a wrinkle had formed. He gave his head a little shake.

  “Do you think it’s safe for me to go?” he asked. “It’s a two-month shoot. If I have to stop halfway through, it would be a disaster for everyone.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Don’t worry about a thing. It’s usually nothing at all. We’ll just wait for the tests to come back. There will be enough time after that.”

  I waited until his car disappeared around the corner. Halfway down the street there was a Dumpster. I dropped our tent into it and walked back to my office.

  The waiting room was empty. In the examination room I held the little jar up to the light. I squinted, studied the contents for a few seconds, then tossed it into the trash can beside the examining table.

  I’d thought it would all go quickly, but it didn’t. Ralph left for Italy to shoot Augustus and two months later he came back. Only then did he call me to ask about the test results.

  “I never heard anything back from the hospital,” I said, “so I assume they didn’t find anything.”

  “But then they usually say something anyway, don’t they?”

  “Usually. I’ll call tomorrow, just to be sure. How are you feeling otherwise?”

  “Good. I still get tired easily, but then I take one of your miracle pills. That works fine.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, Ralph.”

  I was relieved to hear that he was still tired. I had prescribed Benzedrine to repress the symptoms of fatigue and give the disease time to spread through his body. But it was taking longer than normal. I started doubting myself. My skills as a doctor. Maybe I had seen it all wrong.

  The next day I called him back but got Judith on the line.

  “Is it about the test results?” she asked right away.

  For a minute there, I didn’t know what to say. “I thought …” I started.

  “Yeah, Ralph told you not to tell me anything if it was serious. But you left him feeling so reassured that he told me about it right away. That you said that it wasn’t anything. That’s right, isn’t it, Marc?”

  “I told him it probably wasn’t anything. But to be completely sure, I also sent a sample to the hospital.”

  “And?”

  I closed my eyes. “I called today to ask about the results. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Really? I mean, if there really is something, I want to know, Marc.”

  “No, there’s nothing wrong. Is there something that makes you suspect there’s more to it than that?”

  “He’s still tired all the time. And he’s lost weight, even though he still eats just as much. And drinks just as much.”

  “I took a bit out of his leg. Can you still see that? That spot?”

  “No, the bump’s still there, but it’s not getting any bigger. I don’t look at it every day, of course. But sometimes I feel it. Sort of offhand, if you know what I mean. So that he doesn’t notice. Or at least I hope he doesn’t notice.”

  The bit about Ralph losing weight was good news. And also the fact that the bump wasn’t getting any bigger made sense in terms of the clinical picture. The hostile army had established a beachhead. The attacks were being coordinated from there. Only limited commando forays to start with. Clandestine operations behind the lines. Hit-and-run actions. The terrain was being reconnoitered. Brought into readiness. Later the main forces would meet with no resistance worth mentioning.

  “It’s probably just a fat node,” I said. “It can’t really do any harm in that spot, as long as it doesn’t bother him. But if he wants, I can remove it for him.”

  “Isn’t that something they usually do at the hospital?”

  “At the hospital you end up on a waiting list. This kind of thing can be done really quickly. He can come by anytime. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t even have to make an appointment.”

  Lisa asked about Thomas sometimes. Julia never asked about Alex.

  “Of course you can call him,” we told Lisa. “You can ask him to come over and play.”

  But as the school year progressed, she asked less often. Her school friends crowded her summer romance into the background.

  Things were different with Julia. We had the feeling that, for the time being, she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with boys. And especially not with the boy who would remind her of this last summer vacation. In that context, the word remind was not entirely accurate. Julia remembered things about the summer, but not everything. So she probably remembered Alex, too. But up to what point? To what moment? We didn’t ask her about it. It seemed best to leave things as they were.

  Ralph didn’t drop by again. Apparently he was sufficiently reassured and had indefinitely put off having the “fat node” removed. That, in fact, was a favorable sign. Maybe the disease simply needed more time.

  Early in the new year we received another invitation to an opening night. This time it was Chekhov’s The Seagull. We didn’t go. We had adopted a policy of passive deterrence. We were trying to establish as much distance as possible between ourselves and the Meiers. I emphatically say “we” here—Caroline felt exactly the same way.

  It was while we were having dinner out. A few days after the invitation to The Seagull arrived. Just the two of us out for dinner, for the first time in a long time. When the second bottle of wine arrived, I made my move.

  “Do you know why I didn’t want to go to that opening night?” I asked Caroline.

  “Because plays make you hyperventilate,” my wife laughed, clinking her glass against mine.

  “No, this is different. I didn’t want to tell you at first. I thought it would stop by itself. But it didn’t. It’s still going on.”

  It was the truth. Judith had tried to call me again a couple of times, but every time I saw her name on the display of my cell phone, I didn’t answer. When she left a message on my voice mail, I didn’t call back. I had instructed my assistant not to pass her calls along if she tried to call me at the office. Which indeed she did a few times. My assistant told her I was seeing a patient. That I would call back later. Which I then did not do.

  A couple of times she tried our private number. Both times she got Caroline on the line. I could tell from my wife’s replies that it was Judith. No, we’re getting by … a little better lately … I’m not here! I signaled to Caroline and kept as quiet as possible till the conversation was over.

  “Besides that, I didn’t want to go to the premiere because I didn’t feel like running into Judith there,” I said. “I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but that woman wants something from me. Even then, at the summer house. She tried something … It was obvious, she thought I was nice. Nicer than normal nice, I mean.”

  I looked at my wife. She didn’t seem shocked by this revelation. On the contrary, she seemed more amused than anything else. A smile played on her lips.

  “What are you grinning at?” I said. “Did you notice, or not? That Judith was chasing me, I swear.”

  “Marc … I just had to laugh. About you. Don’t be angry, I didn’t mean to laugh at you, but I think you have the tendency to make assumptions pretty quickly: that a woman is after you when she acts a bit flirty or does her best for you. I noticed it at the summer house, too, but if you ask
me, Judith is the kind who does that with all the men. A little uncertain of herself, the type who tries to appeal to every male.”

  I had to admit that, on the whole, I was disappointed with Caroline’s reaction. She’d viewed it all as an innocent flirtation. She really hadn’t caught on. That’s how easy it was, I thought.

  “She calls me on my cell all the time, Caroline. She says she misses me. That she wants to see me again.”

  Caroline shook her head laughingly and took a big slug of her wine.

  “Oh, Marc, she’s just one of those women who wants a bit of attention. I’d probably be the same way if I had to live with a big boor like Ralph. That’s what it’s about. Attention. The doctor’s attention. Maybe that’s what she wants. Maybe she wants you to examine her.”

  “Caroline …”

  “I hate to have to disillusion you, but you brought it up. Judith acts like that with all men. I saw how she acted toward Stanley. A little giggly, a little running her hands through her hair, sitting on the diving board, supposedly lost in thought, dangling her feet in the water, all those tedious old female tricks. In fact, I’m surprised that you would fall for it so easily. And by the way, she had more success with him than she did with you.”

  I stared at her.

  “What are you staring at? Oh, Marc, are you really so naive? You think the women are swooning over you, but a woman like Judith knows exactly what she’s doing. I was going to tell you about it, but I forgot. Until you started in about her just now. Whatever, it was one afternoon by the pool. You’d all gone to the village—Ralph, you, the kids. Emmanuelle wasn’t feeling well—she was lying down inside with the curtains closed. There had been something in the air for a long time, a sort of charged tension between those two. At a certain point I went upstairs to get something to drink, and when I looked out the kitchen window I saw them. Judith was lying in her deck chair and Stanley was leaning over her. He started with her face and then he licked her down completely, Marc. And I mean completely. I made sure the glasses rattled loudly enough when I came down the steps. And when I got there they were both lying neatly in their own deck chairs. But I saw what I saw. I could tell from Stanley’s swimming trunks. I probably don’t have to explain what I saw. And the next moment, there he went, right, splash, into the water.”

  About a month after the premiere of The Seagull, I came across a little item in the art pages of the newspaper:

  PERFORMANCES OF THE SEAGULL CANCELED DUE TO LEADING MAN’S ILLNESS

  The article was no more than ten lines long. “… Ralph Meier … canceled until further notice.” It didn’t say anything about what kind of illness it was. I was already standing there, phone in hand, then I decided it was better to wait a bit.

  Judith called the next day.

  “He was admitted to the hospital last week,” she said. She mentioned the name of the hospital. It was the same one to which I’d sent the sample—to which I hadn’t sent the sample.

  I pressed my cell phone against my ear. I was sitting at the desk in my office. The next patient—in fact, the last patient of the day—wouldn’t be coming in for another hour. This time I had been sure to answer as soon as I saw her name come up on the display.

  I asked a few general questions. About the symptoms. The probable therapy. Her answers confirmed my earlier diagnosis. Ralph’s body had put up a fight for a long time—longer than normal—but now there was no stemming the tide. The disease had already skipped a few stages. The stages at which treatment might have had some chance of success. I was reminded of trenches. Entire networks of interconnected trenches being overrun one by one. Because Judith didn’t ask about the tissue sample, I brought it up myself.

  “It’s strange,” I said. “They really didn’t find anything at the time.”

  “Marc?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How are you doing?”

  I glanced at the clock across from my desk. Another fifty-nine minutes separated me from my next patient. “I’m getting by,” I said.

  I heard her sigh at the other end. “You didn’t call me again. You don’t call me back when I leave messages for you.”

  I was silent for a moment. During that silence I thought about the tissue sample, about the glass jar with the bloody piece of flesh from Ralph’s thigh, which I had tossed into the trash can.

  “I’ve been pretty damn busy,” I said. “And then that trouble with Julia, of course. We’re trying to get our lives back on track, but it’s not that easy.”

  Was it really me who was threading all those words together into sentences? It was all made easier by the fact that I was alone in my office and that Judith couldn’t see my face—in order to concentrate, I even kept my eyes shut tight.

  “It would be nice to see you again,” I said.

  That was how our renewed contact began. I simply told Caroline the truth. I’m going to have coffee with Judith Meier, I said. She’s pretty upset about Ralph’s illness. At first we met at sidewalk cafés, later more and more often at her place. I didn’t have many patients left; it was no problem for me to pop out for an hour or longer. And otherwise I just waited until my appointments for the day were over. Alex and Thomas were still at school around that time, I’m not trying to justify anything. It often went quickly—usually we didn’t even make it to the bedroom. Sometimes, afterward, we would go and visit Ralph in the hospital. The first operation didn’t have the desired results, and a second one “offered little prospect of improvement,” according to the specialist in attendance. Alternative treatments were suggested. More radical treatments. He could decide for himself whether he wanted to stay in the hospital for those, or commute back and forth from home each day.

  “Maybe you’d rather be at home,” Judith said. “I could drive you here every day.”

  She didn’t look at me when she said this. She was sitting in a chair beside the bed, her hand on the blanket, close to her husband’s.

  “It can be more pleasant to be at home,” I said. “But it can also be very taxing. Especially at night. Here in the hospital they have everything you need within reach.”

  A decision was made to try for the best of both worlds, a compromise whereby Ralph would come home on weekends and sleep at the hospital during the week. I continued to go to Judith’s for coffee once or twice a week.

  I don’t know whether it was Ralph’s generally dazed state, or the operation, the medication, and the often highly unpleasant treatments, but he never mentioned the first time I had examined him that last October. During one of our visits, when Judith left the room to buy some magazines for him at the newsstand on the ground floor, I seized the opportunity.

  “It’s strange how things can go with an illness like this,” I said. “One moment you have a node examined and there’s nothing wrong, and a few months later it goes wrong, anyway.”

  I had slid my chair up closer to Ralph’s bed, but I still didn’t have the impression that he understood me.

  “I had a patient once who thought he’d had a heart attack,” I said. “He came in to see me, he was in a panic. With all the symptoms. Chest pain, dry mouth, sweaty palms. I took his pulse; it was over two hundred. I listened to his heart. ‘Did you eat cheese fondue yesterday, by any chance?’ I asked him. The patient looked at me with big, round eyes. ‘How did you know that, Doctor?’ he asked. ‘And I suppose you knocked back quite a bit of white wine along with it,’ I said. Then I explained it to him. The molten cheese, the ice-cold white wine. At the bottom of the stomach it all clumps together to form a huge clot that can’t go anywhere. When that happens, people usually show up at the emergency room in the middle of the night, but this case was waiting for me when I came in at nine.”

  Ralph had closed his eyes, but now he opened them again.

  “But here’s the zinger,” I said. “I send the patient home. Completely reassured, of course. And two weeks later he actually dies of a heart attack. A complete fluke. If you used that story in a book or a movie, no on
e would believe it. But this was real. The fondue and the heart attack were totally unrelated.”

  “That’s what you call tough luck,” Ralph said, and he smiled feebly.

  I looked at the shape his body made under the blankets. It was still the same body, but it looked as though it had collapsed a bit here and there—in fact, he looked like a party balloon the day after a birthday party: a balloon that has lost half its air.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Tough luck.”

  With Julia, meanwhile, things were going a bit better. That was our impression at least. She began bringing her girlfriends home more often, at the table she sometimes told us about things that had happened at school, without our having to ask first, and she had started laughing again. A hesitant little laugh, to be sure, but still: a laugh. On other days, however, she spent most of her time alone in her room.

  “It’s probably the age she’s at,” I said.

  “That’s the worst thing, as far as I’m concerned,” Caroline said. “That we’ll never really know anymore. Whether it’s just part of the age she’s at or whether it’s because of … because of that other thing.”

  Sometimes I studied Julia’s face, when I thought she wasn’t looking. Her eyes. Her expression. That was different from the way it had been less than a year ago. Not so much sadder, but more serious. More inward-looking, as they say. Caroline was right. I had no idea, either, whether it should be attributed to her growing up or to the—unremembered—events on the beach.

  That next summer vacation we went to the States. A change of scenery, that was the idea. A change of scenery from the usual vacation at the beach (or poolside). More of a trip than a holiday. A trip with lots of distractions, new impressions, and little time to ponder—to fret, to lie awake at night.