The Summer House, Later

by Judith Hermann

  I didn’t know Sonja considered it a gift that I let her into my apartment and into my studio, that she could sit at my kitchen table amidst my notes, that she could watch me developing my photos and making little sketches. In her own way she took me very seriously. She would walk into the studio with an almost religious reverence, stand in front of my pictures with the respect of a museum visitor, then sit down at my kitchen table as though she were being granted an audience. She didn’t bother me because I wasn’t actually aware of any of this at the time. She didn’t get on my nerves because she was much too stubborn and tough. I didn’t realize that Sonja was in the process of becoming entangled in my life. During these nights she was for me a small, tired person, obsessed by something, who kept me company in her peculiar way, who sat with me, listened to me, gave me a vain feeling of importance.

  Sonja never spoke. Practically never. To this day I don’t know anything about her family, her childhood, where she was born, her friends. I have no idea what she lived on, whether she had a paying job or whether someone kept her, whether she had professional ambitions, where she was headed and what she wanted. The one person of whom she sometimes spoke was the small red-haired woman I had seen at her party; otherwise she mentioned no one, certainly not men, even though I was sure there were plenty.

  During those nights I was the one who talked. I talked as though to myself, and Sonja listened, and often we were silent, and that too was good. I liked her enthusiasm for certain things, for the first snowfall – about which she could go completely overboard, like a child – for an organ concerto by Bach that she played over and over on my record player, for the Turkish coffee we drank after dinner, for riding on the U-Bahn early in the morning at six, or for watching the scenes being acted out at night behind the brightly lit windows across the courtyard. She stole little things from my kitchen – walnuts, chalk, and hand-rolled cigarettes – and kept them in the pockets of her winter coat as if they were sacred objects. Almost every evening she brought along some books that she put on my table, earnestly beseeching me to read them. I never did, and whenever she asked I refused to talk with her about it. When she fell asleep, sitting there, I would let her sleep for fifteen minutes and then wake her with the detachment of a schoolteacher. I would change my clothes and then we would go out, Sonja clinging to my arm, fascinated by our footprints, the only ones in the freshly fallen snow in the courtyard.

  We went from one late-night bar to the next, drank whisky and vodka, and sometimes Sonja left my side, sat elsewhere at the bar, and pretended not to know me until, laughing, I called her back. Men would talk to her all the time, but she always withdrew and came back to stand next to me, a proud expression on her face. It didn’t matter to me at all. I felt flattered by this odd attractiveness of hers, and watched her with something close to scientific interest. Sometimes, I think, I might have wanted to see her disappear with one of these admirers, but she would stay near me until it got light outside and we left the bar, squinting in the grey strands of morning light. I would bring her to the bus stop and wait until the bus came. She would get on, looking shaky and sad; I would wave briefly and walk on, my thoughts already back on my pictures.

  Today, I think I was probably happy those nights. I know that the past always becomes transfigured, that memory has a soothing effect. Perhaps those nights were merely cold and in a cynical way entertaining. Today, though, they seem to me so important and so lost that it grieves me.

  During this time Verena was travelling, driving through Greece, Spain, Morocco. She sent postcards of beaches with palm trees and of Arabs on camels, and sometimes she telephoned me. If Sonja happened to be there she would get up and leave the room; she only came back once I had let her know, by making noises and moving chairs around, that the conversation was over. Verena would shout into the phone – the connection was bad most of the time, the roaring of the sea and wind it seemed – and I could use that to cover my sudden lack of words. I didn’t forget Verena. I thought of her, and sent letters and photographs to her Hamburg apartment, and was happy with her phone calls. Sonja had nothing to do with that; had someone asked me whether I was in love with her, I would have replied with surprise and certainty – no. Verena, however, thought she could sense changes: she shouted into the phone that I didn’t have anything to say to her anymore, she wanted to know how often I betrayed her with other women. I had to laugh, and she hung up.

  In January a card mailed from Agadir informed me that she would be arriving at the end of March – I’m coming in the spring, she wrote, and then I’m going to stay for a long time. I put the card on the kitchen table and waited for Sonja to find it. I knew that, without being blatantly nosy, she habitually went through the notes and papers on my desk. That evening, standing in the doorway, I watched her. She stood at the table, looked at a photo, drew things with my chalks, rolled herself a cigarette, then noticed the postcard, the front of which showed a fireworks display. She read the card and held it in her hand; she stood still, then turned around as though she had known that I was standing mere watching her.

  ‘Yep,’ I said. She said nothing. She simply stared at me, and I felt something akin to fear. We went out together, and everything was wrong. I felt guilty and was furious. I had the feeling that I should explain something to her but I didn’t know what. That night, for the first time, she slept at my place. All that time I had never kissed her, had never touched her: at night we would walk through the streets, arm in arm, and that was all. While I was in the bathroom she put on one of my shirts, and when I came back into the bedroom she was already sitting on my bed, her teeth chattering. It was incredibly cold. I lay down next to her; we lay back to back, only the cold soles of our feet actually touching. Sonja said, ‘Goodnight,’ her voice soft and small. I felt solicitous and, in an unreal way, moved. I was not at all aroused – nothing could have been further from my thoughts than to make love to her now – yet I felt hurt when I realized, on hearing her calm and regular breathing, that she was already asleep. I lay awake for a long time. It got warm under the covers, and I gently rubbed my feet against hers. I still remember thinking that it would have seemed incestuous to have made love to her, to touch her breasts. I asked myself how it would feel to kiss Sonja, then I fell asleep.

  In the morning she was gone. On the kitchen table lay a small torn-off scrap of paper with a few words. I went back to bed and put on the shirt she had worn during the night.

  And so she disappeared again. She didn’t show up the next evening, nor the evening after that. I waited three evenings, then I began to call her again. But she didn’t pick up the phone, or maybe she really wasn’t there. I began to prowl through the city in the daytime. In vain I would sit around in cafes that she had sometimes mentioned, and I would stand for hours in front of the old apartment house near the Spree; she had disappeared. There was never a light behind her windows, but her name was still on the door, and the piece of paper I sometimes placed under the door as a means of checking on her movements was moved again and again. In her own way she had given me the slip. By the time March arrived I was tired of looking for her and began to get ready for Verena.

  I cleaned up my apartment and tried to blot out all traces of Sonja’s visits. But in fact there were no traces. Three months spent with a tired, bewitched little Sonja had left nothing behind; I searched in vain and grew annoyed with myself. For the first time in ages I phoned my friend Mick. We went to shoot some pool and drink beer, danced with various women, and in the course of a week made our way through all the bars in the city. Now and then I would make an attempt to tell him something about Sonja, then I would break off in mid-sentence – actually, what was there to tell? I really didn’t know.

  At the end of March the last snow melted off the roofs and the swifts returned. I gave the Turkish boys a new soccer ball and cut my hair short. I was waiting for something, but when Verena suddenly stood in front of the door one evening I stopped waiting. I had made it. At night I fell asleep n
ext to Verena, and in the morning woke up next to her. I plaited her hair into braids and gave her an espresso machine as a present. It seemed as though she wanted to stay longer, and I didn’t ask how long. I worked, and she walked around the city, in the evenings we went to the movies and sat in the little cafes by the water. Verena hung her things in my closet and started working at a bar around the corner; when my phone rang she would answer it. Mick said she was just about the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and I agreed with him. The days took on a steady rhythm of their own. I felt well, perhaps even happy, certainly very calm. The linden trees began to bloom in the courtyard, and the first summer thunderstorms gathered over the city, the weather turned hot. Only rarely did I have the feeling that someone was walking close behind me on the street; I would turn around and there’d be no one there, but the feeling of irritation remained. There were moments when I longed for something – I didn’t know exactly what, a special event perhaps, some sort of sensation, a change – but this longing would disappear just as suddenly as it had come.

  One morning in June, Verena and I rode our bikes down to the outdoor swimming pool by the Spree. Verena paid for us both, saying she couldn’t wait to be by the water, and, looking for an unoccupied spot, walked barefoot ahead of me across the lawn full of sunbathers. Triumphantly she stopped in the tiny bit of shade cast by a birch tree, spread out her towel, and sat down. Sitting right next to her was Sonja.

  For an absurd moment my heart beat faster. I thought briefly that this pounding was probably the longed-for change, the skip in the rhythm. I stood still and stared from Verena to Sonja, then Sonja looked up from the book she was reading and saw me and then she saw Verena.

  I said, ‘Verena, I don’t want to sit here,’ and glanced at Sonja’s face, which looked oddly as though it had been torn open. She had let her hair grow, she was tanned, in a blue bathing suit, and very thin. I felt terribly sorry about all this. Verena’s voice came from far away – ‘This is the best spot available by the pool’ Apparently she hadn’t noticed anything, and I felt a trembling in my head. Sonja stood up very slowly, slipped like a sleepwalker into a red dress, and turned to go. Verena said something; I no longer understood the words. But I heard no note of suspicion in her voice so I dropped my bag on the ground next to her and simply followed Sonja. I caught up with her at the exit of the swimming pool. She was walking quickly and erect and looked like a little red stick from behind. I almost ran, men I was at her side holding her by the arm. Her skin was hot from the sun. She turned her crazily serious face toward me and said, ‘Do we want to see each other or don’t we.’

  The tone of her voice was the same as it had been at the train station when she had said, ‘Shall I wait.’ I felt like an idiot, completely mixed up, men I said, ‘Yes,’ and she said, ‘Well then,’ freed herself and walked through the gate into the street. I watched till she disappeared then I returned to Verena who was lying on her back sunning herself and hadn’t caught on to any of it. The grass where Sonja had been sitting was crushed; I stared at the two or three cigarette butts she had left behind and fought against the sensation of having lost control.

  I didn’t have to send Verena away – I wouldn’t have done that in any case, I would have just met Sonja in secret. Verena left of her own accord. She claimed that she didn’t want to disturb me in the current phase of my work, whatever that might mean; she packed her things, gave notice at the bar, and went back to Hamburg. I think she had had enough of me for a while. She had wanted to make sure that I loved her, she was reassured, and so she left. I took her to the train, feeling shattered and strangely sentimental. I said, ‘Verena, anytime,’ and she laughed and said, ‘Yes.’

  That summer was Sonja’s summer. We went rowing on the lakes outside the city, and I rowed Sonja on the mirror-smooth, reed-green water until my arms hurt. In the evenings we ate at little village inns – cold cuts and beer, Sonja with red cheeks and sun-bleached hair. We went back on the train, carrying bunches of field flowers that Sonja took home with her. I worked infrequently, studied maps of the surrounding area and wanted to go swimming in all the lakes. Sonja always dragged along a backpack full of books, reading to me and reciting one poem after the other. The evenings were warm, we counted our mosquito bites, and I taught her how to whistle by blowing on a blade of grass. The summer was a chain of bright, blue days; I immersed myself in it and didn’t stop to wonder. We spent the nights at Sonja’s apartment. From her big tall windows one could see the Spree. We didn’t make love, we didn’t kiss, we scarcely touched, in fact we never touched. I said, ‘Your bed is a ship,’ Sonja did not answer – as usual – but the whole summer long she had a triumphant look about her.

  It was the end of July. We were sitting in the tiny, empty station in Ribbeck, waiting for a train back to the city, when Sonja opened her mouth and said, ‘Sooner or later you’re going to marry me.’

  I stared at her and killed a mosquito on my wrist; the sky was reddish, and a blue mist hung over the forest. I said, ‘Excuse me?’ and Sonja said, ‘Yes. Marry me. Then we’ll have children and everything will be all right.’

  I thought she was incredibly stupid. I thought she was ridiculous and stupid, and nothing seemed more absurd than marrying Sonja and having children with her. I said, ‘Sonja, that’s ridiculous. You of all people ought to know better. How are we supposed to do that – have children? We’re not even sleeping together.’

  Sonja got up, lit a cigarette, kicked some pebbles, and crossed her arms. ‘Well, for that we’ll do it. But only for that purpose. It will work, I know it.’

  I got up too. I felt as though I had to talk some sense into a silly child. ‘You’ve lost your marbles, Sonja. What’s with this nonsense – everything will be all right? What’s that supposed to mean? Everything is all right, and so we won’t get married.’

  The rails began to vibrate. A high note hung suspended in the air, and in the distance a train came into view. Sonja stamped her left foot, threw away her cigarette, and stubbornly marched toward the tracks. She jumped off the station platform, stumbling in the gravel, and finally positioned herself, legs akimbo, across the rails. The train came closer, and I sat down again. Sonja, wild with rage, screamed, ‘Are you going to marry me, yes or no?’

  I had to laugh and shouted back, ‘Sonja dearest! Yes! I’ll marry you whenever you say!’ And Sonja laughed too, the train came rushing toward us, the air smelled of metal. I said her name, very softly and scared stiff, then she jumped from the tracks back up on the platform, the train roared past, and she said, ‘I don’t want to right now, you know. But later. Later on I’ll want to.’

  In the autumn we saw each other less often, then she went away for a while. One morning she was standing at my front door, already wearing her winter coat. She said, ‘Hello dear, I have to go away on a trip, but I’d like to have a cup of tea first.’

  I let her in and put water on to boil. She walked through my apartment and seemed restless. I asked her where she was going. She said she had to work for a month, then she would come back; as usual she obviously didn’t want to tell me anything. We drank our tea in silence, then she got to her feet, pulled me up by the hands and threw her arms around me.

  I held her tight, I couldn’t properly defend myself against her earnestness. She said, ‘Take care of yourself.’ And then she left.

  Everything that happened after that happened out of fear. I think I was afraid of Sonja, afraid of what had suddenly become clear to me, the possibility of spending my life with a strange little person who didn’t talk, who didn’t sleep with me, who mostly stared at me wide-eyed, about whom I knew hardly anything, whom I probably loved, because, after all, I did.

  I felt that I no longer wanted to be without Sonja. I found her unexpectedly indispensable, and I missed her. I was afraid she would never come back, and at the same time I wanted nothing so much as that she would stay away, forever.

  After the month had passed, I packed a small suitcase and took a trai
n to Hamburg. I breathlessly proposed marriage to a completely surprised Verena, and she accepted. I stayed three weeks, travelled with her to see my parents, and announced our wedding would be in March of the coming year. Verena booked a honeymoon trip to Santa Fe, introduced me to her appalling mother, and informed me that she wouldn’t assume my name. It was all the same to me. I felt as if I were drowning, yet I was infinitely relieved. I felt I had escaped from an immense danger at the very last moment, and imagined myself saved, safe. We argued a little about where we would live. Verena wanted me to move to Hamburg, and I said as far as I was concerned everything could stay as before, married or not, and then I went back to Berlin.

  There was no mail in my mailbox, and in the studio there was the usual dust on the pictures and the windows were covered with cobwebs. No news of Sonja. I had the situation under control: I had avoided the worst, and now I wanted to be generous, conciliatory. Pedalling hard, I cycled to her house, bounded up the stairs whistling. She was at home, and opened the door inattentively, obviously expecting someone else, then she smiled and said, ‘Doing well, are you?’

  We sat down in one of the large, almost bare rooms, Sonja at the desk, I on an easy chair near the window. Outside the Spree was brown and seagulls soared over the car crusher. Sonja didn’t ask me where I had been. Nor did she tell me anything about her trip. She sat at her table, erect and looking only the tiniest bit anxious, and smoked almost obsessively, one cigarette after another.