We're Flying

by Peter Stamm

  A couple of months before, Frau Brander had gone to the registry office, she had lost her purse or someone had stolen it, and she needed to get a new identity card. Are you still drawing? she asked, as Heidi filled in the form. Heidi nodded, and Frau Brander suggested she show her what she was working on.

  So a couple of days later they met for lunch in a cafe, and Heidi showed Frau Brander some of her drawings. The teacher looked at each one of them carefully, and then went on to the next. They’re just things I tossed off, said Heidi. They’re good, Frau Brander said, you have a nice clear line. Did you ever think of applying to art school? Heidi laughed and shook her head. You should think about it, said Frau Brander. Go to Vienna or Berlin. Don’t go to Zurich.

  Heidi had made inquiries without telling anyone. Might as well, she thought, it doesn’t cost anything. The entrance exams were in September for Vienna and in October for Berlin, and it was only May. In the next few months, Heidi sketched more purposefully than before, and she went to the library and looked at art books and read the lives of artists she admired. And after some time it became clear that this was what she wanted to do, what she had secretly always wanted to do, to be an artist, as independent and confident as her teacher. When the boss called her into the office once to talk about her future, she said when she’d finished the internship she’d like to go to art school. He looked doubtful. What if they don’t take you? he asked. He said he couldn’t keep a job open for her. Heidi hadn’t discussed her plans with her parents yet. The boss called her father, they were acquainted from way back, through the gymnastic club. Her father was devastated, what seemed to upset him most was the fact that Heidi hadn’t taken him into her confidence. There was a short, vicious scene, Heidi called her father crude, and he called her crazy. And they’d stopped speaking to each other.

  In August Heidi called Frau Brander, and said she was going to apply to Vienna. Frau Brander offered to help her put together a portfolio. Come by my apartment tomorrow night, she said, and bring everything you’ve ever done.

  The following evening, Heidi packed all her drawings into a big cardboard box and cycled out to where Frau Brander lived, in an apartment complex at the edge of town. Heidi had never been to the area before. The building was old and run-down, but the apartment was nicely furnished. There were pictures on all the walls, little oil landscapes that showed the ugly warehouses of the transport companies, the freight station, and the silos. Go out on the balcony, said Frau Brander. Will you have a glass of wine? Heidi hesitated, then she said, Yes, please.

  She stood by the railing and looked down at the enormous cornfield that began at the foot of the house and extended as far as the Three Sisters. In the distance you could hear the highway, a thrumming that alternately got louder and quieter. Frau Brander had stepped outside and was standing next to Heidi. She put her arm around her shoulder and squeezed her closer. I’m all excited, she said, it feels like it’s me applying all over again. Heidi thought of the stories about Frau Brander, but they were such nonsense, it was just a friendly hug that didn’t mean anything. That was the way artists were, easygoing and free from fear and prejudice.

  Frau Brander had opened a bottle, and poured a couple of glasses. Call me Renate, she said, and they bumped glasses. Now let’s see what you’ve brought.

  They took hours making their selection. When it got too dark outside, they went into the living room and carried on there. They laid the remaining drawings on the wood floor. Renate was barefoot, and Heidi had taken her shoes off; suddenly she felt naked in this strange place. They walked up and down among the drawings, putting them in different piles, taking some out and putting in others. It was very warm in the apartment, and when Renate raised her hand to scratch her head in thought, Heidi noticed dark sweat stains rimming her sleeveless dress. They stood at opposite ends of the room, approached one another, stood silently side by side, squatted down in front of one sketch the better to take it in. Renate overbalanced, and caught herself laughing on Heidi’s shoulder, and left her hand there after they had stood up again. Heidi could smell Renate’s perfume, which didn’t drown out the smell of her body, but blended with it to make a warm, summery scent of milk and grass.

  In the end, there were only twenty pictures left, a few small portrait sketches, half a dozen landscapes, and a few recent things, colored-pencil drawings of strange organic shapes. Heidi felt confused when Renate had pulled the stack of them out of the box and asked what they were. She had shrugged her shoulders. This one looks like a vulva, Renate said, and this one too. She laughed, and looked Heidi straight in the eye. Heidi lowered her gaze, but not from shame. Do you have a boyfriend? Renate asked.

  HEIDI HAD FOUND her compartment. There was just a dim emergency light on. She could hear someone breathing. She sat down on the lower bunk, opened her folder, and looked through the drawings once more. Hello, said a voice. Quickly Heidi shut the folder and looked up. A young woman was looking down at her. Where are we? she asked. We’ve just crossed the border, said Heidi. Oh, God, said the woman and she sat up and dangled her bare legs over the edge of her bunk. I can never sleep in these so-called sleeping cars. She climbed down the ladder and went off down the corridor. In a while she returned and stopped in front of the door to the compartment. She pulled down the window and lit a cigarette. Do you want one? she asked. She said that before boarding a night train, she always drank a beer to help her sleep. But in Zurich she had met some guys in a bar and had a few beers too many, and now she had to keep going to the bathroom. My name’s Susa. What’s yours? Heidi. Susa laughed. Is that your real name?

  The conductor stepped into the corridor and said there was no smoking allowed. Asshole, muttered Susa, flicked the cigarette out the window, and went back inside the compartment. She said she was from Kiel. She had been bumming around Europe for the past couple of weeks. She had been to France, and Barcelona, and Italy, and Zurich. Now she was on her way to Austria and Hungary, and if there was time, the Czech Republic. What about yourself? Heidi said she was on her way to Vienna to apply to the Academy of Fine Arts. Are you an artist then? asked Susa. Heidi shook her head. I’m just applying, she said. I think your accent’s cute, said Susa. Are those your pictures in there? Will you show me?

  Heidi hesitated, but she did feel a bit proud as well, to have been taken for an artist. She opened the folder. Susa settled down next to her. Those are the Three Sisters, said Heidi, that’s their name, they’re mountains. That’s the Gonzen. That’s the castle at Sargans, there’s my mum, and she’s someone at work. And there’s you, said Susa. They’re good. Yes, said Heidi. And that’s a girlfriend of mine. And what’s that? That’s just imaginary shapes, said Heidi. Susa laughed and said it looked like a cunt. Heidi stopped turning over pages. She could feel herself blushing. Come on, said Susa, this is exciting. She pulled the rest of the drawings out of the folder herself. Don’t, said Heidi, but Susa had already flicked on ahead. Just a load of cunts, she said in disappointment. She said she would try and sleep a bit now, so that she didn’t look like shit in the morning. She climbed back up the ladder.

  Heidi gathered up her papers, returned them carefully to the folder, and put the folder next to the small backpack with her things. Then she lay down, without undressing. She still felt ashamed. At the time she had done the sketches, she had done them somehow automatically, not even thinking about what she was doing. For the first time, she had had the sense that she wasn’t just copying something, imitating, but making something original. It had been effortless, a wonderful feeling, one line after the next, as if the drawings were simply growing. Organic shapes, was the most she had thought, the organs of some creature or other. Even now she couldn’t see what everybody else seemed to see. Maybe she was just naive. She pictured herself standing in front of the selection committee, the experts looking on, and what they would make of it. She pictured herself standing naked in front of a group of old men, and one of them pointing at her pudenda, and saying that looks like a cunt, and t
he others cackling.

  The train slowed down, and then picked up speed. It was warm in the compartment. Heidi got a water bottle out of her backpack and took a small swallow. She thought about Renate and the life she was leading. An art teacher in a small town, painting in her free time, and every couple of years or so getting a show of her work put on in some cafe room, or the staircase in an office building. Heidi had attended one of the openings, and even she had seen the full absurdity of the event. A local newspaperman had said a few garbled words about Renate’s art, and a flushed-looking Renate had gone around pulling corks and filling glasses for the few people present, all of them outsiders like herself, and listened to them say how great they thought the pictures were. It was strange that Heidi had never had any doubts about Renate before, that she had never stopped to think whether her teacher’s pictures were any good or not. Nor had she questioned Renate’s judgment either. She thought about the works of the great masters she had looked at in the library. What, compared to them, were her pencil drawings, her childish sketches?

  The train had entered a station, and a cold neon light came in through the cracks in the blinds of the compartment window. Heidi looked at her watch, it was twenty past two. Without stopping to think, she jumped up, grabbed her backpack and folder, and ran down the corridor. The sleeping car attendant was standing in the open doorway, talking to a railwayman. I want to get off, said Heidi. We’re only in Innsbruck, said the conductor. I want to get off, Heidi repeated. The conductor muttered something that didn’t sound pleased, and strolled back to his compartment. He seemed to be doing everything deliberately slowly, thumbing through the envelopes that contained the passports of the travelers. At last he produced Heidi’s passport and ticket, and handed them to her. Outside, the whistle blew. Heidi jumped out of the car and the train pulled away. The railway employee was gone, there was no one in sight.

  Heidi stood on the empty platform for ages. She was tired and confused and didn’t know where to go. On the schedule she saw that a train back to Switzerland was due any minute, but she couldn’t go home just yet. She picked up her things and left the station. She walked through the almost deserted city, which seemed very dark to her and rather frightening, with massive buildings and narrow lanes. There was the occasional light still on in a bar, and voices and laughter were audible, and sometimes music. But Heidi didn’t feel like being with people, she couldn’t have handled the nosy looks, the noise, and the drunken cheer of the night owls. On the banks of the Inn she sat down on a bench. She was cold, and put on her sweater.

  That was the night that Heidi met Rainer. He was just going home with a few friends when he saw her sitting down by the river. He was worried she might do something silly, he said later, when she asked him why he had approached her. A woman by the river in the middle of the night, of course you thought of things like that. No, Heidi said, nothing like that had ever crossed her mind. Rainer’s friends stayed behind, shouted to him a couple of times, and then went off without him.

  Rainer had sat down on the bench next to Heidi, and she told him her story, but not what Susa and Renate had said about her sketches. He didn’t seem at all interested in pictures. He took her home with him; after all, they couldn’t sit out on the bench all night. He was very sweet, and then suddenly he put his arms around her and started touching her. She didn’t fight him off for long, she had no strength and was tired and empty. Perhaps she even wanted it, the pain and the humiliation were apt punishment for her cowardice, they set the seal on her defeat. Heidi had to think about Renate, how different she was, more confident but still cautious and sensitive.

  Rainer stood by the window, and Heidi stared at his hairy back and felt disgusted by him and by what he’d done with her. He turned to her and asked how old she was, and when she replied, Nineteen, he said, You’re not shitting me, are you? He was ten years older.

  Heidi stayed at Rainer’s for three days. He worked in a sportswear shop, and left home every morning before nine o’clock, and only returned after business hours. Most of the time she spent in the flat, incapable of formulating a clear thought. Once, she pulled out her drawing things, and she sat for an hour in front of the empty sheet of paper without sketching a line. She sat in the dusk, waiting for Rainer, dreading him but unable to leave. She felt like a prisoner, even though he’d given her a key to the apartment. Sometimes she stood behind the front door without managing to open it. Once Rainer was back, he didn’t feel like going out. He had done the shopping, had bought bread and cheese and ham and wine, and they ate and drank, and then Rainer stripped her naked, and she let him. He was fit and strong and about a head taller than her, and he turned and twisted her and put her in positions that he liked, and demanded that she do things that were difficult for her and shaming, but still she never had the feeling that it was personal, and that he was thinking of her. He seemed very detached and entirely wrapped up in himself and his pleasure, and that was some consolation to her. He used her, but perhaps she used him even more, because she felt nothing, not even pleasure. She viewed herself as from a distance, and was surprised at herself.

  HEIDI HAD NO CLEAR RECOLLECTION of time after her return home. She withdrew to her room and didn’t speak to anyone. She heard her father standing at the foot of her bed, and announcing in a loud voice, You can go back to the office now. He went away, he came back, stood there in silence and looked down at her. Her mother brought her meals, sat down on the side of the bed, talked to her or stroked her hair. Sometimes she cried. You can’t lie here always, she said, you have to eat something, say something. At night Heidi stood in front of the window for hours, gazing out at the moonlit mountains, the stony sisters, that simultaneously drew her and frightened her. She got sick. The doctor was clueless, he performed all sorts of tests on her, and Heidi let it happen. She sat on the treatment table in her underwear. The doctor wrote something in her file, and then swiveled around on his much too low chair. Everything’s fine, he said, making a face as though nothing was, except you’re pregnant.

  She asked him not to tell her parents, but after a while it was impossible to conceal the fact. Her mother was first to notice, and told her father. Her parents reacted with astonishing calm. They asked Heidi who the father was, and whether he knew. Oddly, it had never occurred to Heidi to let Rainer know. What did the child have to do with him? But on her parents’ insistence, she called him. He came that weekend, and Heidi met him at the station. He was wearing good clothes, and she sensed that he had thought about everything and had a plan. They drank coffee in a place near the station, and Rainer cautiously tried to establish Heidi’s view of everything, and whether she could imagine a life with him. By the time they moved on, to lunch at home with her parents, everything was decided.

  Rainer got on well with Heidi’s parents. He had a way of submitting to others immediately, and Heidi’s father liked that. He helped Rainer get a job, and found them a little three-room apartment. From the balcony, Heidi could see the Three Sisters, and when the wind was in the right angle she could hear the trains, and even the platform announcements. On Sundays, Rainer and Heidi went to her parents’, and they all acted as though the baby was already born and belonged to them. Heidi didn’t say much, she sensed that it would pass, and that something different was in store for her, something she couldn’t begin to predict. At the wedding, Heidi’s father made a speech, poking fun at his daughter who had left home to become an artist, and had come back with a bun in the oven. Rainer looked sheepish, but Heidi smiled and raised the baby aloft, like a prize.

  HEIDI WENT TO INNSBRUCK many times in the intervening years, but never once to Vienna. Rainer didn’t care for Vienna, much less the Viennese. Anyway, he didn’t want Heidi to get any stupid ideas, he said, otherwise she might start applying to the Academy again.

  A train came in, and Heidi quickly stood up. She didn’t want people to see her sitting there as though she had nothing better to do. She went to the supermarket, and then home. She stopped by
the neighbor’s. Cyril wasn’t ready to go home yet, he wanted to go on playing with Leah. He can have supper with us, that’s fine, said the neighbor. Not today, said Heidi. Cyril, she called out shrilly, and she stuck her head in at the door, past the neighbor. Cyril!

  While she was making supper, she saw the teenagers hanging around the recycling containers. She knew one of the girls, who was a trainee at the bakery. At work she wore a shapeless apron, but on the street you only ever saw her in a miniskirt, with exposed navel and a pushup bra that made her breasts look even bigger than they were. She’s just a kid, Rainer had said once, in a tone that made Heidi suspicious. He often made remarks like that about other women, he seemed to think of little else. In their years together Heidi had lost all respect for him. She refused to participate in his games, and kept to herself whenever she could. He suggested a course of therapy for her, came home with pamphlets for couples workshops. Never, said Heidi, I’ll never do that, and I’ll never talk about those things in front of other people either. She wouldn’t even touch the pamphlets, that was how disgusted she was.

  After some time Heidi had begun to draw again, in the mornings, when Rainer was out of the house and Cyril was in his kindergarten. Every evening she watched the trainee baker from her kitchen window, saw her parading back and forth in front of the boys, with her chest out and her bottom wiggling. Heidi wanted to ask her to model for her, but she didn’t dare go down and talk to the girl. Instead, she drew her from memory, she imagined her in all sorts of poses, naked and clothed, from the back, from the front, squatting or kneeling, standing, face averted, with a hand in her hair.

  Heidi stood naked in front of the mirror, and then drew the girl, based on her own body, a childlike figure resembling both parents without it being clear which features came from which parent. She hid the drawings in a cardboard box at the top of the closet in the bedroom. There must be hundreds of them by now.