We're Flying

by Peter Stamm

  There was no school until the new year. My parents, along with my grandmother, came up to the valley and stayed in the house. They went skiing every day, my grandmother sat downstairs knitting or dozing. She had complained because I had taken down some of her pictures, and there was a scratch in the slate surface of the dining table. I was relieved when Christmas was over and they all went away.

  During the rest of my time off, I stayed in bed as long as I could, and once I got up I hardly ever left the house. In the late afternoon I turned on the TV. There was the same talk show I’d seen before, only the subject was different. After I’d watched for a while, I turned off the TV and carted it into the garage. I stood there and stared at the thing. Then I took it around to the front of the house, left it on the street, and taped a piece of paper on the screen: TAKE ME. I waited by the window and looked out. From time to time someone would stop and read the sign and look up at the house. But no one took my TV.

  On New Year’s Eve I called Lucia. We didn’t speak for long, she said she was busy. When I tried later, there was just the answering machine. I left a message on the tape. I said, Lucia, and I loved her and I was lonely and I wanted to spend the evening with her. I waited. At nine o’clock I gave up and went out.

  The bar was packed, I could hear the music and the din of voices from out on the street. Lucia and a coworker stood behind the bar, Elio was sitting at one end of it again. I sat down next to him and ordered a beer. Lucia didn’t look at me. Sometimes she came down in our direction, leaned across the bar and shouted something in Elio’s ear, or kissed him, or had a puff from his cigarette. She smoked hurriedly, scanning the room as she did so. The smoke slid around her hand as though caressing it. I felt drunk, even though it was my first beer.

  I watched Lucia at work. She laughed with the customers and moved quickly back and forth. She was wearing a skimpy top, and I saw she had a pierced navel, and wasn’t as slim as I seemed to remember her. But that only made her more alluring. I so wanted to touch her and kiss her, my whole body ached. And at the same time I saw myself hunkered in my corner, a pathetic lovelorn figure.

  Eventually Lucia had some time off. She came out from behind the bar and got between Elio and me. Elio stood up and threw his arm around her shoulder, then he half bent his knees and gyrated with his hips. Then he let go of Lucia to go to the toilet, stumbled, almost fell. Lucia screamed with laughter. She moved slowly to the music, ran her hands down my hips and smiled at me. She said something. I shook my head, and she put her mouth right up against my ear. Great vibe, isn’t it? she yelled. Then she disappeared back behind the bar. I got up and left.

  I WENT HOME. The TV was still out on the street, covered with snow. It was cold inside, I’d forgotten to fill the stove before going out. As I was on my way to the garage to pick up a few logs, my eye fell on the stack of blue exam books on the kitchen table. What I Really Want for Christmas. I flicked through them. What was it my students wanted, snowboards, game boys, a motor sled? And what had I expected? Justice? Love? Peace on earth?

  I heard the bells chiming for midnight, and then cars honking and fireworks going off. I stuffed the essays in the stove and lit them. I watched through the glass panel as they curled in the heat and burned, first slowly, then faster and faster. Before the flames died down, I ripped a few pages out of an education textbook on the floor, and shoved them in too. I ripped more and more pages out of it, and when there was nothing left of it but the cover, I got another one. My eyes were tearing from staring so hard into the flames, and my face felt scorched.

  I burned one book after another. I ripped bundles of pages out of the bindings and threw them in the flames. I was surprised how much strength it took to rip up a book. My hands hurt. In the end I went to bed.

  The next day I carried on. I was more methodical now, I stacked my books next to the stove and burned them one by one. It took all morning. Then I pulled my notes out of my desk drawers, my diaries, newspaper clippings I’d never gotten around to reading. I burned the lot. The room was full of smoke that billowed out of the open door of the stove.

  That evening I went to the bar. There weren’t so many people as the day before. Elio was in his corner again. When I sat down next to him, he looked at me doubtfully. Lucia came and took my order. She asked me if I’d made any good resolutions for the new year. I said I’d burned all my books. You’re crazy, she said. I’ll tell you a story, I said, but it was probably more for my benefit than hers. I told her about how I’d first come to the village, and how I’d met Lucia. I told her about our long hike into the next valley, and our first night.

  Slowly Elio drank his beer. He was looking at the bar, it seemed he wasn’t listening. Lucia was, though. She was in the grip of a strange unrest, and wouldn’t look me in the eye. When I was finished, she leaned across the bar and whispered something into Elio’s ear. Then she kissed him on the mouth long and lingeringly. At the same time she looked at me with an expression that was at once frightened and furious. At least she wasn’t indifferent to me anymore. I got up and left. At home I wrote her a long letter. When I’d finished, I put it in the stove and burned it.

  I didn’t leave the house at all the next day. I burned everything I could find: cardboard boxes, my grandparents’ photo albums, old wooden skis that were in the broom closet, a broken stool. Whatever was too big I sawed or chopped into pieces with the ax. The tools were old and hadn’t been used in a long time, the saw blade was spotted with rust, and the ax was blunt.

  The following day I started on the furniture. My grandparents’ things were solidly built, and I had no idea how much work it was to destroy something. It was probably easier to kill someone, I thought. The application of pressure to the correct spot, a twist of the neck, a blade slipped between the ribs, the way I had seen it done in films. I thought more in terms of killing Elio than Lucia, but it wouldn’t have changed anything. When the shops opened after the holidays, I bought a new ax.

  Destruction had a smell. Torn paper, cardboard, ripped cloth soaked in gasoline to make it burn. Wood smelled when it splintered as if it was freshly felled, as though the smell had been secreted inside it the whole time. And then the smells of burning: the sour smoke from paper that I pushed into the stove in great wads, and that slowly turned to ash. The thick smell of burning gas, the acrid smell of varnish that bubbled and blackened before the wood underneath caught fire.

  Whatever I couldn’t burn I stuffed in garbage sacks that I stowed in the Volvo, first in the trunk, then when that was full on the back seat, and finally on the front passenger seat.

  School had begun again. I had gotten much calmer. During class, my thoughts were already on the work of destruction I would continue that evening. Thinking of it seemed to calm me. When I met the headmaster in the hallway, he gave me a friendly nod, and offered me best wishes for the new year.

  One weekend I drove out of the village and took a narrow road up the mountain. At the beginning of the road was a sign saying no passenger cars, only farm and forestry traffic. There were very few marks in the snow. I followed the zigzagging road up the mountain. After a couple of miles it came to a sudden stop. I left the car and walked back. When I got home I was frozen to the marrow.

  After a week the village policeman phoned and said my car had been found. He was suspicious and asked various questions. He didn’t seem to believe whatever cock-and-bull story I told him.

  On Sunday I went to church for the first time since I was living in the valley. I sat in the back pew. When the minister asked the congregation to come forward for the blessing, I stayed put. I saw Lucia, kneeling down with maybe a dozen other believers. The minister laid his hand on their heads, one after the other, and spoke the blessing. After the service I tried to speak to Lucia. It was the first time in ages that I’d seen her without Elio. I love you, I said. You’re crazy, she said, you’re imagining things. She walked off. I followed her and said it again: I love you. But she didn’t react, wouldn’t even look at me. I fo
llowed her back to her house, climbed the stairs after her to the back entrance. She opened the door, went in, and slammed the door in my face.

  At the end of January I took the bed apart and sawed and chopped it up in the garage into little pieces that I burned in the stove. That was the last of the furniture. There was only the mattress to come.

  On one of the following days I walked up to the place above the village where I’d sat with Lucia. I wiped the snow off the bench and sat down. The sun was already gone over the mountains. After a while I saw Lucia coming up the road. She was walking fast and had her eyes on the ground. Once she looked up at the bench. I waved, but I wasn’t sure whether she saw me or not. She walked on a bit, then she turned back and returned to the village.

  The next day I was just about to give my students a dictation when I saw Lucia through the window. I told them I’d be back in a minute, and ran out of the classroom. By the time I was on the street, though, she had disappeared. I hesitated for a minute, then I went home, packed a few things, and called a taxi. I knew the driver, one of his kids was in my class. He didn’t ask me any questions, and didn’t seem to be surprised when I told him to take me to the station.

  There was half an hour until the next train, and I was suddenly worried someone might come and prevent me from leaving. The driver had parked his taxi outside the station. He had got out and was smoking and talking on the phone to someone. He laughed, I could hear him from the platform where I was standing. Sometimes he looked across at me, and in spite of the distance, I thought I could make out a triumphant expression on his face.

  The train arrived. A couple of skiers boarded with me, but they got off at the next station and I was alone in the car. I opened a window and leaned out. Cold air flowed in. The sky was overcast, and the mountains looked threatening as they passed. Not until the train turned a corner and entered a tunnel did I calm down.

  The Result

  THE BANDAGE ON Bruno’s back felt tight. The wound hardly hurt, but thinking about it got to him and made him sweat more than he usually did. It had been hot for weeks. It was late August, and some people said it would stay hot well into September.

  Bruno had worked at reception for thirty years. The past week he had been on the early shift. He was home at three, and Olivia got him to go shopping with her. In the shops she asked him questions he couldn’t answer.

  Bruno showered before supper. When he came out of the bathroom in clean clothes, Olivia wanted to change his bandage. The thought that she had left the kitchen and waited for him outside the bathroom door bothered him. I’m sure the bandage has gotten wet, she said, and she followed him into the bedroom. It hasn’t, he said, it doesn’t matter.

  Olivia unbuttoned his shirt. He was too feeble to resist, and sank down onto the bed. She sat down beside him, pulled the shirt over his shoulder, and told him to turn around.

  Watch out, she said, and already the bandage was off. It doesn’t hurt, said Bruno. It looks fine, she said. It was just a couple of punctures, he said. She said he had always had good powers of healing. He said it felt a bit tight. Olivia was immersed in her work. There, she said, and she stroked his hair, now you’ve earned your supper.

  It was seven o’clock. They always ate at seven. It’s supposed to get cooler tomorrow, said Olivia, as she heaped Bruno’s plate. He wasn’t hungry, but he had long since stopped trying to tell her that.

  After supper he went out in the garden and stayed out a long time, longer than usual. It was already getting dark when he came in. Clouds had appeared from somewhere. Olivia was in the living room, watching the late news. Bruno went into the bedroom. He got undressed and lay down. Is it raining yet? Olivia asked as she came to bed. Bruno didn’t reply.

  He was glad he was on the late shift again tomorrow. He didn’t have to be at the hotel until three, and could sleep in as long as he liked. Olivia woke him with lunch, and after coffee he was out of the house. They didn’t live far from the hotel, and Bruno loved biking home from work. At night the town center was full of young people talking animatedly in the cafes. When he got home, Olivia was usually in bed already, and he went into the bedroom to wish her good night. He kissed her quickly, and she said, Mind you don’t stay up too long.

  The cold front had reached the town overnight. Suddenly the air was almost twenty degrees colder, and it had gotten darker, almost autumnal outside. When was he expecting the result? Olivia asked him over lunch. She asked him every day, since he’d gone to the doctor a week ago, to get the mole removed. Tomorrow, he said. It’s bound not to be anything, said Olivia. Of course it’s nothing, said Bruno, just a routine check. Well, better safe than sorry, said Olivia, it’s one less thing to worry about. The uncertainty. That’s why I had it done, said Bruno. Quite, said Olivia. Will they call you, or do you have to call them?

  Bruno had left the number of the hotel with the doctor’s assistant. She had promised to call on Wednesday, sometime during the afternoon. The doctor hadn’t even thought it necessary to offer any words of optimism. The chances of it being a melanoma were really very small. Bruno wasn’t worried. On the contrary, he was in a sparkling mood that day, perhaps because it had cooled down at last. He made a joke when he took over from his colleague, and personally arranged the flowers in the room where the Christian businesspeople were meeting in the evening. Then he stepped out onto the terrace and contentedly surveyed the landscape, the little section of the lake you could see from there, and the forested mountains, which seemed to be much nearer now than when it was hot. It didn’t even bother him when Sergio called in to say he was sick. The student who generally filled in on such occasions wasn’t home, but his mother said he would be back soon. Bruno called Olivia. He said he would be back late, he couldn’t say how late. Why today of all days? said Olivia. Bruno didn’t reply.

  The Christian businesspeople had all gone home. Marcella emerged from the room with the last of them, and stopped at the reception desk for a chat with Bruno.

  Those Christians are lousy tippers, she said, I hope they’ll at least remember us in their prayers. She asked what Bruno was doing there still.

  Sergio is sick, he said.

  What about the student? asked Marcella. What’s the matter with Sergio?

  Bruno shook his head. We’ve known each other for thirty years, he said. He began here shortly after me. You weren’t even born then.

  Marcella laughed. She said she was thirty-five.

  You don’t look it, said Bruno. Who looks after your kids when you’re at work?

  They can look after themselves. My younger girl is ten. My older girl is thirteen. The boy is fifteen.

  He had three children too, Bruno said, but they all moved out a long time ago. Marcella said she was just going to straighten out the hall. See you in a minute, she said.

  Two middle-aged women left the hotel. Bruno had often been puzzled by the attractive women who stayed as guests of the hotel. They arrived in twos and threes, without their husbands. They shared a room, were out all day, and returned to the hotel in the evening with half a dozen large bags from expensive stores. Sometimes he saw them on his tours of duty by the pool, lying there half naked on their deck chairs. Bruno would stop for an instant and look at them skeptically from a distance. After dinner, the women might leave the hotel once more, and he wouldn’t be around to see them return. Sergio had told him that they sometimes had men with them whom they tried to smuggle in past him. As if he cared who they spent their nights with. He was quite capable of imagining the rest, when the men slunk past the porter’s desk an hour later, with cigarettes between their lips and frosty expressions.

  Bruno thought of Marcella in her black skirt. He imagined her coming home. The children were already in bed, the husband was watching TV in the living room. She went into the bathroom and took off her skirt and underskirt. She washed and went to the bedroom in her underwear and pulled on her nightie.

  Bruno thought of the time when his kids had still been at home, all those l
ong, monotonous years, all the mornings and evenings. Sometimes he longed for those meals, where no one had said much, nothing of importance. It was the repetition that made them so lovely, the knowledge that tomorrow and the day after and next week and next year they would be sitting together in exactly the same way. There seemed to be so much time then. Not until the children had moved out did he notice how distant they had remained in all those years. When Bruno saw a disaster movie in which an earthquake or flood or volcanic eruption threatened a town, it wasn’t the destruction that moved him or the deaths, only the fate of the man who had become separated from his family and was desperately looking for them in all the confusion. He would have tears in his eyes, and Olivia said what a load of nonsense.

  At ten o’clock Bruno called home and said he still didn’t know when he’d be back. Olivia sounded worried, but she didn’t say anything. He promised her he would call later on.

  He thought of the result he would get tomorrow. He thought about the way they would break the news. The doctor would be straight with him. Seventy percent of patients died within five years. Then he would embark on that rigmarole he had seen one of the waiters, a man from Portugal, go through, that endless sequence of tests and therapies. Times when things looked to be improving, and other times when he could barely recognize the man. Sleepless nights, unbearable pain, days of vomiting, and in the end a mean and nasty death.

  He stood in front of the hotel. Not many of its rooms were occupied. Only a few of the windows had lights on; in one of them a young man was sitting and smoking a cigarette. He tossed the butt out the window and disappeared. Bruno was terrified, absolutely terrified of the disease that might already have spread throughout his body. He was afraid of losing his life a piece at a time. He had never wished for very much, only hoped things might stay more or less as they were. But maybe that had been enough to provoke fate.