We're Flying

by Peter Stamm

  When he left the water he was cold, and he ran to the diving board and back. The surface of the water was smooth once more. Lucas dived the length of the pool, fifty meters, and surged out of the water at the far end with a shout of triumph. Franziska was standing there smiling at him. She bent down, put out her hand, and helped him out. He wanted to hug her, but he wasn’t sure how to do it. They just looked at each other and walked to the lawn side by side. In her bathing suit, Franziska walked somehow differently, more confidently, her whole body moving, the hips, the shoulders, the slender arms. She sat down—it looked as though she just let herself drop. Then she sat there on the grass, cross-legged, leaning forward. She talked and talked.

  Lucas wandered about, crossed the large lawn, and walked along the fence under the trees, where in some places the bare earth had a shiny gleam, as if someone had polished it. There was a smell of grass and earth, and something sweet like flowers or something rotting. The sun had come out from under the clouds, and its level rays were falling on the ground. Little droplets of water glistened on the leaves and in the grass, and suddenly everything looked very bright.

  Lucas wandered across the lawn, hoping to find something, a purse or a watch or a penknife, something. Down by the river he lay down in the short-cut grass and watched the dirty brown water flowing past. The grass was wet and cold. Everything was clear and shallow. It was a mixture of happiness and unhappiness. It was happiness that felt like unhappiness.

  Franziska and her girlfriends were going to the baths. They sat in a circle, they had bought sweets and were talking and laughing. Lucas couldn’t imagine what they were talking about, he couldn’t remember what Franziska used to talk about with him. Sometimes she wouldn’t know what to say anymore. Perhaps that was the moment when people kissed. You had to be quiet before you kissed.

  Lucas lay in the grass. He cupped his hands on his chest and made two shallow breasts. A couple of drops of water from somewhere landed on his stomach. A light wind had started up. Lucas shivered with cold.

  He stood in front of the changing rooms: WOMEN AND GIRLS. He went inside. Here there were single stalls, there was no general changing room, like for men, who didn’t mind changing together. Lucas wondered if women felt more shame, and if they had secrets from one another, and what they were.

  Franziska walked in, with a plastic bag with her things under her arm. She locked herself in one of the stalls and pulled off her jeans and T-shirt. Before undressing further, she pulled her bathing suit out of the bag and shook it out and hung it on a hook. She hurried. She was thinking of the others who were already there, lying in a ring on the grass and waiting for her to arrive.

  Lucas had taken off his trunks and hung them. He wedged his cock between his legs, and looked down his body, stroked his hands over his hips. He could be someone or no one. He had a sensation of warmth, his skin seemed to glow, but inside his body was still cold.

  He opened the stall door, and immediately felt much more exposed. When he stepped out into the open, someone could see him naked. He didn’t dare go on, and stopped at the entrance. The women walked past him, the girls in light summer dresses and young mothers and older women. They vanished into the changing rooms, and immediately re-emerged in various brightly colored bathing suits.

  Lucas ran over to the men’s changing rooms. He hadn’t put his clothes away in a locker, there was a little heap of them lying on the long wooden bench. He pulled on the chilly garments. Then he checked the lockers again, to see if someone had forgotten their deposit, starting with the first lockers and going on until halfway, when he gave up and left the building.

  The toilets were locked. Lucas tried both doors, the men’s and women’s. At the back of the little hut was a door that was open a crack. A low monotonous drone was audible. Lucas peered into the unlit room. The noise came from a big pump. On the floor were blue-and-white plastic chemical containers. It smelled of chlorine.

  He went inside—it was far warmer there than it was outside—and pulled the door shut behind him. For a while he stood in the darkness. Suddenly he panicked: the lifeguard might return and catch him.

  When he climbed back out over the fence, he remembered he had left his trunks in the ladies’ cabins. He imagined Franziska picking them up and taking them between the tips of her fingers to the lifeguard, who tossed them in a box where all sorts of lost and forgotten things were kept until someone came for them.

  The Letter

  IN THE DAYS between Manfred’s death and his burial, Johanna threw away all his clothes and shoes. Later on, she suspected, she would no longer be capable of it. She threw away his toiletries and medications, unfinished containers of food, little supplies. When it was dark, Johanna carried the big garbage bags out to the car. The next day she drove to the incinerator and dropped the bags herself in the big ditch. It was midsummer, and the smell of garbage was unbearable, even early in the morning. The car was weighed once as she drove in and then again as she left, and the fee was calculated on the basis of the difference in weight. One hundred and ninety-eight pounds, said the man at the register, and he charged the basic fee. You know you could have brought in three times as much stuff for that money. Never mind, said Johanna, and she tipped him. The period of mourning began only after the burial.

  It took years before Johanna managed to look through those things she hadn’t immediately thrown away. She sorted through Manfred’s books, almost all of them manuals on tax and company law from the time he was qualifying. He had been a tax accountant, whose clients were mostly small firms for whom he did the bookkeeping, and individuals whose tax declarations he prepared, often without asking for payment. You’re much too good-natured, Johanna would sometimes say, but Manfred merely shrugged his shoulders and said, I see how little people make, we’re well off by comparison. Following Manfred’s death, Hedwig, his long-serving secretary, had settled affairs at the office, got in touch with clients, returned files and recommended other tax accountants, and finally had the furniture collected by the firm from whom Manfred had bought it not too many years previously. Early on, Hedwig had called now and again, but Johanna had always said, I have no idea about these things, you must do what you think is right. I miss him, Hedwig had said, and Johanna, with a rough laugh: Do you think you’re the only one?

  Johanna felt guilty when she cleared Manfred’s desk, even though he had been dead for seven years now. But she would have to do it sooner or later. She needed the room for Felicitas, who sometimes came to stay for a day or two. Thus far, the little girl had slept in her bed with her, but now she was six, and it seemed to Johanna that she needed her own bed and somewhere to keep her things.

  The top drawer was full of the stuff that had been so endlessly fascinating to Adrian when he was a boy. Sometimes Manfred had set him on his lap and pulled one thing after another out of the drawer and told him its story: the Red Sox baseball he had bought during his first trip to America, the Lapland knife, the papier-mâché elephant, a slide rule, a broken pocket watch. Some of these items dated back to Manfred’s childhood, others Johanna knew where they came from and what they had signified to Manfred. She held each item in her hand a long time, unable to decide what to keep and what to throw away. Finally she put everything back in the drawer and shut it again. She would ask Adrian if he wanted any of it. She didn’t need any of it herself, those things only made her sad.

  In the second drawer were files of all sorts of documents, office furniture catalogs and instructions, old papers of no sentimental value that Johanna unhesitatingly threw in the recycling. In one of the folders there were a few issues of a 1970s magazine. On one cover was a black woman with an Afro hairstyle and pointy breasts. Johanna flicked through them. She was surprised by the innocence of the pictures, even though she was bothered by the fact that Manfred had hidden their existence from her. When she hoisted the empty files from the drawer and dumped them in a garbage bag, a bundle of letters slipped out and fell to the floor. Johanna picked it up and
pulled off the rubber band that held it together. There were perhaps twenty small envelopes, addressed to Manfred’s office in an attractive hand. The letters had been sent within the space of a single year, the date on the cancellation stamp was perhaps thirty years old. Johanna hesitated, then she took one of the letters out of its envelope and began to read.

  ADRIAN DIDN’T HAVE much time. When Johanna opened the door, he was in the process of saying good-bye to Felicitas. He greeted his mother perfunctorily and said Iris was waiting in the car. We won’t be that late, he said. She can stay the night if you like, said Johanna, I’ve cleared out the office. You’ve got your own room now, she said to Felicitas, who had taken her hand and was beaming at her. Is that really OK? asked Adrian. Come to breakfast tomorrow, said Johanna, there’s something I want to talk to you about. Thanks, said Adrian, and kissed his mother on the cheek. He stroked Felicitas’s head and said, See you tomorrow, sweetie. You can stay here yourselves if you like, Johanna added, but Adrian said over his shoulder, going down the stairs, he would rather go home, thanks all the same.

  When Felicitas was in bed, she started to ask her grandmother about her grandfather. She always tried anything not to have to go to sleep. Johanna had often told her what a good man Grandfather was, and how he had helped lots of people, but on this occasion she was curt, she didn’t feel like thinking about Manfred now. Why did he die? Felicitas asked. We all have to die, said Johanna, he smoked too much. My papa smokes too much as well, Felicitas said. Does everyone die if they smoke too much? If you’re unlucky, said Johanna. Your grandfather’s in heaven. I don’t think he can see us. A little while ago, Felicitas’s guinea pig had died, and now she was picturing it up in heaven along with her grandfather, a vision that was clearly too much for her. Go to sleep now, said Johanna, and sweet dreams.

  In the morning they were speaking about something else, but when Felicitas caught sight of a photo of her grandfather on the sideboard, she asked if that was taken in heaven. No, said Johanna, that was in Italy, in Tuscany, where we were on vacation. You’ve been there too, remember, with your mama and papa last year. I don’t remember, said Felicitas. It seemed to make her sad. And there followed another round of questions about heaven that Johanna couldn’t answer. No one knows what it looks like. No one has ever come back from there. It’s farther away than the stars. Yes, she said, I’m going to go to heaven as well, and so will your papa and mama, and you too.

  At breakfast Felicitas started again. Grandfather’s in heaven, she said, and I’m going to go to heaven too. Iris looked at her mother-in-law critically. Adrian didn’t say anything, it still wasn’t possible to talk to him about his father’s death, even though the two of them hadn’t been close. I’m going to go to heaven too, Felicitas said again. Sure you will, said Iris, but there’s plenty of time until then. Then she wanted to leave, and Johanna only had a moment in which to show Adrian Manfred’s things. She watched his face, and for a moment saw a boyish joy that suddenly was extinguished. He took out the slide rule and slid the scales along each other. I’ve never understood the principle of these, he said. Look, Felicitas, this is how people used to do calculations before there were computers. Do you want any of it? asked Johanna. Adrian hesitated. We’ve got so much stuff already, Iris said. What about the watch? asked Johanna. It doesn’t work, said Adrian. Johanna felt disappointed, even though she herself didn’t want to keep any of it either. She accompanied them out to the car. Iris put Felicitas in her car seat. Adrian hadn’t got in yet. Are you all right? he asked. I’ve been a bit tired recently, said Johanna, I’m not sleeping well. Wasn’t there something you wanted to talk to me about? he asked. She said it wasn’t urgent, later when he had time. Call me, he said.

  Johanna called Hedwig, the secretary, and they met at a cafe. Johanna got a shock when she saw Hedwig. She had stopped dyeing her hair, and she was in flat shoes and glasses. She couldn’t deal with the contact lenses anymore, she said. The two women had nothing to say to each other—they never had. Manfred’s office had been a world of its own, Johanna had never had anything to do with it. Manfred hardly ever brought his work home with him. When Johanna asked him about it, he would gesture dismissively and say, Oh, the usual. Sometimes she would pick him up from the office and caught him seeing out a client or bantering with Hedwig, and each time she thought he was an utter stranger. He seemed different there from the way he was at home, more decisive, more humorous, more alive. It was this man who had got those letters, and written others whose content Johanna could only guess at, from the replies of his mistress. Your last letter made me blush. Your erotic fantasies turned me on. I think about you all the time. Johanna had meant to ask Hedwig about the woman, but she couldn’t now, she would have felt too ashamed. And would his secretary know anyway? Johanna couldn’t imagine that Manfred would have let her into the secret of his double life. In fact she couldn’t imagine the double life itself.

  She only went to the cemetery out of a sense of duty. When she tended his grave before, she had felt very close to Manfred. Now it was as though he really was dead, as though the bond between them had torn, the connection that had lasted beyond his death. It occurred to her to track down Manfred’s mistress and demand the return of his letters, so as to undo the deception. But it was all such a long time ago, and the woman had signed using her first name only. And what difference would it have made to destroy those relics? In the end it hardly mattered who Monica was. Perhaps she was one of many. Johanna thought of one of Manfred’s clients, the manager of a restaurant where they sometimes ate. She had cried at the funeral, at the time Johanna hadn’t thought anything of it, but now she was suspicious. Many of Manfred’s woman clients had gone to the funeral.

  She had meant to talk about all this with Adrian, but when he next called, she didn’t say anything about it. She tried to persuade herself it was that she didn’t want to damage his image of his father. Privately, though, she knew that it wasn’t his father he might lose respect for, but herself, the injured party. She tried to think of someone else she could take into her confidence, but there was no one. The neighbors were out of the question, and most of the other people she knew in the village she had met through Manfred. He had grown up here, and knew everyone, man and woman. Because she had been his wife, she was still greeted by many people today in the street, but she wasn’t on friendly terms with any of them. Once, a couple of years ago now, she had taken an Italian course, but the others there were all much younger than she was, and when it was over, the group split up. She thought of the man who had taught the course, who wasn’t a local. They had got along well together, but what was she going to say to him? He probably wouldn’t even remember who she was.

  ON HIS FORTIETH BIRTHDAY Adrian threw a big party. For all my friends, he said, and he asked his mother if she would look after Felicitas. Johanna was there from the afternoon on, and played with her granddaughter while Iris and Adrian made salads. The party was to be held in the garden. The weather was being a bit unpredictable, and at the last moment Adrian had a big tent set up in the garden, in case it rained. The guests started arriving at six, work colleagues of Adrian’s and old school friends whom Johanna hadn’t seen in twenty years, but whom she immediately identified. Back then, she had been on easy terms with all of them, and it felt a little weird to her to be formal. Felicitas had gone off somewhere with some other kids. Johanna had followed them, but had quickly seen she wasn’t welcome. She went back out to the garden. Adrian was busy over the grill, Iris was welcoming the new arrivals and introducing them, if they didn’t know each other. Johanna stood on the fringes with a fixed smile on her face. She didn’t want to bother anyone, didn’t want anyone to see how unhappy she felt.

  Clouds had filled the sky, it looked as though it could start raining any minute. The meat’s ready, called Adrian, and a line of people formed in front of the grill. Johanna went inside to get the children, then sat down with them at their junior table and tried to keep them vaguely under control. Fro
m time to time one or another of the parents would go up to the table and ask if everything was all right. One young woman remained standing behind a rather quiet toddler, laid her hand on his head, and asked him if he wasn’t tired yet. Only then did she seem to notice Johanna. She extended her hand and said, Why, how are you, we haven’t seen each other in ages. Johanna hesitated. Eva, said the young woman, I used to wear my hair longer. Now Johanna remembered. Eva had done an internship at the same time as Adrian, and for a while the two of them had been an item. She and Manfred had been fond of the girl, and both were disappointed when one day Adrian announced that they had broken up. He hadn’t given a reason, and Johanna hadn’t asked him for one either. Of course, now I remember, she said. And this is your little boy? Yes, this is Jan. Johanna took the little boy’s hand in hers. He looked at her rather rigidly. And who’s your daddy? she asked. Eva said she and Jan’s father weren’t together anymore. I’m sorry, said Johanna. Eva laughed and said, I’m not!