Alice

by Judith Hermann

  The bottles were plastic. Tinted blue. Spring water.

  A bag?

  Yes, please.

  He pushed an orange-coloured bag across the counter, counted out the clinking change into the little tray, and withdrew behind the plastic boxes.

  Even as she was standing there facing him she couldn’t say any more what he actually looked like. Broken fingernails. The hem of his sweater frayed. The shop smelling of potting soil and wet paper. She said, Have a good day, said it just to hear how he would answer. He said, The same to you. Said it in an absolutely flat voice. Alice pulled open the door and, with the bag containing the two bottles and cigarette packs pressed to her chest, she turned left and walked down the street.

  Along Rheinsberger Strasse. Rheinsberger was a quiet street, in contrast to the street where Alice lived. A simple, quiet, beautiful street, no more, no less. Old acacia trees on both sides, cobblestone pavement, A patchwork quilt of asphalt – light-coloured asphalt, dark-coloured asphalt, seams of tar. On Rheinsberger you could walk along the middle of the traffic lane. Alice walked down the middle with her orange bag, the spring water and cigarettes. A gentle wind moved through the acacias shaking the leaves; light flickered through them onto the asphalt. From the open windows, the sound of televisions, the ringing of telephones, the smell of food, popular songs from radios. A street on a Saturday afternoon in June. Alice thought the street had a Sunday air to it, something about it reminded her of childhood Sundays, of the long drawn-out summer Sundays pulsing with something – as if it were that time just before the onset of a thunderstorm. Waiting for it to come. Waiting for the thunderstorm.

  The house where Richard lived was on the right-hand side of the street. The right-hand side was in the shade. Alice looked up at Richard’s closed windows and thought: In a room in that apartment in this house on this street a man I know is dying. Everyone else is doing something else. Thinking this was a little like reciting a poem, someone else’s words, not anything you could comprehend. She stopped under the arch of the main entrance and listened to a faraway child’s recorder: Cuckoo, cuckoo, half a scale, two trills, and it was finished. Alice pressed the bell. Leaning against the door, she pressed the copper bell button with her index finger. The buzzer buzzed, and the door opened.

  The peonies in the milk bottle were wilted but still standing on the windowsill. A white-edged blue tablecloth covered the table, on it a bottle of water, an ashtray, an open address book with the telephone on top, a stationery pad, pens, matches, a pair of reading glasses. Margaret fetched two glasses from the kitchen, emptied the ashtray. She sat down where Richard had sat two weeks ago, on the chair in front of the books, in the shelter of the books, their spines, their consolingly familiar titles. Who would read these thousand books once Richard no longer needed them? These were the very questions Alice was ashamed of, but which she kept thinking anyway. Margaret poured Alice a glass of water, then one for herself. She opened a pack of cigarettes. Alice could still remember just what that was like, each detail – tugging gently on the little strip of cellophane, then the rustling foil, prying out the first cigarette. Virginia and orient tobaccos – one world. Margaret lit a cigarette, blew out the match, getting rid of the sulphur smell with a wave of her hand. Her face was tanned by the June sun. There was something radiant, strong, very much alive about her. She smoked cheerfully. It’s nice that you came, Alice, she said. And suddenly Alice also thought that it was nice to be allowed to sit here again so unexpectedly, in this room, whose permanence would end at the exact moment Richard stopped breathing, but no one knew just when that would happen, and as long as he was still breathing, it was all here: the table, the books, the flowers, the reading glasses, the glasses of water, his name on the door, and his brown jacket hanging over the back of the desk chair.

  Margaret, Alice said.

  Margaret nodded, said, Well, as far as possible we’ve worked it all out. We’ve arranged everything. The musicians, the cemetery chapel, the gravesite. We’ve set a date for the funeral. In three weeks.

  And what if Richard hasn’t died by then, Alice asked.

  Oh, by then he’ll have managed that, Margaret said.

  They’d discussed the subject two weeks ago; Margaret and Richard had talked about it in front of Alice. Alice had listened. At first she thought it was indecent, unseemly, to be talking with Richard about his own funeral, but instead it turned out to be the natural thing to do. Not unseemly. Richard had said he wanted his friends to carry his coffin, not the gravediggers. No sermon by a minister, no quotations. If the weather’s good, that would please him. Margaret had taken notes on the stationery pad: Whom to call, who should be there, no one should stay away. The food: sandwiches with plum jam, meatballs, and beer.

  She had said, That’s what we’ll do. We’ll do it just like that, Richard; it’ll be a very nice funeral, and Richard had said, Yes it will be, and he had looked at Margaret, a look that Alice tried to describe to Raymond later, but had to give up on because it was impossible to describe.

  That’s how it is, Margaret said. I haven’t slept for a whole week. I’ve distanced myself; I’m standing above it all. When it’s over I’ll collapse. I realise that. Hardly anyone has come to see us since your visit two weeks ago. Things went downhill fast after that. Hard to believe how fast they can go downhill. You can see it happening. You can actually see it.

  She stopped talking and listened. Now he’s asleep, she said. He’s not in pain. What time is it? Let’s see – almost five. That means the nurse will be here soon, in half an hour; he’s got a suitcase full of morphine that he carries around with him through half the city. Will you stay a while longer?

  Yes, Alice said. I’ll stay. She looked across the hall to the other room that faced the courtyard. Richard’s bed was next to the wall on the right. The window was open, the curtains drawn. Richard was lying there with his head near the door, his closed eyes turned towards the window. Alice could see his head, the grey hair.

  Margaret said, The curtains are from when I was a girl.

  Muslin, Alice said.

  Yes, muslin. Margaret nodded. If I had known as a girl – fifty years ago – that one day I’d be hanging them in Richard’s death chamber. Or …

  The white curtains swayed gently in the breeze. Almost imperceptibly, back and forth. Causing a slight change in the light. Hints of embroidery, trimmings. Tiny flowers circled by wreaths, various shades of white.

  The visiting nurse came at six. He brought papaya, mango, and pineapple in a little plastic container, all cut into small pieces. And more water. The room was warm, summery. For a while, they sat there together. Eating the papaya, mango, pineapple. You’ve got to eat, Margaret, the nurse said, preparing the morphine and charging the syringe. Then he went into the bedroom. Alice picked up a piece of papaya, smooth and orange coloured. She heard the nurse speaking to Richard, calmly and matter-of-factly, not as if he were talking to a child. She glanced over briefly; he was bending over the bed, had put his hands on Richard’s head. It looked as though he were going to kiss him. Then he came back and, sitting at the table, tied the laces of his trainers. He was still fairly young. Shaved head, soft features, several earrings. To Margaret he said, So, I’ll have my cellphone with me; we’ll be on the roof today, grilling and stuff, I’ll probably have a beer. Or two. Nothing’s going to happen today. Maybe tomorrow. I think, tomorrow it will all be over. But call me if you need me.

  He said, He notices when you’re sitting next to him, when you touch him. He notices everything. Maybe he was saying this to Alice. They said goodbye, formally, it didn’t matter that they didn’t know each other. Then he left.

  At some point Alice left too. Margaret walked her to the door; they held each other in a brief, tight hug. I’ll let you know, Margaret said. When it happens. When it’s over, I mean. I’ll call you.

  Alice went back along Rheinsberger Strasse, walking down the middle of the street, on the light-coloured, the dark-coloured asphalt. Dusk wa
s falling, and lights were going on in the houses, people were watering their plants on the balconies, and the water dripped down on the shady pavements. The hum of evening. The dog days of summer. It hadn’t rained in a long time and dried linden blossoms rustled in the gutters. Very gradually the heat was letting up a bit. Cars at the traffic lights on the main street, the elevated train going in the opposite direction, and the tram with its green windowpanes and the blue sparks flying in the grid under the bridge. Alice passed the newsagent’s, its window pasted over with ads, the ugly newspaper racks, and the neon sign for Toto-Lotto now on, flickering. A loose connection. The fat man was standing in front of the door. He had come outside, just for a change. Hands in his trouser pockets, the frayed sweater, a friendly, tired face. He nodded at Alice, and Alice nodding back, thought, He knows where I’ve been. No, he can’t know. The water’s been drunk; the cigarettes will all have been smoked by tomorrow morning.

  She stopped at the traffic lights and phoned Raymond. He answered after the seventh ring, and his voice sounded far away and strange.

  Alice.

  Would you please be sitting downstairs when I come home? Alice cleared her throat. She looked at the big intersection, and for a second she had the feeling that she had lost track of the meaning of everything. As though everything was dissolving and re-forming differently with a new meaning. Scribbles. Acoustic scrawls. She pressed her eyes closed with her left hand. The feeling went away. She said, I don’t know, am I interrupting something?

  No, Raymond said. You’re not interrupting anything. Are you saying I should go down to the bar? In front of the house?

  It would be nice, Alice said. What are you doing right now?

  Reading, Raymond said. He laughed. Oh well. Actually I was sleeping. I’ll go downstairs. See you soon.

  See you soon, Alice said.

  The street was still full of people. Talking constantly. No end in sight, no final word. But now that it was getting dark, everything sounded more muted. Lanterns on the tables. Men and women sitting across from each other. Heavy green trees. Bicycles, locked together along the edge of the pavement, the moon above the park, the ship, empty now, an empty wooden ship with an openwork railing in a sea of sand. The benches all around it, deserted. Paper cups, newspapers, bottles. Bottle collectors emerging from the bushes, polite and quiet, picking up the bottles, letting others go first. Bats among the trees. Swifts, their angry, crazy screams. The ping-pong of table-tennis balls, cellphone tunes, symphonies. Alice walked along the edge of the park towards the house where she lived, where Raymond had been sleeping and reading that afternoon and early evening. On the first floor the light was on, also on the third floor, and there was a light in her window. Before going downstairs Raymond had turned on the little light near the window for Alice. She could see him now. He was sitting in front of the house, under the blue awning of the bar, at the last in a long row of tables, right next to the front door of their house. His back was to the wine-red house wall; he was drinking a small beer. His jacket was draped over the back of the chair next to him. Alice almost stopped walking. She tried an old game – to see him as if she didn’t know him. As if he were just anyone. As if she were seeing him for the first time. What would she think of him? What did he actually look like? It didn’t work. She gave up.

  ’Evening, the waitress said.

  ’Evening, Raymond answered for Alice, inimitable, it sounded exactly right.

  Tired?

  Yes, I’m a little tired, Alice said. I’ll have a small beer too, please.

  The waitress smiled, first at Raymond, then at Alice, then up at the sky. She stood there with them a little longer. Like Raymond, she had a tattoo, a Mexican sun on her back, in the exact centre between her shoulder blades. Sometimes when Alice ran into her in the hallway of the house, they would ask each other, How are you? Thanks, pretty good. Lots of work. Always a lot of work. Never enough time. No time. Time for what, actually? They agreed that they didn’t quite know what for.

  The waitress was the same one who, every morning, wrote, Happy Hour on the blackboard next to the front door of the bar. Above that, she drew a smiling moon face. Day after day. She knocked lightly on the table with her knuckles, then she walked away. Alice and Raymond didn’t often sit at the bar in front of the house.

  Alice took off her jacket and sat down next to Raymond. They sat there next to each other and watched the people walking to the left across the park, to the right down the street.

  Are you hungry? Raymond asked. Would you like something to eat?

  I’m not hungry, Alice said. I already had something to eat. Mango and papaya and pineapple. It sounded funny. She thought of the male nurse who was now sitting on some rooftop in a folding chair, grilling and stuff, with a view of the entire shining, glittering city, holding his third bottle of beer, his cellphone in his pocket. Margaret might call him. Margaret might call Alice, too. The nurse had had very dark eyes, somewhat distant, serious.

  Alice said, He’s become inconceivably small. I mean Richard. He’s become as small as a child these past two weeks. His skin is yellow. It’s all over, but his heart is still beating; it simply keeps on beating.

  He wasn’t conscious this time, Raymond said. Or was he?

  No, Alice said. He isn’t conscious any more. But the nurse thinks he notices everything. Could be; I’m not sure. How would he know? I touched Richard. He sighed. Is that a reaction?

  Yes, Raymond said, that’s a reaction.

  Maybe, Alice said.

  The waitress set the beer down in front of Alice. Golden, in a tall glass on a beer mat that Alice pushed away after the waitress had left. The beer was ice-cold and sweet. What was it you were reading? Alice asked.

  Science fiction, Raymond said. He looked happy. Some great parts in it about rain.

  He didn’t say anything more. Neither did Alice. It was quite all right this way. Most likely the nurse wouldn’t have said anything either. At least nothing about Richard, about other things, yes – football news, polar bears, weather forecasts, the presidential elections.

  Margaret had said, After you leave I’ll put the folding cot next to Richard’s bed. And lie down next to him. I won’t sleep, I’ll just lie there. So she was now lying on the folding cot next to Richard’s bed in the room with the white muslin curtains of her girlhood, and so on and so forth. Until Richard was gone. One’s girlhood, What is all the rest, then. Alice wondered.

  She thought of Margaret. Of the male nurse. Of Rheinsberger Strasse and about the Sundays of her own childhood … When a blind man with a hurdy-gurdy and a little monkey on a rusty chain had sung in the rear courtyard; she’d been allowed to throw coins wrapped in newspaper out of the kitchen window – when she told this to Raymond he hadn’t believed her. But why not? She also thought about Richard, but in a different way. She looked past Raymond and the dark park; far away, a late-night plane rose into the sky, and she remembered that Raymond, on one of the first nights they had sat together like this, had said the sound of a plane at night made him sad. Why? Alice had asked. Because it’s as if it were the last possible plane. For me, Raymond had said, and Alice had understood a part of it and a part of it she didn’t understand, and something of what he said had also caused her to feel hurt. She was reminded of all this whenever she saw a plane at night. Whether she wanted to or not, she remembered it every time. A sort of price to pay. But for what?

  Will you be going there again? Raymond asked.

  No, Alice said. I think today was the last time.

  Sunday, they drove into the country. With the Sunday paper, a tartan blanket, a Thermos of tea, three apples, and a bottle of water. Northward. On a secondary road. They parked at the edge of the forest, then walked into the forest on a sandy path until they reached the lake. Alice dawdled, walking quite a way behind Raymond; sometimes he was out of sight, then again there he would be in front of her on the path and in the middle of the light slanting down through the pine trees brightly illuminating
something seemingly insubstantial. Fat bugs waddled along at the edge of the path, persistently and stubbornly. Somewhere a woodpecker was pecking. Raymond was far ahead of her. They walked around the lake, looking for a place to spread out their blanket. It was important to Alice, Raymond didn’t care. They couldn’t find a spot for the blanket, only bumpy, swampy grass, criss-crossed by tree roots. So they were left with no choice but to stay in the shade, close to the trees, Alice leaning her back against a tree trunk, her feet almost in the water. The water was green, muddy, and warm.

  Raymond went swimming; Alice read the Sunday paper without understanding a single word, without wanting to understand. The rustling of the pages. Frogs in the wet sand. At a safe distance from the shore the unpleasantly small head of a water snake. Some birds Alice did not recognise flying above the lake. Kites? She’d always found the name intriguing, had never known what the bird itself looked like. Was she mistaken? Alice shrugged, yes, possibly. Raymond came back, breathing the way you breathe when you’re just coming out of the water; he dried himself, looked back at the distance he’d swum.