Agnes

by Peter Stamm

  “Me neither.”

  “That was when I met Herbert,” said Agnes, pointing at the photograph, “at the graduation party. It was three years ago. He was working for a catering company.”

  “Is he a waiter?” I asked.

  “Actor,” said Agnes. “My parents had come up from Florida specially. They could have stayed with me, but my father insisted on getting a room in a hotel. He didn’t want to be any trouble, my mother said. She always made excuses for him. When he noticed that Herbert was flirting with me, he was mad. He behaved like a moron, found fault with everything, and wanted me to leave with them. I was pretty tired and drunk by then, and I wouldn’t have minded going home. But he’d annoyed me so much all evening that I stayed just to annoy him back, and Herbert came up and asked me in front of him whether I’d dance with him after supper. There was a band at the celebration, but I had to wait a long time for Herbert to finish work. My father made a scene, and called me a tart. Can you imagine? By the time they finally left, my mother was crying.”

  “Then what?” I said.

  “I think I was a bit in love,” said Agnes. “We danced together for quite a long time. Herbert was kissing me. Then he drove me home. But nothing happened. I think he would have been too much in awe of my gown.”

  “Too much, eh?” I said, and Agnes laughed and winked at me.

  “It cost him his job, because he was so late back with the van and all the dirty plates and everything.”

  “Do you still see him?”

  “He’s found a job in New York. He’s working as an announcer in a shopping center, and he’s hoping to be discovered.”

  After lunch, Agnes made me sit next to her at her desk. She turned on the computer, and opened a text file.

  “Read it,” she said.

  I started reading, but no sooner had I skipped over the first couple of sentences than she interrupted me and said: “You see, I’ve written a story too. I’d like to write more of it. What do you think?”

  “Give me a chance,” I said. But she was too nervous to sit next to me quietly.

  “I’ll go and make us some coffee.”

  I read.

  I have to go. I get up. I leave the house. I take the train. A man is staring at me. He sits down next to me. He gets up when I get up. He follows me when I get out. When I turn around, I can’t see him, that’s how close he is to me. But he doesn’t touch me. He follows me. He doesn’t speak. Day and night, he’s always with me. He sleeps with me, without touching me. He is in me, filling me. When I look in the mirror, all I can see is him. I can’t recognize my hands or my feet anymore. My clothes are too small, my shoes pinch me, my hair has gotten lighter, my voice darker. I have to go. I get up. I leave the house.

  I read the text quickly and carelessly. I was impatient. Agnes came back from the kitchen, smiling timidly. We moved back to the table. The candles had almost burnt down.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Coffee?” I said. I didn’t feel like criticizing her text, and resented her for making me. When she apologized, and poured me a coffee, I felt embarrassed.

  “Listen,” I began. I couldn’t endure her expectant gaze, and picked up my coffee and went over to the window. “Listen, you can’t just sit down and expect to write a novel in a week. I don’t design computer software either.”

  “It’s only a short story,” pleaded Agnes.

  “I can’t judge it,” I said, “I don’t want to. I’m not a writer.”

  Agnes didn’t say anything, and I looked out of the window.

  “It reminds me of a mathematical formula,” I said. “It’s like you’ve got an unknown X in your head that you’re trying to find. The story keeps narrowing down, like a funnel. And sooner or later you’ll get your result, and it’ll be zero.”

  I went on like that for a while, and probably believed what I was saying. It was nothing really to do with the story anymore. Maybe it really wasn’t any good, but it was certainly better than anything I’d written in the last ten years.

  “You don’t even read anything,” I said finally, “you’ve got no books. How are you going to write if you don’t read?”

  Silently Agnes cut the apple pie she’d baked for me.

  “Do you want some ice cream with it?” she asked, without looking up. We ate.

  “Good pie,” I said.

  Agnes got up and went over to her computer. There were stars on the screen, little points of light that kept radiating out. When Agnes moved the mouse, her story reappeared. She touched a couple of keys, and the text went away.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I wiped it,” she said. “Forget it. Shall we go for a walk?”

  We walked around her neighborhood. The rain had stopped, but the streets were still all wet. Agnes showed me where she bought food, where she did her laundry, the restaurant she often went out to in the evenings. I tried to imagine what it was like, feeling at home in these particular streets, but I couldn’t do it.

  Agnes said she liked living here, she liked the neighborhood, even though it wasn’t pretty and she didn’t have any friends there. When we got back to her apartment, she pulled a stack of murky glass slides out of a drawer.

  “This is my work,” she said.

  At a glance, all the glass slides seemed to be evenly murky, but when I looked at them more closely, I saw there were patterns of tiny dots in the murk. On each glass plate, there was a different pattern.

  “Those are X-rays of crystal lattice structures,” said Agnes. “The actual arrangements of atoms. Almost everything is symmetrical at some level.”

  I handed the plates back to her. She went over to the window and held them up against the light.

  “The mystery is the void at the center,” she said, “what you don’t see, the axes of symmetry.”

  “But what’s that got to do with us?” I asked her. “With you and me, with life. We’re asymmetrical.”

  “There’s always a reason for asymmetry,” Agnes said. “It’s asymmetry that makes life possible. The difference between the sexes. The fact that time goes in one direction. Asymmetries always have a reason and an effect.”

  I hadn’t heard Agnes sounding so impassioned about anything before. I threw my arms around her. She held the slides up in the air, to keep them safe, and said: “Careful, they’ll break.”

  In spite of her warning, I picked Agnes up in my arms and carried her over to the mattress. She got up quickly to put her slides away, and then she returned, got undressed, and lay down next to me. We made love, and then it was dark outside. I spent the night with her.

  Early in the morning, I was woken up by a knocking in the pipes. I sat up and saw that Agnes was awake as well.

  “Somebody’s sending Morse code signals,” I said.

  “That’s the steam central heating; my place isn’t temperature-controlled like your place. The heat makes the pipes expand, and they make that noise.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you? You can’t sleep with that noise going on, can you?”

  “No, I like it,” said Agnes. “I feel I’m not alone when I wake up at night.”

  “But you’re not alone.”

  “No,” said Agnes. “Not now.”

  9

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Agnes, when we met up a few days later. It was the evening of the 3rd of July, and we had gone for a walk along the shore of Lake Michigan. The Independence Day celebrations begin the night before in Chicago, with music and fireworks. Grant Park was swarming with people, but here, only a bit further north, the lakeside walk was almost deserted. We sat down on the quayside and looked out at the lake.

  “Why did you stop writing,” asked Agnes, “stop writing for yourself, I mean?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t have anything to say. Or I wasn’t good enough. I just stopped one day.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to start again?”

  “Like to? That doesn’t really get you anywhere … Why do you ask? Do
you want a famous boyfriend?”

  “Boyfriend,” said Agnes, “that sounds strange.” She drew up her legs, and rested her chin on her knees.

  “I had the feeling you were jealous when I showed you my story.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am. I got angry, I wasn’t fair to you.”

  “That’s all right. You showed me your book of short stories.”

  “That book sold all of one hundred and eighty-seven copies.”

  “That’s not important. But you can write stories. Come on, let’s go back.”

  It was beginning to get dark as we got up to go. The downtown skyscrapers, backlit by the low sun, blended into one, like a colossal fortress.

  There was a group of Hispanics, maybe a family, that had lit a fire on the shore, and was celebrating. Agnes took my arm.

  “Couldn’t you write a story about me?” she asked.

  I laughed, and she laughed with me.

  “If it’s immortality you want, you ought to find someone more famous than me.”

  “Two hundred copies are enough. Even if it’s never published. It would be like having my portrait painted. You saw the photographs of me. There’s not a single decent picture of me. One that shows me as I am.”

  “Shall I write a poem to you?” I asked. “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

  “Not a poem,” said Agnes, “a story.”

  We were back at the Doral Plaza. The little shop was shut.

  “Have you ever used the stairs?” Agnes asked.

  “No,” I said, “why should I?”

  “How do you know you really live on the twenty-seventh floor?”

  We walked up the stairs, counting the floors. The staircase was narrow and painted yellow. When we stopped for a rest on the twentieth floor, we heard some distant footsteps. We held our breath, but the steps suddenly stopped and a door slammed, and there was silence again.

  “I don’t like elevators,” said Agnes, “I’d rather feel the ground under my feet.”

  “I think they’re pretty practical,” I said as I began climbing again, “just imagine …”

  “I wouldn’t want to live that high anyway,” said Agnes, setting off after me; “it’s not good.”

  We duly found my apartment on the twenty-seventh floor. I flopped exhausted onto the sofa. Agnes got herself a glass of water, and brought me a beer.

  “I’ve never written any stories about living people,” I said, “at the most I might have based characters on people I knew. But you need to have freedom in the actual story. Otherwise you’d be writing journalism.”

  Agnes sat down beside me.

  “And the stories you wrote, they ended up not having to do with the people you thought of when you started?”

  “No, they did,” I said, “or with my impression of those people. Maybe too much. My then girlfriend left me because she recognized herself in one of the stories.”

  “Really?” asked Agnes.

  “No,” I said, “that was just the version we put out for public consumption.”

  Agnes pondered.

  “Write a story about me,” she said, “so I know what you think of me.”

  “I have no idea what might come out,” I said, “I haven’t any control over it. We might both be disappointed.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” said Agnes, “you just need to write it.”

  I was in love, and saw no reason not to sacrifice a couple of days and write a story. Agnes’s enthusiasm had made me curious whether the experiment would succeed, whether I still had any ability to write a story.

  “OK, let’s start,” said Agnes, “a love story with you and me.”

  “No,” I said. “Remember, I’m doing this. And before I start, I want to go and see the fireworks.”

  Agnes said she didn’t care about any fireworks, and could I not begin immediately. I took a piece of paper, and wrote.

  On the evening of July 3, we went up on the roof and watched the fireworks together.

  The elevator went up to the thirty-fourth floor, and from there a small staircase led up to the roof. There was a wooden deck underfoot, almost blackened by the sun and the rain. We went up to the guardrails and looked down. Far below us, we could see cars drive past, and tiny pedestrians negotiating the evening traffic. We could see the lake from here, and Grant Park, where dozens of little fires were burning.

  “All those people,” said Agnes. “They haven’t a clue that we’re observing them.”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference if they did.”

  “They could hide,” said Agnes. “Do you know what time the fireworks start?”

  “No, I don’t. When it’s a bit darker. Are you cold?”

  “No,” she said, and lay down on a wooden bench. “Do you come up here a lot?”

  I sat down next to her. “At first, I used to come up here almost every day. Now I don’t go all that much. Not at all, I suppose.”

  “Why not?” asked Agnes. “You can see the stars from here.”

  The fireworks began. Agnes stood up, and we walked back over to the railing, even though the rockets were going off high over our heads, and we could just as well have watched them from the middle of the roof.

  “How long has Switzerland been independent?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “it’s hard to say.”

  10

  When we were back inside the apartment, we felt cold.

  “Now you have to begin the story,” said Agnes.

  “OK,” I said, “then you’ll have to sit for me.”

  We went into the study. Agnes sat in the basket chair by the window, and, as though she was having her picture taken, she swept the hair out of her face, straightened her blouse, and smiled at me. I sat down at the computer and looked at her. Once more, even though she was smiling, I was astonished by the seriousness in her face and her expression, which I didn’t know how to read.

  “How would you like to look?” I asked.

  “I want it to be accurate,” she said. “But nice as well. You are in love with me after all, aren’t you?”

  I wrote.

  The first time I saw Agnes was in April this year, in the Chicago Public Library.

  “What did you write?” she asked.

  I read her the sentence, and she was satisfied.

  “You don’t need to sit for me anymore,” I said, “I just wanted to look at you in peace for a while.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Agnes.

  “But it stops me from writing, if you sit there and watch me. Will you make us a coffee?”

  Agnes went into the kitchen. When she came back, I read her what I had written.

  The first time I saw Agnes was in April this year, in the Chicago Public Library. I noticed her right away, from the moment she came and sat down opposite me in the reading room. Her awkward movements didn’t seem to fit with her slim, delicate body. Her face was fine-boned and pale, with dark hair that fell to her shoulders. We looked at each other for a moment, and I saw her startled blue eyes. When she left the reading room, I followed her. We met again on the library stairs, and I asked her if she’d like a cup of coffee.

  Our conversation developed unusually quickly. We were talking about love and death, before we even knew each other’s names. She had strong opinions. My cynicism provoked her, and in her agitation she grew flushed and appeared even more vulnerable.

  Agnes was annoyed. “You didn’t have to put that.”

  “Do you want me to write or not? It was your idea.”

  “I always used to blush when I was a child. I got teased and laughed at for it in school. My father hated it when I was teased.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “You get used to it. I read a lot. And I did well at school.”

  “Would you like me to take it out, then?”

  “Yes, please. And do you have to write about my childhood? It’s only a story after all. Can’t I just turn up i
n the library one day, and just be me? The way I am?”

  “Sure,” I said, “you’ll spring from my head fully formed, like Athene from Zeus, all wise and beautiful and unapproachable.”

  “I don’t want to be unapproachable,” said Agnes, and she kissed me on the mouth.

  11

  Over the next few weeks, I neglected my luxury trains. I was writing Agnes’s story, writing how everything happened, and when we met up, I would read her my new chapters.

  It was amazing how many things there were that Agnes and I remembered differently, or had experienced differently. We were often unable to agree, and though I generally had my way, I sometimes wondered whether she wasn’t right after all.

  For instance, we couldn’t agree for a long time on what restaurant we had gone to the first time. Agnes was sure it was the Indian, and I was sure it was the Chinese opposite. I even thought I could remember my order. Then Agnes remembered she’d noted our date in her pocket diary, and the entry proved that I was wrong.

  Some of the things I went into great detail about were of no significance to her. Other things that mattered to her weren’t even included by me, or only mentioned in passing, like the dead woman we saw in front of the restaurant that evening. I mentioned the incident, but nothing more. I didn’t say we’d later learned her story, or that we’d even attended her funeral later. Agnes had been very moved by her, and wrote several letters to her relatives.

  I didn’t mention Herbert in my story either, and Agnes said I was jealous, and that seemed to make her happy. On the odd occasion when we did talk about him, she dodged my questions, or gave general answers. She didn’t like talking about her childhood, but when she was in a good mood and told me about some incident from it, she would stop as suddenly as she’d begun. By the end of August, when I’d caught up with the present, my text was already far too long.

  There had been a long period of wet weather when, in early September, a cool, dry wind blew south across the lake, and scattered the clouds. We had decided to spend the day outdoors. Agnes had gone home to change, and when she came back, she buzzed me from downstairs so as not to waste any more time. She was sitting in one of the black-leather armchairs in the lobby, and looked oddly unfamiliar. She was wearing dark blue knickerbockers, a white T-shirt, and stout shoes that looked as though they’d never been worn.