Summer Lies: Stories

by Bernhard Schlink

  One evening they invited Linda and John to dinner. Susan and Richard cooked, having no idea how, so that they even found it difficult to follow the cookbook. But they finally managed to serve steaks with potatoes and salad and felt good about being able to cope in a crisis together. Apart from this they invited no one, nor did they visit other people. “There’ll still be time for our friends.”

  When dusk came, they made love. The evening light sufficed them until it was totally dark, when they lit a candle. They made love so peacefully that Richard sometimes wondered if he’d make Susan happier by ripping off the clothes of both of them, throwing himself on her, and surrendering himself to her. He didn’t manage to try, and she didn’t seem to miss it. We’re not feral cats, he thought, we’re house cats.

  Until they had their big fight, the first and the only one. They were going to go to the supermarket, and Susan kept Richard waiting in the car because she had to take a sudden phone call, which went on forever. That she let him wait without any explanation, that she had forgotten him or could simply neglect him, made him so angry that he got out, went into the house, and attacked her just as she put down the receiver. “Is this what I have to expect? What you do is important and what I do isn’t? Your time is precious and mine doesn’t count?”

  At first she didn’t understand. “Los Angeles called. The chairman …”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why do you always …”

  “I’m sorry I kept you waiting for a few minutes. I thought a European man sees …”

  “The Europeans—I’ve had it up to here with your Europeans. I was waiting out there for half an hour …”

  Now she got angry too. “Half an hour? It was a minute or two. If that’s too long for you, go into the house and read the newspaper. You prima donna, you …”

  “Prima donna? Me? Which of us …”

  She accused him of making an incomprehensible, exaggerated to-do. He didn’t understand what was supposed to be incomprehensible and exaggerated about wanting to count as much as she did, when he had nothing and she had everything. She didn’t understand how he could be so absurd as to think that he didn’t count. By the end they were yelling at each other in fury and despair.

  “I hate you!” She advanced on him, he moved back, she kept coming, and when he was against the wall and could move no further, she beat his chest with her fists till he took her in his arms and held her tight. At first she fumbled at the buttons of his shirt, then tore it open, he tried to pull off her jeans and she his, but it was too cumbersome and went too slowly, so they each did their own, yanking off jeans and underpants and socks in a single motion. They had sex on the floor in the hall, fast, urgent, passionate.

  Afterward he lay on his back with her half in the curve of his arm and half against his chest. “Well,” he said, and laughed aloud. She made a slight movement, a shake of the head, a tiny shrug of the shoulders, and pressed herself closer to him. He sensed that unlike him, she hadn’t made the transition from passionate fighting into passionate sex. She hadn’t torn open his shirt because she wanted to feel his chest, she’d torn it open because she wanted to find his heart. The object of passion had been a return to the peace she had lost during their fight.

  They drove to the supermarket and Susan filled up the cart as if they were staying for weeks. On the way home the sun broke through the clouds and they took the next road to the sea, not the open ocean but the bay. The water was unruffled and the sky clear; they could see the tip of the Cape and the other side of the bay.

  “I like it before a storm when you can see so far and the contours are so sharp.”

  “Storm?”

  “Yes. I don’t know whether it’s the humidity or the electricity that makes the air so clear, but it’s the kind of air you get before a storm. Treacherous air: it promises you good weather and what you get is a storm.”

  “Please forgive me for attacking you before. And I didn’t just attack you, I yelled at you too. I’m truly sorry.”

  He waited for her to say something. Then he saw that she was crying and stood still, shocked. She lifted her tearstained face and put her arms around his neck. “No one has ever said anything as nice to me before. That he’s sorry for what he said to me. I’m sorry too. I yelled too, I cursed you, and I hit you. We’re never going to do that again, do you hear me? Never.”

  10

  Then it was the last day. She was flying at four thirty, and he was flying at five thirty, and they ate a quiet breakfast on the terrace for the first time. The sun was so hot that it was as if the rain and the cold had just been an infection from which the summer had recovered again. Then they took a walk on the beach.

  “It’s only a few weeks.”

  “I know.”

  “Will you remember the appointment with the architect tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “And will you remember the mattress?”

  “I haven’t forgotten any of it. I’ll buy a temporary mattress and cardboard furniture and plastic cutlery and dishes. If I have time, I’ll go to the storage place and see if I like any of your parents’ stuff. We’ll furnish it all together, piece by piece. I love you.”

  “This is where we met the first day.”

  “Yes, on the way there. And over there again on the way back.”

  They talked about how they’d met, how unlikely their meetings had been, because it would have been so much more natural for him to be heading in one direction and she in another, how they could have failed to connect in the seafood restaurant that evening if she hadn’t smiled at him, no, if he hadn’t looked her way, how she had found him, no, he had found her.

  “Shall we pack and then open the windows in the corner room? We still have a few hours.”

  “You don’t have to pack much. Leave your summer clothes and your beach things here, then they’ll be waiting for you next year.”

  He nodded. Although Linda and John had repaid him part of the money he’d paid in advance, his credit card charges were way over the limit. But the idea that he would have to buy more clothes in New York to replace what he was leaving here, thus running up his debt further, no longer scared him. That was how things were when you loved someone above your financial station. He would find a solution.

  With the packed suitcases standing by the door, the house felt strange. They climbed the steps as they had done so often. But they trod carefully and spoke in hushed voices.

  They slid the windows open and heard the breaking of the waves and the cries of the gulls. The sun was still shining, but Richard fetched the coverlet from the bedroom and spread it over the double recliner.

  “Come!”

  They undressed and slipped under the coverlet.

  “How am I going to sleep without you?”

  “And I without you?”

  “Can you really not fly to Los Angeles with me?”

  “I have rehearsals. Can you really not come to New York with me?”

  She laughed. “Should I buy the orchestra? And then you schedule the rehearsals?”

  “You can’t buy the orchestra that quickly.”

  “Should I call?”

  “Stay!”

  They were afraid of saying goodbye, and at the same time its imminence made them curiously lighthearted. They were no longer in their shared life and not yet in their individual lives again: they were in no-man’s-land. And that was how they made love, a little shyly at first, because they were becoming less familiar to each other again, and then serenely. As always she looked at him throughout, lost to the world, trusting.

  They drove to the airport in Susan’s car. Clark would collect it and drive it back. They exchanged details of when they would be where and how they could be reached, as if neither of them had a cell phone on which they could be reached anytime, anywhere. They told each other what they were going to be doing in the days and weeks until they were together again, and from time to time they played with ideas of this and that to do together in the futur
e. The closer they came to the airport, the more Richard felt compelled to say something to Susan that would stay with her and keep her company. But he couldn’t think of the right thing. “I love you,” he said over and over again. “I love you.”

  11

  He would have liked to see the house and the beach one more time from the plane. But they lay to the north, and the flight was headed southwest. He looked down at sea and islands, then Long Island, and finally Manhattan. The plane flew in a big turn as far as the Hudson and he recognized the church that stood only a few steps from his apartment.

  It had been hard to get used to his neighborhood. It was noisy, and at the beginning when he came home past the cool, tough kids sitting out on the stoops in front of the houses or leaning on the railings drinking and smoking and playing loud music, he hadn’t felt safe. Sometimes they said things to him and he didn’t understand what they wanted and why they looked at him so truculently and laughed at him mockingly once he’d passed them by. Once they blocked his path and wanted his flute case—he thought they wanted to steal the flute, but they just wanted to see it and hear it. They switched off the music and were suddenly ill at ease in the ensuing silence. He was ill at ease too and still anxious on top of it, and first the flute sounded thin, but then he got braver and more at ease and the kids hummed the melody and clapped to the rhythm. Afterward he drank a beer with them. Since then they always hailed him with “Hey, pipe,” or “Hola, flauta,” and he greeted them back and gradually learned their names.

  His apartment was noisy too. He heard his neighbors fighting, hitting one another, and having sex, and he knew their favorite programs on TV and the radio. One night he heard a shot fired in the building and for the next few days he eyed everyone he passed on the staircase suspiciously. When a neighbor invited him to a party, he tried to match up the people to the noises: the thin-lipped woman to the bickering voice, the man with the tattoos to the blows, the large daughter and her boyfriend to the sounds of sex. Once a year he repaid the invitations by giving a party himself, at which those neighbors, who hated one another, managed to behave well for his sake. He was never given any grief for his flute playing; he could practice early in the mornings and late at night, and wouldn’t have disturbed anyone even at midnight. He always slept with earplugs.

  The neighborhood changed over the years. Young couples renovated run-down houses and transformed empty stores into restaurants. Richard met neighbors who were doctors, lawyers, and bankers, and could take his visitors out to a proper dinner. His building was one of the ones that remained as they were; the heirs who owned it were too conflicted among themselves to sell it or work on it. But he liked it that way. He liked the noises. They gave him the feeling that he was living in the real world, not just a rich enclave.

  He became aware that when he’d described the next days and weeks to Susan, he’d left out the second oboe. They met weekly for dinner at the Italian restaurant on the corner, talked about life as Europeans in America, their professional hopes and disappointments, orchestra gossip, women—the oboist came from Vienna and found American women as difficult as Richard had up to now. He had also left out the old man who lived on the top floor of his building and sometimes came down in the evening for a game of chess with him and played so imaginatively and profoundly that Richard never minded always losing. He hadn’t told her about Maria, one of the kids from the street, who had somehow got hold of a flute, had him show her how to hold it and put it to her mouth and read the music and kissed him on the lips and gave him a full-body hug when she said goodbye. Nor had he told her about Spanish lessons with the exiled Salvadoran teacher who lived on the next street over, nor about the decrepit fitness center where he felt comfortable. All he had described to Susan were the orchestra rehearsals and performances, the flautist who practiced with him from time to time, the children of the aunt who’d emigrated to New Jersey with a GI after the war, the fact that he was learning Spanish but not with whom, and that he went to a fitness center, but not where. He hadn’t intended to keep secrets from her. It had just happened that way.

  12

  The taxi set him down in front of his building. It was warm, mothers with their babies were sitting out on the stoops, children were playing hide-and-seek between the parked cars, old men had set up folding chairs and brought cans of beer with them, a few boys were trying to walk as if they were grown up, and some girls were watching them and giggling. “Hola, flauta,” his neighbor greeted him, “back from your trip?”

  Richard looked up and down the street, sat down on the steps, put his suitcase next to him, and propped his arms on his knees. This was his world: the street, the neat houses and the shabby ones, the Italian restaurant on one corner where he met the oboist and at the other corner the street with the food shops, the newsstand, and the fitness center, and above the buildings the towers of the church that was next door to his Spanish teacher. He hadn’t just got used to this world. He loved it. Since coming to New York, he hadn’t had any lasting relationship with a woman. What kept him there was work, his friends, the people who lived on the street and in the buildings, the routine of shopping for groceries, going to the gym, always eating in the same restaurants. A day spent fetching the newspapers in the morning and exchanging three sentences about the weather with Amir, the owner of the newsstand, then reading the paper in the café, where they’d learned to bring him two soft-boiled eggs in a glass with chives and whole-wheat toast for breakfast, then practicing for a few hours before cleaning the apartment or doing the laundry, then exercising, then teaching Maria and getting a hug, then eating spaghetti Bolognese at the Italian place, then having a game of chess before going to bed—a day like that left nothing to be desired.

  He looked at the building and up at the windows of his apartment. The morning glories were flowering; maybe Maria had actually watered them. He had started with window boxes, and now they were climbing in front of several of the windows. Had Maria also checked the bucket that collected the drips from the broken pipe? He would have to get it repaired, he hadn’t had time to take care of it before he left on his trip.

  He got to his feet, intending to go upstairs. But then he sat down again. Pulling the mail out of his box, climbing the stairs, unlocking the door, airing out the apartment, unpacking his bag, going through his mail and answering one or two e-mails, then taking a hot shower, throwing his dirty clothes into the laundry basket and getting clean clothes out of the cupboard, then finding a message on his answering machine from the oboist asking if he’d like to meet up tonight and calling him back to say yes—if he stepped back into his old life again it would never let go of him.

  What had he been thinking? That he could carry his old life into a new life with Susan? That he could cross the city several times a week to go to the fitness center and his Spanish lesson? That then he would have chance encounters with Maria and the kids? That the old man from his building would occasionally take a taxi to the duplex on Fifth Avenue and play a game of chess with him in the drawing room under a genuine Gerhard Richter? That the oboist would feel comfortable in a restaurant on the East Side? He had had good reason to keep quiet with Susan about all the sides of his life he couldn’t bring into their life together. He hadn’t wanted to confront the fact that the new life would require him giving up the old one.

  So? He loved Susan. He had had her all those days on the Cape and had felt that nothing was lacking. And he would have her here now, and he would feel that nothing was lacking here either. The time they’d spent on the Cape hadn’t just been wonderful because his own life was so far away! His life couldn’t come between them here just because it found its recognizable form two miles from the location of the new life!

  But yes, it could. So he mustn’t go upstairs, he must go away, leave his old life behind, set out for the new life instead, right here, right now. Find a hotel. Camp out in Susan’s apartment among the painters’ ladders and their cans of paint. Arrange for someone to get all his things f
rom his apartment and bring them to him. But the thought of a hotel room or Susan’s apartment made him anxious, and he felt homesick even though he hadn’t even left yet.

  If only he were still on the Cape with Susan! If only her apartment were ready and she were here! If only lightning would strike his building and it would go up in flames!

  He made a bet with himself. If someone went into the building in the next ten minutes, he would go in too; if no one did, then he’d take his suitcase and move to a hotel on the East Side. After fifteen minutes no one had entered the building, and he was still sitting on the steps. He tried it again. If in the next fifteen minutes an empty taxi drove down the street, he would take it and go to a hotel on the East Side, and if it didn’t, he would go up to his apartment. Barely a minute later an empty taxi came along, but he didn’t take it, nor did he go upstairs.

  He admitted to himself that he couldn’t cope on his own. He was also ready to admit it to Susan. He needed her help. She had to come to him and stay with him. She had to help him empty his old apartment and she had to settle into the new one with him. She could go to Los Angeles afterward. He called her. She was sitting in Boston in the lounge, but boarding had begun.

  “I’m about to get onto the flight to Los Angeles.”

  “I need you.”

  “I need you too. My darling, I miss you so much!”

  “No, I really need you. I can’t cope with my old life and our new life together. You have to come, and go to Los Angeles later. Please!” There was a crackle in the receiver. “Susan? Can you hear me?”

  “I’m on my way to the gate. Are you coming to Los Angeles?”

  “No, Susan, you need to come to New York, I beg you.”

  “I wish I could come, I wish I were with you.” He heard her being asked for her boarding pass. “Perhaps we can see each other next weekend, let’s talk about it on the phone, I have to board now, I’m the last one. I love you.”