Summer Lies: Stories

by Bernhard Schlink

  “I thought everyone didn’t have to know. Actually, nobody was to know. The pain’s getting worse and when it becomes unendurable, I want to go. What’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong is that you didn’t tell us and didn’t want to tell us. And if not us children, then Mother. Whether the pain becomes unendurable also depends on what Mother helps you to bear. And I thought we too …” Dagmar looked at her father in disappointment.

  Helmut stood up. “Leave it, Dagmar. This is for our parents to decide between themselves. I for one am not going to get into the middle of it, and you’d be wise not to, either.”

  “But they won’t sort it out themselves. Mother said she wants nothing to do with it.” Dagmar looked at her brother, confused.

  “That’s also a way of sorting it out.” He turned to his wife. “Come on, we’re going to pack and leave.”

  They went. Dagmar got to her feet hesitantly, gave her father and her mother a questioning look, received no answers, and left too. The house was filled with the bustle of cupboards and chests being emptied, books and games being collected, beds stripped, and suitcases packed. The parents told their children to fetch this and not to forget that, and because the children could feel that the world was off-kilter, they obeyed.

  His wife had already packed during the night. She stood for a while in the kitchen, just staring into space. Then she looked at him. “I’m going to drive now.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Are you driving to the city?”

  “I don’t know. I still have three weeks’ holiday.” She left, and he heard her saying goodbye to the children and grandchildren, opening and closing the front door, starting the car, and driving off. The others finished packing soon afterward. They came into the kitchen to say goodbye, the children awkwardly, the grandchildren troubled. He heard them leave the house too, slam car doors, and drive away. Then everything was still.

  15

  He stayed sitting, unable to believe how fast the house had emptied itself. He didn’t know what to do. How he should spend the morning and the day, and the next day and the next week, whether he should kill himself right away or later. Finally he stood up and cleared the table, loaded the dirty dishes and cutlery into the dishwasher, added the detergent, switched on the machine, collected the sheets and towels upstairs, and carried them down to the cellar. He had never used the washing machine, unlike the dishwasher, but he found a manual on the shelf with the detergents and followed the instructions. One load comprised two sets of bedding; he would need to run four or five loads.

  He walked to the lake and sat on the bench. With the sounds of his grandchildren playing and swimming it was a place like the table in the library or the café, or the sofa in the living room—he was with the others and yet on his own. Without the sounds he was just lonely. He wanted to go over what he should do, but nothing occurred to him. Then he wanted to think over one of the philosophical problems he’d taken with him into retirement, and not only did nothing occur to him with regard to one of the problems, no problem occurred to him, either. Situations from the last week came to his mind: David and Meike in the boat, Matthias and Ferdinand building the island, Ariane with the book on her knees, he and Ariane with the painter, cooking with the children, trimming the hedge, the tea and lemonade for his wife, their growing intimacy, the morning when they made love. He felt a breath of desire, just a breath, because he hadn’t yet fully grasped that they had all left. He knew it was so, he had heard it with his own ears and seen it with his own eyes, but he hadn’t yet fully grasped it.

  When the pain made its entrance, he was almost happy. The way you are almost happy when you find yourself alone in a strange place and then you meet someone you don’t like, but with whom you share a past at school or university or in a business or an office. The encounter distracts you from the loneliness. And the pain also made him remember why he was here: not to be wrapped up in his family but to take leave of it. Now leave-taking had simply happened a little earlier and a little differently.

  That’s the way it was. Or was it? He stood, intending to hang the first load of laundry out to dry and put the next load in. Before he even reached the house he knew that this morning’s leave-taking hadn’t just arrived a little early and a little differently. It had nothing in common with the leave-taking that he had envisioned. The leave-taking that has happened is over. The leave-taking that you envision still contains the possibility that it can be delayed or prevented, or that a miracle can intervene. He didn’t believe in miracles. But he realized that he had imagined something. He had imagined that the pain would get steadily worse, steadily less bearable, until it became unbearable and the decision to take his leave would make itself. Instead of which the medicine had got stronger along with the pain. The decision to drink the cocktail and depart was not going to make itself. He had to decide, and because there had still been time, he hadn’t allowed himself to know how hard it was. If he broke his arm or his leg—would that be when the time came?

  He had sometimes seen his wife hanging out washing. She wiped off the clothesline that was stretched across the garden, carried the laundry basket up out of the cellar, shook out the pieces of laundry, and attached them firmly with clothespins that she took out of a sack she had tied around her waist like an apron. That was what he did too. Bending over to pick up each piece, shaking it out, taking the pins out of the sack, stretching up to the line, and attaching the pieces firmly to it—with every movement he saw his wife in front of him, no, he felt her make each movement. He was seized by a physical sympathy with his wife’s body, which had withstood the demands of a job and the house and the children, the pains of childbirth and a miscarriage, susceptibility to bladder infections and the assaults of migraines; he felt it so strongly that he began to weep, and wanted to stop but could not. He sat down on the steps of the veranda and watched through his tears as the wind blew through the laundry, letting it sink, and then lifting it again.

  Nothing would remain of the last summer he had so carefully constructed. Once again he had had all the components at hand, but happiness had not resulted. This was different from the times before; he had been truly happy for a while. But the happiness hadn’t wished to remain.

  16

  That same day he began to listen. In the garden or by the lake he listened to see whether what he’d just heard was the sound of his wife’s car. He was upstairs on the second floor, heard a sound on the first floor, and listened for footsteps. He was on the first floor, heard a sound on the second floor, and listened for voices.

  In the next days he was sometimes convinced that he’d heard his wife drive in or come up the stairs or Matthias come running or Ariane calling. He would step outside the door or to the stairs or turn around, and no one was there. One day he kept walking from the house to the lake and back again, because he was convinced that his wife was going to come in a boat, sit on the bench, and wait for him to come and join her. When he was down at the bench, he found the idea absurd. But when he was back in the house, it wasn’t long before he thought he heard the engine throttle as the boat docked.

  As the emptiness of the house and garden grew in his ears, he let himself go. The morning ritual of showering, shaving, and putting on his clothes was more than his strength could manage. When he drove to buy groceries, he put on his pants over his pajamas and pulled on a jacket and ignored other people’s glances. In the afternoons he began to drink, and by evening he was either drunk or, if the alcohol and the pills took effect together, almost unconscious. Only then was he free of the pain. At all other times some part of his body, often his entire body, hurt.

  One evening he tripped on the cellar stairs, but was too drunk to get up and climb them. He sat on a step and leaned against the wall and went to sleep. He woke in the night and realized that his right hand was swollen and hurt. It was not the familiar pain but a new, fresh pain that stabbed from the wrist to the fingers every t
ime he moved his hand. It told him the hand was broken. It also told him that the time had come.

  But he didn’t fetch the bottle. Instead he went into the kitchen and made coffee. He filled a towel with ice cubes, sat down at the table, cooled the hand, and drank his coffee. He wouldn’t be able to drive by himself. He’d have to order a taxi. He was embarrassed by the way he looked and smelled and forced himself painfully into the shower and fresh underclothes and a suit. He called the taxi company, roused the old boss from bed whom he’d known for years, and who said he’d come himself, then sat down on the terrace to wait. The night air was warm.

  After that, things went of their own accord. The taxi took him to the hospital, the doctor gave him an injection and sent him for an X-ray, the nurse in the X-ray department took the pictures and sent him to the waiting room. He was the only patient, and sat in the white neon light on a white plastic chair looking out onto the empty parking lot. He waited and wrote a letter in his mind to his wife.

  It was an hour before he was called. There was a second doctor standing with the first, who took over the conversation and explained the number and composition of bones in the hand, which two were broken, that no operation or splinting was required, that a firm bandage would be sufficient, and everything was going to heal just fine. He applied the bandage and instructed him to come back in three days. Reception would call a taxi for him.

  The old boss who’d driven him to the hospital also drove him home. They talked about their children. The sky was growing light and the birds were making the same racket as on the morning when he’d made the pancakes. How long ago was that? Three weeks?

  17

  He went into his study and sat down at his typewriter. On it he had written letters, essays, and books until he got a secretary to whom he could dictate. He should have taught himself to use the computer in his retirement, but he’d preferred to ask his former secretary or to stop writing.

  Using the typewriter was no longer a habit, and he was particularly clumsy without the use of his right hand. He had to use his forefinger to find one letter after the other.

  I can’t cope without you. Not because of the laundry; I wash and dry and fold it. Not because of meals; I buy things and prepare them. I clean the house and water the garden.

  I can’t cope without you, because without you everything is nothing. In everything I’ve done in my life, I’ve drawn on the fact that I had you. If I hadn’t had you, I would never have achieved anything. Since I’ve no longer had you, I’ve been steadily disintegrating until I came apart completely. Luckily I had an accident which has brought me to my senses.

  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything about the state I was in, and that I planned to end things by myself, and that I wanted to decide on my own when I couldn’t go on any longer.

  You know the box I inherited from Father. I’m going to lock the bottle in the box and put the box in the refrigerator.

  You’ll find the key in this letter; that way I won’t be able to make my decision without you. When things can’t go on, we’ll decide together that they can’t go on. I love you.

  He locked the bottle in the box, put the box in the refrigerator, put the key and the letter in the envelope, and addressed it to their apartment in the city. He waited for the mailman and gave him the letter to take with him.

  The mailman had barely left when he was overtaken by doubt. His life, his death, in her hands? What if she didn’t get the letter, or didn’t open it, or didn’t like it? He would have liked to read over what he had written, but he hadn’t made a copy. At least there was an almost complete draft that he’d thrown away because it was full of mistakes. He would find it in the wastepaper basket.

  When he was standing in front of his desk he saw a key in the open drawer. He took it out. He’d forgotten there was a second key to the box. He laughed and tucked it away.

  He lay down on the sofa in the study and slept the sleep that had eluded him the night before. When the pain in his head woke him two hours later, he walked to the lake and sat on the bench. If she hadn’t gone off somewhere, she would get the letter tomorrow. If she were in fact away, it could take days.

  He stood up, took the key out of his pocket, and threw it as far as he could with his left hand. The key flashed in the sunlight, then flashed again as it hit the water. A few tiny waves made a circle around the spot. Then the lake was calm again.

  Johann Sebastian Bach on Ruegen

  1

  At the end of the film he wanted to cry. Not that the film had a happy ending—it didn’t end with the promise of a happy future, only a vague hope. The couple who were meant for each other missed each other, but perhaps they would meet again. The woman had lost her business, but was going to risk a new start.

  She’d lost her business because her sister had done her out of her money. She could risk a new start because her father, a grumpy old man who sometimes took care of her son after a fashion and mostly was full of idiotic ideas, out of nowhere sold his house to give her the delivery van she needed. After that father and daughter stood in the street looking at the van, she with her head on his shoulder and he with his arm around her. Her business was the cleaning of crime scenes, and at the end the father was setting to work with the daughter in blue coveralls, a white face mask, and the kind of intimacy that makes words superfluous.

  Happy endings in films more and more often made him want to cry. His chest would tighten, his eyes go damp, and he’d have to clear his throat before he could speak. But the tears didn’t come, even though he would have liked to cry, not just at happy endings in the movie theater but also when he was overcome with sadness about the end of his marriage or the death of his friend or simply the loss of his life’s hopes and dreams. As a child he had cried himself to sleep—but he couldn’t anymore.

  The last time he’d been able to cry properly was many years ago. He was having one of those political arguments with his father that were a frequent occurrence in those days between the generations and in which the parents saw everything threatened that they had lived for, and the children everything denied that they wanted to do differently and better. He understood and respected his father’s pain over the loss of a world that was familiar and loved; all he also wanted was for his father to understand and respect his own wish for a new world. But his father accused him of being thoughtless and inexperienced, presumptuous, lacking all respect and responsibility, until he wanted to cry. But he didn’t want to give his father that triumph. He swallowed his tears and couldn’t speak, but stood up to him.

  Would his father have sold his house and given him a delivery van if he’d needed it? Would his father have put on blue coveralls and a white face mask and helped him clean crime scenes? He didn’t know. For him and his father it wouldn’t have been about delivery vans and coveralls and face masks. Would his father have supported him if he’d lost his job because of his political involvements? Helped him to start again in another profession or another country? Or would he have felt it served him right and he didn’t deserve any help?

  Even if his father had helped him—it would never have happened in the atmosphere of silent intimacy that existed between father and daughter in the movie. It was a miniature happy ending within the large vague ending of the film. It was a tiny miracle. So tears were allowed.

  2

  He had intended to take a taxi home and get back to work on the article the newspaper wanted to publish at the beginning of next week. But when he came out of the movie theater and felt the soft night air of summer, he decided to walk. Across the square, past the museum, along the river—he was astonished at how lively the streets were. Groups of tourists came toward him, and parents and kids were often out together. He was particularly moved by a group of Italians. Grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, sons and daughters plus their boyfriends and girlfriends came toward him, arms linked, walking lightly, singing quietly, giving him friendly, inquiring, inviting looks, and had passed him before
he could even begin to imagine what the inquiry and the invitation might represent and how he might respond. Am I, he wondered, turning sentimental when I see parents and children happy together?

  He asked himself the same question again later while he was having a glass of wine in his local Italian restaurant. A father and son were having a lively, friendly conversation two tables over. Then his mood changed; he turned envious, irritable, and bitter. He couldn’t remember a single similar conversation with his father. Any time they were talking animatedly, it was an argument over politics or the law or society. The only time they talked in a friendly way was when they were exchanging trivialities.

  The next morning his mood changed again. It was Sunday, he had breakfast out on the balcony, the sun shone, thrushes were singing, and the church bells were ringing. He didn’t want to be bitter. He also didn’t want there to be nothing except tired or bad memories when his father died. When his parents were back from church, he called them. His mother picked up, as she always did, and as always, after the exchange of questions about archives, health, and the weather, the conversation faltered.

  “Do you think I could invite Father on a little trip?”

  It took some time for her to reply. He knew that there was nothing she wanted more than better relations between her children and her husband. Was she hesitating because she couldn’t grasp the pleasure she felt at his question? Or because she was afraid the situation between him and his father was already far gone? Finally she asked, “What sort of a little trip are you thinking of?”

  “What Father and I both like is the sea and Bach’s music.” He laughed. “Can you think of anything else we both like? I can’t. In September there’s a little Bach festival on Ruegen, and I’m thinking of two or three days with a few concerts and some walks on the beach.”