The Stranger Upstairs

by Melanie Raabe

  Number one, I think: I’m a cheat.

  Number two: I have killed someone.

  Number three: I have a tattoo in a secret place.

  One of those is a lie.

  Summer 2008

  The moment just before it happens, he thought—that moment when you know it’s going to happen, but before it actually does. That moment is everything.

  It was like the fluid, apparently effortless movements that take ballerinas years of practice to master—and at the same time entirely spontaneous. As if by some secret and unspoken arrangement, they began to turn their heads, his blond head one way, her dark curls the other. Then their lips met.

  It was their first kiss—he saw that at a glance. The thrill quivering between the two of them was palpable.

  He’s amazed at how soft her lips are, Philip thought, looking out of the corner of his eye at the young couple sitting across from him. Whenever you kiss a woman for the first time, you can’t believe how soft her lips are. No matter how many women you’ve kissed before, it never fails to astonish.

  The two of them were alone in the world. For them, there was no boarding area filled with people sneaking looks at them, no terminal and no airport. No Hamburg, no Germany, no world—only the two of them, only warmth, moisture, breath, lips.

  It was, of course, only biochemical processes being played out. The two of them were merely entering into an intuitive exchange of saliva to check for genetic compatibility—that was all there was to kissing. Anything else, thought Philip, averting his gaze at last, is mysticism—romantic nonsense. At once the airport noises around him grew louder, as if somebody had turned up the volume: people talking, announcements, clacking heels, ringing phones, laughter. Philip left his seat by the gate and went for a wander.

  Today is my eleven thousand, eight hundred and seventy-fifth day on earth, he thought. Eleven thousand, eight hundred and seventy-four times he had woken up and opened his eyes, always with the same question at the back of his mind: what kind of day will it be today? Then he had lived through the day and gone to sleep again, and eleven thousand, eight hundred and seventy-four times he had lain and dreamed.

  An old friend of his had once chosen to celebrate his eleven thousand, one hundred and eleventh day on earth instead of his thirtieth birthday, and since then Philip sometimes did the sums.

  As he watched the planes taking off and landing, he took stock of his life. It was important to do this from time to time, so you knew where you’d been, and where you were going.

  I had a moderately happy childhood, he thought. I got through my teenage years without any major disasters. I fell in love seven times before I met my wife. I studied business, buried my father, married, fathered a child. I’m the head of a large enterprise and good at my job.

  A successful life—a fulfilling life.

  But that isn’t all, he thought. I’ve done something else.

  Philip ran his hand through his hair, suddenly craving a cigarette although he hadn’t smoked for years.

  He bought himself a packet and joined the other mute figures in the smokers’ lounge.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the way he had left Sarah.

  He should have told her—should have told her before now, certainly—but he hadn’t, and this had been his last chance. He’d drunk his coffee and watched the baby, steadied by Sarah, padding across the kitchen on those fat little legs that never failed to draw squeals of delight from elderly ladies. He’d watched him almost trip over the edge of the cream rug, catch himself, carry on. It occurred to him what a miracle it was to have a wife and a healthy child. He knew he should be grateful, but he wasn’t.

  This is my punishment, he thought. I knew I’d be punished one way or another for what I did.

  Sarah had turned to him, as if she’d felt his gaze on her back, and forced a smile.

  Ask me, he thought. Ask me whether I’m all right, how I’m feeling—anything. Ask me one of those stupid questions you always used to annoy me with.

  But Sarah had just busied herself with the baby and hadn’t given him another glance. He could still see the kink left in her long, loose hair by the hairband she tied it back with at night. He would have liked to touch her hair. On the table, there had been brightly coloured flowers—ranunculus, if he was not mistaken—the only dab of colour in a monochrome room done out all in cream.

  The entire house was so awfully beige—almost completely drained of colour—but he hadn’t noticed until now. His mother, Constanze, had decorated it entirely to her own taste: beige upholstery, lots of antique wood and, on the walls, framed prints of nautical motifs. They had made very few changes out of respect for the old woman, who after moving to a smaller and more manageable place had been in the habit of inviting herself to tea and deploring so much as the slightest change in ‘her’ house. After a while, he supposed, they must simply have given up and acclimatised themselves to its cold restraint, the cream-coloured elegance that suited Constanze, but not her son—and certainly not his down-to-earth wife with her love of vibrant colours.

  The flowers Sarah bought at the market every week were the only thing that gave the rooms life. He was surprised that she still found the time for such details—for agreeable, pointless activities like buying flowers and trimming them and arranging them in vases. But perhaps it was precisely such small, unimportant details that kept Sarah going.

  From the outside, their marriage looked the same as ever, but things between them had changed. He had forgotten the simplest things: how to stroke your wife’s hair or kiss her goodbye, how to play with your year-old baby—sometimes even how to breathe. When had they begun to slip out of control? Was it really on that fateful night? Or had it started before that?

  As the time approached for him to leave, Philip had struggled with his conscience. Should he tell her? He’d watched the hands on the kitchen clock jerk forward, minute by minute, until it was too late to broach the subject. He’d given Sarah a kiss on the forehead and turned to go.

  Sarah had always come to the door with him and watched him leave when he was setting off on a long journey. Countless times she’d stood in the doorway, waving until he was out of sight. He’d felt her gaze on his back as he got in the car—seen her grow smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror as he drove away. At first he’d thought it sweet, then he’d come to regard it with indifference. At some point he’d started to find it silly, and in the end he’d stopped noticing. But on this day he was glad of the ritual. It meant that she still loved him, and he knew now he couldn’t take that for granted.

  And somehow it had been nice to know what was coming as he set off on his trip. That small, loving gesture that said: no matter what accusations we’ve hurled at each other, no matter how many spanners Constanze has thrown into the works, no matter what has happened, we can keep going. He had been grateful, and it had pleased him to know that he was still capable of feeling some kind of emotion.

  He had gone out the door, feeling Sarah’s gaze on his back as always, and resolved to do something he had never done before because it had always seemed faintly ludicrous to him. He resolved to get into his Mercedes as usual—and then lower the window and wave to Sarah. She would see him wave and know that he still loved her. And she would smile. Unselfconsciously. The way she used to.

  Philip had gone down the front steps, turned to face Sarah and smiled—just in time to see her close the door and disappear into the house. That was it. No wave, no ritual, no comfort. Only the milk-white front door, flanked by a number eleven.

  As he got into the car, he could taste autumn in the air—tiny particles of the first frost and rotting leaves—the way cats supposedly smell approaching death in the fatally ill. On the way to the airport it began to rain. Grey rods, as thick as bars, connected sky and earth.

  Queasy from the cigarette, Philip stubbed it out and returned to the gate to sit down—this time as far as possible from the smooching couple. Most of the black vinyl seats were occ
upied by businesspeople, grey men like him, tapping away at their laptops or phones. Only a handful of obligatory tourists were scattered between them, as garish as exotic birds.

  Earlier, rummaging around for his ticket, he’d discovered that Sarah had put an apple in his bag. He didn’t know whether this pleased or annoyed him. If he’d wanted an apple, he’d have taken one himself. His wife’s strange mixture of patronising solicitude and coolness—what was it all about?

  He watched the people in the terminal building, each hurrying towards an uncertain fate, and as so often of late he was overcome by the thought that free will was a mere illusion. He wasn’t moving freely through life, but travelling on tracks that led him this way and that, regardless of what he wanted. It wasn’t up to him to take this turning or that, to choose between right and wrong, kindness and malice, love and hate. All he could do was hold on tight when the train took a bend, and occasionally stick his head out of the window and enjoy the feel of the wind in his face. Everything was hurtling towards some predestined end. He himself, Sarah, Leo—everything, everyone.

  He’d never had thoughts like these in the past—none of this had started until that damn night. But maybe he was deceiving himself. Maybe it had all begun much earlier. He went over the situation again, step by step, as he had so many times in the past few months, and as always he felt overwhelmed by the force of what had happened. It was as if a freight train had crashed into him at full speed—a train he had had no chance of stopping. He searched his memory, but found no moment when he might have acted differently from the way he did. When had the train been set in motion? Was it when they’d left home that fateful evening? Or before? He found no answer to these questions.

  Still, he should have told Sarah. Even if she didn’t deserve it.

  Philip took out his phone and called Sarah’s number, but then hung up straight away and put the phone back in his pocket. You didn’t deal with that kind of thing over the phone.

  He would tell her—of course he would—as soon as he was back.

  My eleven thousand, eight hundred and seventy-fifth day, he thought. A day I’ll be spending almost entirely on an aeroplane.

  From his seat in departures, Philip could see the planes taxiing to the gate and taking off. He leant back and watched them shoot along the runway and slowly overcome gravity. The summer rain had stopped, and the sky was a mixture of dirty grey and streaky blue.

  I could stay, Philip suddenly thought.

  For weeks, he’d wanted only one thing—to get away—but now the thought of boarding a plane that would take him further away from everything that mattered to him with every passing second was almost unbearable. South America—what the hell did he want in South America?

  I could stay, he thought again—not board the plane, not run away, but do the right thing for once.

  The smooching couple had vanished. He looked across at their empty seats as if they held the answer.

  I could take a later plane, Philip thought. Or none at all.

  Eleven thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five days, he thought.

  I have a lot. I have a lot to lose.

  What do I want?

  What kind of day will it be today?

  He still hadn’t made up his mind when his flight began to board.

  Sarah

  The lions are tired. They lie sluggishly in the summer sun, their bellies slowly rising and falling with their breath. My son looks at them for a few minutes, then pulls me away towards the meerkats, who are more entertaining than the boring old lions. At least the meerkats do something.

  I hate zoos—hate looking at caged animals,—but Leo begged and cajoled me for so long that I ended up caving in. He’s off school for the summer and most of his friends will be going away with their parents, so a trip to the zoo is the least I can do. Besides, it does me good to get out of the house. I can’t stand being bored, so I need some way of occupying myself in the summer holidays. I never say it out loud because I don’t want to be thought strange, but I don’t look forward to the holidays. I like the rhythm my work gives the days and weeks and months. I like the discipline, the knowledge that when I get up I’ll go jogging, have a shower, make breakfast, take Leo to school, go to work—that I teach German and English from Monday to Friday and art too on a Friday. That when I come home, I’ll help Leo with his homework, tidy up, clean, cook, and then, depending on the day of the week, help out in the refugee shelter, meet up with Miriam or work out.

  Leo tugs impatiently at my hand, bringing me back to the present. I see what he’s pointing at and have to smile at the teeming bustle of meerkats.

  ‘Mum,’ he says, after we’ve watched them in silence for a few minutes, tightly wedged between the hordes of visitors who flood the zoo at this time of year, ‘can I have an ice-cream?’

  ‘Of course, sweetie.’

  To get to the ice-cream van we only have to walk round the elephants’ enclosure to where the children with pink and brown smeared mouths are streaming from. The queue is a throng of excited children and weary parents. By some miracle I discover a free bench only a few metres away. I give Leo some money and sit down while he queues up by himself, nervous but proud. I close my eyes for a second, enjoying the feel of the sun on my skin. The horrors of last night are already far away.

  I open my eyes again and find myself staring at the elephants. They are in a kind of dusty yard, a small group of them huddled together like dejected smokers whose break is coming to an end, their unloved work beckoning. To my left, a solitary elephant stands in front of the wall, swaying its head back and forth, shaking it from left to right, over and over again. It’s as if it were in permanent denial of its situation: I am on the African savannah. I’m not here in this tiny, dusty enclosure—no, I’m not—no, no, no, no, no. I tear my eyes away from the distressing spectacle and look around for Leo, who has moved forward in the queue but is still a long way off being served. I catch his eye and he smiles at me, all gappy teeth and dimples. If I had a lump of ice instead of a heart, like in Leo’s favourite fairytale, it would melt on the spot.

  I turn my attention back to the animals. Being locked up is the worst, I think, and I picture myself coming back at night and opening the enclosures. I imagine the animals leaving their cages, pouring out of the zoo and filling the town—baboons attacking cars stuck in the rush-hour traffic; leopards silently climbing the trees in city parks and fixing their gaze on unsuspecting joggers, their eyes narrowed to slits; elephant families tramping side by side along the broad shopping streets, reflected in the shiny glass of the shop fronts; giraffes, their big eyes wreathed by long lashes, staring in at the upper windows of office blocks as startled workers spill black coffee over their white shirts.

  ‘Mum, your phone’s ringing,’ Leo says at my side. I jump slightly—I hadn’t noticed him sit down beside me, a cone piled high with soft ice-cream in his hand. He licks at it diligently, his face serious, as he concentrates on winning the race against the implacable sun.

  I fumble in my handbag for my phone, expecting it to be Miriam, or possibly one of yesterday’s guests—maybe Claudia, who left her silk scarf behind, or perhaps Mirko. But it’s a number I don’t know.

  I’m immediately uneasy, though I know it’s foolish. I don’t like to answer the phone when I don’t know who’s calling. You never know who’s on the other end and what they might be about to tell you. For a moment I toy with the thought of letting the call go through to my voicemail, but then I remind myself that Leo is with me, that Leo is all right—very much all right even, with his enormous ice-cream running stickily over his fingers—and that as long as Leo is sitting next to me, grappling with his ice-cream, there can be no catastrophe. I take the call.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘This is Wilhelm Hansen,’ says a sonorous, official-sounding voice. ‘Is that Sarah Petersen?’

  I frown.

  ‘Speaking,’ I say.

  ‘Mrs Petersen, I work for the Foreign Ministry. I’m
so glad I’ve managed to get hold of you. I’ve been calling your landline all morning while we tried to track down your mobile number. We have some important news for you and didn’t want you to hear about it from the press.’

  My mouth is suddenly very dry.

  ‘You didn’t want me to hear about it from the press?’ I repeat.

  I know what he’s going to say. This is the call I’ve waited seven years for. I know it is, and yet I can’t believe it. It feels like a dream. Any minute now I’ll find myself, trembling and fearful, before a closed door from which a dull rumbling sound is emanating.

  ‘Mrs Petersen, are you sitting down?’ the voice asks.

  ‘I’m sitting down,’ I say.

  I’ve had seven years to prepare for this call. There’s nothing this man can tell me that I’m not ready for. There’s no scenario he can confront me with worse than the ones I’ve thought up as I lay awake night after night. He will tell me, and then, at last, I’ll be able to start over again. Start afresh—wasn’t that the word?

  I swallow.

  ‘Tell me,’ I say.

  There is a very brief pause before he speaks. I listen to him in silence. When the call is over, I put the phone back in my handbag, do up the zip, put the bag down beside me and begin to vomit.

  I’m sitting in the garden under my favourite apple tree. I know it must be hot, but I feel cold. The world looks so different, as if someone has dropped a filter over it that makes everything more intense. Everything dazzles me: the sky is bluer, the leaves on the trees fluorescent green, and the sun so bright it hurts my eyes, even through my sunglasses.

  Philip used to have the same effect on me: bringing colour to my sometimes drab world, lighting up grey days or gloomy moods with his lust for life and his humour and enthusiasm, colouring in my life the way a child colours in pictures in a book with thick wax crayons.

  I’m glad there’s nobody here—Leo playing inside, my neighbours nowhere to be seen—because I need a little time alone to give my brain the chance to process everything. I sit under the apple tree as if I were waiting for enlightenment, like Buddha under the Bodhi tree. Three words go round and round in my head like a mantra.