I ponder this.
‘And the two days? What was all that about?’
‘I’d been told I would find out in two days whether or not my kidnapping had been organised and paid for in Germany.’
I need a moment to process this.
‘You hoped you’d know in two days whether it was me.’
Philip nods.
There’s a question on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t ask it. I don’t want to know what he’d have done if he’d been told it was me—that I’d inflicted such suffering on him.
‘Why does your mother call you Green?’ I ask instead.
Philip sighs.
‘Long story. I’ll tell you some other time.’
‘You always say that.’
He gives a crooked smile. ‘May I ask you something?’ he says.
‘Mmhm.’
‘When we were sitting in the garden and you told me about your miscarriages and how perfectly your husband had behaved—do you remember?’
I nod hesitantly.
‘It wasn’t like that. I wish I had reacted like that, but I didn’t.’
The city appears before us.
‘Why did you say that?’ he asks.
Hamburg grows closer.
‘Because you remember it that way?’
We’re on our way home.
‘Or because you wish it had been like that?’
Together, after all these years.
‘Or both?’
I don’t reply.
We drive in silence.
The sun’s coming up.
Summer 2015
I’m ready for the march-off. I move slowly—don’t want to wake Sarah, whatever happens. Have to get away, have to be alone. I don’t yet know where I’ll go. Vanish into the crowds of Tokyo? Seek seclusion in the forests of Canada? Stare at the sea in Thailand? I leave the spare key on the kitchen table where Sarah and I sat last night, hunt for something to write with and find pen and paper in a drawer. I sit down and look about me, pausing for a moment when I see Leo’s drawings hanging on the fridge. Quickly I look away. So much lost time and no chance to make up for it.
I begin to write.
Soon afterwards I am standing at the front door, holdall over my shoulder, hand poised on the doorknob. I change my mind, walk back through the house and out the backdoor to the garden. I skirt the high grass that Sarah has allowed to grow, bend down to the currant bushes, pick a few of the gleaming red fruits, put them in my mouth and grimace when the tartness hits my tastebuds. It is absolutely quiet, as if the world were all mine. Summer isn’t ready to step down yet, but the wind is back. Hamburg is Hamburg again.
I sit down on the grass for a moment, shivering when a few wet blades touch my bare arms. I ignore the wetness that soaks into my jeans, leaving dark patches—I simply enjoy the quiet.
Returning home after years in captivity is a positively supernatural experience. It’s as if you’d died and then risen from the dead only to discover that the world is perfectly capable of turning without you. That no one really misses you. That you’re not only dispensable—you’re superfluous.
In the end it just isn’t possible that I still love her. What I feel is probably only a kind of afterimage. Like the patch the sun leaves on your retina if you stare at it for too long.
I wish I could sit here forever, but I have to be on my way. I’m about to leave when the old woman next door calls out to me, and we exchange a few words before she disappears back into her house.
I head for the hole in the fence, the one I’ve slipped through more than once in the past few days, when I suddenly feel watched. I look about me, but there’s no one in sight. I hope I don’t run into Mr Lauterbach again, who laughed in my face when I told him I was Philip Petersen.
I bend down and crawl carefully through the hole, then straighten up and look down the road. I’ll walk to the main road and hail a taxi. I take a few steps, breathing in the scent of the old lime trees—and then there it is again, that feeling of being watched. I stop and look about me more carefully this time. At first I think I must have been mistaken, but then I see it—a strikingly marked cat sitting by the side of the road, looking at me. I crouch down and hold out a hand. The creature hesitates, then begins to move, skirting the fence shyly, but giving me a wide berth. I watch it a moment longer—from where I am, I can’t work out whether it has a blind eye and ginger patches like Schnapps or two good eyes and brownish patches like Schnitzel.
I turn away and set off, saying hello to a red-haired young woman going the other way, presumably on her way home from some party.
‘You’re being followed,’ says the young woman, and she laughs.
I follow her gaze and see that the cat is coming after me.
‘There used to be two,’ says the young woman. ‘I think they were from the same litter—they certainly looked pretty similar. But one of them got run over last year.’
I say nothing, only stare at her, because I realise we know each other—that we named those two cats together. Unusual names that you don’t forget in a hurry: Schnitzel and Schnapps. But the young woman just shrugs and goes on her way.
I crouch at the side of the road and wait until the cat plucks up the courage to approach me.
‘Hey, Schnapps,’ I say when it’s finally close enough for me to stroke its ginger-and-white coat. ‘Sorry about Schnitzel.’
The cat rubs against my legs, then rolls in front of me on the asphalt and lets me give it a good stroke. After a while it gets up again and goes back to rubbing against my legs. You’d think it were greeting an old friend.
Sarah
When I wake up, something’s different, and it’s a moment before I work out what it is. The chill that had taken hold of me in the last days has left my bones. The colours, too, are different—it’s as if the filter has been taken off my eyes. When I go out into the passage, I sense that I’m alone in the house. I listen to the silence—to its many voices. Most of what has happened in the last few days seems like a dream to me. It’s time I found my way back to reality.
For the first time in weeks I tie my trainers.
The sun is still low in the sky when I set off. Wind plays around my bare calves. I register the absence of a ponytail bouncing at the back of my head as I trot along the pavement. The scent of the limes—the undoing of hundreds of bumblebees—still hangs in the air, and I inhale deeply. The summer has reached its height—the first signs of autumn won’t be long in coming. I turn off towards the park, past the villas of the neighbourhood, getting into a rhythm, left-right, left-right. A doberman barks when I jog past him and his master into the park and I run off, leaving him and his yelping behind me. Suddenly everything is green. I run faster and faster, over the grass, towards the trees, until I’m sprinting. I feel strong. I relish the thud of my heart. I almost have the impression I can feel the blood flowing through my veins—and then, at last, I stop thinking.
I get back to the house over an hour later, exhausted and drenched in sweat, and go straight to the kitchen to get myself something to drink. I see the note on the kitchen table as soon as I enter the room. I pour myself a glass of water, take a few sips, collect myself. Then I sit down at the table. My legs are shaking—I don’t know if it’s exertion or nervousness.
When I was a little boy, maybe five or six, I would only eat green food. Nothing else. My mother couldn’t get me to eat anything else. She tried bribing me, she tried threatening me—but nothing was any good. I refused to eat potatoes and meat and tomatoes. I wouldn’t touch fish or sausages. No carrots, no bananas, no chocolate. Instead, I ate a lot of things that most other children turn up their noses at: lettuce and spinach and sprouts. Anything, just as long as it was green—green apples, green jelly babies, greengages. Curly kale, eucalyptus sweets. Of course it was only a phase. The whole thing lasted just a few weeks—a month at most. But my fad acquired me the nickname ‘Green’ in my family. It’s not a name I like, because my father often used to
beat me so hard that I’d be left covered in green bruises—and the nickname tends to remind me of those beatings rather than of a five-year-old’s harmless fad.
I drain my glass, then turn over the note and find a postscript: PS—I really did trick you out of your maiden name.
I have to laugh in spite of myself. I know, I think. And I tricked you out of your son’s name.
In the shower I scrub myself until my skin is red, then watch the water rinse away all the tears and dirt and ballast. Standing in front of the mirror wrapped in a white towel, rubbing my short hair dry, I feel lighter.
Then I set off. At the market I buy fruit, vegetables and a big bunch of sunflowers for Miriam. I apologise to her, thank her, promise her that we’ll talk everything over in peace soon—maybe over breakfast at my house. I watch her arrange the flowers in a green glass vase and give her a kiss. I find my son in the tree house with Justus—he doesn’t want to leave, but I ignore his protest, promising there is no reason to be afraid, that I will explain it all, and he trusts me enough to calm down and let me take him home. I ring Johann and explain everything to him as best I can. I apologise; he apologises. I know he hasn’t understood a word of what I said, but we’ll leave it at that for the moment.
With a heavy heart I sit down at the computer and look for the newspaper article about the suicide who ran into the traffic on a country road many years ago. I click my way through the archives of all the local newspapers, but I find nothing. Was Philip lying to spare me? I bite my lip.
I ring Barbara Petry. She doesn’t answer. Ashamed, I hang up. Then I take myself in hand, ring again, and leave her a message. I ring the nursing home and am told that Constanze is well, and has been raving about my tea party to anyone who’ll listen.
I talk to Mirko again. He admits he was behind not only the anonymous calls but also some of the nasty online comments. We apologise to each other. There’s a silence. We say we’ll stay friends. We know we won’t.
Again I sit down at the computer. I prepare for the first week of school.
I make a pan of tomato sauce.
I take off my wedding ring again, wrap it in one of my grandmother’s old cotton hankies and put it in my chest of drawers.
I try to find the article again. I find the website of a local paper I’d forgotten about. I have to log in to use the archive. Impatiently I set up an account. Username: Radioheadfan1978. Password: karmapolice. I enter search terms and click around a bit. It doesn’t take me five minutes to find the article I’m looking for.
Philip was telling the truth.
Seven years ago, my husband disappeared without trace.
Then for a bare three days he reappeared in my life, only to vanish again.
Dust tickles my nose, making me sneeze. It’s stifling hot here in the loft, which has stored up the heat of the day and held it for hours into the night. A time capsule. Sweat breaks out on my forehead as soon as I go in. I open various boxes, but without any luck. I push them aside and keep looking.
Where is Philip now? I wonder. Where did he go?
When we got back from our drive, we ended up in the kitchen again. We looked sheepishly at one another, not knowing what to say. A couple of strangers. We stood there for a while, then Philip said he’d spend the night in the spare room and make himself scarce in the morning. He needed some time to himself, and so, presumably, did I. Again, we looked at each other.
Then he took himself off. In the morning he was gone.
There it is, the box I was looking for. ‘Sentimental Stuff’ it says in big letters. I open it. The photo albums are right on top. The photos of our trip to Las Vegas, of our wedding. Pictures of the first months with Leo. Even photos of the barbecue one of our friends organised for our first solar eclipse together. I hold the albums in my hands a moment—I had intended to take them downstairs and look at them on the sofa—then I put them away unopened and close the box. The present is all that I have and it is always.
I leave the loft and go and sit on the sofa in the living room. My eyes fall on Philip’s record collection and I get up and search through it, find the record I’m looking for, slip it out of its sleeve, lay it on the turntable that Philip bought himself not long before he went missing (the sound quality, he said, was so much better than on CD, which I thought a bit pretentious). I sit down again and the music swells—Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, ‘Do You Love Me?’
I manage to endure the tight feeling in my chest. I keep breathing.
I look about me and think of all that Philip and I have been through together in this house. All the arguments we’ve thrashed out, all the insults, all the nasty remarks, all the love—and Nick Cave sings for me. My thoughts drift as the singer asks the mother of all questions. Philip’s face appears before me and my throat tightens with longing.
I get up as if to shake off the feeling, go over to the little bookcase where I keep only my absolutely favourite books, close my eyes and pull one out.
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.
I remember something my wise grandmother once said to me: being happy is a decision. Maybe, I think, it’s the same with love. Maybe love is a decision.
Number one, I think: Years ago, at a Radiohead concert, I almost got struck by lightning.
Number two: I’ve done five triathlons.
Number three: I don’t love Philip anymore.
One of those is a lie.
I’m walking down the road, under the old lime trees. Their dreams smell of love-struck bumblebees and summers of long ago. With every step I take, I feel stronger. It is night. Some things are going to sleep, others waking up. I try to imagine that it’s broad daylight on the other side of the world. I’ve often thought about that in my darkest hours, when I couldn’t take it anymore: somewhere, it is light now. It’s always light somewhere.
I know what to do. Where to go. And if it’s meant to be, Philip will be there too.
The view from here over the Elbe at night has hardly changed in all these years. I’ve been running, and try to get my breath back as I stare out at the water. It looks like an enormous sinuous snake in the darkness. The water is black as crude oil, with only the occasional blurry yellow spot here and there where lights are reflected in the surface of the river. There is no one here except me. This is our place, this is where it happened—our first official date—and, years later, Philip’s proposal.
I think of our first date—one night, many years ago. It was a new moon, which I thought a shame, but Philip said, ‘New moon’s great. You see the stars better.’ A night picnic on the Elbe Beach, a rather drunk Sarah who thought it would be a good idea to go swimming in the river—and Philip, who thought it silly, but couldn’t stop her.
‘Don’t go too far out. There are currents.’
‘I’m just going to paddle a bit!’
I remember the undertow, my delayed reflexes. It was only when I could no longer put my feet down—when I’d been under and come up again, gasping for air—that I began to panic. The cold water had sobered me up instantly, but it was too late. I could feel myself being swept away and didn’t want to be swept away—I wanted to get out—out of the maelstrom, to the safety of the bank, but it was too late. There were no riptides, it wasn’t that—only a slow, patient, deadly undertow, pulling me further and further away from life.
But then he appeared. First his voice, calling from a distance, frantic, alarmed. And then somehow he was there, grabbing hold of me from behind, pulling and tugging, flailing and panting. And we struggled together, a little way at a time, groaning and gasping for breath, and cold—so cold. I could feel his hand grip mine but was so tired I couldn’t carry on—I was wavering between fighting and letting go, but I knew that if I went down I wouldn’t go alone, that he’d go with me, so I made up my mind to fight and gave all I had—and at last I could put my feet down again. There was still an undertow, pulling and tugging at me, but I didn’t give in to it, I fought against it, until the water g
rew shallow and gave way to the shore and we could throw ourselves down. Breathe. Rest. Lie.
Philip’s pale face, his dark eyes and hair. His dimples. Philip who liked football and surfing, which I thought was great. Philip who liked old gangster films, which I thought was great. Philip who was a vegetarian and loved not only Radiohead, but also Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and Tom Waits, which I thought was amazing.
‘That was a near thing,’ he panted, when he could speak again.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘a near thing.’
‘Not a good idea to go swimming here.’
‘No,’ I admitted, ‘a very bad idea.’
We looked into each other’s eyes and something happened to me—I didn’t know what. The moment seemed to go on and on, and suddenly it held everything—everything that had ever happened and ever would happen. I saw with absolute clarity. The trillions of coincidences, circumstances and events that had led to our being exactly the way we were, to finding one another, to being here together, at this precise moment, in this infinite universe—right here and not anywhere else, right now and not at any other time—the two of us. I saw us from above, minuscule and at the same time vast, and I felt everything from the inside and knew all that lay behind me and all that was yet to come. I knew that everything was exactly as it should be and, for a split second, it all made sense. I saw everything. I understood everything. I saw the quadrillions of cells that went to make up Philip, the cells that ensured, with their crazy, tireless dance, that he was just the way he was and not the least bit different. Madness, I thought. Utterly perfect and utterly mad. Then Philip’s face came close to mine and our lips met and I stopped thinking.
Our dramatic first night, water all around us and stars overhead, my wet hair draped over my naked shoulders like a cloak. The strange boy with drops of water in his hair. Silence, apart from our breathing. Darkness. The world suddenly tiny, shrunk so small that there was no room for anyone but us. A cocoon of silence and stars. And then, very cautiously: a hand in my hair.
The Stranger Upstairs Page 25
