Almost Everything Very Fast (21 page)

“How do you know? Not only can you look at most of your life whenever you want, but it’s mostly good, too. It says, Look here, Violet, you have a pretty good life.”

“We could go looking for your history.”

“I’ve done that, more than once.”

“Somewhere in this house there must be …”

“A heap of Hansel and Gretel crumbs.”

“A heap of what?”

“Hansel and Gretel crumbs. You follow them because you think they’re going to help you get out of the forest. And all they do is lead you deeper and deeper in. Till you can’t tell the day from the night anymore. Then, all of a sudden, the trail ends.”

“You don’t get lost so quickly if you’re traveling with someone else.”

“Or else much quicker.”

“You’re living in your own head again.”

“It would do most people good to live in their heads a little more. They’d cause less harm.”

“We’d make it through the woods.”

Albert’s hand obscures the picture.

“What’s wrong?”

“That’s enough.”

“Why?”

“Please, turn it off now.”

November 16, 2001

Violet’s slim legs disappear into dark water. Feet invisible. Swarms of insects. Splashing. Whip pan: Albert sits on the bank, wrapped in a coat. Pines. Underbrush. Naked roots.

Violet’s voice from off camera: “Come in!”

“It’s fucking cold.”

“I’ll help you warm up.”

“Water’s not my thing.”

“You go swimming with Fred.”

“Water’s
his
thing.”

“I love the feeling of not knowing what’s around me. What’s under me.”

“That’s just the feeling I can’t stand.”

“Then let me help you. Let me ask Fred a couple of questions.”

“About the past?”

“He must know who your mother is.”

“I already told you, I’ve mucked through all of that.”

“Maybe I’ll see something you missed.”

“Promise me you won’t ask him.”

“Albert.”

“Violet.”

“I promise.”

“Can we go now? I’m cold.”

December 7, 2001

Zoom in on a leather sofa with a metal frame. Albert’s naked back. Pale and freckled. Before him, a stereo from Bang & Olufsen. Not a speck of dust on its mirrored surface.

Violet’s voice from offscreen: “Hey!”

Albert flinches, spins around. “I thought it was your parents.”

“Sorry.”

“Do you have to do that?”

“I could film you for hours.”

“You
could?
You do. Sometimes it’s hard for me to picture you without that thing in front of your face.”

“You don’t need to be afraid of it just because you’re not used to it.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s just that I’d like to look you in the eye now and then.”

“Someday you’ll thank me.”

“I don’t need recordings to remember how things were.”

“So, what—you think I’m one of those people who videotape the paintings in a museum, and only realize what they’ve seen when they get home?”

“Please, switch it off.”

December 23, 2001

Grainy grayness. Moaning. Heavy breathing. Violet’s voice from off camera: “Wait.” Something bumps the microphone. A streak. A pan across pale thighs. Albert’s hairless chest.

His cold stare. “You can’t be serious.”

“It could be—”

“Turn it off.”

“But it’s the kind of video I want for Christmas.”

“Very funny. Not the kind
I
want.”

“Just pretend it isn’t here.”

“Violet!”

January 21, 2002

Fred’s profile. Hazy outlines of brownish-green clouds behind him—a map of the world.

Violet’s voice: “Okay. Let’s go. What’s your name?”

“You
know
what my name is, Violet.”

“Of course. But when other people see this, they’ll certainly want to know what you’re called.”

“Most other people know that I’m Frederick Arkadiusz Driajes.”

“And who gave you that name?”

“Mama.”

“Can you remember her well?”

“I can remember everything.”

“Good, then … what did she say, when Albert was still a baby?”

“Mama said,
Albert is a Most Beloved Possession.
”

“I already know that.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Never mind. Fred, do you know a woman who has red hair, like Albert?”

“Mama says,
Nature says that red means danger.
”

“How so?”

“What?”

“Why is red dangerous?”

“Because red is the littlest color, of course. You mustn’t touch red, or eat it, or drink it.”

“Fred, did you touch red once?”

“I never, ever touch red! Green is much more ambrosial. I have green eyes.”

“But everyone needs a little bit of red sometimes. Strawberries, for instance, who doesn’t like strawberries?”

“Mama says strawberries make my skin red and steal my breath.”

“Well, she’s right. But you like Albert. And he’s pretty red.”

“Yes.”

“Well …?”

“…”

“Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

“I always understand everything.”

“Fred, there are times when it’s just fine to touch red. Everyone does it.”

“Mama says everyone who touches red says that touching red is okay.”

Door slam. Footsteps.

“Albert!”

Violet’s voice from off camera: “I thought you were going shopping.”

“They’d already closed … is that thing on?!”

“Violet’s doing an interview!”

“I asked you not to.”

“We’ve only been chatting a bit.”

“I have to talk a lot. Violet doesn’t know that red is dangerous.”

“Fred, can you please go to your room?”

“But we aren’t done yet!”

“Yes, I think you are.”

“It’s okay, Fred. We’re done.”

For the first time Fred looks into the camera, as if he’s seeing something that he hadn’t noticed before. Then he goes. Shadows flit across the green-brown clouds.

“I don’t think this is working out.”

“Albert, you’re overreacting.”

“We’re just too different.”

“That could be to our advantage.”

“It doesn’t feel right.”

“I love you.”

“I thought that’s a concept you aren’t convinced by.”

“At least take a little time before you make a decision. Don’t do it for me. Do it for us.”

March 4, 2002

“Is the camera running?”

“Of course not.”

“The red light’s on.”

“It’s off. Don’t you believe me?”

Albert in a coat and hat on a park bench. A torn-open envelope in his left hand.

“Violet, what is this?”

“Tickets.”

“I can see that.”

Violet’s reddened hand moves toward Albert. He flinches. The sound of crows cawing.

“I want to apologize.”

“With first-class tickets?”

“You don’t return my calls. Fred says you were in Königsdorf the other day. You could have told me.”

“You told me to take some time.” He slips the tickets back into the envelope. “This isn’t a good idea.”

“Why not? One of my father’s friends is putting his house in Newfoundland at our disposal, right on the east coast, you know, there should be tons of blueberries, we can hike the East Coast Trail and look for whales. And we’d be far away from here.”

“And what about the camera?”

“I could leave the camera here.”

“You
could.
”

“Really!”

“And Fred?”

“You could tell him you’re at Helena.” Her hand reaches for his. “So, what do you think?”

March 7, 2002

A curtain covers the only window in the room. A knock on the door. An older man’s voice from off camera: “Are you okay?”

Violet: “Yes.”

“Why don’t you come on out for a while?”

“Go away!”

Footsteps fading. Violet’s hand, with gnawed fingernails, reaches for the camera. Her pale face appears.

“I eat rice pudding with too much sugar. I cocoon myself in the bedsheets. I don’t go to the bathroom for so long that my belly hurts. The cell phone has grown into my hand. The ‘redial’ button is sticking. I press it every few minutes. Even though you never answer, I think every time that you’re going to, you’re going to explain that you were out, that you’re sorry you canceled the trip, that now it’s clear to you how wrong it was, and you want to make up for it, and that you’re already on your way to me, with two new tickets.”

She weeps.

Violet had sent Albert these seven recordings after their breakup. And he’d made the mistake of watching them. It was with difficulty that he prevented himself from calling Violet and apologizing. That would only have unnecessarily extended the separation phase, thought Albert again, as he finally approached the airfield. He waited beside the only barn in sight and watched a prop plane with a glider in tow take off. The hill on which the church with its onion dome rose from among the farmhouses of Königsdorf was surrounded by a flat plane of moorland, where the glider airfield had been built back in the fifties.

The street he’d come down, still damp with dew, ran past the barn into town. From the opposite direction, a new Beetle, solar yellow, was approaching—it slowed, and finally drew to a stop a few steps away from him. The engine cut off, but the driver’s-side door didn’t open. It made Albert think of a scene from some sort of Upper Bavarian mafia flick. Violet clearly wanted him to come to her. He obliged. She had her head turned away, he had to knock on the window, and then she took her time rolling it down, and turned her face only halfway toward him, as if she hadn’t come out of her way to Königsdorf just to see him, as if she got up early every Saturday morning and drove out across the foggy moor to the airstrip, as if she hadn’t lain awake all night wondering what could be so important that he couldn’t tell her about it over the phone.

“Hello, Albert,” she said, looking at him and then away again.

Albert couldn’t explain it, but now, seeing her again after so long, he doubted whether he’d made the right decision back then, not answering her calls anymore. To his own surprise he realized he wasn’t just glad but happy to see her; he wanted to give her a hug.

“Hello,” he greeted her, uncertain whether he ought even to ask her to get out of the car, because he didn’t believe she’d do it. From where he was standing, all he could see of her was her smooth, white left cheek.

“Albert,” she said, clutching the wheel, “why am I here?”

He laid his hand on the side panel of the Beetle. Maybe this was a beginning: “It’s nice that you’re here.”

“You think it’s
nice
here?” She pointed at the airstrip. “It reminds me that I gave you two tickets once. Tickets we never used.”

“Shit. I hadn’t thought of that.” Albert withdrew his hand. “How’ve you been?”

Violet looked at him again, but didn’t turn away this time: “Totally great!”

He read the real answer in her red-rimmed eyes.

The previous day, fifteen minutes before his call had reached her, Violet had been on her way to the office. Stuck in traffic in the firm’s car, a Jeep Cherokee, still umpteen one-way streets distant from the production company’s parking lot, on a Friday evening. It was one of those lonely situations in which thoughts of Albert resurfaced, thoughts she did her best to chase off by saying “Violet!” loudly to herself. But it didn’t help, and so she edged the Jeep to the right of the Munich ring road, turned off without using her blinker, and stopped at a gas station. She didn’t get out; the tank was two-thirds full. Her right hand gripped the engaged emergency brake. The cinnamon bubblegum scent from the car’s last cleaning filled her nose, and she rolled down the window to replace it with the odor of gas. For the hundredth time, she read, on a label affixed to the visor,
K&P Commercial
—a commercial advertising agency her father had a good relationship with, and which had allowed her to snag, without even having to go through an interview, one of those internships that every other media and communication studies student yearned for. Though she couldn’t understand why they did. She spent most of her time ferrying actors, camera operators, directors, and friends of the producers, or rattling stacks of film cans across Munich. This was supposed to help her make “contacts,” so-called. Since she’d had her license for only half a year, she had her hands full simultaneously studying the Google driving directions, shifting gears, steering, and obeying traffic signs and one-way streets, which had a way of funneling inexperienced drivers to the most remote corners of the city in no time at all. Violet had already had to call the office two times, with a lump in her throat, begging for help. And alongside all that, she was supposed to make “contacts”?

When she’d started the internship, only a month after graduation, she’d assumed that the people at K&P Commercial were smarter, more interesting, more open-minded—in every sense above and beyond the product they produced. An overoptimistic judgment, as she’d since found. When Violet came into the office in the morning and was asked how she was doing and answered, “Not so good,” she always received the same response from her colleagues: “Great! Me, too!” Violet wished it was meant to be sarcastic. Of course she missed the old Violet, the one who’d rebelled against everything, left, right, and center, but she also observed how much easier it was to protest and do the right thing when one’s parents paid for the train ticket to the demonstration. After knocking off for the evening, a group of her coworkers, 80 percent of them interns, gathered regularly around a Mac to applaud a few of the recent commercials—except for Violet, who was easily able to contain her enthusiasm for cappuccino advertisements featuring cowboys and sea monsters. Accordingly, she’d been pulled aside by the producer and encouraged to show a little more spirit. So that now, in the mornings, when the inevitable question came, she always answered, “Totally great!”

Now, behind her, a Mercedes honked. She stepped on the brake, and wanted to shift to “drive,” but her hands were shaking. That happened once in a while. She couldn’t drive on like that. She got out and topped off the tank, to buy time. In the snack shop she wandered aimlessly along the aisles, without buying anything. She paid for the gas with her credit card, and bent low over the receipt as she was signing, so that the cashier wouldn’t notice her shaking. She couldn’t read her own signature. She went back to the car, saying “Violet!” again to herself, then took a deep breath and slipped behind the wheel, started the engine, and steered back into traffic. By the next stoplight, the Jeep began to judder and buck. She had to floor the gas pedal to get the thing moving. Midway through the intersection the engine flooded, and the Jeep stopped short. She turned the key, the indicator lights flared, the engine coughed. A terrible suspicion crept over her that she should have refilled with diesel rather than unleaded. Pairs of headlights rushed toward her and flashed. A concert of horns. She didn’t dare get out of the car. A soft melody tickled her ear. She dumped her handbag out on the passenger seat and managed to get hold of her cell phone. The screen read:
Albert.