Almost Everything Very Fast (29 page)

Alfonsa said, “I’d better leave the two of you alone,” and vanished into the station with a meaningful nod. Her black veil, which he’d never seen her without, prevented him yet again from reading the back of her head.

Violet set down Fred’s backpack and Albert’s bag. Slammed the trunk shut. Pulled out her purse, and passed him a fifty-euro note. “For the cable car.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Let’s not make this harder than it already is.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I thought you always catch on to everything.”

She shoved the cash into his pants pocket.

“You …?”

“Exactly.”

“Why did you bring us here, then?”

“Should I have left you all on the side of the road?”

“You were only pretending?”

“Weren’t we both?” She looked at him, sad, intent, and he realized what it was like to look at someone when you were looking at them for the last time. “I tried, I didn’t want to just give up on us. But now I know—I don’t love you, I love what we had, once. And I think that’s how it is for you, too. When you hugged me last night I could feel how hard it was for you.”

Albert wanted to say something, but she wasn’t finished yet.

“I thought that maybe it was just a question of time for us, I thought that if I gave you some space and got rid of the camera, we might have a chance. And for a little while it was going pretty well, wasn’t it? Only, people simply aren’t made to live long and happy lives together. You get either the one or the other.” She smiled wearily. “Anyway, don’t worry. About me. It’s not the end of everything. It’s not.”

It was ridiculous, but part of him wished she hadn’t said all of this. He didn’t want to say good-bye to her here and now, it was all happening too fast for him, he searched for some objection, some solution, there had to be something that could buy him time, and he rejected one word after another.
Fear. Mother. Expectation. Curiosity. Danger. Fred. Stress. Death. Bewilderment. Loneliness. Fear.
None of them passed muster, and no combination expressed what it was he wanted: that she stay, and that she go, and that he love her and she him, equally, and that they might have some kind of future together, and that they’d never met.

“Albert, one last thing—and one that has nothing to do with us: if you want, I’ll drive you back. But only if we go right away.”

“Before”—his voice was almost gone; he cleared his throat—“before I’ve talked to her?”

“If you ask me, you should forget her, take Fred and clear out, and go enjoy the time you have left with him. I realize how utopian that sounds, but believe me, I know what it’s like to go chasing after something that doesn’t exist anymore. I’m an expert at that. Don’t make the same mistake. You don’t mean anything to this woman. Otherwise you’d have heard from her long ago. She’s not your problem. Forget about her, start worrying about your own life. And Fred’s. You could still have a couple of good weeks together. All you have to do is open the passenger door and climb in.”

Albert stood in the half-empty parking lot, a cigarette between his lips. The curb bent his shadow. Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. Fred.

“You’re smoking!”

“You don’t say.”

Fred took the cigarette and tossed it away.

“Why’d you do that?”

“It makes your legs black! And then you go dead.”

Albert lit up another. “That’s just peachy. Didn’t you say you’d rather die with me?”

“I said that.”

“Great, so cheer up.”

Fred snatched the second cigarette and stamped on it.

“Hey!”

“We can’t all go dead!”

“Well, we’ll see about that,” said Albert, opening the cigarette pack. It was empty. “Shit.”

“Albert!”

“Yeah yeah.” He crumpled the pack, aimed, threw, and missed a trash can. “I guess you’ll have to die alone.”

Fred glanced around. “Where did Violet go?”

“Where the woodbine twineth.”

Fred looked at Albert, smiled, and suddenly threw his arms around him. Albert inhaled his sweetish smell, feeling a heartbeat that might have been his own or Fred’s—he couldn’t tell.

“You’ll find someone better,” said Alfonsa. “Believe me.”

Albert freed himself from the hug; he hadn’t realized she’d come back. “Did you know that was going to happen?”

“The breakup? How was I supposed to know that?”

“I haven’t even said that we’ve broken up.”

Alfonsa smirked.

The gondola to the top of the Zwirglstein pulled away from the platform; they were taking the cable car because you needed permission to use the road up to the old-folks home—and a car, of course. The gondola moved with a metallic rattling and clanking. It amused Alfonsa to see Albert clutching the pole for dear life with both hands. Fred stood unsupported in the middle of the car, twisting his head excitedly in all directions as they began to climb. “Ambrosial!” He stepped toward the rear window. The tips of fir trees slid past them, tossing in the wind. The station shrank away. The panorama was like a model railway’s plastic landscape.

“Please don’t do that,” said Albert.

Fred turned back to him. “What?”

“Move.”

“You don’t need to be afraid of heights yet, Albert.” Fred pointed in the direction they were headed. “Up there it’s much higher!”

“How comforting.”

They reached the first support tower, and the gondola swayed. Albert slid down his pole to the floor. Even a five-foot bunk bed at Saint Helena had left him feeling uneasy. How many feet from the ground were they now? Too many, in any case. Albert pulled out the makeup compact and held the hair up against the light. A thin, sinuous rift in the white sky.

“You still have that with you,” Alfonsa said, more to herself than to him.

As a kid he’d sometimes imagined that his mother, wherever she was, looked up at the sky just as much as he did, that they were both looking at the same thing, that a cloud hanging above her would soon be casting its shadow on him.

“Klondi says you’re a good son,” said Alfonsa.

“She’s wrong about that,” he said.

“He is a good son. Don’t you think so, Fred?”

“Albert is a totally good son,” said Fred.

Albert looked over at Fred. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Albert didn’t want to ask Fred, but he had to. “To whom?”

“To whom what?”

“To whom am I a good son?”

“That’s easy!”

“Oh really?”

“Yes! You’re the son of your mom, and the son of your dad!”

Albert laughed. “So easy.” He slipped the hair back into the makeup compact.

The gondola slowed, and slid jerkily into the rectangular maw of the mountaintop station. The doors were unlocked and opened. Fred jumped from the gondola, Albert climbed out cautiously behind him, and Alfonsa followed. They were greeted by a blast of damp cold, and by the cable car’s operator, who shook his head and said: “You picked a fine day for it. There’s nothing to see.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” replied Alfonsa.

They left the station and followed a well-trodden path. High fog hid the view of the valley. Which was fine by Albert. Bright-green letters on a dark-green sign:
Alp-View Senior Residence, 0.2 km.
Fred was taking smaller steps than usual, Alfonsa walked beside him, and Albert strayed off ahead. Only a measly three hundred steps to go! How many he’d already taken in quest of his mother. He thought of Fred’s attic and the Hansel and Gretel crumbs, he thought of the gold in the tin box and the silent cassette tape and the lists of green cars, he thought of the streets of Königsdorf, of the flyers taped to every front door, he thought of Klondi’s garden and the Hofherr and the rectangular sewer pipes, he thought of Saint Helena and the chessboard of stained boxwood and of darts and shoelaces and the backs of heads, he thought of Tobi’s feet and Clemens’s house and Gertrude’s neighing, he thought about Klondi
(Mothers are overrated, Albert. If you ask me, you can count yourself lucky that you grew up without one)
, he thought of Alfonsa
(What are you looking for elsewhere that isn’t here?)
, he thought of Violet
(You don’t mean anything to this woman. Otherwise you’d have heard from her long ago. She’s not your problem. Forget about her, start worrying about your own life)
, he thought of Fred in the Speedster, with his encyclopedia, in the cemetery, with his diving goggles, in “The Day the Bus Attacked the Bus Stop,” and he thought of a woman whose name he still didn’t even know.

“I don’t feel good,” said Fred, as they reached the old-folks home: a modern building, reminiscent of a hotel, its front side of slanted glass in which the sky was reflected.

“Neither do I,” said Albert, pointing to a wooden bench cut from a bisected tree trunk by the front door. “Should we rest for a minute?”

Alfonsa said she would go ahead and wait for them at the reception. Glass sliding doors closed behind her.

Fortunately, Fred followed Albert and lowered himself to the bench. He pulled his hat down onto his forehead and slumped over. Every part of him was pointing earthward, he seemed weaker than ever before. Albert helped him take off the backpack, slipped it under his head, and closed the collar of the poncho. Within seconds Fred seemed to be asleep. His chest rose and fell evenly. For a moment Albert let his hand rest on Fred’s shoulder, feeling the comforting warmth of his body. At once Albert realized how quiet it was in his head. No thoughts.

When he let go of Fred, it felt as if he were saying farewell.

The air in the entry hall smelled of iodine. To Albert it felt brighter inside, as though the glass walls strengthened the daylight. His footsteps echoed. No one was staffing the reception desk. At a kiosk a pair of old folks in bright blue anoraks were examining a sodden trail map.

Alfonsa waited by a white column. She wasn’t smirking now. Albert went over to her, and before he could say anything she lifted her arms and removed the black veil. He didn’t move. Her hair was done up in a French braid; it was graying already at the temples, but otherwise the color was still strong. It glowed a fiery red.

Nathaniel Wickenhäuser, whose love for me was greater than my own for him, had folded up his mother’s bridal gown for me—presumably with his eyes shut, so that its whiteness wouldn’t blind him. It had smelled as Else would have, were she still alive: of grease, dried flowers, and bitterness. I can’t burn you, he must have thought. I can’t throw you out. But I can’t keep you, either. So you’re going to be a gift.

The next morning, in the bus, the bundle lay on the empty seat beside me. During the whole course of the trip, I didn’t touch it, but stared out the window: the mountains grew bigger, the forests thicker, while the road dwindled. When the bus reached my stop, I left the bundle where it was. Gifts from liars I could do without.

“Wait!” a woman shouted, holding the package aloft. “You’ve forgotten something!”

I struggled to smile, and thanked her.

“Somebody sure is lucky today,” she said.

“The question is, who?” I answered, stuffing the bundle into my travel bag.

That’s where it stayed for the moment, sharing the space with my provisions. It first saw the dull light of Segendorf when the innkeeper emptied the bag onto the floor of the barn on the moor, pulled it over her head, and announced, “Now you can do what you like with me!”

Which is exactly what I did, though the innkeeper had presumably had something else in mind: I chased her out of the barn. “I want nothing more to do with you!” I shouted, bringing the wench to tears, something that no one had managed to do for a good long time.

The very same night I had secretly watched my sister dancing for Arkadiusz, I set out once more for their house. The innkeeper had confirmed that it was she who lived there. This time I had Wickenhäuser’s present with me. Anni’s wedding was set to take place the next day, the innkeeper had told me, and if the bundle contained what it smelled like
,
then it was meant for her. I knocked, and Anni opened the door and shook her head, and I couldn’t say a single word. All of a sudden I saw our old house looming before me. Behind a second-story window Jasfe and Josfer lay atop and within each other. Anni, little Anni, stood in front of the house with the torch in her hand. She stretched out her arm and painted a streak of fire across the front door. Flames leapt up across the wooden walls and wrapped the structure in a gleaming coat of burning colors. The wall of flame built higher and higher, till it reached the window behind which Josfer and Jasfe screamed. Our parents pressed themselves against the pane. Howling. Out of lust, or despair, or who knew what.