Fame (16 page)

I called Luzia.

It wasn’t so bad, she said immediately, it didn’t matter, I shouldn’t take it to heart.

I nodded silently, already feeling better. She was so good at consoling me.

When Luzia called to tell me she was pregnant, I was at the open-air pool with the children. The sun was playing on the trembling surface of the water, its reflections cut down deep, the whole world seemed shot through with light. Children shrieking, water splashing, the smell of coconut oil, chlorine, and grass.

“What?” I lifted my hand to my brow, but my arm was moving with a delayed action and my fingers seemed to be wrapped in cotton wool. My knees went so weak that I had to sit down. A fat little girl came trotting up, bumped into me, fell over, and began to cry. I blinked. “That’s wonderful,” I heard myself say.

“Really?” She didn’t seem to completely believe me and I didn’t quite believe myself either. And yet: why did I feel such a surge of joy? A child—my first! I had never felt so strongly that I was made up of two people, or rather that I had split one and the same life into two different variants. Over there, on the other side of the pool, my daughter was crawling across the grass. Farther in the distance my son was leaning in what was meant to be a casual pose, hoping I couldn’t see him and talking to two girls his own age.

“I don’t know if I’ll be a good father,” I said quietly. I stopped, I was finding it hard to speak. “I’ll try!”

“You’re wonderful! You know, back then when … where are you, actually, there’s an awful lot of noise!”

“On the street. Not so far from your office. I wish I could come and see you …”

“So do it!”

“… but I can’t. An appointment.”

“Back then, when I got to know you. I’d never have believed it! You were like someone under a deadweight and at the same time … how can I put it? Someone forcing himself to stand upright at all times—I found it hard to believe you.” She laughed. “I thought you weren’t being honest.”

“Strange.” My daughter was looking for the edge of the pool. I stood up.

“If anyone had told me back then that it would be you of all people I …”

The little one was too near the water. “Can I call you back?” I hurried over toward her.

“But why do you think …”

I pressed the disconnect button and began to run. Sharp blades of grass prickled my naked feet. I hurdled two children who were lying there, dodged a dog, pushed a woman aside, and caught my daughter three feet from the water. She looked at me, puzzled, thought for a moment, and began to cry. I lifted her up and whispered soothing nonsense in her ear.
I’ll call later
, I thumb-clicked on my phone.
Subway, lousy reception.
I was about to send it, but then added
I’m so happy!
I
looked at my daughter’s face, and once again was struck by how she was looking more like Hannah with every month that passed. I blew the hair off her forehead, she giggled softly; she’d already forgotten she’d just been crying. I hit Send.

Mollwitz was in a complete state of shock when he got back. He was muttering to himself, was almost un-talkable-to and didn’t want to say anything about what had gone on.

Sooner or later, said Hauberlan, it had to happen.

His presentation had been a disaster, said Schlick. Everyone was talking about it. Really embarrassing for the department.

And there was worse, said Lobenmeier. Apparently he’d forced his way into a hotel room and …

“Everyone makes mistakes,” I said, and they went quiet. It suited them that nothing interested me anymore. I had lost weight and even the classics no longer held my attention, Sallust seemed verbose, Cicero empty, for neither of them addressed the question that preoccupied me to the exclusion of all else, making my mind turn in circles the way water drives a millstone—wasn’t it possible to have two houses, two lives, two families, one there, one here, a me in this town and a me in the other one, and two women, each of them as close to me as if she were the only one? It was only a matter of organization, of train timetables and airline schedules, of
cleverly judged e-mails and a little foresight in making arrangements. Of course it could all collapse, but it could also … yes, it could work! For a short while. Or maybe longer.

The double life: the redoubling of life. Only a short time ago I was merely a depressed head of department. How had I come to the point where I suddenly understood them: the bogeymen portrayed in the tabloids, all the people who had secrets just because you can’t live without them, and absolute transparency means death, and a single existence is not enough for human beings.

“What?” I jumped. Lobenmeier was standing in front of me. Behind him, Schlick. I hadn’t heard them coming. Then I realized that it had happened the other way round. The others had left the room and only these two had stayed behind.

Schlick began to talk in a low voice. Clearly something really terrible had happened: a memo from Security had informed us that several hundred phone numbers in the databank had been given a wrong date for general availability, so there was a danger that although they were already in use, they’d be assigned to new customers. Lobenmeier had forwarded it to Mollwitz, who had set it aside because, as they discovered subsequently, he was absolutely set on writing a post for SpottheStars first.

“For
what
?”

Didn’t matter, said Lobenmeier, not important right now. Anyhow, that’s what had happened and several dozen new customers had been given already-assigned numbers. The
press had got hold of it and at least two claims for commercial damages had already been filed. The main error came from our department.

The screen on my cell phone lit up. Hannah’s name, and underneath:
We’re coming to visit you!
My pulse began to race.

“We’ll talk about this later!” I got to my feet.

He was sorry, said Lobenmeier, but the situation was too serious. It could—

Would, said Schlick.

Lobenmeier nodded.
Would
cost several people their jobs.

I pressed several buttons, but there were no messages. Could I have dreamed it? Had I erased it by mistake? I had to be sure, it was critical that I not make a mistake.

“Be right back,” I cried, and ran out down the corridor to the elevator, which took me noisily downstairs, then through the main hall and into the street. That’s it, I thought, that’s what’s happening to me. You don’t founder because of circumstances, you don’t founder because of bad luck, you founder because of your nerves. You founder because you can’t take the pressure. That’s how, sooner or later, the truth comes out. I turned around slowly. I noticed that passersby were looking in my direction, that a child on the other side of the street was pointing at me, only to be dragged along by its mother. Pull yourself together, I thought, just pull yourself together, if you don’t give up it can work, but you have to pull yourself together. I forced myself to stand there calmly. I glanced at my watch and tried to look like someone mentally checking the day’s appointments. Turn around, I told myself,
and go back inside. Get in the elevator. They’re waiting for you. Sit down behind your desk. Save what can be saved. Do something—defend yourself, don’t run away. You’re not going to fall apart. Not yet.

“A problem, dear sir?”

Standing next to me was a startlingly thin man with greasy hair, horn-rim glasses, and a bright red cap.

“Excuse me?”

“Life is hard?” he said with an ingratiating smile. It sounded more like a question than a statement. “Every decision is hard, even organizing the everyday things is so complicated that it can drive even the strongest of us mad. You agree, dear sir?”

“What?”

“So many things are not subject to our will, but some things can be made a little easier. I have a taxi at my disposal.” He pointed to a black Mercedes standing next to us with the door open. “And here’s my suggestion: if there’s someone you would like to see in the next hour, call them. Life is over so quickly. That’s what these little phones are for, that’s why we have all that electrical gadgetry in our pockets. Don’t you agree, dear sir?”

I didn’t understand what he wanted from me. His appearance was repulsive, but his words had a calming effect on me. “That’s a taxi?”

“Dear sir, get in, give me the address, and, you’ll see, it’ll become one.”

I hesitated, but then nodded and let myself sink into the
soft leather of the backseat. He got behind the wheel, took some time adjusting the driver’s seat, as if this were not the car he’d come in, repositioned the rearview mirror, and slowly fingered the ignition. “Your address,” he said softly. “Please. I know many things but not everything.”

I gave it to him.

“We’ll be there in a flash.” He turned on the engine and steered out into the traffic. “Are you sure you want to go home? Not somewhere else? No one you’d like to visit?”

I shook my head, pulled out my phone, and dialed Luzia’s number. “Come to me!”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“What are you doing here anyway? I thought you had to be in Zurich for the whole week! Did something happen?”

I rubbed my forehead. Right, I had said that, so that I could get away the next day and spend the weekend with Hannah. “It didn’t come off.”

“Mollwitz again?”

“Mollwitz again.”

“I’m on my way.”

I disconnected and stared at the phone’s tiny screen. And if Hannah really was on her way here? Then I’d done the exact wrong thing, and Luzia couldn’t come anywhere near my apartment. I’d have to call right away—but which one of them? Why were things slipping away from me already? The thin man stared at me in the rearview mirror. I felt faint, and closed my eyes.

“You’re asking yourself why so many things aren’t doable, dear sir? Because a man wishes to be many things. In the literal sense of the word. He wishes to be multiple. Diverse. He’d like to have several lives. But only superficially, not deep down. The ultimate aspiration, dear friend, is to become one. One with oneself, one with the universe.”

I opened my eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t say a word. And if I had, it wouldn’t be anything you don’t already know.”

“Is this even your car?”

“Should that really be your most pressing concern?”

I fell silent until he halted outside my apartment building. For some reason I’d assumed he wouldn’t take any money, but he named a wildly high fare. I paid and got out; when I looked back, the car was already gone.

Luzia was waiting in the corridor outside the door of my apartment. She must have set off immediately. You could really rely on her. “What is it?” she asked. “What?” She was looking at me attentively.

I opened my mouth and shut it again.

She put her hands on my shoulders. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

I didn’t move. We were still standing in the corridor. I took a deep breath and didn’t say a thing.

We went inside. Through the hallway, through my untidy living room, and then, as always, into the bedroom.

Seconds later we were lying there and I felt the firmness of her limbs, saw close up the darkness of her eyes. Her
hands fumbled with my belt, my hands slid under her blouse, all of their own accord, without hesitation or reflection, it seemed to happen without our intervention. Then the covers and the nakedness and the panting and her strong hands, her clutching me and me clutching her and then we were already apart again, lying exhausted beside each other, out of breath. There was a thin coating of sweat on her skin. The sight made me melt, to such a degree that I was on the point of saying things that I would have needed to take back a few minutes later. Was she really carrying my child? But I already had two, and they were difficult and disconcerting enough, they looked at me suspiciously and asked questions to which I had no answers, and I wasn’t a good father to them.

“It can’t go on like this,” she said.

My stomach went into spasm. “What?”

“This Mollwitz. You’re too nice. You have to do something.”

I slid my hand under her neck. How soft her hair was. The golden fuzz on her arms. The soft curve of her breast. I would have done anything for her and abandoned anything.

Anything?

Anything except the other one who would call me in a few minutes or perhaps next week or next month or sometime this year at the most inconvenient moment, to tell me that she was coming for a surprise visit and was already in town, on my street or already in the building, on the stairs, right in front of my door. If this were a story, I thought, there
would be no point in delaying things, and it would happen right now.

The doorbell rang. I sat up with a jerk.

“What is it?” asked Luzia.

“The bell.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

I stroked her head in silence. I can still confess everything, I thought, I haven’t yet been convicted of anything. Would you forgive me? But I knew she wouldn’t.

Without pulling on my clothes, I went out into the hallway. If I opened the door now and Hannah was standing outside, what should I do? Maybe there was a way to fake my way out of it. In films and stage farces there’s always one, just as everything looks hopeless. The leading actors find the most brilliant subterfuges, open and slam doors, push one woman into one room and the other into another, they maneuver whole groups of people around the smallest spaces without anyone bumping into anyone else. An entire genre specialized in nothing else. Anyone with sufficient determination could surely do the same thing. Almost anything could be accomplished with the necessary strength of mind. Even a double life. But who has it, I asked myself as I stood there naked in the hallway; who has that kind of strength?

I reached for the handle. Even the certainty that there’s absolutely nothing now between you and catastrophe gives a certain assurance. For one last moment I hesitated. Why not have an even bigger scene, an even more powerful effect? If Hannah was standing outside, why not the children too, why
not my parents as well, come of their own accord from their dismal retirement home, and while we were at it, why not Lobenmeier, Hauberlan, and Longrolf from Accounting, why not Mollwitz too; all come to see me without my clothes on, without secrets, pretences, illusions, and deceptions, just as I really was.