Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2) (34 page)

93

She had to get rid of it all, couldn’t keep it in any longer.

She said I was a plaything in an evil game, a chess piece moved back and forth. Jonas knew everything from the start and money changed hands. A lot of money. The gallery, in which my pictures hang. Where I spent so much time. Blood money.

It was so long ago when I met Jonas again. So long ago.

I’d known him almost all my life. He used to come to our house when Gertrud and I were still children. He was a friend of Gertrud’s father. We liked him. He came and went at will, sometimes staying a long time, sometimes only briefly.

At one point he went to England, became a famous photographer, and exhibited in galleries all over the world. We must have been fifteen or sixteen; I don’t remember. I thought it was all so wonderful—his photos, his traveling around the world. The years passed, studying in Munich, loving Tonio, holidays in Greece, on the island, Tonio’s death, my own travels around the world, the pregnancy, Lilli. No dreams left to be dreamed.

What an effort it was to fight against my illness, to return from it, from that dark hole in which I had languished. How much energy it drained from me, but ultimately I emerged much stronger. I completed my studies and then I set off again, roaming the world again, searching again for pictures, impressions, life.

My first exhibitions, my first successes. And suddenly he appeared. Jonas. Elegantly dressed in black with a silk scarf around his neck. He had grown older and so had I, but I recognized him immediately.

Later he told me I was one of those women he found beautiful because they’re hesitant, far from perfection, their heads not totally together. It made me laugh, and for some reason, I don’t know why, I needed that so much. It did me such good, laughing with Jonas like that.

“Hanna,” he said, brushing his hand against my face, nodding. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes.” Nothing else. Something in him seemed to understand me.

“My photos,” I said. “The exhibition. Can I show you them?”

He said no, I didn’t need to. He knew my photos; he knew me, so he also knew my photos. Art shouldn’t be explained.

I said nothing, a little hurt. He noticed that and tried to appease me. “Hanna, I came here by chance, just for the weekend. To think things over a little. Then I saw your poster and I had to come for a few minutes.”

He waved toward the door, where a taxi was waiting. “I have to go, Hanna. My flight.”

He shrugged regretfully, put his wine glass down on the shelf near the door, and left.

Years later, I received a letter. He had given himself a lot of time.
I saw you in the paper,
he wrote,
a wonderful photo, too. And I read your interview.
Do you still remember me?

I had to smile, while shaking my head in amazement. Did I remember him?
Coquettish,
I thought.
He’s being coquettish.

Even if I hadn’t known him since childhood, even if he hadn’t been in and out of our home, I would have known who he was. He was a big name in his field, at the zenith of his career. I was just beginning mine. To put it simply, you could say he was old and I was young. Later, much later, he would talk about himself as someone coming to the end, but I didn’t let him get away with it.

His letter lay on my desk. I waited a few days, tapped it regularly with the nail of my index finger. Finally, I typed in the address in an e-mail window and wrote with trembling fingers. I said I was surprised by his message. That I
. . .
was pleased by it. I also liked myself in the photo, which was rare. And I clicked “Send.”

His reply came immediately. He’d like to meet for a coffee—anywhere, in my town, in his, somewhere in between.

We went for the middle ground.

He talked. I listened. His life affected me. I listened. It all affected me. Fine pins and needles. I don’t know why. I sat in that October wind, listening.

He looked a bit worn out, fighting for the last vestiges of a long-held love, battling lost dreams. He was full of the breakdown of his relationship. For years he had held the rip cord in his hand but never had the courage to pull it. Now his wife had beaten him to it, and surprised, he’d fallen through darkness, through hard times, and he had still not found his way back to the light.

“You’ve gotten thin,” he said.

“No, not at all.”

“You have,” he said. “And your hair. So short.”

“Yes.”

The wind blew the ash from the cigarettes, put goose bumps on our arms. We were insufficiently dressed, not warm enough.

“I’ll take you to the Tuscan sun,” he said and smiled. I looked at him with shining eyes and shook my head.

He didn’t relent. “But yes,” he said. “It warms the heart and soul.”

I laughed. “Quite the poet, Jonas.”

He turned serious. “I’m not doing photography anymore,” he said.

I hadn’t known that. I hadn’t seen any new works by him for a long while, but that he had given up completely was news to me.

“You mean you’re taking a break.”

He shook his head. “No, not a break. Finished.”

“Why?” I was a little dismayed. He noticed that and gave me a placatory smile. He touched my arm lightly.

“It’s not a bad thing,” he said. “And in any case, we have you now. And you’re better than I am. You’ve overtaken me.”

I held my breath. What was he saying to me?

He nodded, as if to reinforce his statement, and smiled a little sadly.

“I have a gallery,” he said. “It takes up a lot of my time. Yes, I’ve been settled for years. Will you visit me?”

We drove back, each to our own town, and exchanged a few e-mails.

I started traveling again, enjoying the flights, the train journeys. I enjoyed that which Jonas had long since grown bored of. Eventually I started taking my
Waiting Hall
photos. Sitting in airport departure lounges or station waiting rooms, resigned to hours of waiting because the flights or trains were delayed.

I took photos. Tiredness, hope. Sketches of waiting. Views of trains, airplanes, platforms, the broad corridor between the gates, passengers scurrying past, lonely footsteps in the darkness.

I often sat alone in the twilight, in the evenings or nights, my work done, commissions fulfilled, exhibitions over, hours away from home, laptop and notebook in my luggage. I felt the frequent specter of memory, the storm, the man, the child, her crying, but I never let it touch me, always pushed it quickly back and with it that tug in my belly and hands, that light pain in my heart. I would grab my camera and go out on the streets at night, taking pictures, as I knew that way I could bridge time, set time back to zero.

The strangeness of the flight passengers toward one another was like snowflakes that only touch one another when they land on the ground, when they fall onto one another and there’s no going back.

French chansons
sometimes played in the background; I found them fitting. It was as though they were about me—about me and my lover, about me and my child. The sad songs of failed lives and failed loves blended with the constant chatter of telephone calls playing out before me. Calls with friends, mothers, bosses. Agreeing to meetings, perhaps on Thursday, perhaps tomorrow, let’s see what’s in the schedule. The voices were sometimes young, sometimes old, sometimes tired, sometimes excited. Nothing was surprising: the dialects were familiar, a laugh was a laugh, astonishment was astonishment.

I stopped counting the hours spent traveling, eventually also stopped the exhibitions, and came to concentrate only on those moments at the airports and rail stations, waiting in readiness for the pictures, the photos, when they arose, when they were there before me. Snapshots merging into a long, endless journey inside me.

I had the clear, certain feeling that it was right, that I was on the move so that the photos could form their routes inside me, in my camera, in my eyes. All around me were people waiting to move on, the chatterers, the laughers, the newspaper readers, the telephoners, the texters, the online chatterboxes. Every now and then was the crackle and hum of alarms, of officials’ radios.

Eventually, I chose only aisle seats, no longer window seats, no views of rain, fog, clouds, lights, sun, snow, whatever. I chose aisle seats so I could cross my legs, feel a little freer, a little more relaxed, not so alone. I could bear the loneliness of the hotel rooms, but it never became routine.

I always began to feel a little sad before the end of my journeys. The sadness of work completed, finished. A longing began to creep through me, displacing the magic of the beginnings.

Along the way I saw Jonas, who still wasn’t taking photographs. It was as though I had taken over from him and now continued his work. He limited his activities to the gallery, curating excellent, highly regarded exhibitions.

“Things are slowing down with me,” he said. “My career’s in the process of decline. But yours, yours is taking off like a comet with these brilliant images of your restlessness.”

He smiled, but I could feel his wistfulness. He was suffering, but I didn’t know why. Perhaps he found it hard to come to terms with being the “prince consort” by my side, perhaps he was finding aging more painful than before, perhaps it was a thorn in his side. Maybe my success threatened his existence because it made him think about his own life.

I had the feeling that, on the one hand, he was grateful toward me, which he demonstrated with tenderness and with affection. But on the other hand, he knew that I didn’t need him for my own career, and perhaps that was what caused him the most pain.

No, I didn’t need him. I mustn’t need him, for whenever in my life I had begun to need someone, they had been taken from me. Nothing was more important than to preserve my freedom.

And so we lived off one another, although we had never really lived together. And yet his reserve was unforeseen.

“Has it become a duty?” I asked him. “If so, we should end it. I can’t be someone’s duty.”

He denied it. Vehemently. No, it wasn’t a duty. What kind of a threat was I making?

But I’d always felt we couldn’t follow each other into our different worlds; they remained apart, foreign worlds behind strangers’ eyes. Despite all this, I eventually became his wife.

Not long ago a man was sitting by me at the airport in Munich. I felt his curious eyes taking me in, and I felt from his look that he was ready to approach me and strike up a conversation.
Very well,
I thought,
he can have it, I can manage that.
I looked up and found a warmth in those eyes that I had been missing for a long time.

“Are you flying to Cologne, too?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m going to Cologne, too.” I surprised myself with the lightness in my voice. “Do you want a drink?”

“Yes, let’s. Can I treat you? We’ve got plenty of time.”

With a sigh, he looked up at the information board by the gate.
Delayed, Delayed, Delayed
. The flight would not be departing for another four hours.

We sat down in the nearest restaurant, and I don’t know why, but I began to tell him of this strange love I was caught up in, which refused to be tied down to a time or purpose, which was doing my head in with this, I don’t know, disembodiment. Yes, suddenly I could see it, suddenly I knew it with great insight and clarity.

I have no idea why I told him all that. Maybe because it was nighttime and quiet and the clicking of heels as people moved along the corridors was louder than in the daytime. Maybe it was because this man was such a stranger to me and yet seemed so close. Maybe it was because I knew I would never see him again.

My voice was a little subdued, a little quieter than usual, like a shade in an in-between world. He listened to me as I talked, and I saw that he had curly brown hair, that he was wearing a business suit, a tie, that he carried the inevitable laptop, wore the obligatory dark coat, and had a wife and children, probably two, probably school age, at home.
Just like it should be,
I thought a little scornfully
.
Just like it should be.
And I knew we would have sex.

We did it in the bathroom; it was quiet all around and I thought about the November fog outside.

We did it in the expected silence, with the expected concentration. My body had not experienced such intensity, such abandon, for a long time, and I felt as though I’d finally found myself again. I knew that it was good, that it was right, that it was fitting.

I realized at that moment that I had never stopped thinking about Lilli, never stopped missing her, and at that realization, my sadness was so huge that it moved me to tears. When the man in the business suit felt the tears around my mouth, he stopped in shock, but I held him tight, drew him to me, and said, “Don’t stop. Stay, don’t go. Hold me, hold me tight, don’t let go.”

I loved him in that moment, I loved his warmth, his calmness, his clarity, because I believed I could sense my daughter in all that, my daughter who was so far away, so far, and who, I was sure, knew nothing of me, would never know anything of me
. . .

Later, we sat a distance apart on the plane. We met again only briefly as the carousel spat out our suitcases. We smiled at each other, and I knew what comfort I would gain from then on, picturing his hand on my breast, a hand that gave me support and strength. I knew that when I was next with Jonas, I didn’t have to tell him anything.

Once at home I found my businessman’s card, which he’d slipped into my coat pocket without my noticing. I felt a shiver, a warmth, that suddenly crept into me and filled me with a glowing, warming strength. I can’t describe it in any other way.

I gave myself three weeks before I sent him an e-mail. I composed it carefully, in just a few words.

His reply came immediately.

. . .
Are you an enchantress?
he asked
. I still have an aura around me like a multicolored cloak. You’ve thrown a warm hood over me, so are you an enchantress?

. . .
I miss you,
I replied.
I’ll miss you for a long time . . .