All Days Are Night by Peter Stamm Page A

Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America, Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God. You don’t say, said George, who never got anything. And still the mailman had delivered the letter. Each time she said that sentence, it brought tears to her eyes.
    It was a time when everything seemed possible, but freedom unsettled and scared her. She didn’t suffer from stage fright, oddly, she never had, but a sort of fear that was worse after the show was over. Her boyfriend had been taken on at another theater, but they had never bothered to break up. They telephoned less, and then stopped entirely. Gillian was left to her own devices, she lived over a pizzeria in a little apartment where it was always too warm. She had no friends outside the theater, and none in it really either.
    It took her a while to discover that she wasn’t a good actress and never would be. She played women who gave themselves, who loved unconditionally, who sacrificed themselves, but she couldn’t take any of the roles quite seriously. A part of her always watched herself acting. I can’t regret, or flee, or stay, or live — or die! The little miss marched resolutely out the door, but the audience surely realized she wasn’t going to the barn to hang herself, but to the dressing room to take off her makeup.
    Only after she had entered journalism did she start to feel more secure. She got the job in television and then she started playing the beautiful and successful cultural correspondent for the viewers, for the media, for Matthias, and for herself. She avoided making crass mistakes, Matthias played along, basically he was the better actor. They were continually in demand, giving information, playing themselves. Their voices were louder, they moved differently in public. When they got home, half soused and tired, and stood side by side brushing their teeth in the bathroom, Gillian sometimes had to laugh at the two faces in the mirror. Even the laughter was part of the performance.
    Gillian felt slightly sick from her cigarette. She put it out and went inside. She stopped briefly in front of the coffeemaker, then she went into the bedroom and lay down again. The window was open a crack, and the rain was audible only as a steady hiss. She spent all day in bed, delaying trips to the kitchen or bathroom as long as possible. Her pains had let up, but that didn’t make it any easier, they had battered her back into her body, had made her boundaries all the more distinct. Gone with the pain were her points of reference, and now Gillian had to go tothe trouble of finding them all again. She leafed through old photo albums. There were family albums, with pictures of her as a little girl, photos of holidays and birthdays, family portraits that barely changed over the years. These albums held the first pictures of elementary school productions, Gillian as Mother Mary, as Snow White, as a cat in a musical. Eventually her story detached itself from the family’s. Everything concerning her profession was in a separate album, which Gillian had started. Theater programs, interviews, photos taken at parties, reviews, all clipped and pasted. The first page, the one that in the other albums bore a name or dates, was empty.
    She read an interview she had given shortly after she had taken on the television job. Every week the same questions were put to a different person. The journalist had been perfectly pleasant, they had met in a café. Each time Gillian was stumped, they had made up the answers between them. When did you first make love? One afternoon. What would you most like to know? What my friends really think of me. What was the saddest moment in your life? They were both stumped by that one. Then the journalist had suggested: My death. And that had to do.
    The life in those magazine pictures was inexplicably more personal and more concrete than the interchangeable family snaps in the