Every Seventh Wave by Daniel Glattauer Page B

Where do we go from here?” This nightmare has failed to materialize. A far worse one has come to pass. You, Mr. Leike, the silent “other world.” Illusions of love via email, feelings intensifying day by day, a growing yearning, unsated passion, everything directed toward one apparently real goal, an ultimate goal which is forever being postponed, the meeting of all meetings, but one which will never take place because it would dispel the artifice of ultimate happiness, total satisfaction, without end, with no expiry date, which can be lived only in the mind. Against that I’m impotent.
    Mr. Leike, since you “arrived,” it’s as though Emmi is transformed. She’s absentminded and distanced from me. She sits in her room for hours on end, staring at the computer screen, into the cosmos of her dreams. She lives in her “other world,” she lives with it. When there’s a beatific smile on her face, it’s no longer for me—it hasn’t been for a long time. She has to make a real effort to hide her distraction from the children. I can see just what a torture it is for her to sit next to me now. Do you know how much that hurts? I’ve tried to ride out this phase by being extremely tolerant. I’ve never wanted Emma to feel constrained by me. Neither of us has ever been jealous. But all of a sudden I no longer knew what to do. I mean, there was nothing and nobody there, no actual person, no obvious interloper—until I discovered the root of the problem. I could have died with shame that the whole thing had gone so far. I snooped around in Emma’s room. Eventually, in a secret drawer, I found a folder, a fat folder full of documents: her entire email correspondence with a certain Leo Leike, printed out nice and crisp, page by page, message by message. I copied these documents with a trembling hand, and for a few weeks I managed to put them out of my mind. We had a ghastly holiday in Portugal. The little one was ill, the older one fell madly in love with a sports instructor. My wife and I didn’t say a word to each other for a fortnight, but both of us tried to fool the other that everything was just fine, as it always was, as it always had to be, as custom dictated. After that I couldn’t hold out any longer. I took the folder with me on the walking holiday, and in a fit of self-destruction, out of some masochistic desire to make myself suffer, I read through all the emails in one night. Let me tell you, since the death of my first wife I have experienced no greater emotional torture. When I’d finished reading I couldn’t get out of bed. My daughter phoned the emergency services and I was taken to the hospital. My wife picked me up the day before yesterday. Now you know the whole story.
    Mr. Leike, please meet up with Emma! And now I come to the wretched nadir of my self-humiliation. Meet her, spend a night with her, have sex with her! I know that you’ll want to. I’ll “allow” you to. I’m giving you carte blanche, I’m freeing you from all scruples, I won’t consider it cheating. I sense that Emma wants physical as well as mental intimacy with you, she wants to “know” it, thinks she needs it, something’s urging her to do it. That’s the thrill, the novelty, the variety I can’t offer her. So many men have worshipped and lusted after Emma, but it never struck me that she felt attracted to any of them. And then I saw the emails she has written to you. Suddenly I understood just how great her desire can be if aroused by the “right one.” You, Mr. Leike, are her chosen one. And I’m almost wishing you would sleep with her once. ONCE (like my wife I’m using emphatic block capitals). ONCE. JUST ONCE! Let that be the culmination of the passion you have built up in writing. Make that the conclusion. Crown your email correspondence, and put a stop to it. Give me back my wife, you