shouldn't have said that, he whispered. He shouldn't have said that. Why not? I asked. Because it's the truth, he replied.
We didn't drink bourbon that night, but vodka on the rocks.
In the end Karl was so drunk that I had to lay him on his bed. He weighed little more than a child. He went on singing. Sombre Slav songs of which I didn't understand a word. There were lots of books in his bedroom. And a large painting of a ballet dancer floating in the air. I sat on the edge of the bed. Karl had finished singing. I was no longer quite sober myself. He was lying with his back towards me. I started telling him about Vera and about the only time I had been unfaithful to her. In Paris.
She sat down opposite me in an overcrowded restaurant that Leon Bähr had recommended to me. Fat and dark, she was wearing a shiny black silky blouse; there was something gypsy-like, something unbridled about her. It is difficult to avoid the eye of someone who is sitting opposite you at a table hardly fifty centimetres away.
I was eating entrecôte au poivre. She ordered the same. I took a coupe dame blanche. So did she. I was always one course ahead of her and watched how she ate, with tiny little bites, leaving nothing on her plate. I noticed how thin her fingers were only when she caught up with me at the coffee and cognac stage. She held her glass as if it were a baby's hand. She was slow and she was graceful. Unlike most fat people, she had not yet lost power over her body.
We touched glasses very lightly and said our names. Maarten, Sylvie. As if these were the names of the glasses. And that was true. Our names, our pasts, did not matter that evening. This ritual was repeated three more times. Soon we were the only ones left in the restaurant. In clumsy French I had explained to her why I was in Paris. She worked somewhere in an office, she told me. Allons, she motioned me, when she noticed the waiters and waitresses in their white aprons standing leaning against the bar watching us. Allons.
We went. She lived close by. She pressed the light button in the hall of the apartment building and suddenly walked quickly ahead of me on tapping heels. Vite, she said, it will go out after a minute. Apart from her name and her occupation, that was all she told me that night, in a curiously light, almost girlish voice. For the rest, she made soft, contented, grunting sounds, deep down in her throat.
It was an event that happened to me but which I also wanted. It was complete. Maybe because we had no past for each other nor wanted to acquire one. We moved in and over and out of each other. Pure lust, it was. Pure and anonymous. Finally she turned her enormous back with the imprints of my teeth in her left shoulder blade towards me and fell asleep. I got up, dressed, and vanished from her life. Outside, the dawn glimmered. Blackbirds sang. Only when the night porter at the Ambassador Hotel said my name did I remember who I was.
Had Karl heard what I said? He, too, was lying with his back to me. He said nothing in reply. I got up and left.
The next day he did not come to work. Nor the following days. Bahr drove to his house in person. The police did the rest.
We all attended his funeral. It was a beautiful cemetery, near Shipman's Wreck, a hilly area with tall oak trees. Bahr made a speech. He spoke of integrity, and that we would miss him. There was nothing in his words to suggest that Karl had cut his wrists in the bath and had drowned afterwards, as the autopsy showed.
No one mentioned him again. I often thought of that evening before his death. With a little less to drink we might have become friends then, I might have helped him overcome his shame, his shame at being alive while others were no longer. Maybe.
No, that story about pure lust must have eluded him. He was asleep. Thinking of that evening I still see his back moving in tranquil sleep.
'Come,' says Vera. 'Come and sit down, Maarten.'
Before her on the table lies an open photo
We didn't drink bourbon that night, but vodka on the rocks.
In the end Karl was so drunk that I had to lay him on his bed. He weighed little more than a child. He went on singing. Sombre Slav songs of which I didn't understand a word. There were lots of books in his bedroom. And a large painting of a ballet dancer floating in the air. I sat on the edge of the bed. Karl had finished singing. I was no longer quite sober myself. He was lying with his back towards me. I started telling him about Vera and about the only time I had been unfaithful to her. In Paris.
She sat down opposite me in an overcrowded restaurant that Leon Bähr had recommended to me. Fat and dark, she was wearing a shiny black silky blouse; there was something gypsy-like, something unbridled about her. It is difficult to avoid the eye of someone who is sitting opposite you at a table hardly fifty centimetres away.
I was eating entrecôte au poivre. She ordered the same. I took a coupe dame blanche. So did she. I was always one course ahead of her and watched how she ate, with tiny little bites, leaving nothing on her plate. I noticed how thin her fingers were only when she caught up with me at the coffee and cognac stage. She held her glass as if it were a baby's hand. She was slow and she was graceful. Unlike most fat people, she had not yet lost power over her body.
We touched glasses very lightly and said our names. Maarten, Sylvie. As if these were the names of the glasses. And that was true. Our names, our pasts, did not matter that evening. This ritual was repeated three more times. Soon we were the only ones left in the restaurant. In clumsy French I had explained to her why I was in Paris. She worked somewhere in an office, she told me. Allons, she motioned me, when she noticed the waiters and waitresses in their white aprons standing leaning against the bar watching us. Allons.
We went. She lived close by. She pressed the light button in the hall of the apartment building and suddenly walked quickly ahead of me on tapping heels. Vite, she said, it will go out after a minute. Apart from her name and her occupation, that was all she told me that night, in a curiously light, almost girlish voice. For the rest, she made soft, contented, grunting sounds, deep down in her throat.
It was an event that happened to me but which I also wanted. It was complete. Maybe because we had no past for each other nor wanted to acquire one. We moved in and over and out of each other. Pure lust, it was. Pure and anonymous. Finally she turned her enormous back with the imprints of my teeth in her left shoulder blade towards me and fell asleep. I got up, dressed, and vanished from her life. Outside, the dawn glimmered. Blackbirds sang. Only when the night porter at the Ambassador Hotel said my name did I remember who I was.
Had Karl heard what I said? He, too, was lying with his back to me. He said nothing in reply. I got up and left.
The next day he did not come to work. Nor the following days. Bahr drove to his house in person. The police did the rest.
We all attended his funeral. It was a beautiful cemetery, near Shipman's Wreck, a hilly area with tall oak trees. Bahr made a speech. He spoke of integrity, and that we would miss him. There was nothing in his words to suggest that Karl had cut his wrists in the bath and had drowned afterwards, as the autopsy showed.
No one mentioned him again. I often thought of that evening before his death. With a little less to drink we might have become friends then, I might have helped him overcome his shame, his shame at being alive while others were no longer. Maybe.
No, that story about pure lust must have eluded him. He was asleep. Thinking of that evening I still see his back moving in tranquil sleep.
'Come,' says Vera. 'Come and sit down, Maarten.'
Before her on the table lies an open photo
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