Seven Years

Antje didn’t get up until we had had breakfast. I made her some coffee. Sonia said she was going shopping in town. Antje asked Sonia to take her along, she had to check in on the gallery and run a couple of errands besides. I asked her if she wasn’t tired. No, she said roughly, and drank her coffee standing up.

Sophie wanted to watch a movie. Just this once, said Sonia, although it was really a very common occurrence. Sonia had distinct notions of how to raise a child, and even though she kept having to make compromises, she wasn’t prepared to abandon her ideal line. That way, Sophie’s upbringing presented itself as a sequence of exceptions. Sophie had learned how to live with that. Each of her appeals ended in “just this once.” And since Sonia and I were generally overworked and felt guilty for not spending enough time with Sophie, we rarely denied her. But only once you’ve fed Mathilda and changed her litter, said Sonia. Why is it always me who has to do that, groaned Sophie. You wanted a cat, said Sonia, now you have to look after her.

The two women set off. I put in a DVD for Sophie and went out to the garden. The fog had lifted a little and the sun was peeping through, but the air was still chilly. We had a few vegetable beds where we grew lettuces and vegetables in summer, but this year had been so rainy that we hardly harvested anything, and had neglected the garden out of annoyance. The tomato plants had rotted away, their fruits had gone black and fell off at the slightest touch and splattered on the ground. A few tiny cabbage heads lost themselves in the rampant grass, the cucumber that I’d once trained up a wooden stake had been attacked by mildew and was dried out. I ripped everything up and tossed it in the compost bin. I wanted to hoe the beds, but the ground was frozen. Instead I started to rake up the leaves that had dropped from our neighbor’s great sugar maple onto our tiny patch of lawn and onto the front yard. Once Sophie came out of the house and watched me, then she disappeared inside again. Shortly before noon, Antje and Sonia returned with bulging shopping bags. Half an hour later Sonia called me in to lunch.

After our meal we pulled on our coats and sat down outside to drink our coffee. Sonia talked to Antje about her time as in intern. Antje said Marseilles had changed, even since Sonia’s latest visit. The city was much cleaner than before, but it had gotten a bit boring too. Which is fine by me, she said, I’m not twenty anymore. Sonia said she had found it hard to settle in there, if Antje hadn’t introduced her to a few people, she would probably have spent the entire six months alone. You had so many visitors, said Antje. That’s not true, said Sonia, I did nothing but work all the time. Even so, it was perhaps the time of her life. Albert had trusted her, and she had learned an incredible amount. Do you remember the silly fellow who visited you?, asked Antje. The one who went on and on about udders? Jakob?, I asked. He didn’t visit me, Sonia said, he just turned up one day. Anyway, he came and stayed with us, said Antje. You thought he was so frightful, didn’t you?, I said. He just wrote to me a couple of times, said Sonia. He got the address from my parents. He called them and said he was an old friend, and they had no reason not to believe him.

Jakob had written Sonia long, wild letters that she didn’t answer. Then, in spring, shortly before she was due to return to Munich, he had gone to Marseilles and rung Antje’s doorbell.

And I let him in, said Antje. How was I to know that he and Sonia hardly knew each other? When she got back that evening, she was in for a shock. Why didn’t you just throw him out?, I asked. He was all right, said Antje. And he cooked for us too.

Jakob had come with veal sausages from his village butcher, and pretzels and beer, a whole little barrel from a local brewery. Sonia laughed, Antje had asked a few friends over, and they celebrated a proper bierfest, bang in the middle of Marseilles. We taught the French German songs, said Antje. “Annchen von Tharau.” Remember that? She started to hum the melody, and Sonia recited the words.

Würdest du gleich einmal von mir getrennt,

Lebtest, da wo man die Sonne kaum kennt;

Ich will dir folgen durch Wälder, durch Meer,

Eisen und Kerker und feindliches Heer.*

German chansons, said Antje laughing. After that we clearly couldn’t throw him out anymore.

Jakob stayed a whole week with the two women. He cooked for them every night and entertained them with his strange stories. How we used to laugh, said Antje. His village must be populated entirely by idiots. He wasn’t always like that, said Sonia. He seriously tried to convert me to Catholicism. We sat up whole nights arguing. You never told me about that, I said. You don’t tell me everything either, said Sonia. Antje shot me a dark look. No one spoke. Then Sonia told us about how one night Jakob declared his love for her. Seriously?, I said, and had to laugh. It wasn’t funny at all, said Sonia. He cried when I told him I was going to marry you. But he took it like an absolute gentleman. To this day, he sends me a card every birthday. And we exchange the occasional e-mail. Jakob was still living on his own, she said. He was a vet, and lived in his parents’ house in the Bayerischer Wald. When we were going through our rough patch, she had often called him on the phone, and he had been very helpful. He urged me to stay with you, she said. For Sophie’s sake. He respects the institution of marriage and family. I wanted to say something, but when I caught the look in Sonia’s eye, I just said, I’m going for a walk.

I walked through the village down to the lake. On the grounds of the Academy, I sat down on the shore. I sat in the shadow of a tree and looked out onto the water. A steamer went by, it had to be a charter tour, because the regular passenger steamers had stopped a month ago for the winter. There was no one to be seen on deck, but I could make out some shadowy shapes behind the tinted windows.

Sonia and I had chartered a boat when we got married. Her father paid for everything. There must have been eighty guests, loads of family on Sonia’s side, and friends and people who stood in some relation to her and her parents. I would have been quite happy if things had been more modest, but Sonia said her parents would be disappointed if we didn’t have a proper celebration. We almost argued when I said, whose wedding was this anyway? Sonia had spoken against me. A wedding was a social occasion, she said. And that’s what it was. If I hadn’t happened to be the groom, I’d have enjoyed it, I think. Everything was perfectly organized, the food was excellent, and the speeches were funny and suited the occasion. Only my father’s speech was a bit embarrassing. He wasn’t used to public speaking, and he was inhibited. In spite of that, he still seemed to feel it his duty to say something. He hadn’t prepared anything and lost his way. When I saw the smug, sympathetic looks on the faces of Sonia’s family, I hated her for a moment. Then my father managed to finish, and there was warm applause. Sonia hugged him, and her mother, evidently moved, went over and toasted with him. I had too much to drink that evening, and when Sonia and I were finally able to get away and disappeared into our hotel room, we were both so tired we collapsed into bed. Even so, I was unable to sleep for a long time. I could hear people talking and laughing outside long into the night, and felt slightly sorry for myself. I lay there in that grotesque four-poster bed with canopy and heart-shaped pillows, and could think of nothing but how much I was missing my friends.

A few bigger waves slapped against the shore, and then the lake was calm again. It was a strange notion, that Jakob had made a declaration of love to Sonia a matter of weeks before our wedding. I talked to her often on the phone that spring, to discuss the wedding and the honeymoon, but she never mentioned Jakob’s visit. I wondered if she had any feelings at all for him. I could remember her criticizing him after Rüdiger’s New Year’s party. That was the night I had proposed to her. Jakob had been unlucky and too late. Probably he loved her more than I had ever done. Maybe that’s why she chose me.


* If you were ever sundered from me / and lived somewhere that’s always winter / I will go through forests and seas for you / and brave prisons and chains and enemy armies.





We got back from Marseilles in a day as well. North of the Alps the weather was changeable. The sky was cloudy, and there were lots of showers.

Sonia dropped me off at the Olympic Village. She got out of the car with me, but when I tried to kiss her, it seemed to embarrass her. Shall we have a drink?, I asked her, but she said she was too tired, she was going straight home. When shall we see each other? I don’t know, said Sonia, I’ve got a lot going on in the next few days. In the end we made a date for Saturday.

Sonia had left me by the subway station. I got myself a cup of coffee from the stand there. The rain had stopped. The sound of the evening rush-hour traffic on the wet roads surrounded me like an invisible space. I walked to the tennis courts, where it was quieter. After the long drive, I felt like being outside, but I was tired, and all the benches were wet from the rain. My coffee had gotten cold, and I dumped the half-full cup in a bin. I was relieved to be on my own again. In my recollection, the past few days appeared more real than they had to me while I was living them. It was as though it was only just dawning on me now that Sonia and I were going out together. I felt like talking to someone, to convince myself, but I didn’t know who. In the end I went to the bungalow and called my parents. I told my mother about the trip, but not about Sonia. She was only half-listening, I could hear the TV on in the background.

When I called Sonia a couple of days later, to fix a time and place, she said she had arranged to go to the cinema with Birgit, one of her roommates. They were going to see Rain Man. I said I thought we had a date. Would it bother you if she came along?, said Sonia.

After the film, we had a glass of wine in a bar, and argued about Dustin Hoffman, whom I’d never liked, and who the girls thought was amazing. We didn’t agree about the film either. I said I couldn’t understand how Sonia could fall for such kitsch. She was hurt. She had treated me like a stranger the whole evening, and our difference of opinion didn’t help things. When I tried to kiss her, she turned her head away, and when I tried to take her hand she withdrew it. Fairly early on, she said she had to go to bed, she was tired. I walked the two of them home. I had hoped to spend the night at Sonia’s, but she said good night outside the door so emphatically, I didn’t want to say anything. I’ll give you a call, she said.

A couple of days later, she visited me. The weather had picked up, and we ate in the beer garden of the Olympic Village, and after that we walked in the park. For a long time we sat by the lake and discussed the competition entry Sonia was working on. She’d stopped asking me if I wanted to participate, and that was fine by me. The project didn’t interest me, Sonia’s ideas were all too practical for me; I didn’t listen to her, and watched the girls jogging by alone or in little groups, and thought about other stuff. When Sonia paused, I cut in to ask her if we were actually an item still or not. Of course we are, she said in astonishment. I said I thought she had treated me like a stranger on Saturday. She said she was tired. Anyway, her roommates didn’t know about us yet. Are you ashamed of me? Oh nonsense, said Sonia, and shook her head.

She went back to the bungalow with me that evening, and we slept together, but I had the sense she was doing me a favor. The bed over the steps wasn’t especially solid, and it creaked so loud that Sonia finally asked if I was sure it would hold up. Do you think your neighbors are in? Never mind them, I said. I’ve heard them at it often enough. But the thought that someone might be listening to us bothered Sonia so much that she stiffened and grabbed hold of me. Not so hard, she said, or we’ll crash. She kissed me mechanically a couple of times, then she said she’d better go home, she had something in the morning she didn’t want to be late for.

We were now seeing each other regularly. Sonia invited me back to her place, and told Birgit and Tania about us. She did it in such a weirdly formal way, it felt like I was being introduced to her parents. In spite of that, I didn’t really have the feeling Sonia was my girlfriend. I would occasionally spend the night with her, but when we made love, I could feel her anxiousness. The least noise made her flinch. You know this isn’t a crime, I said. You don’t understand, said Sonia.

My internship started in September and Sonia’s in October. After she had sent in her competition entry, we had a couple of days free and drove to Stuttgart, to look at Mies van der Rohe’s Weissenhof Estate. She had been there once before, with the class, but I’d been low on funds and hadn’t been able to go with them. Now Sonia showed me around like a tour guide. She talked about stereometric form and the absence of ornament as a sign of spiritual force. To my mind the buildings were superficial and uninteresting. In their naive functionalism they were somehow of no particular period. Living isn’t just eating, sleeping, and reading the paper, I said. A living room is first and foremost a place of refuge. It has to offer protection from the elements, the sun, hostile people, and wild animals. Sonia laughed and said, well, I might just as well go to the nearest cave in that case.

We spent the night in a pretty basic hotel. On the staircase there was a vending machine for drinks, and we took a couple of bottles of beer up to our room. The floor in the hallway was linoleum, but the room was carpeted, with thick curtains in the windows, reeking of cigarette smoke. We sat down side by side on the bed, drinking our beer. Suddenly Sonia started laughing. I asked her what the matter was. She said this place was so awful, you had to laugh or cry. And she preferred the former. That night we made love. Sonia was much less inhibited than in Munich, perhaps the ugliness of our surroundings had a liberating effect on her. When I stood by the window later, smoking, she came up to me and took the cigarette from my hand, and had a puff. You’re cute when you smoke, I said, clasping her waist. Kiss me. Once in a blue moon, she said, pressing herself against me.

Sonia insisted on paying for the room, her father had given her money when she graduated. But surely not to keep a fancy man on, I said. Do they even know about me? Sonia hesitated, and I noticed that the subject was difficult for her. I had told my parents about Sonia, albeit in a casual way, and they hadn’t asked me any further questions.

Then my internship began, and now it was me who never had any time. The firm was on the edge of the city, and I rarely got back from work before nine or ten. I was so exhausted then that I didn’t feel like going out afterward. Sonia called me every day, but it didn’t seem to bother her that we only saw each other on weekends.

At the end of the month I had to move out of my bungalow in the Olympic Village. Birgit and Tania were fine with me staying in Sonia’s room until further notice. Before I could offer Sonia my help, she had already carted her things back to her parents’ house and tidied the room. I didn’t have a lot of stuff. A tabletop on two sawhorses, a mattress, and a couple of cardboard boxes full of books and records. I bequeathed the rest of my stuff to the person moving in after me. Rüdiger and Sonia helped me move, then we went for a meal together, and then they took the train back to Lake Starnberg. I had asked her to stay with me, but she wanted to spend her last few days in Germany with her parents. On the eve of her departure we met up one more time. Sonia was nervous and eager to get home. We said good-bye without making any promises. Be good, was all Sonia said as she got into her car. You too, I replied, and waved to her till she turned the corner.

We were a good match, so everyone said, but we both knew that plenty could happen in six months. Sonia had said she didn’t want to commit herself in any way. She was right at the beginning of her career. Maybe she’d stay in Marseilles, or she’d accept an offer to go somewhere else. She would love to work in a big bureau in London or New York. We’ll see, I said. Maybe it’ll be good for us to be separated for a while, Sonia said, and if we’re still together come the spring, well then, so much the better.

Sonia wrote me every week, so regularly that it seemed to me to express a duty rather than a need. She wrote to say she was fine, and she asked when I could visit. I replied that I had a lot on my plate, and wouldn’t be able to get away from Munich very easily. Maybe over the holidays. But she’d be in Starnberg with her parents then, she wrote. I got the sense she didn’t really mind conducting a long-distance relationship. She could use it to keep other men away, and give herself wholly to her work. Her boss was a genius, she wrote. She always referred to him by his first name, as though they were old friends, and after a very short time, it was all “we” and “us.” We’re building a day care. We’re entering a competition to build a conference center. We think architecture should appeal to all the senses, it wants to be seen, touched, smelled, and felt. I resisted the temptation to tell her to cut the crap. Presumably I was just jealous. The office where I was an intern specialized in unimaginative office buildings. The company motto was the customer knows best, or maybe money doesn’t stink. In one of her letters, Sonia quoted Hermann Hesse. So that the possible can come into being, the impossible has to be attempted again and again. I pictured her walking along the beach with her Albert, the mistral playing in her hair, and her appealing to all the senses of her boss. She was gazing at him adoringly and he was quoting Hermann Hesse to her. Every beginning has its magic. I felt good in my jealousy, even though I was sure that Sonia was faithful to me, and that she took our relationship seriously, maybe more seriously than I did. When we talked on the phone, occasionally we made plans, we discussed founding a firm one day, after we’d accumulated some experience. But I wasn’t accumulating any experience, my work consisted principally of constructing models and filling in work schedules. For months I sat in a windowless office, sketching identical staircases. Even though I was kept busy, I was bored. Boredom had a seductive charm. Secretly I enjoyed having no responsibility and nothing to aim for. I didn’t go looking for a better job, ordered no competition guidelines, and read no architectural journals. Instead I immersed myself in books by dead authors. I read Poe and Joseph von Eichendorff, Mircea Eliade and Giambattista Vico, and it was as though their writings contained a truth that I could at least sense, though it could never be proved. By way of Aldo Rossi I came across Étienne-Louis Boullée, a pre-Revolutionary French architect who designed melancholy monumental structures not one of which had been built. I became fascinated by his way with light, which in his drawings wasn’t a given, but more like a substance. It looked as though the buildings were pushing back against a stream of light, against the stream of time.

I filled notebooks with confused thoughts and designs for enormous purposeless constructions, archives, cenotaphs, fortresses half sunk into the ground, almost windowless rooms that light barely penetrated.

When, quoting Aldo Rossi, I said in a letter to Sonia that every summer felt like my last, she shot back that to her, this summer had felt like her first. She had never cared for Rossi’s melancholy and fixation on the past. She believed the world could be transformed by architecture, and when I objected that all the great things had already been built, she mocked me and said I was just trying to excuse my lack of ambition.


Our shared apartment was on the second floor of a tenement building on a narrow street. As long as Sonia had lived there, I had always enjoyed visiting, but since she moved out, I felt rather ill at ease in the rooms. The arrangement of space was somehow inharmonious, and it didn’t get enough light. My room was long and narrow and disproportionally high. I had set up my table in front of the window, but even so, whenever I sat down to work, I felt simultaneously exposed and jammed in. The only heating in the apartment was an oil-burning stove in the living room, and when I closed my door for privacy, I noticed the room got cold very quickly. So when I was at home, I spent most of my time lying on my mattress, which was in one corner of the floor, and read or dozed.

My living with Birgit and Tania turned out to be problematic. Sonia had talked them into taking me in, but actually neither of them wanted to share with a man. In the case of Birgit, who was just gearing up for her thesis, I had often had the feeling before that she resented me, but when I raised it with Sonia, she only laughed and shook her head, and said Birgit had grown up with two sisters, she just wasn’t used to encountering a man outside the bathroom door every morning. Tania, my other roommate, worked as a medical assistant at the hospital in Bogenhausen. To begin with, we had gotten along rather well, but lately she’d gotten into discussions about drugs and upbringing and expressed arch-conservative views that I hadn’t expected in her. She was away for weeks on end at congresses or courses, and each time she returned, she had a new pet theme, feminism or antiauthoritarian rearing or homosexuality, which she would proceed to blame for the approaching end of the world. Shortly after Sonia left, Tania started talking obsessively about AIDS, and developed an absurd preoccupation with hygiene. She brought back bottles of disinfectant spray and left them out in the kitchen and bathroom, and each of us got his own individual shelf in the fridge, and there was no more sharing of food. Then Tania started bringing home people who were put up in the living room, and who tried to convert Birgit and me to their opinions. It turned out that they were all members of a dubious anthroposophical society. Birgit would often argue with them, while I retreated to my room or demonstratively switched on the TV and turned the volume so high that it wasn’t possible to conduct a conversation over it. The atmosphere in the apartment deteriorated. Even so, I was only halfhearted about looking for a new place to live.

Most of the people I knew from college had moved away. Ferdy had found a job in Berlin and Alice had gone with him, Rüdiger was touring Latin America and sending back postcards from Buenos Aires and Brasília. I envied him, not so much the trip itself as the energy to have undertaken it in the first place. I had the feeling of being the last person left in the city. That’s the only way I can explain the fact that at the end of October, I started seeing Ivona again.


It was very simple. I told them in the office that I had a dentist’s appointment, and went to the bookstore just before closing time. Ivona came out from the back of the store, just as on the occasion of my first visit. She stood silently behind the counter and straightened the saints’ pictures and the little books compiled from nature photos and quotations from Scripture. She wore beige knickerbockers and a sort of folksy embroidered blouse. I could feel her eyes on me, but when I looked over, she looked away. I felt an incredible desire to sleep with her, in the midst of this Christian kitsch and self-help and inspirational literature. Are you on your own?, I asked. She didn’t reply. I lifted the curtain and peered into the back room. In spite of the drawn curtains, the space was murky this time. The window opened onto a tiny yard that probably caught the sun only for an hour or two in the middle of the day. In the center of the room stood massive old oak desks, and on the walls were shelves containing cardboard boxes and stacks of plastic-sealed books. There was a smell of dust and paper, and more faintly of candle wax and human sweat. I sat down on one of the desks. Ivona followed me, and stopped in the entry. Come on, I said. She said she was closing in five minutes. The bell chimed in the shop, and Ivona disappeared. I heard her speaking, and couldn’t understand a word, it must have been Polish. I looked through a chink in the curtain and saw a pretty blond woman roughly Ivona’s age. The two of them clasped hands, and the blond woman was laughingly trying to persuade Ivona of something, who shook her head, and seemed to be explaining. I sat down on the desk again, and waited. Shortly afterward, the bell went again, and then I heard the key turn in the lock.

I had expected Ivona would complain to me about what had transpired at our last meeting, or that I hadn’t been in touch for such a long time, but she stopped an arm’s length in front of me, and stared into space. I stood up, took a step toward her, and embraced her. She didn’t resist, just freed herself quickly to switch off the light, and pull the curtain across.

I took off her pants and underwear, and kissed and stroked her. She moaned and turned her head from side to side. She almost looked to me as though she was faking, but I didn’t care. I got undressed, and we lay on the bare floor, and Ivona started kissing and stroking me back. Only when I tried to enter her did she refuse me. When I finally turned away from her, she whispered something in Polish. I didn’t ask what she was saying, I could imagine it well enough, and I didn’t want to hear it. Don’t go yet, she said. I’ve got lots of things to do, I said. Do you want something to eat?, she asked. I said I didn’t have the time, and got up. Will you come again? Yes, I said, and I went.

I went back to the office to finish a couple of things. My boss had already left. At eight I called Sonia. She wasn’t home. Two hours later, after I was finally finished with my work, I tried again. This time, Sonia picked up, and I asked her if she was so busy. But I wasn’t jealous, and I listened patiently as she told me about some new project she was working on. Then I talked to her about my work. Sonia said she hadn’t heard me in such a good mood for ages. And it was true, I was perfectly calm, and made jokes, and told her I missed her. I miss you too, said Sonia. We’ll see each other at Christmas. I was astonished not to feel guilty at all—on the contrary, I felt more connected to Sonia than I had in a long time.

When I turned up in the shop the next time, Ivona asked me to go back to the student residency with her. It was one of the few times she ever asked me for anything.


From then on, I only saw her in the dorm. Her room seemed like it might belong to an old woman or a little girl. It was stuffed full of junk, faked memories of a life that hadn’t happened. At the head of the bed was a small plastic crucifix, the walls were covered with postcards and framed Bible sayings. On the bed were any number of soft toys in garish colors, the kind you can buy at railway station kiosks. On the floor were piles of romance novels, Christian manuals, and Polish magazines. In amongst them were scattered clothes and tights, clipped recipes, and cheap costume jewelry. The pokiness, the untidiness, and the absence of any aesthetic value only seemed to intensify my desire. There was nothing there to inhibit me, by reminding me of my life and my world. It was as though I became someone else in that room, an object in Ivona’s chaotic collection of treasured and neglected knickknacks.

I turned up whenever it suited me and whenever I could. Ivona was there every evening, she didn’t seem to have anything to do but wait or hope for me to come. Usually the TV was going, and when she made to turn it off, I said no, and we undressed and kissed and embraced to the soundtrack of some schlocky film or other. Usually I was gone before the film was even over. I never spent the night there, for fear Tania or Birgit might tell Sonia about it. Anyway, I couldn’t imagine waking up beside Ivona, I could only stand her company when I was aroused.

My third or fourth meeting with Ivona was the day after the Wall came down. I had sat up half the night in front of the television and was tired when I went to her place the next evening. I asked her what she thought about it all. She shrugged her shoulders. I said I wasn’t sure I agreed with reunification, and totted up the pluses and minuses as though the future of Germany were somehow mine to give. Ivona listened to me hold forth with an apathetic expression, as though it was all no concern of hers. She seemed to live in her own little world, not registering what was going on around her.

I noticed that Ivona took steps to make herself prettier. She started to apply makeup and did her hair, and took trouble with her clothes. When I said I didn’t like her dolling herself up, she stopped. She seemed to take it as proof of love that I noticed her appearance and bothered to comment on it. Sometimes she showed me two outfits and asked me, which do you like best? I pointed to one of them, even though I was completely indifferent, and then she disappeared behind the closet door to put it on, and I followed her to watch and pulled her back to bed, still in her underwear. When she went to the toilet too, I sometimes followed her, her sense of shame provoked me until she had completely lost it and accepted everything I did, and did everything I demanded of her. With one sole exception.

When I stayed longer, Ivona would start to talk. She had an inexhaustible supply of abstruse stories, featuring the Black Virgin of Czestochowa or some other sacred figure performing miracles in the lives of ordinary people. It would start with a lost bunch of keys, and end up with a miracle cure or a surprise late pregnancy. She talked hastily and not looking at me, it was as though she was talking to herself, an endless litany. At those moments, I got a glimpse of what a terribly lonely person she was. Sometimes she would talk about her Pope, whom she revered, and who was something approaching a saint in her eyes. When I criticized him, she wouldn’t say anything, and when I’d said my piece, she would resume where she’d left off. My words seemed not to have reached her.

Our encounters always followed the same pattern, rarely lasting for longer than an hour and sometimes a lot less. Ivona wasn’t a sophisticated lover, she had no experience and no imagination. When she touched me she was either too hesitant or too rough, when I touched her she barely reacted, or faked a reaction. The thing that kept me fascinated with her was her utter devotion. Her unconditional love for me, however purely random, drew me irresistibly to her and, by the same token, repulsed me the instant I was satisfied. Then I would feel the need to hurt her, as though that was my only way of breaking free.

Do you think your Holy Father would approve of what you’re doing?, I asked her one time, do you not think it’s a sin even if we don’t technically make love? I accused her of bigotry. She didn’t understand the word, I had to explain it to her.

I don’t know how I can excuse my behavior, I can’t remember how I justified it to myself at the time. All I know is that I got to be more and more dependent on Ivona, and that while I continued to think I had power over her, her power over me became ever greater. She never demanded anything from me, was never hurt when I stayed away for days on end because I was busy in the office or didn’t feel like visiting her. Sometimes I’d tell Ivona about other women to get her upset, but she took it, and listened, expressionless, while I raved about the beauty, the wit, and the intelligence of other women. Perhaps she didn’t know she had power over me. Perhaps she mistook my submissiveness for love.


The situation in the apartment had deteriorated to the point where we only communicated by means of little notes that we stuck on the fridge door. Tania had come up with a roster of household duties, which Birgit and I strenuously ignored. The whole apartment reeked of disinfectant, and it was often cold, because Tania would turn down the heat to keep the germs from multiplying so quickly, as she explained. Her visitors stayed longer and longer, and began to take a hand in our business. When I returned from a weekend with my parents once, my bed had been stripped. I brought it up with Tania, and she said a friend of hers had spent the night in my room, surely I had no objection? I stood by silently while she sprayed my bed with disinfectant and put on new sheets. From that day on, I locked my door when I went out, and belatedly became serious about looking for somewhere else to live.

Finding a new place wasn’t easy. I was on three thousand marks a month, which wasn’t bad for an intern, but that sort of money didn’t buy you much. I looked at all sorts of apartments without being able to decide. Over time, I started to take pleasure in inspecting places that were obviously hopeless. When I told the landlords that I was an architect, they treated me with respect and left me all sorts of time. A few of the apartments were still occupied, and it was fascinating to see the different ways people arranged themselves, and how much you could infer about their lives from a few objects. It was always embarrassing being taken around by tenants, peering into closets that were stuffed with junk and inspecting kitchens full of dirty, food-encrusted plates and withered herbs on the windowsill. One tenant had locked himself in the bathroom. The super took me around and knocked on the bathroom door, but the tenant didn’t make any noise. He’s been given his notice, said the super, and I can promise you he’ll be out by the end of the year, even if it means calling the cops.

In the end I found a small three-room apartment on the top floor of an old building in Schwabing. I’d fallen in love with it on the spot. It was unrehabbed, and just had an old oil-fired stove, but the layout was good, and the rooms were light and had the sort of attention to detail that you don’t often find in newly built homes. I told Birgit about it that same evening. She wasn’t too thrilled about the prospect of having to deal with Tania and her loopy friends on her own. She said if she could afford it, she would move out tomorrow.

The holidays came nearer. Lots of my friends were going to spend Christmas with their families, and had announced their visits. Ferdy and Alice were coming, Rüdiger wrote from São Paulo, the last stop on his South American tour, even Jakob the vet called. He had accepted a job as an assistant in Stuttgart, and said he would be in Munich briefly on his way to the Bayerischer Wald, and did I feel like going out for a beer with him. Sonia would be the last to return, she still had lots of work to finish, and booked her flight for the morning of the twenty-fourth.

I made a date with Jakob. Before I saw him, I went to Ivona’s. As we sat on the bed and got dressed, on some whim I asked her if she felt like going out and having a beer with me. I don’t know what got into me. It was risky, I had to consider the possibility of Jakob running into Sonia on one of the days after Christmas. Perhaps it was a similar impulse to the one that prompts people to show off their scars, some absurd pride in damage.

Not since that first evening had I gone anywhere in public with Ivona. The notion of being seen together by one of my acquaintances was at once terrifying and beguiling. Whether I walked fast or slow, Ivona always trailed a couple of paces behind me. On the bus, she didn’t sit down, but stood in front of me at my seat. When we reached our stop, I got out without a word and just glanced back quickly to see if she was following me.

I had arranged to meet Jakob in a bar we would never have gone to as students, one of those soulless beer halls in the inner city, beloved of tourists. Ivona sat on the bench along the wall, and after a short hesitation I sat down next to her. Jakob was a quarter of an hour late. We shook hands and I introduced the two of them. Ivona’s from Poland, I said. I looked Jakob in the eye but saw no reaction. He just smiled, and shook hands with Ivona. Then he started talking about his dissertation, which was something about morbid changes to cow udders. It was bizarre watching this peasanty guy drinking beer and simultaneously holding forth about some complex diagnostic procedures that I was a long way from understanding. He asked me about my work. I kept my answers short. Then he asked Ivona what it was she did, and she said she worked in a bookstore. He asked where in Poland she came from, and why she had come to Germany, and whether she intended to go home ever, now that the East was opening up. Ivona said she didn’t know. I was waiting the whole time for Jakob to make some remark, or give me some look, but he talked to Ivona as though it was the most natural thing in the world. He even tried out a couple of Polish phrases he had picked up on his parents’ farm from migrant agricultural workers: left and right, and watch out, and postage stamp.

What was strange was that I felt a kind of jealousy when I heard the two of them talking together so easily. It wasn’t that I was scared of Jakob taking Ivona away from me, but I sensed a sort of harmonious understanding between them that I couldn’t account for. Jakob wasn’t even especially attentive toward Ivona, he just treated her normally. She seemed to blossom in his company, whereas she was clumsy and inhibited when she was with me. I started to stroke the inside of her thigh under the table. She moved slightly away from me, but I didn’t stop, and did little to hide what I was doing from Jakob. It was childish, but I couldn’t stop till Jakob finally got up and smilingly said he didn’t want to impose on us anymore.

When we said good-bye outside, he asked if I had any news of Sonia, the blonde who had studied with me. Immediately I understood that she was the reason why he wanted to see me. She’s in Marseilles, I said. Are you in touch with her still? Sure, I said, and nodded. I looked at Ivona as I said it, but she had turned aside and was facing the other way. Maybe he’d be back after Christmas, he said, when he was with his parents he got a little stir-crazy at times. How about the four of us doing something together? I said he had my number, he could give me a call when he was next in the city.


A few days later I met Ferdy and Alice for lunch. Alice was pregnant, and they were getting married in the spring. Ferdy said he wanted to start his own architectural firm, he was going to try his luck in the East, there would be a lot of work there, it promised to be a sort of El Dorado for architects. He had made a couple of important acquaintances. Alice fussed when he lit a cigarette, and he meekly put it out. He had gotten fatter, and when he ordered pig’s trotters, she said he shouldn’t eat such heavy things, and pinched him in the gut. She kept on at him the whole time. It didn’t seem to bother him at all, on the contrary, he seemed extraordinarily pleased with himself, as if all this was exactly what he’d always wanted. Alice asked me if I was going to Rüdiger’s New Year’s party. Rüdiger had asked Sonia and me, but I didn’t want to accept until I talked with her. I said yes, we would probably go.

When Alice went off to powder her nose, Ferdy asked after Ivona. He had talked to Jakob on the phone, who had told him about seeing me and her together. He grinned unpleasantly. He’d never thought I was the type. But why in God’s name didn’t I get myself a better-looking lover while I was at it? Who says she’s my lover? Ferdy laughed. He couldn’t imagine what else Ivona could be good for. And frankly, he didn’t think she’d be particularly good for that either. But maybe she had hidden talents? Alice came back from the ladies’ room and said she was feeling sick and wanted to leave, and the two of them headed out.

That evening I went to Ivona’s. I told her to take her clothes off, and I sat and watched her. When she was completely naked, she lay down on the bed, like a patient on a doctor’s table. I stood by the bedside and looked down at her, and asked her when she was going back to Poland. She tried to cover herself up, but I pulled the blanket away. She wasn’t going back, she said, and she looked at me as though she expected me to be overjoyed about it. I can’t see you anymore, I said, I’ve got a girlfriend. Since when? I told her I’d been with Sonia since the summer. Before me? Shortly after actually, I said. That seemed to please her, for the first time I caught a sort of flash in her eyes that seemed to say, I was first, I’m in the right. But she didn’t say anything. We don’t belong together, I said, reasoning with her, surely you must see that. You have different interests, you come from a different country, another world, really. That might not seem to matter to you, but in the long run those are the things that matter in a relationship. You wouldn’t get along with my friends. What would you talk to them about? Do you understand? Ivona was stubbornly silent the whole time. When I was done, she said in a quiet, firm voice: I love you. Well, I don’t love you, I said.


Before I left, Ivona had pushed a parcel into my hands, wrapped in gift paper. I didn’t unpack it until I got home. It was a knitted sweater with a hideous geometrical pattern.

A few days later my new landlord called me. He had had the walls painted, he said, and I could move in any time. Ferdy helped me with my things, and went to IKEA with me, where I picked up a bed, a bookshelf, a rag rug, and a so-called starter set for the kitchen. We spent the evening assembling the furniture.

Ferdy told me about Alice. He seemed to be very enthusiastic about life as a couple. The hunt is over. I laughed. You of all people. Student life had never been his thing, he said, even if he had enjoyed it. He always longed to settle down somewhere, earn money, get some stability. It didn’t mean stumbling blindly through life.

Isn’t this fun, he said, holding up two pieces of wood that seemed to fit together. Yes, as long as you’ve got a screw, but there’s always a screw missing in these things. Ferdy said that was a matter of attitude, and he kept on working. When the bed was finally done, he said, you see, there’s no screw missing at all.

Furnishing the apartment was enjoyable, and gave me something to do to distract me from my introspection. I found an old cherrywood table in a junk shop, and four chairs with straw seats and backrests. I hung up some lamps, put a few posters on the walls, and moved my books onto the shelves. The day before Sonia’s arrival, the place looked really cozy. There were flowers on the table and the fridge was stocked. I’d even screwed in a nameplate.

Up until now I’d always taken care to own as little stuff as possible, so as to be mobile and unencumbered, but the more I bought, the more pleasure I took in my possessions. I walked through my apartment and ran my hands over the new things, picked up all the unused items and turned them over in my hands as if they promised me a different life. I switched the lamps on and off, pulled books down from the shelf, and put an LP on. In the bedroom was the sweater that Ivona had given me. I tried it on. The fit was perfect, but the pattern hurt to look at. I wondered whether I should throw it away on the spot, but I couldn’t decide, and draped it over a chair in the living room.

The next morning I went to the airport to pick up Sonia. It was almost three months since the last time we’d seen each other. I was there before the plane landed, and had to wait a long time before Sonia finally came through customs. Even though I kept a picture of her on my desk, I was still astonished to see her, as I always was every time I saw her. She had gotten her hair cut really short, and was wearing a blue-and-white-striped sailor’s jersey. She was tanned, and with her supple upright posture, she stood out a mile from the ruck of other passengers. When she caught sight of me, she beamed. She put down her bags and ran up to me, then stopped not quite sure what to do, till I took her in my arms and kissed her.

On the way into the city Sonia didn’t talk about anything except her work. She said she had done some sketches on the flight, and showed me her notebook. She had learned a lot in those three months, that was obvious from the confidence of the drawing, her resolute and unwavering line. Altogether Sonia struck me as having grown up. She spoke more quickly and she laughed a lot, and when the taxi stopped, she paid the driver before I even had time to get my wallet out.

She seemed to approve of the apartment. She rapped on the walls and opened the windows and flushed the toilet. Well?, I said. I’ll take it, she said. We stood next to each other in the bathroom and looked at ourselves in the mirror. Two beautiful people in a beautiful apartment, said Sonia, and laughed. I turned and kissed her, and thought of the beautiful couple in the mirror kissing as well, and that excited me more than the actual kiss itself. I reached into Sonia’s short hair with my hand and rubbed her shaved neck. You look like a boy. She laughed and asked if I’d gone off her? I stepped behind her and placed my hands over her breasts, and said, luckily there were still a few points of difference. When I tried to pull the sweater over her head, she turned to face me and kissed me again and said, not now. I had the feeling she was blushing under her tan. Come on, she said, let’s not be late, my parents are waiting.


While we’d been students, I’d been out to Sonia’s a couple of times, but either her parents weren’t home at the time or else they just gave us a cursory greeting. Presumably they had no recollection of me at all. I hadn’t seen them since I’d started going out with Sonia, and was accordingly nervous. Sonia’s mother met us at the door; she kissed Sonia on both cheeks and gave me her hand and called me by my surname. He goes by Alexander, said Sonia. Alex, I said. But she disappeared into the kitchen even as we were still taking off our coats. In the living room Sonia’s father was decorating an enormous Christmas tree. Ah, there you are already, he said, shaking hands with both of us. Can I get you both a drink? He was perfectly at ease, but even so I felt a little tense. Sonia said she would take me on a tour of the house.

The house had been built in the seventies. It had rough whitewashed walls, high ceilings angled in the upstairs part, and wood paneling. The staircase was open to the living room, a very large space with ceramic floor tiles and a fireplace. Sonia showed me her old room and her sister Carla’s room, who was away in America studying, and who for the first time wouldn’t be home for Christmas. You’ll be sleeping here, Sonia said, pointing to Carla’s narrow bed. I looked at her in speechless astonishment. She lowered her eyes without saying anything and led me back downstairs.

Her parents were standing at the foot of the steps, looking expectantly up at us. Under the Christmas tree there were now a couple of presents. Sonia’s father gave us all a glass of champagne, and we toasted each other. Conversation was sticky. We talked about Antje, and I wondered what use these people could possibly have for Antje’s paintings. Only when Carla called long distance did the atmosphere relax a little. The three of them clustered around the phone, and each of them had a brief conversation with her. The weather in California was fine, it felt weird to be celebrating Christmas under palm trees, the Americans were incredibly hospitable. After everyone had said their Merry Christmases and the call was over, we talked about America and the Americans. I was the only one not to have been to the United States, but that didn’t keep me from joining in the conversation, only to have my contributions corrected by the others. I had a completely wrong sense of the States, said Sonia’s father. I contradicted him, and presumably we would have had an argument if Sonia’s mother hadn’t changed the subject.

The evening was full of traditions, which I failed to understand. Sonia’s parents weren’t religious, but the course of the evening followed a rigid plan. The candles were lit on the tree, and Sonia’s mother put on a record with kitschy American Christmas songs, and turned off the main light. For a while we sat on the lounge suite, gazing at the tree. Then the lights came on again, and the presents were unwrapped. Sonia carried on like a little girl, which bugged me. Her parents had bought me a horrible espresso machine from Alessi. For the new apartment, said Sonia’s mother—the design is by Aldo Rossi. Sonia told us you’re a great admirer of his work. Sonia handed me a very light box. This is from me, she said, and she watched me unwrap it. It was a cardboard model of a single-family house, very carefully done. In front of the house stood two little human figures, a man and a woman. Someday, said Sonia. I wanted to kiss her on the mouth, but she turned her head away, and I kissed her on the cheek. Here are the plans. She passed me a black-bound book of sketches and rough designs for the house. You’ll have to do a lot of work to afford something like that, said Sonia’s father.

Soon after dinner was over, Sonia said she was tired and was going to bed. When I stood up too, she said I could stay if I liked. It probably took two hours before I finally broke free of Sonia’s father. He had an unpleasantly instructional way about him, and imparted his completely unoriginal views as if they were pieces of extraordinary wisdom. Even when we talked about architecture, he didn’t hesitate to correct me. In the middle of one of his lectures, I got up and said I was going to bed. I walked up the stairs. I hesitated outside the bedroom doors. Sonia’s father had followed me up the stairs and motioned to Carla’s door with a frosty smile.

On the morning of Christmas Day we drove out to my parents’ in Garching. There was another round of gift giving and another big meal. I hadn’t seen my parents in a long time and expected they would ask me lots of questions, but they just talked about the neighbors, and the recent autumn holidays, and the garden, it was the same topics of conversation as for twenty years.

We got back late to my apartment and went straight to bed. When I kissed Sonia, she said she needed to get used to me first. There’s no hurry, I said, and turned over.


For the next few days it was very cold, but the sun shone. We wrapped up warm and strolled through the city, and met people and sat in cafés. Sonia had let all her friends know she was back for the holidays, and I had to listen to the same stories half a dozen times, and drank innumerable lattes.

We met Birgit, and she told us Tania had completely lost it. Her sanitary neurosis had gotten out of control, she wore silicone gloves in the kitchen, and wouldn’t touch a doorknob that she hadn’t previously wiped clean. She was forever talking about Christian-humanist values, and bombarded the newspapers with letters urging a tougher stance on drugs and some anti-AIDS claptrap. We wouldn’t happen to have a spare room, would we? Sonia looked at me inquiringly. No, I said, sorry. On the way home, she asked me why I’d said no. She doesn’t like me. You’re imagining that. Anyway, I don’t feel like having roommates anymore. What do you want?, asked Sonia. Perhaps she was expecting me to ask her to move in with me when she returned from Marseilles. But I missed my opportunity, if it was one.

When we were at home, Sonia worked and I read and enjoyed the feeling of being together. Sometimes I looked in on her and remained standing in the doorway of the office, and when she asked me what the matter was, I said, nothing, I’d just wanted to see if she was still there. She smiled in bewilderment. Of course I’m still here. That’s good, I said, and I went back to the living room and whatever I was reading.

At dinner I kept complaining about my job. Why don’t you find another one?, said Sonia. It would do you good to go abroad for a change. I said I didn’t fancy it, I didn’t think it was my thing. She furrowed her brow and said she didn’t know if she was coming back to Munich or not. Everything was so complicated, and the old buildings everywhere depressed her. Why don’t we go somewhere where they’re still building properly? Eastern Europe or America. I said my English wasn’t up to it. You can learn that. If you learned French, we could move to Marseilles together. They’re doing so much building, the city is really going places. I don’t know, I said, and I shrugged my shoulders. Sonia didn’t say anything, but for the first time since we’d been together, I had the feeling I might lose her, which made me feel relieved and afraid at the same time.

Sonia had no inhibitions wandering around the flat, but she got terribly bashful when it was bedtime. She never undressed in front of me, and when I crept into bed beside her, naked, she turned away, and talked about something or other, until I lost the desire to sleep with her. When I asked her what the matter was, she said again that she had to get used to me. Nonsense, I said. You seem to be so far away, she said. I asked what she meant by that, but she just said, hold me.


On New Year’s Eve we traveled out to Possenhofen, for Rüdiger’s party. When we walked from the station to his parents’ house, Sonia said she’d like to live here one day, not now, but later, when she had children and her own firm. It’s just a matter of finding some property on the lakefront then, I said, you’ve already designed the house. Sonia ignored me. And she wanted an apartment in Marseilles as well, she said. Then she would spend half the year here and the other half there. Nice plan, I said. So that the possible can come into being, the impossible has to be attempted again and again, Sonia said. It took me a moment to remember where I’d heard that before. I said that was an idiotic saying. But I have to admit, I liked the idea of living here with Sonia. I could see myself standing at a big picture window with a glass of wine in my hand, gazing down at the lake. Sonia was standing next to me in a casual pose, and we were talking about a project we were working on together. We could have a motorboat, I said. A yacht on the Med, said Sonia.

Rüdiger’s mother opened the door and welcomed us warmly. She took us into the living room and vanished again. By the window Rüdiger and Jakob were talking together softly. It was exactly the same situation in which I’d just pictured myself with Sonia. Rüdiger turned and came toward us to say hello.

In the middle of the room was a big laid table, decorated with paper snakes. I read the names on the cards. Most of them were familiar enough. I’m splitting you up, said Rüdiger, you don’t mind, do you? Sonia and Jakob were over by the window. I went over and threw my arm around Sonia. Jakob didn’t bat an eyelid. He was telling Sonia about his dissertation in exactly the same words he’d used with me two weeks before. He asked her if she knew the Bayerischer Wald. When she shook her head, he said he would take her there one day and show her the area. The doorbell rang and Ferdy and Alice walked in, and from upstairs came a young woman I didn’t know.

It was almost the same group as at the summer party, but the feeling was far starchier than it had been then. Everyone had put on good clothes and brought presents. We stood around in small groups, sipping champagne and talking terribly seriously about work and our future plans. It seemed a little bit as though we were pretending to be grown-ups.

I talked to the woman who had come down the stairs. She was one of the very few people who weren’t half of a couple. She said she was from Switzerland. I’d never have guessed, I said. From the Rhine Valley, she said, laughing, did I know where that was?

She was staying with Ferdy for the moment, she was going to apply to the Academy of Arts. She was an artist. The young woman was like a simple peasant girl, she had red cheeks and she wore a handmade sweater and wide pants with some African pattern. I asked her what sort of things she did. She shrugged her shoulders. All kinds of things, for the moment she was thinking about bread. What do you mean, thinking about bread? You know, bread, she said. What bread means. Bread, I said. Yes, she said, bread. Her father was a baker, her name was Elsbeth.


He’s so awful, said Sonia in the taxi, the way he kept going on and on to me. What did he talk about?, I asked. Cow udders and folkloric costume had been Jakob’s subjects of choice. He had said in all seriousness that a dirndl was the ideal outfit for the female body. And stared at her the whole night as though he had X-ray vision. It wouldn’t be a bad life, you know, I said, married to a vet in the Bayerischer Wald. Sonia made a face. You would give him eight children, and you would hold on to the cows while he injected the semen into them, and look after his ancient parents. The arrogance of it, she said, with proper indignation. He’s obviously crazy about you, I said, it’s not his fault. It’s not mine either, she said. I always get these madmen coming on to me. If only it was someone with money for a change, or good-looking. You’ve got me, haven’t you?, I said. She was silent for a moment, and I could tell she was thinking about a question in her head. Then she took a deep breath, made a skeptical face, and asked: Are you still seeing that Polish girl? From time to time, I said. Did she knit you that vile sweater that’s in the apartment? I nodded. You’d tell me if it was anything, wouldn’t you? I didn’t answer right away, and then I slowly said, it was something. What do you mean? It started before we got together, I said. What started?, asked Sonia. What are you talking about?

The taxi driver didn’t seem to be interested in our conversation, he had his radio on and was listening to electro music. Even so, I spoke very softly. I could easily have talked my way out of it, after all, I’d never slept with Ivona. But I didn’t. I said I’d had an affair, I didn’t quite understand it myself. It’s finished now, I said, I ended it. Perhaps I really believed that just then, I wanted to believe it. The thing with Ivona had been really stupid, I had risked my relationship with Sonia for nothing at all. Sonia still didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about. She looked at me like a stranger. I hadn’t seen her cry before, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Her face seemed to melt away, her mouth was contorted, her whole posture dissolved. I tried to take her in my arms, but she slid away from me and looked out the window. She said something I didn’t understand. What did you say?, I asked. Why? I don’t know why. She’s not good-looking, she’s boring and uneducated. I have no idea.

That night we made love for the first time since Sonia’s return. She had gone into the bedroom without first going to the bathroom. I went after her, and watched her get undressed with awkward movements. There was something broken about her, only now did it occur to me that she might have had too much to drink. She sat down on the side of the bed, her shoulders hanging down. Her hair was tousled, and when she turned toward me, I could see her eyes were shining. In bed she pressed her back against me, and I noticed that she even smelled differently than usual, perhaps because, unlike the other nights, she hadn’t showered. Her body felt softer, more relaxed, and very warm, almost fevered. After a while, she turned toward me and held me tightly and started kissing me, very quickly and frenziedly, all over my face.

Late that night, we were lying exhaustedly side by side, not touching. I asked Sonia to marry me. Yes, she said, tenderly, and without any great surprise or excitement. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.