Seven Years

If we hadn’t slept together that night, I probably wouldn’t have asked Sonia to marry me, and she would have left just as uncertain and undecided as she’d been when she arrived. Perhaps then she would have stayed in Marseilles, or gone to England or America. I sometimes wondered afterward what would have happened to us if we hadn’t gotten married, but Sonia never seemed to quarrel with destiny, not even at the worst of times, when everything seemed about to go up in smoke. She had made her decision that night, or maybe even earlier, and she stuck to it and accepted the consequences.

I got up and walked along the lakefront. I asked myself if Antje was right when she said passion was an inferior form of love. It wasn’t for nothing that it didn’t last. What connected me and Sonia was more than a brief intoxication. We had after all stayed together for eighteen years. Maybe our relationship worked precisely because we’d never gotten really close. Even so, I wasn’t sure if I wouldn’t one day find myself in a situation where I’d be willing once more to risk everything for nothing.

I went home. Sonia and Antje were still sitting on the terrace, talking. Sonia said they were going to go to the movies, they wanted to see The Lives of Others. We’ve seen that already. Yes, but Antje hasn’t, said Sonia. You’ll have to stay here anyway and watch Sophie. I didn’t understand what Sonia thought was so great about the film. When we went to see it, she cried. The last time she’d done that was for Schindler’s List, and I couldn’t understand that either.

I sat down at the table with the two women, even though I could sense I was intruding. Are you still talking about old times? It’s an inexhaustible subject, said Antje. Sonia was just telling me how her family reacted when she brought you back to meet them for the very first time. That was on Christmas Eve of ’89, I said. I remember because we argued about the fall of the Berlin Wall. I expect you were against it, said Antje. I wasn’t against it, I said, what I was against was prompt reunification. I think most of us at the time hoped that something of the GDR would be preserved, and that the West would be changed in some respect as well. Then Sonia’s father trotted out his war experiences. That wasn’t it at all, said Sonia, he was just a kid in the war. And then her parents asked me all kinds of questions about my family, I said. I was surprised they didn’t ask how much my old man made. Rüdiger would have suited them better. Antje laughed. That’s what Sonia just said too. They thought you were a bit rude, said Sonia, and my father had the feeling you were a socialist. He still does, I said. In Bavaria, it doesn’t take much to be thought of as a socialist. I think I just wasn’t good enough for them, they would rather their daughter married someone from their own circle.

Alex had to sleep in my sister’s room, Sonia laughed. And you slipped in to be with him?, Antje asked. Did I?, asked Sonia. No, I said. To this day you behave like a little girl when you’re with your parents. Sonia protested. Probably she was just too tired. Antje said she could remember Sonia arriving back in Marseilles after Christmas, and telling her she was going to get married. I looked at Sonia. She creased her brow thoughtfully. It’s a long time ago, she said, and stood up with a sigh. I’m getting chilly out here.

Sonia and Antje left at six, they wanted to get something to eat before the film. I stuck a frozen pizza in the oven for Sophie. When we began to eat, Mathilda meowed plaintively next to my chair. She hopped onto my lap. I grabbed hold of her and dropped her on the floor again. Didn’t you feed her?, I asked. Sophie made no reply. Did you hear me? Sophie looked at me furiously, and said Mathilda isn’t getting anything to eat today, she pooped on my bed, and that’s her punishment. I tried to explain to Sophie that you couldn’t treat a cat like a human being, but she acted deaf. I lost my temper, and said if she didn’t give Mathilda something to eat right away, she wouldn’t get anything either. I took her plate away from her, and she got up seething with rage and ran upstairs. I ate, still furious at Sophie’s behavior. Then I gave the cat some food and went up to see Sophie, but she didn’t respond to my knock, and I didn’t feel like giving in. When I looked in on her an hour later, she was lying on her bed, fully dressed and asleep.

I went up to the attic to look for the model that Sonia had given me back then, the house she had created for the two of us. I was pretty sure it was in one of the boxes of my student stuff, but it took me a long time to find it. It was in a shoebox, along with the plans for it. It was much smaller than I’d remembered it. The cardboard was yellowed, and the glue had come off in one or two places, the two figures that represented Sonia and me had fallen off. I found them at the bottom of the box. They were plastic figurines of the sort you can get in any model shop. I looked at the plans and sketches. Le Corbusier’s influence could clearly be seen. The house occupied a relatively small area, but it was three stories and had a roof terrace. The rooms were generously cut. Light came in through a wall of windows, and through skylights on the top floor. I imagined what it would be like to live in that house, asked myself how it would have changed our lives. The house we were in now was much cozier, but there was something small-scale about it, with its narrow staircase and saddle roof. It was conventional in every way, and emanated a modesty and unobtrusiveness that might have suited me but that certainly didn’t express Sonia’s nature. It’s absurd, she said to me once, we think about beautiful buildings all day long, but we’ll never be able to afford one for ourselves. And the people we build for have no appreciation of quality. I took the model downstairs to the living room and put it on the sideboard.

Sonia and Antje weren’t back until almost midnight. Antje wasn’t wild about the film, but Sonia had cried again. I made myself some tea, the two women drank wine. Presumably they had had something to drink in the city, at any rate they both talked fast and volubly, and I could hardly get a word in edgewise. They talked about the film, but I got the impression the real subject was something else. Antje was aggressive, while Sonia defended herself to the best of her ability. She seemed unhappy, something was bothering her. After a while she got up and said she was going to bed. On the way to the door she noticed the model. She picked it up and turned to face us, as if to speak. For a moment she stood there with half-open mouth, and then she clumsily set the model down and quickly left the room.

Antje had settled herself comfortably on the couch. She leaned back and looked at me expressionlessly. Why should I give a damn?, she finally said. I asked her what she was talking about, and she gestured dismissively. If I hadn’t brought you together, you would have found some other way. What you made of it is your affair. You’re free individuals.

I wondered what Sonia had told her, what they had discussed. Strange as it may seem, I said, the only one of us not to have compromised at all is Ivona. She’s the only one who knew what she wanted from the get-go, and who followed her path to the end. Didn’t exactly make her happy, did it?, said Antje. Who can tell?, I said. You didn’t get to the end of the story, she said. I don’t know if I can tell you the end of the story, I said, but I can at least tell you how it goes on. Antje poured herself some more wine and looked expectantly at me.

I told her how I had started seeing Ivona again during Sonia’s internship. I know about that, Antje said, Sonia told me. I was lonely, I said, all my friends had left the city, the office I was working in was staffed by idiots, and I was living with these two crazy women. I think the worst thing for Sonia was that it had to be the Polish girl, Antje said, she didn’t understand that. She still doesn’t understand it. She loved me, I said, she loves me to this day. It was as though that absolved me of all questions. You told me in Marseilles that I mustn’t demand too much from Sonia. I could ask for everything from Ivona. The more I asked of her, the more she loved me. Then why did you ask Sonia to marry you?, asked Antje. I don’t know, I said, maybe I couldn’t stand the responsibility. Antje groaned aloud. After I split up with Ivona, I didn’t hear from her for years, I said, and I couldn’t say I missed her. They were difficult years. We opened our firm and took every job we were offered, renovations, little things that brought in neither money nor fame. At the same time we entered loads of competitions, were up against two hundred other firms. We worked for eighty hours a week, basically we did nothing but work. But it wasn’t a bad time, for all that. We knew what we wanted. We were still living in the three-room apartment in Schwabing, we had one of the rooms equipped as an office. Sometimes we didn’t go outside for days on end. I slept badly, and often I was half dead with exhaustion. Sonia’s parents offered to support us, but we didn’t want that. Then we won a contest to build a school in Chemnitz. Our project got some attention, and soon we got more contracts. We were able to start employing people, and move into bigger premises. Sonia was the creative brains of the enterprise. She did most of the designs, while I took on the organizational and managerial tasks. I hardly gave Ivona a thought. I assumed she was back in Poland, when one day I got a letter from her.





The letter came at the worst possible moment. I had a thousand things on my mind, a building that was supposed to be finished and was going wrong in every way, a builder who kept calling me about some guarantee or other, a contest jury that I needed to prepare myself for. Sonia had been home all that week, she had a migraine and was bedridden, and only got up for a short time in the evenings when I came home, and we had something to eat together, and then she went back to bed.

The mail had been on my desk since lunchtime, but I only got around to looking at it in the evening. The envelope was made out by hand in a clumsy writing that I couldn’t recognize; there was no return address. I pulled out two pieces of paper, saw the signature, Ivona, and immediately had a bad feeling. The secretary had already left for the day, so I went to the kitchen to get a coffee. Then I sat down at my desk and began to read.

Dear Alexander, perhaps you still remember me. After everything that had happened between us, I thought it was absurd, Ivona addressing me formally. Of course I remembered her. I sometimes used to wonder what had become of her, but never made any effort to find out. She wrote to say she thought about me every day, and the lovely time we had together. She had often meant to write to me, to ask to see me again, but then she had learned that I was married now, and she didn’t want to interfere. She was sure I had lots to do, she sometimes saw my name in the papers, and was proud of knowing me.

For a brief moment I had the absurd thought that Ivona wanted to blackmail me, but she had nothing on me. Sonia knew about our affair, and after that night when I told her about it, I hadn’t seen Ivona again, I just stopped going, and she’d never tried to get in touch. Sure, I’d behaved badly toward her, but that wasn’t a crime.

The reason she was writing, I read on, was that she was in dire straits. She was still illegally in Germany, getting by on badly paid jobs off the books, cleaning and child minding and occasional little bits of translation work for a Christian publisher in Poland. The money had always been enough, Ivona wrote, she had even been able to support her parents on it, who had had a hard time after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, but a few months ago, she had gotten sick, some abdominal condition. She never had health insurance, she had just been lucky enough to stay well. Now she was facing expenses that dwarfed her income. She had turned to God for advice, and one night in her dreams she had seen me as her rescuer. Even then she had hesitated for a long time before asking me for help. If I wasn’t able to give her anything, she wouldn’t bother me anymore. I owed her nothing, she would see any help as a charitable act, and try to pay me back as soon as possible.

The letter was cumbersomely expressed. I was pretty sure someone must have helped Ivona write it. Even so, the formulations were full of that blend of submissiveness and impertinence that had struck me about her from the start. I could picture her face before me, the expression of humility that made me wild with lust and rage. Ivona had signed with first and last names. Below her signature was an address in Perlach and a phone number. I pocketed the letter, shut down the computer, and went home.


The lakeside house of Sonia’s dreams turned out to be beyond our means. Instead we lived in a row house in Tutzing, away from the lake. We had been able to buy the house after an aunt of Sonia’s had died and left her a small inheritance. The first time we looked at it, we wandered into a small room under the eaves with a slanting ceiling and Sonia said, this is the nursery. I didn’t say anything, and we talked about a couple of modifications. But that same evening, Sonia brought up the subject again. She said she didn’t have that much time left in which to get pregnant, after thirty-five things got critical. We had a very objective conversation about the pros and cons of having children of our own, and in the end decided that Sonia would come off the pill.

After some years at the planning stage, the building work finally began on the school in Chemnitz. I rented a room there, and often stayed away all week. It was only on Sonia’s fertile days that I absolutely had to be in Munich.

In spite of, or maybe even because of her beauty, Sonia was pretty inhibited. She was incapable of passion, and I sometimes got the feeling she was watching herself while we made love, to make sure she kept her dignity. Initially, synchronizing our nights to her ovulation had a positive effect on our sex life. On those evenings Sonia was nervous, she blushed easily and upset glasses and knocked things over. Then she would disappear into the bathroom for a long time, and when she came out and joined me on the sofa in her silk wrap, it felt as though she was offering herself to me, which was a thought that stimulated me. Sometimes we made love on the couch, and I thought Sonia was turned on as well, and forgot herself at least for a little while. But when she didn’t get pregnant, my feeling of failure got more pronounced, and I lost all pleasure in this game.

Birgit, who had been Sonia’s roommate in their student days, had opened her own practice by now. She was Sonia’s gynecologist, and ran all kinds of tests, and sent us to specialists. Finally she told us that medically everything was okay, and she urged Sonia to work less, but we couldn’t afford to take advice like that. It’ll be all right, said Birgit. Don’t think about it so much, then it’ll just happen naturally.

After the appointment, the three of us went for a drink together. Conversation turned to Tania. She and Birgit had continued to live in the apartment together for two years after I moved out. Tania’s hygiene neurosis had gradually abated, but she’d gotten crazier in other ways. She subscribed to German nationalist papers, Birgit told us, and expressed extreme right-wing views. I couldn’t invite anyone back to the apartment anymore, I would have been ashamed if they’d seen who I was living with. Also, Tania had grown increasingly suspicious. She had developed a thoroughgoing paranoia. She ended up marrying a Swiss guy who was also a member of the organization she had joined, and she had gone to live with him in Switzerland.

But it was so nice at the beginning, said Sonia, do you remember? How we used to cook meals together? She was always a bit uptight, said Birgit. She took everything so fantastically seriously, and had theories and views about everything. She couldn’t allow things just to be. Like any true believer, in other words, I said. Sonia said that was a mean thing to say. It’s not the worst people who end up in sects, said Birgit. It’s the seekers, the ones who are missing something, and can’t live without it anymore. Then they go and hang their hearts on some guru or some idea that’s in the air just at that time. Something that gives them security. A relationship can give you just as much security, said Sonia. Money gives you security, said Birgit. I said I hoped to be able to endure insecurity. Birgit laughed. If you expect a certain standard of living, there’s only the appearance of freedom for you anyway. Who said that?, I asked. Birgit shrugged her shoulders. Me? No idea. The only alternative is sainthood.

The office did better than we could have dreamed, we had taken on more staff, but somehow there wasn’t any less work for the two of us to do. You can’t plan everything, said Birgit. We’ve got time, said Sonia, and if it’s not meant to be, then it’s not to be. I knew how much she wanted a baby, and I felt bad that I couldn’t make it happen for her. We stopped talking about it, only sometimes Sonia would say she was fertile just then, and I would feel sorry for her, which didn’t make me perform any better. When we moved into the house, we used the room under the eaves as a storage room, but Sonia didn’t stop referring to it as the nursery.


On the day Ivona’s letter arrived I happened not to have my car with me. I had belatedly taken it to the mechanic that morning to have summer tires put on, and had gone to work by subway. It was a fine day, and after work I went to the station on foot, and was thinking about Ivona. The thought that she was still living in Munich was somehow disagreeable to me. I hadn’t seen her for almost seven years. It was surprising that we’d never bumped into each other in all that time, on the street or on a bus or in a store. I was sure I would recognize her instantly if I did happen to see her. Perhaps she was observing me, the way she did back then in the beer garden. I stopped with a jolt and spun around. A man who was following hard on my heels brushed past me and muttered, a*shole. Not a trace of Ivona.

It had been my intention to tell Sonia about the letter and ask for her advice, but when I got home I saw that she still had her migraine, and I decided not to. She would only worry herself needlessly, or get all suspicious or something. I would call Ivona, meet her somewhere if it wasn’t possible otherwise, and lend her the money, provided the amount she needed wasn’t too much. And that would be an end to the matter.

Sonia said she was feeling a little better, and tomorrow she would go back to work. She had even cooked something. I’m just going to make a quick call, I said, and went to the basement where we had set up a little office.

I shut the door and rang the number in Perlach. A man’s voice answered. I asked for Ivona. Just one moment, he said, and I heard sounds, a door, a hushed conversation. Then there was silence, and I knew Ivona was on the line. I got your letter, I said. I didn’t want to, said Ivona. Want to what? Ask you for help. Silence again. I’ll see what I can do, I said. I’m not swimming in money. Silence from Ivona. It was no good, I’d have to see her. I asked if we could meet. The man came on the line again, said Ivona was sick, if I wanted to see her, I’d have to go there. His voice sounded dismissive, but I was pleased Ivona appeared to have someone looking after her. I asked who I was talking to. Hartmeier, he said, a friend.


The following afternoon I went to Ivona’s. I told Sonia I had a meeting, and she nodded and said she’d probably stay longer at the office, a lot had accumulated in the course of her absence.

Ivona lived in an apartment building in a characterless sixties development. The buildings stood right on the road, clustered around a green space with a few trees and a neglected playground. The facade was grimy and sprayed with cryptic graffiti next to the entrance, but other than that it was in surprisingly good condition. I rang the bell and after a while a bluff-looking man with gray hair came down the stairs and opened the door for me. Hartmeier, he said, extending his hand. We were expecting you. I looked at my watch, I was only a few minutes late. He took me to the third floor, to a small, cluttered apartment. He knocked on a door and went in. I stayed in the hallway and listened to him say, with false friendliness in his voice, that he had to go. You sure you’ll be all right? Then he came out and held the door open for me. When you leave, make sure she locks the door after you.

I entered the bedroom. The curtains were drawn, and it took me a moment to make out Ivona in the dimness. She was sitting on a chair beside the window. This room too was stuffed with junk. The air was stale and far too hot. I walked up to Ivona and gave her my hand. She had changed in the years of not seeing her. Her face had grown puffy, her hair was thinner. She was wearing an ugly quilted wrap of no particular color, and white socks under plastic sandals. She might be only two years older than me, but she was an old woman.

I had known her body in all its details, the heavy, pendulous breasts, the rolls of fat at her neck, her navel, the stray black hairs on her back, and her many moles. I knew how she smelled and tasted, how her body responded to touch, I knew its repertoire of familiar and less familiar movements, but when I saw Ivona sitting there, I had to acknowledge that I didn’t know the least thing about her, that she was a complete stranger to me.

She told me quite freely, almost pleasurably, about her condition before the impending operation. For some time now she had had very heavy bleeding and cramping during her period. The doctor had found myomas, harmless growths in her womb, and instead of putting her on hormone treatments for years, he had suggested having the womb and ovaries removed. A perfectly routine operation, she said, the removal would be done vaginally, there was no need to open her up. It felt strange to hear the technical medical terms in her mouth. She talked about her body as though it were a malfunctioning machine. She had no fear of the operation, she said, but what made her sad was the knowledge that she would be unable to have children afterward. Thirty-eight is leaving it a bit late for babies anyhow, I thought, but didn’t say anything.

Are you with someone?, I asked. Herr Hartmeier is just a friend, she said. She had the flu, that’s why she was home. And he looked in on her from time to time and checked up on how she was. She asked me if I wanted some tea, and I followed her into the kitchen and watched her heat up water and take a tea bag from one of the cupboards. Her way of moving had something coquettish about it, I could think of no other word for it. Presumably, I was the only man who had seen her naked apart from her father and the gynecologist, I thought. And suddenly I had the overwhelming desire to strip her naked. I came up to her from behind, and opened her wrap, and let it fall to the ground. She was wearing a thin short nightie underneath, maybe it was the same one she had years ago. I pulled that over her head, and took off her underthings too. She turned to face me. Her features were completely expressionless.

I was pretty sure Ivona had never slept with a man, and that her panting wasn’t excitement but fear. I knew I was making a mistake that could not be amended, but I was reeling with desire. I pulled her into the bedroom and onto the bed, and she lay down, and I lay on top of her. Again, I had the sense of Ivona’s body having a life of its own, that when it was naked it was quite divorced from her character, and was capable of unexpected responsiveness, a mute language all its own. While Ivona kept her eyes tightly closed, and her face looked as if it were asleep, her body was awake and reacted to every touch, every glance almost, with a shaking, a trembling, tension or relaxation, in a way that both excited and repulsed me.

At five I called Sonia in the office, and explained I was running late, the meeting was taking longer than expected. Then I went back to the bedroom. Ivona lay naked on the bed, her pose had something obscene about it. I lay down on top of her and she shut her eyes again.

It was almost seven before I could tear myself away. She was in the bath, and I was sitting on a kitchen stool, feeling liberated. I could hear noises in the apartment over us, and thought about the people who lived here, the human hordes who filled the subways in the morning and sat in front of the TV at night, who sooner or later fell ill from their labor and the hopelessness of their efforts. A camp of the living and the dead, as Aldo Rossi had once described the city, where only a few symbols manage to survive. Undecipherable references to people who had once lived there. I had always been half-afraid of the faceless masses for which we put up skyscrapers. I remembered the topping-out parties when we celebrated the completion of a project with the workers. How they sat hunkered together and looked at the rest of us, the investors and builders and architects, almost with scorn. Or when I visited one of these projects years later, when I saw how the buildings had been taken over—laundry hanging out to dry on the balconies, bicycles dumped higgledy-piggledy outside the doors, little flowerbeds arranged in defiance of any understanding of landscaping—then too I didn’t feel annoyance so much as fear and a kind of fascination with life swarming and seething and escaping our plans, the memories that sprouted here and merged with the buildings in some indivisible unity. Then I understood the remark that a building wasn’t finished until it had been torn down or lay in ruins.

I remembered listening once to Sonia explaining to a school janitor why the bicycle racks couldn’t be made any bigger. She talked about proportions and form and aesthetics. He looked at her in bafflement, and said, but the kids have got to park their bikes somewhere. Sonia had looked at me beseechingly, but I had just shrugged my shoulders, and said the janitor was right. She shook her head angrily and stalked out without another word.

Ivona emerged from the bathroom. She looked tired. I said I had to go. At the door I asked her how much the operation cost. About four thousand marks, she said. I was surprised it wasn’t any more than that. I’ll lend it to you, I said, you can pay me back whenever you can. I’ll bring you the money. She said she was always at home during the day. At night she went out cleaning. Don’t forget to lock the door now. I had to smile. She said Herr Hartmeier had her best interests at heart.


From then on I started seeing Ivona regularly again. My feelings toward her had changed from what they were seven years ago. I couldn’t claim she interested me as a human being, but I had gotten used to her, and no longer felt as aggressive toward her. I drank her herbal tea even though I couldn’t stand it, and I listened to her boring stories, and sometimes I told her something from my life, some office stuff that she listened to without a trace of interest or sympathy. It was still and exclusively the physical thing that tied me to her, those sluggish hours that we spent together in her overheated room, stuck to one another, crawling into each other, together and always separate. Once, I’d just gone to the bathroom, Ivona fell asleep, and I stared at her withered body and her face, by no means beautified by the relaxation of sleep, and I asked myself what I was doing here, why I couldn’t leave her. But she awoke, and looked into my eyes, and like an addict I had to lay hands on her again, and grab hold of her and penetrate her.

I asked her what she had done in all those years we hadn’t seen each other. She seemed not to understand the question. She had worked. And what else? Do you see girlfriends? Did you go abroad? Do you have a hobby of some kind? Sometimes she went to events organized by the Polish mission, she said, and she had a cousin who lived in Munich too, though she hardly saw her anymore. Once a year she went to Posen to visit her family.

Religion seemed to loom even larger in her life than it had seven years ago. She went to Mass regularly, and she belonged to a Bible group. That was where she had met Hartmeier. She talked about him often. He was a plumber. One of his sons was in charge of the family business now, he devoted himself entirely to the church, ever since his wife had died a couple of years ago. Once I asked Ivona if there’d been anything between them ever. We were lying on the bed side by side, she was gripping my hand, the way a child might hold its mother’s. I leaned over her, and asked, is he your lover then? Own up. She looked at me with an astonished and at the same time disappointed expression, perhaps because I doubted her fidelity. Herr Hartmeier wasn’t like that. Not like me? Bruno often came to see her, said Ivona, he had said he felt very close to her, but she told him she was keeping herself for someone else. It took me a while to understand whom she meant. I should have told her that I didn’t want anything from her, that I would never leave Sonia for her. The very idea seemed preposterous, to give up everything for the sake of a woman with whom I had nothing but a sexual obsession. But I guessed I would never manage to persuade Ivona to give up her idée fixe, so I didn’t say anything. I think she was firmly convinced that God directed our paths, and that He had plans for her and me. Let her think that if it did her some good, I didn’t care. I stood by the window and looked down at the deserted playground. It had been raining for days, and big puddles had formed on the grass. There was a large birdcage on one of the balconies opposite that was covered with a patterned cloth, maybe an old curtain. I opened the window and I could hear the sound of dripping water, the sound of flowing water, and the strained buzz of a light airplane. It was late spring, but it could just as easily have been fall. I turned to Ivona and asked her if it was true that she’d had nothing to do with men for seven years. And what if I hadn’t called her? Ivona didn’t reply.


I always saw Ivona during the daytime. To begin with I made up meetings, but Sonia knew what I was working on, so I had to think of something else. For years I’d suffered from occasional back pain, so now I claimed I was going to do something about it. I joined a fitness club, that way I could spend an hour or two a week with Ivona, without Sonia getting suspicious.

I had brought the money for Ivona’s operation to our second meeting, but I never asked her if she had gone through with it or not. She had started working again, now she was working as a cleaner in people’s homes during the day. Her hours were unpredictable, and often she canceled me at the last minute, because one of her employers needed her to be there. When she told me again that she wouldn’t have any time this week, I said I would pay her. She didn’t reply. I’ll pay you, I said, how much do you want? I had expected her to be insulted, but she just said she got paid ten marks an hour for cleaning. All right, I said, I’ll give you twenty. It was a bad joke, but now every time we parted I left her some money. I’d never gone to a prostitute, the idea of spending money on sex was offensive to me. But giving money to Ivona was something different. It wasn’t payment for services received. Ivona belonged to me, and my looking after her in that way was the justification of my claims of ownership. Sometimes, I don’t know what got into me, I started giving her commands, and naming a price, fifty marks if you do such and such. Maybe it was a way of humiliating myself. If it offended Ivona, she never let on. She did everything, regardless of what I offered, and she took the money with an apathetic expression, and didn’t bother to count it.

We were now meeting two mornings a week at regular times. Usually Ivona wouldn’t have left the house yet, and was waiting for me in her wrap. She offered me herbal tea, until I gave her an espresso machine. I drank an espresso standing up. Ivona was sitting at the kitchen table, looking at me inquiringly. Then I told her what I had planned, and we went to the bedroom, or the sitting room, or the bathroom.

It was an exceptionally rainy summer, and the city felt like a hothouse under its warm humid shroud. When I lay on the bed tangled up with Ivona, a great lassitude would come over me, our sweating bodies would seem to coalesce into one many-jointed organism that moved slowly like a water plant in an invisible current. Sometimes I dropped off into a sort of half-sleep, from which Ivona would rouse me when the agreed time came around. You have to go, she’d whisper in my ear, and I got dressed and walked out into the rain, where I only slowly woke up.

I had reckoned I would get sick of Ivona sooner or later, and get rid of her, but even though the sex with her interested me less and less, and sometimes we didn’t sleep together at all and just talked, I couldn’t shake her off. It wasn’t pleasure that tied me to her, it was a feeling I hadn’t had since childhood, a mixture of freedom and protectedness. It was as though time stood still when I was with her, which was precisely what gave those moments their weight. Sonia was a project. We wanted to build a house, we wanted to have a baby, we employed people, we bought a second car. No sooner had we reached one goal than the next loomed into sight, we were never done. Ivona on the other hand seemed to have no ambitions. She had no plans, her life was simple and regular. She got up in the morning, had breakfast, went to work. If it was a good or a bad day depended on certain little things, the weather, some kind words in the bakery or in one of the houses where she cleaned, a call from a friend with whom she had a drink after work or went to the movies. When I was with her, I participated in her life for an hour, and forgot everything, the pressure of time, my ambition, the problems on the building sites. Even sex became completely different. I didn’t have to make Ivona pregnant, I didn’t even have to make her come. She took me without expectations and without claims.

Her hunger for a better life was fulfilled through romance novels and TV films that always ended happily. I asked myself what she felt when she shut the book or switched off the TV. I hadn’t picked up a novel in years, but I still remembered the feeling of finishing a story when I was a child, late at night or on some rainy afternoon. That alertness, that sense of perceiving everything much more clearly, even the passage of time, which was so much slower than in books. I held my breath and listened, even though I knew there was nothing to hear, and that nothing had happened or would happen. I was safe in bed, and in my thoughts returned to the story that now belonged to me, that would never end, that would grow and turn into a world of its own. It was one of many worlds that I inhabited in those days, before I started building my own and losing all the others.

Basically, my relationship with Ivona had been from the start nothing other than a story, a parallel world that obeyed my will, and where I could go whenever I wanted, and could leave when I’d had enough.

Perhaps our relationship was nothing more than a story for Ivona as well. I had been struck by the way she never talked about herself. She never asked me about my life either. I could just sometimes tell from things she said that she didn’t approve of my social environment, just as she seemed to despise her own surroundings. It was as though nothing counted beyond our secret meetings.

I could understand Ivona’s feelings. I too was moving in a circle I didn’t really belong in, only, unlike her, out of cowardice or opportunism I had managed to come to terms with it. The splendid family holidays with Sonia’s parents, the visits to concerts and plays, the male gatherings where fellows smoked cigars and talked about cars and golf, they were all part of another world. Basically, I yearned for the lower-middle-class world of my childhood, with its clear rules and simple feelings. However limited it was, it still seemed more honest and genuine to me. When I was with my parents, I didn’t have to playact, didn’t have to try and be better than I was. Their affection was for me as a person, and not for my achievements as an architect. And then they were much more sensitive than Sonia’s parents. They noticed immediately when something was wrong. Their ethical ideas might be narrow, but they understood human frailties and were prepared to forgive anything. I was sure they would like Ivona, and would accept her as one of themselves. They had never quite warmed to Sonia, even though they would never have said as much to me. Once or twice I was almost on the point of mentioning Ivona to my mother. I was certain she would understand, even if she disapproved. Presumably the reason I didn’t was that I was afraid of her advice, I knew what she would say.

In the seven years I’d been married to Sonia, I’d had a couple of brief affairs, once with an office assistant and the other time with a neighbor, whose child we sometimes babysat. Sonia had been unfaithful to me once as well. We had owned up to these affairs and gotten over them, albeit perhaps scarred by them, and afterward our union felt either better or at least more stable. But I could never have told Sonia about my relationship with Ivona. It seemed to take place in a world governed by different rules. I couldn’t have explained my behavior to her—I could hardly account for it to myself.

Once I asked Ivona if she wanted to go back to her homeland. She said no, she had to stay here. I didn’t ask her why. But I do admit I felt relieved to hear it.


I’d been seeing Ivona for six months or so when Hartmeier called me one day. He called me in the office, at first I didn’t know who it was. Only when he said we’d met at Ivona’s did the shoe drop. He asked if he could see me. I asked what it was about, but he said he’d prefer to talk about it in private. A little reluctantly, I agreed to meet him in a café near Ivona’s apartment. There were never many people there, he said. It was as though he was planning a conspiracy.

It was November, and it had been raining for days. At twelve o’clock it suddenly stopped. Now it felt cold, and there was a smell of snow in the air. When I went to the café, it was already dark outside, and I could see Hartmeier through the window, sitting over an almost empty glass of beer. He was the only patron, and was chatting with the waiter.

I walked up to his table. He stood and held out his hand formally. I ordered something, and we sat down facing one another, like two chess players. Hartmeier sipped at his beer and looked at me in silence, until I asked him what this was about. Ivona, he said. He looked somehow pleased with himself, which made me suspicious. That’s what I thought, I said. More silence from him. Then he said it was a delicate situation, and he didn’t want to speak out of turn, but he didn’t like the way I was treating Ivona. I wondered how much he knew. I had no intention of confiding in him, so, to play for time, I asked him what he meant by that. She loves you, he said, and sighed deeply. I shrugged my shoulders. With all her heart, he added. She’s waited for you for seven years, the way Jacob waited for Rachel. I only vaguely remembered the story, but I remembered that at the end of seven years, Jacob had gone off with the wrong woman. Leah, Hartmeier said. And then he had to wait another seven years. I didn’t understand what he was driving at. Whether she waits for you for a year or seven or fourteen, makes no difference, he said. It’s like love of the Savior, it doesn’t get any less over time, in fact the opposite. Ivona’s feelings are a matter for her, I said. And you? I said I didn’t think that was any concern of his. I might not know this, said Hartmeier, but Ivona had sacrificed a lot for me. She was acting against her faith, which forbade extramarital sex, and with a man who was married himself. Perhaps it was hard for me to grasp, but in a certain sense Ivona had sacrificed her spiritual welfare for me. She’s a free human being, I said. But the Lord saw that Leah was less beloved, and he opened her womb, said Hartmeier, and then I understood why he had summoned me. He didn’t speak, and it was as though I caught a glimpse of secret triumph in his face. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. It’s not easy for me to describe what I felt. I was shocked, my pulse was racing, and I felt slightly sick in my stomach. At the same time, though, I felt a great feeling of calm and a kind of relief. I would have to talk to Sonia, she wouldn’t find it easy, maybe she would leave me, but just at that moment, all that seemed unimportant.

Ivona is pregnant, said Hartmeier. I know, I said, I wasn’t going to allow him his little triumph. He looked at me in bewilderment. You cannot ask that she … He didn’t go on. I don’t ask that she do anything, I said. He said it would be a sin. I don’t care if it’s a sin or not, I’m not asking her to abort the fetus.

Hartmeier walked me to Ivona’s. Though he was shorter than me, he set such a rapid pace I could hardly keep up with him. It seemed to have gotten colder, or perhaps I was just feeling it more, because of my excitement and uncertainty. I put up my coat collar and ran after Hartmeier. He stopped outside Ivona’s building and said he wouldn’t accompany me any farther. He rang the doorbell, and I heard a rustle in the intercom. Hartmeier leaned down and said in his best conspiratorial tone, he’s here. Immediately the door buzzed, so loud that it startled me. Hartmeier shouldered the door open, gave me his hand, and nodded to me, as though to give me courage.

Ivona was waiting for me with an almost simple smile. She looks like a bride, I thought. We sat down in the little parlor. Ivona had made tea, and poured a couple of cups. I took a quick gulp and burned my mouth. Hartmeier told me you’re pregnant, I said. She nodded. I wasn’t expecting that, I said. She looked at me expectantly, with an edge of panic. I said I understood that an abortion was out of the question for her, and that of course I would recognize the child, and give her what support I could. But it wouldn’t be easy for her to bring up the child all by herself. Her face took on a scared expression. She must have imagined I would leave Sonia for her. There are several options, I said, of course it would be better for the child to grow up in an intact environment than with her, after all she was still an illegal alien. I would talk to my wife, after all it was my child. Ivona didn’t speak, and let her tea go cold. I said she ought to think about it, there was quite a bit of time yet.

The idea had come to me during the conversation with Hartmeier. Of course it would be a challenge to Sonia to bring up the child of my mistress. On the other hand, she was a sensible woman who had her head screwed on properly, and that solution was the best for all of us. We had already gone over the possibility of adopting a few times.

I didn’t do anything for the moment. Ivona was in her fourth month, and there was still a chance she would lose the baby, and the whole agitation would have been for nothing. I went on seeing her and sleeping with her, and watched her belly swell. She was even more taciturn than before, and talked neither about her condition nor about any plans for the child after its birth. Only sometimes she would groan and rub her back, which seemed to hurt. Once, when I was getting a glass of water in the kitchen, I saw an ultrasound picture lying on the table, it was a white crooked thing against a black background, but I got no sense of that as my child.


I kept putting off my conversation with Sonia. Finally I resolved to talk to her after the holidays. We spent Christmas with her parents, and then drove into the mountains for a few days by ourselves. Ferdy and Alice had recommended a hotel, a great castle of a place in a remote valley not far from Garmisch. They would come up for a couple of days themselves, we hadn’t seen each other in a long time. I had the sense that Sonia was looking forward to it more than I was. We had gone to the office quickly that morning, to sort out a few things, and we left Munich later than we’d planned. On the way Ferdy called me on my cell. I passed it to Sonia, and she talked to him. She laughed once or twice, and then she said, Oh well then, see you tomorrow. They would be coming a day late, she said, Ferdy evidently had even more to do than we did. Fine by me, I said.

We arrived in the early evening, and barely had time to look at our room before we heard the dinner gong. The dining room was full of families with nicely dressed children with good posture, talking quietly to their parents. Sonia had an expression I often saw on her when there were children around, a mixture of rapture and slight sorrow. Her last ovulation had been two weeks ago, I had spotted the red ring around the date on the kitchen calendar, but had gotten home that night later than expected, and Sonia had already been asleep. I wondered whether to wake her, but ended up just letting it go.

From the very beginning I didn’t feel at ease in the hotel. Sonia seemed to like it. This was her social sphere, people who were demonstratively hiding their wealth and treated the staff in such a jolly, friendly way that it almost had the effect of condescension. They all seemed to be playing a game, and observing themselves and one another. They were playing at high society, the cultivated art lovers, hurrying out of the dining room to the events hall to catch the chamber music concert, as if there were no other possible way of getting through an evening. Sonia didn’t want to miss the concert either, as she said. Please no, I said, I have to go outside for some fresh air, otherwise I’ll suffocate. She looked at me in alarm, as if she’d peered briefly into an abyss, but then she gave in right away, and said she had a headache, perhaps it was the altitude, and a walk would do her good.


It was cold outside, there was snow predicted for the night ahead, but the sky was still clear, with many stars and a waning moon. Sonia started to talk about a project we were working on. We’re on holiday, I said, forget about work for once, can’t you? I had thought long and hard about how to break the news to her, now I just said, listen, I’m having a baby. Sonia reacted amazingly calmly. It must have been that she had so many conflicting feelings that none of them came out on top. She had guessed that I had a lover, that seemed to bother her less than the fact it was Ivona, the Polish girl, as she always referred to her. I was amazed that her first thought was the same as mine. And that she used the same words I used with Ivona. After all, it’s your baby too.

I asked her if it wouldn’t be a problem for her. She said her only condition was that she wouldn’t have to meet the Polish girl. What if she wants to see the baby? That’s up to you. She said she wanted to go home. Right now?, I asked. I can’t drive you, I’ve had too much to drink. I haven’t, said Sonia. She didn’t want me with her anyway. She needed time to think. You can have your Polish woman come and stay. Her voice sounded cold rather than bitter. Sonia wouldn’t be talked out of her plan, and finally I handed her the car keys and helped her with the bags. I asked her to call when she got home.

Two hours later, she called. I had taken a bottle of wine up to the room, and was lying on the bed, watching TV. I hit the mute button when the phone rang. Sonia said she had arrived safely, then she stopped, but I could tell she wanted to talk. It seemed to be easier for her to talk to me on the phone. She said she’d thought things over during the drive.

We talked probably for two hours about our relationship, about our affairs, about our expectations and desires. Sonia cried, and at times I cried too. I had never felt so close to her. We won’t tell the child anything, will we?, she said. We’ll bring it up as ours. Are you looking forward to it? She stopped for a moment, then she said she wasn’t sure. She said she thought she was. You’ll make a wonderful mother, I said. She promised to drive back up in the morning, we had lots to talk about. Sleep well, I said. I love you.


The next day Sonia was back in the hotel. It had snowed overnight, and the last bit of the road hadn’t been cleared yet, and she’d been stuck down in the valley, waiting for the plow to come through. When she finally arrived, we greeted each other as though we hadn’t seen each other for ages. We went for a walk in the snow, and talked everything over again. We relished the reconciliation of the night by saying over and over what we’d done wrong, and how we meant to do better in the future, and what our life would be like, and how much we loved each other. Our words were conjurations, as though everything would go the way we wanted so long as we said it often enough. Aren’t we good together?, said Sonia. Yes, I said, everything will turn out fine. And at that moment I really believed it. It seemed possible in that landscape that had transformed itself overnight into a pure shiny surface.

Ferdy and Alice arrived in the afternoon. Sonia and I had lain down after lunch, we had neither of us gotten much sleep the previous night. At about four the phone rang. It was Ferdy, and we arranged to meet downstairs in the restaurant in half an hour.

I knew right away that it was a mistake to see those two up here. He had done the drive in five and a half hours, Ferdy bragged before we had even shaken hands. He had put on weight and lost a lot of his hair, and even though he talked and laughed the whole time, I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something wrong. Alice was even thinner than she’d been seven years ago. There was something careworn about her, and she seemed tired and irritable. She talked a lot too. She was still meeting lots of geniuses and going to astounding concerts and art exhibitions. There was so much more going on in Berlin than Munich, she said, returning to Bavaria always gave her the creeps. I asked her if she was still playing the violin. She wanted to take it up again, she said, once the kids were a little older. They had two girls they’d left with Ferdy’s parents on the way here, both, according to Alice, highly intelligent and exceptionally musical. Ferdy and Alice took turns telling stories about the girls, the funny things they said, the searching questions they asked, the profound utterances they made. After a while Alice asked whether we didn’t want any ourselves. I didn’t know what to say, but Sonia quickly put in that so far we hadn’t been able to. How old are you? Thirty-three. In that case you’ve got a bit of time yet, said Alice. She was pleased, even so, to have had her children so young. Ferdy laid his hand on her shoulder, and leaned right across the table as though to let us into a secret. Those girls, he said, are the best thing that could have happened to us. You can’t imagine it when you don’t have children yourself, said Alice, but it’s an incredible source of richness. Your priorities change, said Ferdy. Some things lose their significance. I wouldn’t want to raise children in Berlin, said Sonia.

Alice had a massage appointment. Ferdy asked if we fancied going to the sauna before dinner. I looked at Sonia. She said she didn’t, but there was no reason for me not to go. She’d meant to get on with some work anyway.

You’re still in pretty good shape, said Ferdy in the changing room, and he smacked his spare tire with his bare hand, I’ve put on some weight. Alice is a fabulous cook.

We had the sauna all to ourselves. Ferdy asked how business was, and I said we couldn’t complain. Berlin is an El Dorado, he said, if you’re half-presentable, then you can earn yourself a golden nose. He and his firm specialized in the construction of office buildings, maybe not the most thrilling things to build, but incredibly well paid. His clients thought strictly short-term, he said, buildings needed to be amortized within three years, nobody nowadays planned any further ahead than that. Good design was okay, but the critical factors were being on time and not going over budget.

He talked about the new type of contract where the price was set before the planning began. That way, if you kept costs down, you could make a hefty profit. The magic formula was guaranteed maximum price, and he got up to splash on some more water.

While we rested after the first round, he said Sonia was looking pretty good too. But she was never his cup of tea, too controlled, too cool. What did I think of Alice? I said nothing. She was still great in the sack, said Ferdy. Then he told me about a young woman journalist who had done an interview with him not long ago, and afterward gone for a meal with him. Then over dessert she said, what’s the point of sitting around here, why don’t you come back to my place and we’ll screw. He laughed deafeningly. That’s what young women are like these days. He had sat up and was rocking back and forth like a maniac. Everything about him, his way of talking and moving, had something driven about it, restless, that I disliked. After the second go-round in the sauna, I said I’d had enough, and we’d see each other at dinner.

I didn’t go upstairs to the room, I went outside. I stood in the darkness in front of the hotel and smoked a cigarillo, and asked myself what the difference was between Ferdy and me. I was driven too, and maybe even more than he was. He had bedded the journalist as if it meant nothing, the two of them had enjoyed a couple of pleasurable hours, and that was it. No hard feelings, as Ferdy said. If anyone had behaved like a son of a bitch, then surely it was me. And yet my relationship with Ivona seemed less contemptible to me than Ferdy’s casual f*ck. It was as though Ivona’s love and anguish did something to ennoble me, and give our relationship a seriousness that Ferdy’s infidelity lacked.


Do you ever hear from Rüdiger?, Ferdy asked over dinner. I shook my head, and was pretty dumbfounded when Sonia said yes, she sometimes talked to him on the phone. What’s he up to? He’s working in a think tank in Switzerland, said Sonia, but she wasn’t sure exactly what it was about. Something futurological, the private realm, or evolving forms of cohabitation. That’s so typical of him, said Ferdy, anything rather than work.

When I was in bed with Sonia later on, I asked her why she’d never told me she was in touch with Rüdiger. I was the last person who could afford to be jealous, she said. I’m not jealous, I just think it’s odd, after all, he’s my friend as well. I got the impression you didn’t like him, said Sonia. Of course I like him. Things hadn’t been easy for Rüdiger. He had fallen in love with a Swiss art student. Maybe you remember her, she was there at the New Year’s Eve party. Was that the crazy woman who was working on bread? No idea, said Sonia, I didn’t talk to her that night. Elsbeth, I said, that’s what her name was.

Rüdiger had met Elsbeth on his tour of South America; he traveled around with her for a while and then brought her back to Munich. She had applied to the Academy of Arts there, but hadn’t gotten in, so she’d gone back to Switzerland. Rüdiger followed her and lived with her in an artists’ commune in a farmhouse somewhere in the sticks. Full of people, said Sonia, who don’t know what they’re about, and who spend half the day high, and call themselves artists, without ever accomplishing anything. I’ve no idea what Rüdiger saw in the lifestyle. He never got his degree. Instead he’d tried his hand at art as well; along with Elsbeth and the others, he’d run up some socially critical installations in public space somewhere, and scrounged off his parents the whole time.

He wrote to me a couple of times, said Sonia, crazy letters, he seemed to be deliriously happy. I wrote back to warn him, but he took no notice of my alarm, and only repeated how fantastic his life was, and how free and un-tethered he felt.

Eventually Elsbeth got into harder drugs. Rüdiger gave her money, so as to stop her having to get hold of it in other ways. She promised to quit, then she disappeared for days on end, and when she returned she was stuffed full of dope. There’s this park in Zurich where a few thousand addicts live, said Sonia. I nodded, I could remember the pictures in the newspaper. Eventually Rüdiger gave up, said Sonia, I think he accepted that he couldn’t help her. He looked for an apartment and found this job in the think tank, but he’s still obsessed with her to this day. She keeps turning up on his doorstep, asking for money. I think—I hope—he doesn’t give her any. I can’t imagine what’s so spellbinding about a woman like that, and a life without responsibility and without aims. I thought I could see the attraction myself, but said nothing.

We spent another two days in the mountains. We went for walks and swam and went to the sauna. I gradually adjusted to the setting and didn’t feel as nervous as I had at the beginning. Ferdy seemed to calm down a bit as well, and started talking about other things than his money and his success. In time, Sonia and Alice got along better, and on one of our walks Sonia even raised the subject of adoption, though admittedly without going into detail. Can’t you have babies then?, asked Alice. Sonia said we didn’t know, all the medical tests were fine. With Alice you just take her to bed, and bingo she’s pregnant just like that, said Ferdy. It made me wonder if he was really so keen on having kids. Alice had always wanted children, even when she was with me she had gone on about it the whole time. I thought I’d ask him about that, but in the end I didn’t. What was he going to say, anyway? In a different context he’d said you could plan a building, but not a life. Sonia had contradicted him, but presumably he was right, and hadn’t done too badly with his philosophy.


In the new year, I visited Ivona to talk about the baby. I’d had to promise Sonia to quit Ivona once and for all, and I was grimly determined to do just that. You must understand, I said, I’ve been married to Sonia for seven years, I love her. Ivona said nothing, and I was forced to remember how right at the beginning of our affair she once said she loved me. Her presence was disagreeable to me again, but I forced myself to be friendly. Did you think about it?, I asked her. She said Bruno had promised to help her. I’ll help you too, I said, whether you keep the baby or not. It’s a matter of whether you’ll allow our child to be raised free of worry and in a protective environment or not. If you work the hours that you do, you’ll hardly have any time to look after it.

By now I had visited the social welfare department, where I was told parental rights were automatically with the mother, but if we drafted a joint agreement, then the child might grow up with us. Even then, however, the mother kept her rights to the child. Adoption would be a more effective method. That way the mother’s out of the picture, the social worker said.

I felt bad about taking the child from Ivona, but I was firmly convinced that it was the best for all concerned. I explained the process to her. Ivona didn’t say anything. She sat there mutely, staring at her feet. I said she had to decide, and the sooner the better. I wouldn’t see her anymore now. She was to call me when she knew what she wanted.


I didn’t tell Sonia about Ivona’s indecision. I didn’t want to alarm her, and I felt sure that Ivona would be cooperative and everything would go well. Sonia started with her customary efficiency to prepare for the child. She found a day care, and read books on parenting, and got information from the welfare office about the ins and outs of adoption. We prepared the little room under the eaves, the one that Sonia had seen from the very beginning as a nursery. We bought a cradle and Onesies in neutral colors. I had forgotten to ask Ivona whether the baby was going to be a girl or a boy, and I didn’t want to call her. We bought a dictionary of names, and agreed on a couple. If it was a boy, he would be Eric, and if it was a girl, then we would call her Sophie.

When Ivona still hadn’t gotten in touch by the end of February, I called Hartmeier and said I wanted to see him. I asked him to come to the house, hoping he would be impressed by our lifestyle. I told Sonia that Hartmeier was a friend of Ivona’s, and he ought to see what arrangements were being made for the baby.

He came along after dinner. I let him in. Sonia was standing behind me. She usually went around in pants, but tonight she was wearing a plain blue dress that made her look very beautiful and slightly fragile. Hartmeier was visibly impressed. He seemed nervous, and was uncertain in his movements and stammered when he spoke. He sat down, and for a moment no one said anything, as though we were all waiting for something to happen. I asked Hartmeier if he wanted a drink, and he asked for a glass of water. Sonia went into the kitchen to get it, and he seemed relieved, and started talking hurriedly. Ivona had had some premature contractions, and was told to stay in bed. Someone from the parish was visiting her regularly and helping with the chores. I said I’d stopped visiting Ivona, because I didn’t want to influence her decision. Sonia came back with a carafe of water and three glasses. Besides, it was probably better for both of us if we stopped seeing each other, I said. It was too difficult for my wife. Sonia filled our glasses and stood behind me. I turned to her, and took her hand. She had put on a tormented smile. Hartmeier, looking earnest, nodded.

Hartmeier stayed for probably two hours. At the beginning, he was negative, but over time he thawed a little, which was probably mainly Sonia’s doing. I’d told her we had to settle one or two logistical details. When she realized that nothing had been decided yet, she shot me a horrified glance, but other than that showed no emotion.


I shut the door after Hartmeier, and turned to Sonia to hug her, but she took a step back and looked at me furiously. And what would you have done if she’d said no? I said I was certain we’d get the baby. She hasn’t even decided yet, said Sonia. She’ll listen to him, I said. I didn’t want to alarm you. Then Sonia yelled at me, for the first time in all the years we’d known each other, to stop treating her like an idiot. She calmed down right away. If I had any faith in our relationship, she said, more calmly now, then I would have to be honest with her. However difficult. She wasn’t a baby, she could face the truth, but she couldn’t stand it if I was dishonest with her. I gave her my word. Then we opened a bottle of Prosecco and drank to the positive effect of the meeting with Hartmeier. He had promised to see what he could do with Ivona. We had talked a lot about unbroken families, and then talked about money as well. I had even shown him the latest set of accounts from the business, and some photographs of buildings we’d designed. We had spoken about the building trade, and I had suggested I might listen to a bid from his son on our next project.

And what happens to the child if you separate?, he asked. I’ve forgiven Alexander, Sonia said, I’m sure nothing like that will happen again. I nodded and felt quite convinced of it myself. Even so I had a sense that Sonia and I were acting. Hartmeier said we were all sinful creatures, which made me wonder what sins he might have committed.

We spent the weekend in a mixture of euphoria and apprehension. On Monday Hartmeier called the office and said Ivona had declared that she was prepared to give the baby up for adoption. And without insisting on visiting rights?, I asked. I was able to talk her out of that, he said, to begin with it will be difficult for her, but in the long run it’s better, especially for the child. From the sound of his voice I could tell that he had supported me, and even though that was to my advantage, it still annoyed me. He had allowed himself to be dazzled by our comfortable middle-class life, and betrayed Ivona, the cleaning woman, the illegal immigrant.

That evening we celebrated. We ate out in an expensive restaurant where we normally only ever took clients. I meant what I said. Sonia looked at me inquiringly. About being faithful to you. Sonia nodded impatiently, as though unwilling to hear about it. Ever since we’re getting a baby, I’ve seen babies everywhere, she said. It feels as though the whole of Munich is full of mothers and strollers and babies. That’s normal, I said. And by the way, it’s a girl.


Only now did we mention it to our parents. We told them we were adopting a baby, not that it was my baby. Apart from them, we told no one. Ivona had eight weeks’ grace after the birth to reconsider everything, and we didn’t want to talk to people about it before we were positive we would get to keep the baby.

Sophie was born on April 17. Shortly before, Hartmeier had called me and told me how Ivona envisaged the handover taking place. She wanted me to be there at the birth, and to wash the baby, and give it to her so that she might hold it. Then she would hand it to me, and me alone, and after that she didn’t want to see it again. She had bought a pair of Onesies for the baby to wear, and a little chain with a golden cross on it. I found the whole to-do theatrical if not slightly mawkish, but I had no idea how to do it any better, and I agreed. I asked who would pay for the hospital stay, and whether Ivona wouldn’t have trouble with immigration as an illegal alien. Hartmeier said there was an amnesty of at least three months following the birth, and after that everything would be reconsidered. As for the matter of costs, it wasn’t clear yet, perhaps the welfare department. I said of course I would happily pay for them myself.

On the day of the birth I got a call from the hospital, but it all happened so fast that Sophie was born before I even got there. She had been washed and put away. Ivona lay there in her room. Her greatest worry seemed to be that her plan had been frustrated. The nurse who escorted me into the ward now refused to bring us the baby. It had to get over the birth, she said, and looked at me in rather a hostile way. I said I could always come back later.

That afternoon, I was back in the hospital. The baby was in a little cart with clear plastic sides, next to Ivona’s bed. Ivona looked at it in a way I couldn’t interpret. I was about to pick it up out of the cart, but she said, no, I had to take the baby from her. She lifted the back of her bed and rang the bell. This time another nurse came, this one very friendly, who, in response to Ivona’s request, lifted the baby into her arms. Ivona waited for her to leave, and then she handed Sophie to me without a word.

It felt weird to hold my baby in my arms for the first time. Sophie was incredibly light. Her face was reddened, and looked somehow birdlike. I thought briefly about Ivona’s appearance, and of the fact that Sophie had some of her genes too, but then I felt ashamed. Anyway, I thought, all babies are ugly. For the most part, Sophie struck me as a completely independent being from the outset, a creature that might be biologically descended from Ivona and me but that really had very little to do with us. I thought I ought to say something. I’ll look after her, I said. I promise.

Sophie started bawling. What’s the matter with her?, I asked. Ivona said nothing, maybe she wanted to demonstrate that I was responsible for the baby from now on. I went out into the corridor and looked for a nurse. She picked Sophie up and sniffed her bottom. Your first?, she asked, and when I nodded, she said in that case she’d help me. After we changed Sophie’s diapers, the nurse put her in one of the little cribs. I went back to Ivona’s room, but she wasn’t there. In the office I was told she was just having a checkup, she had said I could take the child. Those were her words, said the head nurse, looking indignant.

A midwife came along and told me a thousand and one things I needed to know, most of which I forgot immediately, and handed me a cardboard box with samples of baby care products and formula.

On the drive home I thought about Ivona. I wondered what feelings she had for Sophie. I was firmly convinced that we had decided on the best solution, but I was afraid Ivona would think I had stolen her baby. I would have liked to talk about it with her, I sort of wanted her blessing, but that was probably asking for too much.

Throughout the drive, Sophie had stayed absolutely silent. When I parked, I saw that she had fallen asleep. I lifted her out of the car in her baby seat and carried her into the house. Sonia must have heard the car pull in, because she opened the door, and after a quick look at the baby, led the way up the stairs to the nursery. Then she stopped, not knowing what to do. I put the baby seat on the ground and squatted down next to it. Look, I said, here’s our baby. Sonia came closer and asked whether everything was okay. Couldn’t be better, I said. Sonia sat down next to me cross-legged and started to cry. After a while, she asked, what do we do now? I don’t know. Wait for her to wake up. For the first time, Sonia looked at the baby closely. She stroked the back of its hand with one finger. Black hair, she said, I always wanted to have black hair when I was little. Like the American Indians. Like Nscho-tschi, I said. No, said Sonia, I wanted to be Winnetou, not the girl. She turned to me and asked what effect Sophie would have on our life together. I don’t know. Come on, she said, let’s have a cup of coffee first.

We were still sitting over our coffee when Sophie started to yell, and I raced upstairs, as though there wasn’t a second to lose. Bring her down, Sonia called after me, she’s sure to be hungry. When I came back, she was already preparing a bottle of formula. She tested the temperature with the back of her hand and settled down on the sofa. Give her to me, she said, and opened her blouse and bared her breast. Sophie moved her mouth here and there questingly, until she got Sonia’s nipple in it, and started sucking greedily. I looked at Sonia, but she was concentrated entirely on the baby. When it took its head off the breast for a moment, she gave the baby the bottle. Only now did she look at me. She must have caught my puzzled expression. She said she had been to the lactation consultant, and had learned that even adoptive mothers can breast-feed their children. Usually the milk wasn’t enough, but it was worth it just the same. And you can do it just like that? I prepared myself, said Sonia. She had massaged her breasts every day for months, without breathing a word of it to me. The notion had something alienating, even off-putting to me. Of course it was idiotic to feel that way, but for a moment I thought Sonia wanted to take my baby away. The next day as well she set Sophie on her breast, until I asked whether she hadn’t proved her point. Sonia said it was important for the lactation. I didn’t like it when she talked about her body as if it were a machine, but I’d already noticed women tended to do that. I never got used to the sight of Sonia breast-feeding. She seemed to get a kick out of it. When I said something, she would reply, you’re just jealous. She didn’t give up until Sophie was a year old.

For the time being Sophie stayed in our bedroom. We set the crib right next to our bed, afraid we might not hear her otherwise. When she cried at night, Sonia picked her up automatically and took her out. I rolled over and fell right back to sleep.

The following morning, I paid one more visit to Ivona in the hospital. She didn’t say a word, and I didn’t say much either. I didn’t mention Sophie, only asked her how she was feeling, and when she would be able to go home, and if she had everything she needed. When I offered to support her financially, she shook her head, and turned to the wall. Then Hartmeier came in with a little bunch of flowers, and I left.