I knew by then that he hadn’t been sickly from childhood. As soon as he’d finished school he’d let himself be lured by favourable terms into a chemical plant, where they offered him a flat within a year and special danger pay straight away. That danger pay was not just a lure. He’d hardly been at the plant five months when an incident occurred, which is the term used in the jerkish press for an event which costs the health and even the lives of an appreciable number of workers. There’d been an escape of poison gas. Two women died instantly and the young man was discharged from hospital after six months and pensioned off. His liver and kidneys were damaged, and he’d better forget about women altogether. Nevertheless he’d taken a liking to a tram driver called Dana, admittedly the divorced mother of two girls and his senior by ten years, or maybe it was just because of that that he thought he had a chance. Apparently he’d been courting her for a year and he’d been cleaning the city’s streets for that period in order to earn a little extra money so he wouldn’t come to her as a pauper.
The rain thirty years ago had been an obstacle to the foreman’s intentions until he remembered that a little beyond the airfield there was a rusty old Messerschmitt which had been wrecked during the war. Its innards had of course been torn out, but if you pulled the canopy shut and put a rug on the floor it was almost a hotel. First time they did it the dark-haired girl had hardly taken her skirt off when she let out a terrible shriek because a snake was creeping out from one of the holes in the instrument panel. There was a whole nest of vipers there, and the foreman had to get rid of them all and stuff up the holes with tow before he could get to the most delicious hole of all. ‘Let me tell you,’ the foreman concluded, ‘one thing I’ve learnt in my life more than once: a bed isn’t everything!’
It was nearly a quarter past ten and it was still raining outside. Listening to other people’s tales, whatever they are, I sometimes feel like a debtor, like an eternal dinner guest who never offers any invitations himself, but usually I cannot bring myself to demand the attention of others.
A few years ago my wife’s sister was moving to another flat. She asked if I would help her. The woman who’d let her have her one-room flat was quite mad, she’d piled it high with junk she’d picked up at rubbish dumps, but she was anxious about it and wouldn’t let the removal men touch it, and so she didn’t know how to move her things out.
How many things can you get into a room? I thought my sister-in-law was exaggerating. I took the word rubbish heap figuratively. I promised to move the lady’s things bit by bit in my car. Even outside her door I felt a strange odour wafting from inside. The instant she let me in the smell of rot and mildew hit me violently. The woman, however, was neat and clean, the hand she held out to me was scoured white. She showed me in. I walked a narrow path between crates, boxes and masses of parcels until I reached the window and asked if I might open it. A wave of fresh air full of smoke and exhaust fumes rushed inside, but the atmosphere of decay which persisted here was not to be drowned. Then I helped the woman finish her packing. We tied up children’s copy books and stacked them in a crate together with burnt-out lightbulbs and an unmatching pair of sandals without straps, bits of worn-out cork tiles and armless dolls, old envelopes, the shells of radios, rusty saucepans, a broken chandelier and a glass marble. The woman had clearly spent her life collecting and storing other people’s rubbish, which possibly gave her a sense of hope or security. For five whole days I drove to and fro. She thanked me and promised me eternal salvation for my trouble, a salvation I’d soon experience because the time was nigh when mankind would assemble for judgement in the place called Armageddon. I felt like asking her why in that case she was keeping all those things, but there was no sense in putting this question to a crazy woman when I might just as well ask anyone else or myself.
As I was carrying downstairs what must have been the fiftieth package at least I couldn’t resist the temptation to untie the string and to tip the contents into the nearest dustbin. I covered it up with some empty paper cups and kitchen waste from the bin next to it, and drove off with the rest of the junk to my sister-in-law’s flat.
About an hour later I returned for the next load, but I had to wait a long time for her to let me in. She was standing in the door as if hesitating whether to admit me. ‘You, you…’ she said to me. ‘And I trusted you!’
‘What a hope,’ the foreman spoke up, ‘Let me tell you, I’ve learned this more than once in my life: you won’t get any thanks from a woman!’
Wisps of fog were drifting outside, rising from the pavements and the sodden lawns. In the telephone box outside the tavern a girl was smiling prettily down the instrument at someone.
I too used to smile. I thought that I was really seeing the woman I loved and that I could touch with my eyes what she was seeing just then. She told me: outside my window a raven is freezing on a branch, he’s telling me something but I can’t hear him. I was freezing as much as that raven. I had to breathe on the glass to see out. On a rime-covered tree there actually sat a raven. What could he say? Nevermore, nevermore. I thought I understood him: we’d never find anyone to love so much again.
The girl stepped out of the phone box. My companions were still lazily hanging about the tavern door. I lifted the receiver. I hesitated for a moment, but I so needed to hear a familiar voice that I dialled. Lida said she was pleased to hear me and wanted to know where I was calling from, what I had just been doing and if I wasn’t cold. She was looking forward to my coming home. I would have liked to say something nice to her, to my wife, to address her tenderly as I used to: Lida darling, or at least Lida dear, at least ask her what she was doing, what she was thinking about, but I was unable to say anything other than that I’d come straight home after visiting Dad at the hospital.
I remained in the box for a moment. My garish vest was brilliantly reflected in the glass. I fished in my pocket for a coin. That other number so
I stopped fishing for that coin. I watched my companions marching slowly uphill to the little park where we’d left our tools in a small shed. Mrs Venus caught sight of me and waved.
Some other time, my love, but I’m not silent because I’m not thinking of you, it’s just that I have nothing new to say to you.
And you think that this silence, the way we live now, is good?
I don’t know if it’s good, but I don’t know anything better.
You don’t know anything better? Just look at yourself, the stuff you’re wearing, this masquerade. Have you gone in for repentance or what?
No, it’s perfectly honest work. I can think while I’m doing it.
You can think, can you? How nice for you. And what about me? Are you at all interested in what’s happening to me? How I’ve been feeling? After all those years I haven’t even merited a single phone call from you.
We had a lot of phone calls with each other. At least a thousand!
Don’t count them up. I don’t want to hear numbers. Anyway, that was before. Afterwards you didn’t ring even once.
We’d said everything to each other. We were exhausted from those conversations. What else was there to say to each other?
You’re asking me? You might at least tell me whether the whole thing meant anything to you.
You know very well what you meant to me.
I don’t know anything after the way you behaved. I always thought…
What did you think?
Never mind. I didn’t want to believe it. After all you’d told me when we were together, how could I believe that you’d chase me away like some…
Please don’t cry!
Tell me at least, did you love me at all?
You know I did.
I don’t know anything. How am I to know?
An old woman was approaching the box. Perhaps she didn’t even want to telephone, but to be on the safe side I opened the directory and pretended to look for a number.
If you’d loved me you wouldn’t have behaved the way you did!
I was crazy about you.
Don’t be evasive. I asked you if you’d ever loved me. If you’re capable of loving anyone.
Don’t torture me!
Me torturing you? Me you? Tell me, my love, what have you done to me? At least explain to me what was good about it.
I just couldn’t carry on like that. Forgive me, but I couldn’t go on living like that!
