noticed that there was a swing hanging between some branches. He sat her on it and then disappeared somewhere. But the swing began to swing on its own accord, the music was still there, a kind of music she’d never heard before. She looked about, trying to discover where it came from, but couldn’t see a single musician. It was then that she realised that the music was coming straight out of the ground, that the stones were humming and the trees singing like some gigantic violin. In the clearing stood some naked people, among whom she also recognised us, and on the shoulders, the heads and the extended fingers of everyone those magnificent brightly coloured birds were perching. She was naked too, but she didn’t feel ashamed because she was still quite small. At that moment one of the coloured birds approached and sat on her hand. Its plumage had colours she’d never seen before. She was also aware of a delicious perfume she’d never smelled before, and it was then she understood that she was in paradise.
‘And what seemed to you most beautiful in that dream?’ my wife wanted to know.
Our daughter thought for a moment and then said: ‘That I was a little girl again.’
Daria attributed my loneliness and reluctance to attach myself to anyone to the stars. I am a saturnian person, my Saturn is in fact retrograde and capricornian, there was a smell of bones coming straight out of it. Love alone could liberate me from my loneliness: real love, embracing my whole being. That was the kind of love she was offering me, to save me. She offered me her proximity, such sharing that I became alarmed. Man is afraid to attain what he longs for, just as subconsciously he longs for what he is afraid of. We are afraid we might lose the person we love. To avoid losing that person we drive him or her away.
She wanted us, at least once in a while, to be together for a few days. At least some movement, some change to that immobility, she lamented. But I resisted so I shouldn’t have to invent more lies at home – surely we’d been together recently.
That I had the nerve to hold that against her! That single night? And you’re with her – she meant my wife – all the time! You’re acting the model husband! The hypocrisy of it! What kind of life are you leading? It’s all so miserable and vile!
I couldn’t think of an excuse. I tried to placate her with presents.
I don’t want you to buy me. I want you to love me!
I do love her, but I can’t go on like this. I’d like to find some conciliation – with her and with all those I am fond of, but I can’t muster the courage to reveal the truth to all of them. And she keeps urging me more and more often: When will you finally make up your mind? Have you no pity at all?
For whom?
For yourself. For me! How can you treat me like this? She cries.
Her husband has gone away. She has remained behind for a week, entirely on her own. One day she’ll be entirely alone with only her stones, they are more merciful than me. What kind of life had I made for her? she cries. Well then, so lie for my sake if you can’t speak the truth for my sake!
At home I say that I’m off to visit a friend whose daughter is getting married.
A good idea, my wife says, you’re always at home on your own, at least it’ll make a change for you. And she begins to wonder what present I should take along for my friend’s daughter. And she’ll bake me a guggelhupf cake for the journey.
But there’ll be plenty of food at the wedding! And we kiss goodbye. It’s shameful. How can I treat her like this!
We arrived at a chalet in the foothills. In the small wood-panelled hall tropical plants are growing and lianas climbing, even though spring has not yet come outside, a black terrier is lying lazily and devotedly by the feet of the woman guarding the door. I stiffen as I show her my identity card, which proves me guilty, but the receptionist cares little about other people’s infidelities, she has her own worries and my lover inspires confidence in her. Indeed the two women chat together as if they’d known one another for years, while the terrier on the floor regards me without interest as I wait in this strange hall like a faithful unfaithful dog.
Our room looks out on the lake. For a while we gaze at the deserted water, then we embrace. She wants to know if I like it here, if I’m glad to be here with her. I assure her that I do and that I am. At our moments of ecstasy we whisper to each other, as we have done for years, that we love one another.
Before supper we set out for a walk. We stroll round the lake and continue through the woods until we find ourselves on a wide piece of flat ground in the midst of which, as in a dream, stands an extensive wooden construction: a pattern of roofs, turrets, silos and metal hoppers. Probably a stone-crushing mill or a building for the shredding of old banknotes, securities and secret documents, all brought here by the lorries which are now parked in the deserted yard. We don’t see a living soul anywhere, only a few rooks cawing from beneath a tall wooden tower. For a while we stand waiting, in case a face appears in one of the windows, or somebody yells at us to get out of here. She is also anxiously looking about in case some vision appears from somewhere in the darkness, but nothing happens, except for the wind making a half-open door creak now and then. We step through that door. In the vestibule, where everything is covered with a layer of grey dust, towers the metallic bulk of some machinery. The huge motionless wheels glisten greasily in the twilight. We climb some rusting iron stairs, up to a boarded platform above the machinery. Through a narrow window we can see the woods and beyond them part of the lake, now darkening in the fading light. Across the sky float drink-sodden faces with reddish noses. Through the cracks in the walls or in the roof rustles the wind. Do you still love me at all? she asks. She picks up some old sacks and rags. She takes off her coat and her soft leather skirt and lays them down on the blackened boards, we make love on the platform of the abandoned mill.
The dusk is obliterating her features. I see her now as I saw her when we first met. I feel as though I were returning to those days, or rather as though I was outside any definite time. With her I am outside anything, and that emptiness bewitches me. I am tossed by the waves, I rise up in my net so high that I can see absolutely nothing from it.
The floorboards are creaking, the wind is rattling some loose corrugated iron, grains of dust are swirling in the air, but these sounds merely heighten the silence in here, the absolute isolation. I say tender words to her and she replies to me. Then we just lie by each other in the darkness. I am conscious of the familiar scent of her body and the smell of stone and timber, and suddenly it hits me that I know this enclosure, that I’ve been here before. I feel the icy touch of fear, even though I have probably only been reminded of the wooden huts in the fortress ghetto of my childhood, or perhaps of the wooden floors of the barracks to which I was forcibly confined, and where death reigned. At just this moment I have to think of death!
My uneasiness won’t go, we make love again, I clutch her to myself in the darkness of this seclusion, in my own ecstasy, I press myself to her, grateful that she is here with me, that she has climbed up with me to this spot which is more suggestive of some elevated hell, where the bones of sinners are ground to dust, than a place intended for love-making.
Out of the blue she asks: Do you also make love with your wife?
Her question snatches me back into the present.
I don’t want you to sleep with another woman, I want you to be with me alone! She draws away from me. Do you hear what I’m saying?
I hear her. What am I to say? How can I chase away her question, how can I chase her away, she who’s lying next to me, when she wants nothing but that I accept the consequences of the fact that I am embracing her, that I’ve been embracing her for quite a few years now, that I call her to me and that I hasten to her whenever she calls. The meanness of my situation and my behaviour overwhelms me and stifles all the words within me.
She pushes me away, gets up hurriedly, dusts down her skirt and dresses. For a while she rummages in her bag, then strikes a match and runs down the creaking stairs. Tell me, who do you think you are? she asks when we are back in our room. You think I have to take everything from you, you think I couldn’t find another man like you? Maybe she really couldn’t find another man who’d treat her the way I do, she adds, who’d treat her like a slut from the streets.
I never ask her how she lives with her husband, but now I say that, after all, she isn’t living on her own either.
What did I mean by that? The fact that she had a husband suited me very well. If she were on her own I’d have dumped her long ago, I’d be afraid for my splendid marriage.
A few weeks ago we were at the cinema together. In the interval she noticed that in the row in front of us sat her husband with a strange woman. From that moment onwards I could see that she couldn’t keep her eyes on the screen. When the film was over she kissed me hurriedly, I mustn’t mind her leaving me now, and she ran off after
