Nothing but Ghosts. Judith Hermann
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I peeled my tangerine and watched them. A sweet fruity aroma rose from the tangerine; it rattled me. Raoul sitting in the house, reading Musil. He was working, he was awake. Things could have been different, but this way was all right too. I ate the tangerine section by section; the school bell rang and even the slow kids started running, all in a jumble, bumping into each other or grabbing for the hand of a friend; none of them looked at me. I made the swing go a little faster. The school bell rang again, then stopped suddenly as though it had been cut off.
The front door opened and Raoul called my name; I turned towards him. Perhaps I still wished for something to happen, one last time, but not really. He said, ‘We have to leave now,’ and I got up and went back into the house, set my coffee mug on the kitchen table, the tangerine peel next to it, and put on my coat. We got into his car and drove off. Traffic was already heavy on the main roads, and at the traffic lights people were waiting to cross the street on their way to work, the office, the factory; I felt relieved, as though a burden had been lifted from my heart. I think we didn’t say much; he seemed to be in a bad mood; he said he did not know his lines, that on the whole the rehearsals were awful; he sounded as if he were talking to himself.
At the railway station he double-parked the car, saying, ‘I can’t go to the train with you; I’m going to be late anyway.’ And I said quite candidly, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ We embraced in the car, quickly, cursorily; he kissed my cheek, then I got out. I walked into the station without turning round; I could hear him rev the engine and drive off. The train for Berlin was scheduled to leave at 9.04. I got on and took a seat next to a window, opened my book, and read till we got to the Berlin-Zoo Station. Afterwards I couldn’t remember a single line I had read.
Later I thought I should have listened to him more carefully. I don’t know if that would have changed anything, if I would have made a different decision. Nevertheless, I should have listened to him properly. He had said, ‘Are you the one I think you are?’ and I had understood something totally different from what he had intended. He had recognized me in spite of that. What he had actually said was, ‘Are you a traitor for whom nothing counts, and who can’t be expected to keep a promise?’ He had asked, ‘Would you betray Ruth for me?’ I had said, ‘Yes.’
I see Ruth sitting across from me, naked, her legs drawn up to her chest, her face, a towel wrapped around her wet hair; she says, ‘Promise me.’ She shouldn’t have said it. I never told Ruth, ‘Ruth, I had to know; it had nothing to do with you.’ And I never told her about the kids going to school, their faces, the smell of the tangerine, about that morning. When we were still living together, we had a habit of writing little notes to each other whenever one of us went anywhere without the other. Whenever I came home after having been out without Ruth, there would be a note on the kitchen table if she was already asleep, a short, tender message, sometimes more, sometimes just a few words. Ruth never forgot. I happened to find one of these notes today, a bookmark in a book, the paper a little crumpled, folded up, Ruth’s large, flowing handwriting: ‘My dear, Are you well? It’s been a long day for me and I’m going to bed now – 10 o’clock – my feet are rubbed raw from the damned new shoes. I went shopping, fruit, milk and wine, that was all the money there was. A. phoned and asked where you were and I said, She’s out looking under every paving stone for a message. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that? Good night, till tomorrow. Kisses, R.’
[Translator’s note: the excerpt quoted is from Molièere, The Misanthrope and Other Plays: A New Selection, translated by John Wood and David Coward, Penguin Books, 2000, p. 114.]
The package arrives early in the morning. There’s postage due because Jonas didn’t put on enough stamps. It is addressed to both of them, to Jonina and Magnus. Magnus is sleeping. Jonina sits down on the white sofa by the window. It is still dark and she has to turn on the light. She doesn’t hesitate, not even for a moment. Maybe she acts as if she were hesitating, but she isn’t. She wouldn’t think of waiting for Magnus to get up. The package is rectangular and flat; it feels a bit heavy, there’s a ‘handle with care’ sticker on it, and the wrapping paper is sloppily secured with sticky tape. Amazing that it arrived in one piece. She rips open the paper and pulls out a framed photograph, very painstakingly framed, the photo surrounded by a green mount, and an enclosed card, nothing else: ‘The photo comes a little late, but we’ve been thinking of you constantly. The beautiful blue hour, eleven o’clock in the morning of December 3rd, much too short. Regards – see you soon. Jonas.’ The phrase a little late might be considered amusing; it was exactly a year ago; that’s not a little. It might be a little for Jonas. She doesn’t want to think about the phrase see you soon.
In the photo, the moon is suspended above the road that leads to the Old Althing. The sky is a glowing, diaphanous blue, everything else is white; the road is white, the mountains are white, blanketed in deep snow. Magnus, Irene and Jonina are walking towards the camera. Magnus in the middle; he is blurry, his face unrecognizable. Jonina is on his right, Irene on his left. The distance between Jonina and Magnus is greater than the distance between Irene and Magnus. Irene is laughing; she walks straight ahead. Jonina seems to want to walk out of picture towards the right but is looking directly into the camera. Jonas was standing in the middle of the road, his camera mounted on a tripod. Afraid that the light would change, he had yelled at them – ‘Now!’ Jonina remembers how he looked just then, his woollen hat pulled down over his eyes, the sheepskin jacket open, swearing at the cold, delighted and enthusiastic.
It’s not that Jonina has forgotten that beautiful, much-too-short, blue hour. She hasn’t forgotten it. She remembers it exactly, and if she wants to she can recall everything else too, each detail of those seven days. The Soviet star on Jonas’s belt buckle, the ring on Irene’s left hand – a moonstone in an oval setting – blueberry-flavoured Absolut vodka in a large frosty bottle. Coffee with sugar but no milk for Magnus in a snack bar on the Ring Road going north, the weather forecast on the third day they were together. Sunna’s childish drawing of two pugnacious snowmen and the colour of Jonas’s eyes – green, dark green with a thin yellow band encircling the iris. She hasn’t forgotten any of it. She just hasn’t been thinking about it any more. Thinking about it only induces a feeling of heaviness and weariness. And now she holds the photo in her hand early in the morning – nine o’clock, it’s not even light outside – and again she remembers everything. She can’t decide whether she wants to remember or not, but she can’t help it – everything comes back to her.
She recalls how she and Magnus were driving down the Barugata in their car; Irene and Jonas stayed behind, waving to them from the side of the road. ‘That’s that,’ Magnus had said, and Jonina wanted to say, ‘Stop, let me out. Let me out,’ but didn’t say anything. And they turned a corner and Irene and Jonas were gone, had vanished, once and for all. That was that.
She could hang the photo on the wall above the table, on the shiny grey unblemished wall and surprise Magnus with it when he got up. She could hammer a nail into the unmarred surface of the freshly painted wall and hang the photo on it. It is a beautiful photo. They’ll have to hang pictures in the apartment anyway. They’ll have to acquire things; there’s got to be some disorder and some dirt in this unlived-in cleanliness, otherwise she won’t be able to cope. But not this photo. Anything, but not this photo, not Jonas’s beautiful glimpse of this one, much-too-brief, blue hour.
Irene and Jonas were coming to Iceland for the very first time in late November. Magnus had known for a month they would be coming, but he doesn’t tell Jonina till fairly late: ‘I’m expecting visitors from Berlin tomorrow.’ Jonina doesn’t ask him why he waited so long to tell her. It will be disconcerting for him; visitors from the past are always disconcerting. On the other hand, she is rather curious. She has known Magnus for two and a half years. She had never seen him before that, and for Iceland that’s unusual, but that’s the way it was. They didn’t attend the same school; they were not distantly