Seven Years - By Peter Stamm Page 0,42

beside her, naked, she turned away, and talked about something or other, until I lost the desire to sleep with her. When I asked her what the matter was, she said again that she had to get used to me. Nonsense, I said. You seem to be so far away, she said. I asked what she meant by that, but she just said, hold me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He’s so awful, said Sonia in the taxi, the way he kept going on and on to me. What did he talk about?, I asked. Cow udders and folkloric costume had been Jakob’s subjects of choice. He had said in all seriousness that a dirndl was the ideal outfit for the female body. And stared at her the whole night as though he had X-ray vision. It wouldn’t be a bad life, you know, I said, married to a vet in the Bayerischer Wald. Sonia made a face. You would give him eight