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