Seven Years - By Peter Stamm Page 0,7

a.m. when I got home. Everything was peaceful in the village, and the paths were deserted. I put on the coffee machine and took a shower, then I set off for nowhere in particular. I felt euphoric and needed exercise. I headed for the city center and thought about the future. Everything seemed possible, nothing was going to get in my way. I would find a position in a big architecture firm, in time I would set up on my own, and realize big projects all over the world. I walked through the city, staring at the windows of car dealerships, and already pictured myself at the wheel of some luxury model, going on tours of inspection from building site to site.

I went to the library and read a long newspaper article about a wave of refugees from East Germany, and somehow that went with my feeling of freedom and adventure. Everything seemed possible, even if the commentator urged caution and doubted the imminent collapse of the GDR. At noon I had a sandwich, then I moved on. I bummed around the city, bought myself a pair of pants and a couple of white T-shirts. When I returned to the student village in the evening, I was tired and satisfied, as if at the end of a long day at work.

I went to bed early, and even so I didn’t wake up until noon the following day. It was the telephone that woke me. It was Sonia. She asked me if I was doing anything. No, I said, just recovering from the strains and stresses of the final project. We agreed to meet for lunch near the library.

My relationship with Sonia wasn’t altogether straightforward. She had caught my eye on the very first day of school, but I had only got to meet her through Rüdiger. We got along well, and sometime we started doing our drafting together. She was more gifted than me, and had more application. But she was generous-spirited, and would never have trashed someone else’s work, the way Ferdy and I did. She wasn’t uncritical, but she was always fair, and whatever her critique might be, it always seemed to be positive. She was just as popular with the professors as with the students. She was able to admire people, and maybe that’s why she was admired herself by others. She and Rüdiger seemed to be a dream couple. They could have been married, the way they planned parties and asked us to their parents’ homes, as though they had already come into their own. At one of those parties, I met Alice, and we had been going out for several months now. Then Sonia and I broke up with our partners at about the same time, in the middle of exam pressures—maybe that brought us closer to one another. My breakup with Alice was rough, and Sonia, who was a friend of Alice’s, had spent nights hearing all about what a son of a bitch I was, and how badly I had treated her. Remarkably, none of that seemed to affect us in any way. Quite the contrary, it was at that time that we grew really close. First I thought it was Sonia’s intention to bring Alice and me back together, until one day she said Alice mustn’t hear about us meeting, because it would wreck their friendship. Rüdiger knowing didn’t matter, they had ended it amicably and with no bad feelings. When you saw the two of them, you might have been forgiven for thinking they were still an item. I asked Sonia what had caused their split. Oh, she said, and made a vaguely deprecating gesture.

Sometimes I entertained the idea of falling in love with Sonia myself, but however plausible it was as an idea, it didn’t seem at all appropriate. Perhaps we knew each other too well, and our friendship was too cemented. One time I tried to hint at something. Wouldn’t it be perfect, I said, if Alice started going out with Rüdiger, and the two of us … What an idea!, said Sonia laughing. And she was right. I couldn’t picture her as my girlfriend, not in bed, not even naked. She was certainly very beautiful, but there was something unapproachable about her. She was like one of those dolls whose clothes are sewn onto their bodies. Although, Sonia said, Rüdiger and Alice would make a good couple. So would we, though. It would finish Alice, said Sonia. Anyway,