Half an hour later, Joachim and Helena are in a cab, inching through the traffic of Charlottenburg toward Halensee. He called the cab, offered to take her out to a romantic dinner on the water, and carried her down the stairs, trying not to feel that she’d gotten lighter since he carried her up them. He feels miserable and more than a little afraid, but he can’t let her see.
“How’d your work go today, darling?”
She mumbles something he can’t understand, but at least she’s stopped crying. It was horrible, seeing her like that. Not the way that seeing someone you love in pain is horrible, but the way you feel if you see some miserable stranger in the street: guilty, sorry, moved to help but not knowing how, more than anything hoping someone else will take responsibility so you don’t have to. But he was at home and Helena was his wife again, and there was no one else.
He strokes the copper silk of her hair from the crown to the tips, gently, like she’s an animal that might bite. Was he always this afraid of her?
He tells her about his day in a light tone of voice that sounds false even to him, stretches insignificant events into anecdotes to fill the ride across town. He feels ashamed in front of the cabbie, as if the silent man weaving through the West Berlin traffic knew all about them, knew the reason for her mournful silence, and despised his desperately cheerful prattle. When they finally get out, he tips the cabbie to excess, buying his thanks if not his approval.
At least she pulls herself together when they get there. She’s still quiet as he takes her arm and helps her through the half-empty restaurant to the terrace overlooking the dark water, but her silence is no longer ominous. The danger—whatever it was—has passed.
“How nice,” she says, sounding almost surprised to find herself there.
“Let’s try to get something close to the water.” They were here together a few years ago—he can’t be sure quite how many—not to eat but just to explore the lake. It was something of a failed excursion, because the only swimming area was already chock-full of nudists and the path around the lake was chopped up by fences surrounding private villas. Toward sundown, they’d seen the lights of this restaurant twinkling across the lake, and he hoped to rescue the day by bringing her here. But when they finally reached the other side, they saw that it was closed for a private party. She teased him for the rest of the evening about his failed attempt to take her on a date. It was good when they could laugh about things. They could just as easily have fought. They always could have.
It’s the kind of memory he hasn’t thought about in years. Not that he’d forgotten, just that the thought never came up. There were so many things he could’ve remembered about her, it was better not to start in the first place. A wave of alarm passes over him, and he pauses a moment to regain his balance, as if the wooden boards of the terrace were moving under his feet.
“Well, you finally got us a table,” she says when he pulls out her chair.
He laughs, but there’s something uncanny about her now, the candlelight playing on her unreadable face. Does she really remember that evening the way he does, or did she simply pluck the thought out of his head? The light in her eyes is alarming; it’s unclear whether they’re reflecting the candlelight flickering between her and him, or being reflected by it.
“Do you remember?” she asks. “It was closed and we ended up eating currywurst at a bus stop on the way back.”
She touches his hand and he relaxes. So this is real, after all.