Eight
Clara phones in the afternoon. Her voice on the telephone is hoarse and absent-minded, so familiar and close, as if Stella could touch her; it is a huge relief to hear Clara’s voice.
Stella, Clara says. Before we talk about anything else. Your new admirer – what sort of guy is he? Can you tell me what sort of guy he is?
She says it casually and distractedly. She says it as if she were chewing gum. As if Stella would even consider getting to know Mister Pfister. As if that were really still a possibility – one man among many, and yet the only one, just as in the past, wouldn’t it be possible? Clara asks this as if Jason didn’t exist. As if Jason didn’t yet exist or not any more.
Clara, Stella says firmly. He isn’t my admirer. In any case, he certainly isn’t the type who would court me in some wacky way or other. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Oddly enough Stella knows this. She knows that Mister Pfister’s interest in her is nothing like the interest of those who ten years ago dropped letters and cards into her mailbox, scratched symbols into the doorsill, and who, pushing past Clara in the hall, would sit down at the kitchen table, a bottle of schnapps in one hand and in the other a hand-rolled cigarette: Is Stella home, your roommate, you know, the pale, blonde; oh, she isn’t, well then I’ll just wait for her here, don’t let me bother you; I’ll just sit down here; she’s sure to come back soon, isn’t she. Ten years ago it sounded different when someone knocked unexpectedly on the door; so it seems. Perhaps Stella could say that Mister Pfister is the Finale. The final summing up of all those who had stood outside her door during the years she spent with Clara in the city.
Stella says, Mister Pfister is a damned ghost.
She’s sitting at the kitchen table, drinking water, having peeled herself a green apple and cut it into little boats as she does for Ava; she eats the apple deliberately. Piece by piece, like a form of defiance. Clara, a thousand kilometres away, is also sitting at her kitchen table. At the cluttered table in her water-mill under a small square window, her children in kindergarten, Clara’s husband at school, the table full of cups and brushes, paints and glasses, nuts, fruit and candlesticks. Clara’s beloved clutter, her hopeless chaos. Clara is drinking tea. But not eating an apple with it, smoking instead; she puffs audibly, and she is sketching; Stella can hear the sound of the pencil drawing on paper.
She says, Mister Pfister is a retribution. He is a punishment.
Punishment for what, Clara says.
I don’t know, Stella says darkly. I haven’t found out yet, but I think I will soon, I’ll know soon, I’ll figure it out. Do you remember the man on the tram?
The memory of the man on the tram has come back to her at just that moment. How long ago was it, fifteen years? A stranger, and she had got off the tram with him, walked quite matter-of-factly along the entire street all the way to hers and Clara’s house, wordlessly climbed up the stairs, and finally arrived in the luckily empty apartment and gone to bed without any further ado. In the bright middle of the day. In Clara’s bed.
Not her own, but Clara’s bed. As if the encounter weren’t real, hadn’t taken place or had happened to someone else; Stella as Stella wouldn’t have dared to do anything. Only as Clara had she been up to it – hold out your hand, close your eyes – and this way, but just one single time.
She says, the man with whom I went to bed, without knowing him. Who I never saw again after that. I don’t remember his name, could also be that he never even told me his name, nor I mine, probably. My name is Stella? I never said that. But I remember everything else in detail. I dropped all scruples.
Actually I’m reserved, shy, Stella thinks, surprised. Was I always like that? Does Jason want me to be reserved? But in any case it makes no difference as far as Mister Pfister’s interest in her is concerned. Mister Pfister’s interest is a completely different type, and maybe it’s precisely this that makes it so humiliating.
She says, I don’t know any more whether I locked the apartment door in case you’d come home. You didn’t come home. I didn’t have to tell you about it, but I did tell you. I asked you whether I should put fresh sheets on the bed; the man wasn’t clean, in a way you wouldn’t have liked. In contrast to me.
What did I say, Clara says; she sounds interested now.
You said, No need to.
Stella has to laugh about it; Clara laughs too. Knowingly, probably wistfully; it’s so pointless.
So you do remember now, Stella says.
Yes, Clara says, I remember. And why are you telling me?
Because Mister Pfister is the exact opposite, Stella says; she straightens up and takes a deep breath. I’m probably telling you because he is the exact opposite. Well, in any case he comes by here every day. Every day. When Jason is here, he doesn’t; since Jason left, he’s coming again. Rings the bell, puts something in the letter box, doesn’t even wait any more; he knows that I’m here, that I won’t come out; he knows it very well.
Stella gets up, goes to the sunroom, opens the screen door and stands in the doorway. May sunshine on the lawn; the trees cast hard, precise shadows. The lilac is withered, the flower-clusters are brown. A biting wind blows around the corner of the house, and the clouds near the horizon move swiftly.
Mid-thirties? Maybe he’s in his mid-thirties. Stella thinks it would be better not to talk any more about Mister Pfister, it’s not doing her any good, but she can’t back off. She says, Actually he looks pretty good. Youthful, open, you know what I mean, but it’s as if … damaged, you know. He looks quite normal, just like the rest of us, but something else comes through from underneath, exhaustion, neglect. Misery. Are you listening?
Yes, Clara says, surprised. I’m listening to you.
Stella listens for sounds. Then she says, He’s absolutely alone. He acts as if he had all the time in the world. Endless amounts of time. By now I’ve seen him scores of times walking away from our house down the street, and he doesn’t look like a man going to work. He wears unremarkable clothes, a dark jacket, light-coloured jeans; he never has a briefcase, never a book or a newspaper or a mobile. But always a packet of tobacco, always cigarette papers, always a lighter.
She thinks about it. Then she says, with hostility in her voice, He smokes constantly.
She says, I’m certain his fingers are yellow from the nicotine. Index finger and middle finger; Stella can feel that she’s talking herself into a fury that might seem suspicious to Clara; nevertheless she keeps talking. He lives on our street. Five or six houses away. Jason walked by it. I haven’t. Maybe I ought to do that sometime? I think he considers himself somewhat superior; you can tell from his handwriting. In any case, his spelling is correct and he listens to classical music; he wrote that to me. I have the feeling he got stuck. He got stuck; one day or other in his life something just didn’t keep going; he’s caught in a time warp and thinks he can pull me into it with him – that’s what it looks like.
Stella says, Do you follow me, and she listens to Clara’s thoughtful silence on the other end of the line, Clara’s thoughtful silence in her oh-so-distant life. But today, just as back then, Clara still prefers to sit in the kitchen and, Stella knows, she has her feet up on the chair and the telephone clamped between her head and shoulder because she has to hold the cigarette in her left hand and the pencil in her right.
Clara, I’m asking you whether you can follow me. What are you drawing?
I can follow you. I’m drawing spirals, of course, Clara says drily. I’m drawing a time warp.
And how should I visualise that, Stella says.
Well, like a black hole, Clara says. A spiral, a very delicate one; I drew a delicate spiral, more of a vortex. In the middle, a black hole. Undertow or a deep void. The deep void in which Mister Pfister got stuck, that’s what I’m drawing, it’s obvious.
Please cut it out and send it to me, Stella says. Write something comforting under it, maybe something botanical. As if the spiral were something beautiful, a plant.
I will, Clara says. Already doing so.
*
Back then – in the apartment in the city, in the three rooms of which Clara had the left one, Stella the right one, and the middle room had only a sofa, the telephone and always a bunch of flowers – Clara had cut a poem out of the newspaper and hung it up on the apartment door. And the poem had stayed there until they moved out. The last line, as far as Stella can remember, was, Let everyone in, whoever may come.
*
Do you remember the title of the poem you hung up on our door?
House Rules. The title of the poem was House Rules.
Stella says, that’s right. House Rules. Now I remember. If you were here, it would still apply. I would have to let everybody in, and I would have let Mister Pfister come in too. Would have invited him into the kitchen and put a cold beer on the table for him.
But Clara isn’t here, and without Clara the commandments of these House Rules are defunct. Mister Pfister seems to know this; perhaps it’s precisely because of this that he began to take note of Stella, Stella without Clara’s protection and apparently without Jason’s protection as well.
Do you think I should let him in? Open the door for him and speak to him?
No, Clara says slowly, and her voice sounds so earnest and profound that Stella suddenly becomes quiet. No, you should not let him in. Shouldn’t open the door for him, or talk to him either. You should look out for yourself. Stella. Will you do that?