“I WAS SO TIRED,” Katja said, “but now I can’t fall asleep. I might as well get up.”
“Maybe the men would like to sleep.”
“And we’ll stand guard? Sounds like they’ve got quite a conversation going.”
“Could you catch any of it?”
“Nope. But Adam has a lovely voice. Damn, when he told me his real name, it was like the end of the world.”
“You thought he’d been jerking you around the whole time?”
“For a moment—yes.”
“I’d already moved in with him, and I didn’t know even then. Everything had just his last name on it.”
“Is it because it sticks out so far?” Katja tapped her larynx.
“He had to have been embarrassed as a kid, with that thin neck and then that huge Adam’s apple. Somehow he was always Adam.”
“It looks very masculine.”
“Hm, I thought so too.”
“But not anymore?”
“Oh, sure.”
“And Michael?”
“That’s totally different. Adam’s a child in comparison.”
“You think so?”
“Michael knows what he wants, keeps moving on. With him something’s always happening, he’s a searcher, a researcher. Been everywhere, speaks umpteen languages, there’s a wide-openness there, he breathes a lot freer—it’s not the same thing year after year.”
“He has beautiful hands.”
“Hm. But he’s got some crazy stuff inside his head too. He’s read everything by Lem. Lem’s the reason he started learning Polish once.”
“The science-fiction guy?”
“Yeah, with all the robots and machines. Michael thinks he’s the greatest writer there is.”
“His stuff is available to us too, isn’t it?” Katja propped herself up so that she could see Evelyn. “Is he a good lover?”
Evelyn nodded.
“Was there a spark right from the start?”
“It didn’t even occur to me. He was supposed to marry my girlfriend, his cousin.”
“Mona?”
“Oh, right, you know her.”
“The bad company.”
“Is that what Adam called her?”
“It just slipped out. Why did you take off without him?”
“Adam didn’t tell you about that, of course.” In propping herself up too, Evelyn touched the roof of the tent. “It’s damp,” she said and pushed back her hair.
“You have to be careful in the morning. You bump against it and there’s a sudden downpour,” Katja said.
“We’ve got one like it, or almost the same.”
“And so what was it?”
“I knew what was going on for a long time, or at least I had a pretty good idea. Mona said everybody knew except me.”
“Knew what?”
“That he was screwing them, his women.”
“His women?”
“His clients, his creations. He even gives them names. At first he said they were the names of the designs he created. But they’re more like the nicknames guys give easy girls. He photographs them in their new outfits. You only need to look at their eyes, so hot to trot it’s as if they’re only taking a quick break. The last one was a silk blouse, nothing underneath of course—you could’ve put out your eyes with those nipples.”
“Younger than you?”
“Ah, anything but! If you saw them on the street, nobody would ever think of turning around for a second look. Well past their prime.”
“Really?”
“But when he custom-tailors something for them, and can he ever, they look really sharp, and that turns him on.”
“Is it maybe a dressing-undressing thing?”
“Nah, it’s not that simple. I caught them at it, I saw them, even though I truly didn’t want to know.”
“Ouch, damn! That hurts.”
“I don’t think I’m all that vain, I don’t, but if you had seen that woman.” Evelyn’s hand touched the roof again. “Sorry. You wouldn’t believe, I swear you wouldn’t. Naked she was just an old biddy.”
“And Adam?”
“I still see him standing there, behind the cupboard, not a stitch on—”
“Adam without his fig leaf. Has he a got a thing for women like that?”
“No, that’s not it. They’re not all that way. But theoretically it could be any one of them, of his clients, just about any woman.”
“I don’t know whether this is of any interest to you or not, but he was always perfectly proper with me—I mean it, a real angel.”
“I believe it, I believe you.”
“I’d said something stupid about how I’d fulfill his every wish, or whatever—and I was even thinking of that. I just wanted him to take me along with him, all the rest didn’t matter. But there was never even a remark or a stupid move. I was beginning to think he was gay—”
“Adam?”
“Well, he’s a tailor. I know a gay hairdresser, and tailors and hairdressers, they’re not all that different.”
“A tailor is a whole different thing.”
“Doesn’t matter, what I wanted to say was that he was either gay or truly loved his wife.”
“Maybe he did once.”
“If a man would be willing to follow me in an old heap like that, even though I was with somebody else—that counts for something.”
“Yes, but what?”
Katja was lying on her back now, one hand under her head. “Do you really want to go back?”
“The awful part is I change my mind every couple of hours,” Evelyn said.
“Do you have anybody over there?”
“No, no one. Adam has an aunt—well, not a real aunt, but she came to visit now and then. Her husband fled at some point, didn’t want to live in the East anymore or wasn’t allowed to. He’s some sort of big shot now.”
“All our relatives are over there. We’re the only ones who haven’t done it.”
“Once you start thinking about it, and it suddenly becomes a real possibility, and you suddenly ask yourself what your life’s about, where it goes from here—”
“And from that point on, there’s no peace of mind. I even think a person has a duty to get out. We have no idea what life can mean.”
“Adam is so undemanding. Sits there in the garden of an evening, with a beer and a cigar, and the neighbor comes to the fence—he even gets along with his neighbors. That always fascinated me, he was so independent, you know—it showed character. The guys at university were so cautious and well behaved. Adam was like breathing free. He never minced his words, always spoke his mind. And yet, if he’s just going to sit there in his garden—”
“Have you never gone on trips together?”
“We were in Bulgaria once. He’s got money. Money to burn, at least to my mind. Adam even wanted children. But … I …” Evelyn rolled over to face the side of the tent.
“What’s wrong? Hey, Evi?”
Katja carefully began to stroke Evelyn’s hair and shoulders.
“What’s wrong? Are you crying?”
“I had them get rid of one.”
“I’ve got that behind me too. But he was such a son of a bitch, a real thug.”
“Adam doesn’t even know. And don’t you dare tell him, never ever. Promise?”
“Sure, I promise.”
“You had a reason at least. But I, I just thought I wanted to wait. And now I’m thinking it was a good thing I didn’t have it. What would I do with a baby in the West?”
“I didn’t want to be tied to that guy my whole life long—all the same it crosses my mind way too often.”
“Are they still out there?” Evelyn raised her head.
“Your men?”
“My men?”
“Well yes, that’s true, you have two, and I don’t have even one.”
Evelyn blew her nose. “You can have one, that’d simplify things somehow.”
“Then I’ll ask in the morning if one of them wants me.”
“And who are you going to ask first?”
“Adam, of course.”
“But he doesn’t want to go to the West!”
“All the same, if it doesn’t matter to you?”
“It’s a mob of some sort.”
“Can you make anything out?”
“The West German national anthem?”
“No, it’s ours, it’s our anthem!”