“THEY’RE REALLY VERY NICE—nice, and sharp as tacks too,” Evelyn said as she entered the room, waving a Polaroid picture. “And we have the small toilet practically to ourselves.” She walked over to Adam, who with one hand on the window handle was pressing his forehead to the pane. Next to him was the magic cube, each of its sides all one color.
“What were you doing?”
“We were setting up quarters for Elfriede in the vegetable bin, works perfectly, exactly six degrees Celsius.”
“Are you sure she isn’t dead?”
“Gabriela pricked her leg with a toothpick, she responded but didn’t wake up. No need to worry. Besides—if she was dead she would have dried out and feel a lot lighter.”
“But it won’t be quiet enough for her in the vegetable bin.”
“Why’s that? In March or April we’ll take her out again. Have you seen the CD collection? Michaela is writing a paper on Haydn’s Creation.”
“I know it—quite well in fact.”
“Do we have it?”
“We had it, with Peter Schreier and Theo Adam.”
“About this time day after tomorrow,” Evelyn said, putting her arm around Adam’s shoulder, “you’ll have your first working day under your belt.”
“At the patch-and-cobble shop.”
“I’ve heard you say that alterations are the hardest thing to do.” She removed her arm from his shoulder. “Katja wants you to sew something for her, and Michaela is already thinking it over …”
The wind yanked at the last chestnut leaves. Piles of raked leaves were being strewn across the lawn, to be caught again in the rose bushes and hedge.
“What a spectacular view, and come spring—”
“Where’d you get that sweater?”
“It’s practically new.”
“Must have been knitted for somebody on a mountain rescue team.”
“Orange looks good on me. See, here I am.” Evelyn showed him the Polaroid. “You have a pretty wife, don’t you think? So far no one’s noticed a thing.” She passed her hand across her belly.
“It’s a little early, I’d say.”
“All the same, from the face or just general look, with some women you can tell right off. This is a present for you.”
“Thanks,” Adam said as he took the photo.
A magpie landed on a branch just outside the window.
“Don’t you like it here?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘like.’ ”
“What time is it?”
“Three after four.”
“Should I make some tea? Or coffee? When we have a little money I’ll buy us a real tea service, maybe something Chinese, like the one Marek gave Katja.” Evelyn gave Adam’s cheek a peck and sat down at the table. “I’m going to buy another couple of albums.”
“What for?”
“Who knows how long they’ll be such a bargain. Gabriela would lend us her camera. Sharp down to the last detail. And when our snookums comes—”
“Please don’t say ‘snookums,’ ‘snookums’ is ghastly.”
“When our baby comes I’ll start an album, one for each year.”
“Plenty of time for that. You need to worry more about school. Don’t you ever have any homework?”
“I work at the library.” Evelyn paged through the album with Adam’s models. “It was a really great idea to gather up all these photographs. I don’t know if I could have done it. I might have just run away. Why they went to the trouble of tearing them up—think of the effort it took. Flogging would be too good for the bastards! Makes my head swim just thinking about it. But you know, if they do actually manage to pull it off over there, we might consider, in a couple of years maybe, whether—”
“Go back? To the neighbors who stole my bike, robbed us of everything that they didn’t smash to smithereens.”
“Neighbors? Why the neighbors?”
“I saw it at the Kaufmanns’, leaning against the wall. It was my bike.”
“You mean they tore up the pictures? I don’t believe it.”
“Or watched and did nothing.”
“What about selling it?”
“The house? What am I going to get for it? The whole shebang isn’t worth anything. You’ve been watching too—one West to ten East, in two weeks it’ll be fifteen, and it’ll just keep going like that. If I hadn’t exchanged my money it’d soon be worth nothing.”
“You need to buy up stuff there and sell it again here. Jewelry and china, old coins and chests, anything antique.”
“Especially jewelry—my best wishes, but for that you’re going to have to look for another man.”
“It wouldn’t take all that much effort.”
“I’ll be putting in my time at the patch-and-cobble shop.”
Adam stared out at the garden. Evelyn looked through the photos.
“You could make one outfit after the other and I’d wear them. I’d be your model. That’d work, once people get a look at it.”
“It’s a matter of body type, the walk, the figure—”
“Wouldn’t matter, once you present it and if I come along. Or you can create a whole new collection just for me, for me with my big belly. You’ve never done something like that, have you?”
“Oh Evi, what’s all this?”
“Just picture it, early June, sunshine, blue sky, everything green, the mountains—our baby will be coming into the most beautiful world there ever was.”
“You think so?”
“Well, then tell me one that’s ever been better. Is there a time you’d want to go back to?”
“And Michael will help us make it to two hundred, and after that we can become immortal.”
“Not a bad idea. And nobody needs to be scared of war anymore. They can put all that money to a sensible use, not just here but around the world. Pretty soon there’ll be a thirty-hour workweek, and instead of a year and a half in the army, it’ll be a year of everybody doing something useful.”
“And the lion shall lie down with the lamb.”
“Why do you have to say that?” She tried to catch his reflection in the window, but he was standing too close. “Do you really believe it will all just go on like before? That would be absurd.”
Adam shrugged. The Polaroid shot had slid off the windowsill and now lay backside up in front of the radiator. Evelyn tore off a piece of cellophane tape and taped her picture to the window.
“So that you’ll look at me again once in a while. Do you want tea or coffee?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Tea or coffee?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Okay, tea,” Evelyn said.
Gabriela was in the kitchen peeling apples, dough still clinging to her fingernails. “For tomorrow,” she said, “Sunday breakfast.”
“Can I lick the bowl?” Evelyn asked. “I haven’t done that for ages.”
Gabriela shoved the blue plastic bowl across the table, reached to pull the utensil drawer open with her pinkie, and handed her a teaspoon.
“Thanks.” Evelyn started scraping the bottom of the bowl. Gabriela spread slices of apple across dough rolled out on a cookie sheet.
“Want some?” she asked, pushing a strand of hair from her forehead with the back of her hand and offering Evelyn two leftover slices of apple. “Would you like to help me peel?”
“There’s more?”
“Those go in the oven after the strudel.”
“Baked apples?”
“More like a casserole, with cinnamon and topped with vanilla sauce.”
“Aha,” Evelyn said. She set the well-scraped bowl in the sink and held the kettle under the tap.
When she had finished with the apples and the teapot, and glass cups stood ready on the tray, Gabriela took off her apron and offered Evelyn a cigarette. They sat at the table and smoked.
“You can’t imagine how much I’m enjoying all this,” said Evelyn. “As if I had never lived anywhere else.”
But after only a few puffs she stubbed her cigarette out again.
Adam wasn’t in the room. Evelyn set the table, with the sugar bowl and a saucer of apple slices in the middle, and poured the tea. It wasn’t until she heard Adam’s voice and laughter coming from the garden that she noticed one of the windows had been tipped open. There was a smell of fire.
The first thing she saw was her straw hat on his head. Adam was holding the opened album in front of him like a musical score. He pulled one of the large reassembled photographs of his women out and dropped it into the flames. He did this without haste. He turned the page, pulled the next one out, tossed it on the fire. One page fluttered up again, only half burned, curled up, and perished in the heat. What frightened Evelyn the most was the symmetry and calmness of his movements.
Two women were standing at the fence and gesturing in Adam’s direction. The man from next door was trying to climb over the hedge. He was holding a spade above his head like a rifle and shouting something. A male voice could be heard from the ground floor, then a window slammed shut.
Adam went on paging, pulling out photos, tossing them on the fire, and laughing. The bottle beside Adam’s feet was stoppered with a blue-checked rag.
From one moment to the next the fire collapsed. The flames crouched low to the earth. Adam clapped the book shut.
The man with the spade grabbed the bottle and took it somewhere out of her line of sight. He quickly returned and started beating the fire with his spade. Sparks scattered. Adam stepped back to make room for a second man. Both men were yelling as they raked wet leaves over the embers and stomped out the last few flames.
All at once Adam looked up at her over his shoulder, as if he had known she had been standing there all along. He doffed his hat, smiled, nodded to her, and set it back on his head. Evelyn felt a chill run up her back.
She closed the window and retreated into the room, until all she could see were the two women at the fence, and then not even them. She bumped against the table and just stood there. The magpie hopped along across the bare boughs and branches of the chestnut tree, all the while rocking back and forth as if at any moment it might lose its balance. In the windowpane was a reflection of the ceiling lamp. Beneath it Evelyn saw herself and the whole room around her, looking much larger than in reality, almost huge, and right in the middle she saw, small but in bright colors, her own image.