XI. ORANGES

She was standing under the awning of the grocery store, a cigarette between her fingers, her lips slightly pointed, thin streams of smoke slipping from her mouth. She had a pack of Gauloises reds, which puzzled me, for all the smokers I knew obsessively stayed faithful to one brand. She didn’t seem picky, and if she was, then her choice clearly depended on her mood. I didn’t know if that made me sceptical or if it excited me or if it didn’t matter at all. In the end, cigarettes taste of smoke. I observed her delicate, somewhat too small thumbs brush the filter. A birthmark, as big as the head of a pin, spotted the back of her hand. She didn’t look over towards me, but had to have felt my proximity. A bus went past. She moved to toss her cigarette onto the pavement, paused and then took one last drag. The bus closed its doors.

How soft her face was, exhausted and soft, I’d only need to stretch out my hand and in a single movement I’d pull her to me. Behind her a mountain of oranges smouldered in the sun, plump, almost ruddy little balls that if just one were stolen would all spill out across the pavement. Here in the sun the severity that had echoed in her gait as she hurried out of the library had disappeared. Then she turned towards the oranges and observed them with an almost tender curiosity.

‘Excuse me, but you missed something.’ I was standing so close to her that had she felt me, she would have jerked. But she just slowly looked up and raised her eyebrows.

‘If I miss something, then it’s unimportant to me.’

I smiled, composedly boyish. Five seconds to allow it to work. Ten and it would be transparent.

‘We met over there,’ I said and pointed towards the cafeteria.

‘I didn’t meet anyone.’

‘It’s my fault you ran off so quickly.’

‘Your fault? Who do you think you are?’ She flicked her cigarette away and picked up an orange, weighed it in her hand, put it back on the slope of the mountain.

‘Who do you think I am?’ I took another step closer, felt the vibration in her skin, soft, like a trembling of water when the waves cannot yet be seen.

‘Do you have anything like a sense of shame? If you do, I’d like to ask you to use it. You’re standing on my foot.’

I liked her rebelliousness. It flared once again, fiercely, and I knew what such fierceness could feel like if it found the right channels.

‘Let’s go have a coffee,’ I suggested.

‘Absolutely not.’ She pulled out her pack of cigarettes again, she was clearly nervous, whereby we were on the right path.

‘Think about it.’

‘Thanks, I already have.’

I pulled a piece of paper out of my jacket pocket and wrote down Brevi’s number. ‘Once you’ve thought about it, give me a call, Tatiana. Any time.’

‘Why are you calling me Tatiana?’

‘I think that’s your name.’

‘Don’t think too much. You don’t know a thing about me.’ She stamped out her half-finished cigarette, turned away from me without taking the piece of paper and took off down the street, a barely noticeable swing to her hips. A bus stopped next to me, the doors opened. I grabbed an orange off the mountain and sprang inside, settling between a number of old people dressed in black and beating the air with plastic fans and tourists smelling on onions. Standing at the light, Tatiana briefly looked up as the bus rattled past.

Naturally, she wouldn’t forget me. Even those women who tried to avoid me sooner or later came running after me, they had no choice, and, had they been able to accept that, things would’ve gone better for them, you can’t feel guilty about the inevitable. A lot of the women I’ve met made their lives unnecessarily difficult, there was nothing they could do about it, or, rather, there was nothing they could do to organize themselves against it. I simply attracted women, the pretty and less pretty, those I sought out and those I would’ve preferred to have avoided. Hedda never understood that, or didn’t want to understand. She thought you could just brush them off, like dust off a coat.

‘At the very least, you could pull yourself together in front of Lasse,’ Hedda said to me later that evening after Lasse’s birthday party. I was at the kitchen counter, exhausted, the noise from the children’s party still in my head, the last guest, packed into their parent’s arms, had disappeared fifteen minutes before and I just wanted some peace and quiet, a glass of wine and to forget the boisterous voices.

‘Do you even know what kind of reputation you have in the elephant group?’ she asked.

‘Elephant group! I had no idea I was a member of an elephant group.’

‘Haven’t you noticed how everything goes silent when you come into the cloakroom?’

Of course I’d noticed. I’d stand in front of the twenty-two animal motifs, below them the coat hooks, the little jackets, the children’s hustle and bustle, make my way through the room and grab Lasse’s jacket off a chubby-faced male mouse. The mothers would watch every one of my movements; the fathers would roughly pack their children into their parkas.

‘Elephant group!’ I called out once more.

‘It’s a kindergarten, Anton. How else do you want them to name their groups? The post-revolutionary syndicate?’

‘I’d prefer it. I don’t constantly want to dumb myself down to the level of six-year-olds.’

‘But you should. Don’t you see how, in the end, everything comes back to Lasse? Robert’s parents no longer take Lasse with them and Caroline is uncomfortable with the way you constantly size her up.’

‘Uncomfortable? Maybe she’s just jealous of you.’

‘Jealous, of course.’ Hedda laughed drily. ‘And who else? Do you think I haven’t noticed how early you’ve been heading off for kindergarten recently?’

Hedda always delivered her accusations at exactly the right time, right when I was too exhausted to defend myself and would just shrug my shoulders, something she naturally took for an admission. At that moment I was completely worn out by the whole Robert-Maria-Esther-Hannes-Wiebke-noise. Maria had tripped, Hannes had begged for more cake, Esther had wanted to go home and didn’t trust us Stövers an inch. Naturally, Hedda again overlooked my presence in the children’s room. It was only in the late afternoon when I helped Wiebke’s mother out of her coat a tad too warmly that I became visible again, and now she scented a dirty story in its arms.

‘Hedda, nothing’s going on there, and even if there was, you don’t have to lecture me any more.’

‘I’m not lecturing you about anything. Just please, not in our flat too!’

‘This isn’t our flat any more, it’s only a substitute.’

‘But we’re living here.’

‘If you call this living.’

‘Don’t talk like that in front of Lasse.’

He was standing in the door, slamming two newly received Matchbox cars (which, he thought, were also speaking with him) into each other. Her property entirely, Hedda ran a hand through his hair and took the cars out of his hand. He protested, looked anxiously back and forth at the two of us. She knelt down, kissed him on the forehead and gently led him out of the kitchen. Her lightly swaying gait once Lasse was out of out of reach. She opened the refrigerator, grabbed the Sauvignon and poured herself a glass. Coming back to the counter, I winked at her, at that point I wanted a peaceable end, we were both spent. Over the last few months, Hedda had grown sharper, I didn’t hold it against her, those who are in love are unfair, but Hedda liked to hurt with gusto, as if she had no other plans in her life any longer.

‘Some day you’re going to be ridiculous too,’ she said.

‘Of course, Hedda, whatever you want.’

Hedda raised her glass as if she wanted to throw it at me. Then she put it to her lips, took a long drink and placed it back on the counter. She’d been drinking a lot recently, I’d told her so one morning when she spent too long in front of the mirror. ‘Hedda, don’t kid yourself, it’s just like you see it, and you know what’s going on.’

‘I haven’t wanted anything for a long time. But I have a son, and at some point I understood what responsibility is. Otherwise, the two of us would’ve been long gone by now.’

I let myself sink onto the barstool, played with the crumbs on the colourful paper plate and exchanged deep looks with the face of the clown who, even after all that cake, had not lost his wild grin.

‘You’ll soon be rid of me. When I’m in Rome,’ I said.

‘Why Rome?’

‘A research project.’

‘And? I’m just learning about it now?’

‘I thought I’d alluded to it.’

‘Alluded?’

‘I’ve got to go to Rome, Hedda, there’s nothing to discuss.’

‘You’ve got to?’ Hedda asked in her haughty way as if I usually spent my time doing nothing.

‘Rome,’ I repeated, ‘for quite a bit this time.’

‘Is this an exodus?’

I shook my head.

‘How long?’ Hedda asked.

‘Four weeks,’ I said. ‘To begin with.’

‘To begin with?’ She took the paper plate from beneath my fingers and let the lid of the trash can bang open. ‘Why not four years right off the bat?’

‘Is that what you’d prefer?’

‘There are a few things that I’d prefer, but that’s no longer an issue between us.’

Another drink from the glass, once again too deep.

‘At least think of sending Lasse a card,’ she said. ‘But don’t even think of showing up for the first day of school. For once I’d like to celebrate with my son in peace.’

She grew fierce again. She was no longer in control. The worst thing about someone you have a child with is that you have to deal with them your whole life, and I really didn’t like seeing Hedda growing helpless and absurd. But I was just too far away from her to give her support. I looked at her, her perfectly made-up mouth, her too-expensive dress billowing out around the low-cut neckline. I neither liked nor disliked the way the black fabric framed her bright skin. I was uncomfortably indifferent. There was nothing left between us. What was there supposed to be? The moment for me to be sad was long past. The beautiful moments too.