Forever Yours (5 page)

Judith was surprised that this time she was the one with no appetite. She was astonished that he spent minutes buried deep in the menu. And she started to become unsettled by the fact that his diffident gestures betrayed nothing, absolutely nothing of the tempestuous emotions with which he'd kept her spellbound for months.

“Has anything changed?” she asked after an hour of good-humoured but trivial chit-chat. (Fortunately she didn't let the words “Don't you love me anymore?” cross her lips.) “Yes,” he said. “My attitude has changed.” He used the same tone in which earlier he'd said, “For pudding I can recommend the strawberry and chestnut tart.”

Hannes: “I want to be careful. I want you to feel comfortable with me. I don't want to pressurise you with my love anymore.” Judith: “That's good to hear, and I really appreciate it, Darling.” She reached for his hand; he withdrew it. Hannes: “But?” Judith: “There are no buts.” Hannes: “I can sense there
is
a but.” Judith: “But that doesn't mean you have to stop showing me that I mean something to you.” Hannes: “I can only be one way or the other.” Judith: “That might be honest, but honestly, it's not a good thing. How did it work in your previous relationships?” Hannes: “I don't want to talk about them. What's gone is gone.” The sun had gone down now too. “Shall we go?” he asked. “Good idea,” she said.

She wanted to kiss him on the way home; to be honest she could hardly wait. But the pace at which he walked was so regular and purposeful that she didn't want to stop him and upset his rhythm. When she opened the front door he just stood there and said, “O.K.” Judith: “What do you mean ‘O.K.'?” Hannes: “I'm going to say goodnight.” Judith: “What?” Hannes: “I'm not coming up with you.” Judith: “Why not?” She found it almost impossible to disguise her disappointment. Hannes: “I think it's better this way.” Nothing was ever better when people used that ghastly cliché, she thought.

Judith: “But what if I really want to sleep with you?” Hannes: “Well, I'm delighted.” Judith: “Doesn't the prospect excite you?” Hannes: “Yes, of course.” Judith: “But?” Hannes: “There are no buts.” Judith: “I can sense there is a but.” Hannes: “But excitement isn't everything.” Judith: “O.K. Hannes, let me try again. I would love you to spend the night with me. I would really, really love you to!” Hannes: “That's wonderful.” Judith: “But?” Hannes: “But I don't just want to spend the odd night with you.” Judith: “What, then?” Hannes: “My whole life!” The pause that followed was a necessary one.

Judith: “Oh, good evening Herr Bergtaler, I almost didn't recognise you today.” Hannes said nothing. Judith: “And, by the way, it'll be difficult to spend your whole life with a woman you haven't spent the odd night with. Nights first, then your whole life. Which is why I'll ask you one last time. Are you coming?” He said nothing. Slowly she stepped inside and made to close the door. He stayed where he was. “Goodnight!” she shot at him pointedly through the crack in the door. “My goodnight to you is in your bag,” he called after her.

*

For a restless hour in bed she managed to ignore the foreign object in her bag – from a napkin with the inscription “Sleep well” or “I love you” to the twin brother of the hideous amber ring, she thought Hannes was capable of anything. At around three o'clock she decided to take a look so she could finally get to sleep. But, of course, the goodnight from Hannes kept her awake for several hours more. It was an envelope containing airline tickets: Venice, three days, two people, three nights, her name, his name. Departure: Friday. The day after tomorrow. Then there was a pencil-drawn heart – far too large – and his unmistakeable handwriting: “Surprise!”

Venice was not to blame. It did all it could to live up to his idea of romance. But with its brightly coloured gondolas and green canals it was always fighting a losing battle against Hannes Bergtaler. Before they had even set off, she could tell from the feverish explorer's glint in his eyes, his kissing of the guidebook and his expedition suitcase that it was a mistake to have accepted the present. She consoled herself with the thought that this would certainly be the last error of its kind.

They stayed in a small four-star suite with a balcony by one of the 426 bridges. Hannes knew every one, so Judith didn't have to bother remembering them. You might think he'd grown up in Venice. But no, he assured her that this was the first time he'd been.

At any rate he knew Venice almost better than he knew himself. As it soon transpired, familiarising her with Venice was the deeper purpose of the trip, the deeper
and
shallower purpose – the entire purpose, the only one. At first Judith made no attempt to fight it. In his drive to lay the world (this time in the form of Venice) at her feet, Hannes was obstinate and relentless.

They put off sex from one night to the next because of (her) exhaustion and because sex couldn't make (his) Venice any more picturesque. The daily schedule involved an intricate geographically based system of museum visits and tours of the sights and non-sights, planned coffee breaks – which Hannes used for short private architecture seminars – and excursions to the outskirts, “the secret, hidden, but real and genuine Venice”. He had booked tables in well-known restaurants for the three evenings and arranged tickets for the best violin concerts and theatre performances. Their cloakroom hangers had probably been reserved too. Now Judith was able to picture what he'd spent the previous fortnight doing.

Once more she noticed that every one of her feelings about Hannes was tied to obligations. This time she owed him her thanks and appreciation. What an elite tour guide he was! The trump cards he had up his sleeve incessantly to demonstrate his love! But if you were forced to be impressed at hourly intervals for three whole days, at some point you couldn't take it anymore. After two days Judith had had enough of the chronically overblown Bergtaler-Venice and she feigned a severe migraine attack.

*

On the third and final night she was jolted awake by bad dreams and found herself lying on her back, wedged between his arms and legs. Not wanting to wake him, all attempts to carefully extract herself from this vice failed. She cursed herself for having put him and herself in this position. Her appraisal of the situation turned to panic, which then blended with a feeling of profound sadness, fuelled by the silence and darkness. Feeling for the switch, her free right hand turned on the filigree ceiling chandelier. At first the glass crystals glistened clearly in their colours, the colours of Judith's childhood. Then they began to blur into each other and slowly liquefied into tears.

Finally they were washed away by torrents from her eyes.

She suppressed the sobbing noises as best she could. She had to endure this stifling grip for only a few hours more without letting on to Hannes. But as soon as they were home it would have to come out. She had to tell him. But more than that: she had to tell him in a way that he understood. She had to separate from him on good terms. The very prospect of it terrified her.

“It's got nothing to do with you,” she said, starting with a brazen lie. She dropped three cubes of sugar into her coffee. Hannes drowned his expression in a glass of water – she had no desire to know what it looked like. No relationship could ever be so wonderful as to justify the misery of breaking up.

Judith: “I'm just not capable of having a close relationship at the moment.” For God's sake, why didn't he interrupt her angrily? Judith: “Hannes, I… I'm really sorry.” With the tip of his thumb he wiped a tear from the bridge of her nose. She resolved that it would be her last.

“You're such a wonderful person,” she said. “You deserve a different woman altogether, someone who's sure of her feelings, someone who can give you back what you give her, someone who…” It was no wonder he was barely listening anymore. From his large, slim briefcase he took a sheet of paper and put it on the table. “Did you notice?” he asked mischievously, and far too cheerfully, given the situation. While the two of them had sat at a café by the Bridge of Sighs they had been sketched by a street artist on Hannes' instruction. So that's why he'd pressed his cheek to hers for several minutes. The artist had captured his face well, though she didn't recognise the blissful expression on hers. How could a Venetian artist know what she looked like when she was in love?

“Look, Hannes, I think it would be better if we just stopped…” “Fine,” he interrupted her. “Please keep the drawing as a little memento.” “Thanks,” she said. She was confused. Surely that wasn't it, their farewell? Hannes: “Maybe we tried to pack in too much in Venice.” Judith: “No, not at all. It was perfect as it was. I'll always have fond memories of the trip, I promise.” (She could feel the shame coursing through every vein in her body. Not even her father had said such things to her mother.)

“Do you hate me now?” she asked, hoping to receive a resounding “Yes”. She could not prevent him from taking her hand and raising it to his lips. When you were breaking up with someone you had to allow all this sort of stuff. Hannes: “Hate you?” He smiled. “Darling, you don't know what you're saying.” Worse than that, she was worried that
he
didn't know what
he
was saying. And now he really ought to stop calling her darling, she thought.

“Well,” she said, when the silence had become unbearably long. “Well,” he said, as if this great word were crying out to be repeated. On her lips were the words: “I'm sure we'll bump into each other again.” But she boosted it with an anaesthetic dose of calculated optimism: “I'm sure we'll bump into each other a lot.” Now he laughed with his entire rack of white teeth. “Yes, we certainly will.” She stood up and turned immediately towards the exit to avoid the possibility of a dramatic farewell kiss. “We certainly will, Darling,” he called after her.

That evening she called upon all the good and wicked television channels to addle her brain with the help of a few glasses of red wine. She didn't feel up to seeing anyone, not even friends, and having to tell them of the failure she'd pulled off so professionally. She only knew so much and she wanted to keep that to herself. Never again would she test whether she could bear to have a man permanently at her side without really loving him. Never again would she undertake such a humiliating retreat, and she wouldn't expect anyone else to either.

At around ten o'clock she was wrenched out of one of those soap series with canned laughter by her pentatonic ringtone. Hannes had written: “May I send you a text message if I'm feeling low?” “Of course, whenever you like,” she wrote back, wracked by a bad conscience and grateful for his understated attempt to relieve his frustration. Then she switched off her phone.

In the night she woke up several times and made sure that he was not lying beside her. Finally she gave up, turned on all the lights, put on her earphones to drown out any noises from the hallway, soothed her eyes with the first few words of T. C. Boyle's new book, and waited for the radio alarm to put her out of her misery.

In the morning she forced herself to keep busy. When she closed the front door behind her – if only she hadn't turned around! – she caught sight of the plastic bag hanging from the handle, with the inscription: “FOR MY JUDITH”. It contained three yellow roses wrapped in paper, together with the cryptic words “WHAT DO THESE…” and Hannes's trademark outsized heart. She would have to make it clear to him without delay that he must stop embarrassing her with flowers. Why was he hanging around outside her building anyway?

“You look shocking, Frau Wangermann,” Bianca said in the glow of the newly installed delivery from Liege. “I'm fine, my dear, I just had a bad morning with the make-up,” Judith replied. Bianca was powerless against such a deft response.

“Frau Wangermann?” From Bianca's tone she inferred that unpleasant news was on its way. Bianca: “Your boyfriend was here and left this for you. He was like, I'm in a hurry, and I was like, do you want to leave a message, and he was like, oh yes, please tell her that I love her more than anything else in the world. What a sweetie! I wouldn't mind a man like that some day.” She gave Judith the flowers: three yellow roses and a note with the meaningless message “… AND THESE…”, framed in a big, fat, nightmarish heart.

She retreated to her office and switched on her mobile to forbid Hannes from sending any more flowers. Eleven new messages. His name eleven times. Eleven messages with the same words. Two-thirteen: “I'm feeling low.” Three-thirteen: “I'm feeling low.” Four-thirteen: “I'm feeling low.” He felt low eleven times, at hourly intervals, precise to the minute, irrespective of whether it was day or night. Another quarter of an hour and he would be feeling low again, she sensed. And just in case she forgot this or pushed it to the back of his mind, he was going to remind her, punctually.

She dialled his number and got his voicemail. “Hannes, please stop it! Don't send me any more texts like that! It's pointless! And no more roses! If I mean anything at all to you, then please respect my decision. Believe me, I'm not feeling great about it either. But this is the way it's got to be. Please accept that!”

She had difficulty making it through the rest of the working day. After her call, Hannes stopped texting. Now all she worried about were further rose ambushes. All the way home she was plagued by the anxiety that he might be nearby. Maybe he'd come to meet her halfway. Maybe he'd shoot out from a hidden corner. Maybe he was sneaking up on her. Maybe he was already at her heels.

A presentiment made her take a detour across Flachgasse, where her Citroën was parked. Even from a distance she could make out the tall white package beneath her windscreen wiper: three yellow roses, a note, the fragment of a message, “… AND THESE…”, inside yet another monstrous heart. She comforted herself with the hope that he'd probably deposited the flowers before she'd reproached him on the telephone.

When the door to her flat was finally locked behind her, the tension subsided, but the peace didn't last long. Judith was lying on the ochre sofa, allowing herself a little light therapy beneath her laburnum lamp from Rotterdam, when the doorbell rang. Her shock turned at once to fury. “Hannes?” she roared. She swore she'd send him packing. “It's me, Frau Grabner, the caretaker,” an intimidated voice replied. “Something was left for you.” “By whom?” Judith asked in a deliberately mild tone as she opened the door. Grabner: “A delivery boy.” Judith: “When, if I may ask?” Grabner: “Oh, this morning, around eleven.” Judith: “Around eleven? Thank you very much, Frau Grabner!”

She threw the flowers straight in the bin without unpacking them. For a while she stared at the new heart message, “… ROSES…”, before ripping it up. In her mind she pieced together the fragments: “WHAT DO THESE AND THESE AND THESE ROSES…” The sentence was incomplete. Evidently more gifts awaited her.

“Have you got them all now, Darling?” he asked. He answered immediately as he'd been expecting her call. Judith: “Hannes, why are you doing this?” Him: “I thought you'd be pleased. You were always pleased. You like roses, I know how much you like them.” He was starting to sound like the leader of a sect. “And the colour yellow,” he continued. “You love yellow. You've always been surrounded by yellow in your life. Your beautiful yellow hair, the most beautiful in the world. You grew up in the light, my darling. You are a child of the light.”

Her: “Hannes, please. Just…” He interrupted her, his voice suddenly impersonal and strict: “Darling, there's no need to repeat yourself. I got your message. I saved it. I can hear it again any time I like. And I'll respect your wish. I won't send you any more roses in the near future, neither yellow nor any other colour.”

Her: “And where are the rest of them? What's the message you're trying to tell me? How does the rest of it go? Let's just bring this to a close, O.K.?” Him: “It's a puzzle, Darling. It's just a little puzzle. You'll figure it out in no time.” Her voice increased in volume: “Please! I don't want to figure it out! I just want some peace!” Him: “Fifteen roses in total. Five times three. A little attentiveness and a little thought, no more. You must use the large crystal vase. How many little bunches have you collected?” Her: “Four. The front door, at work, the car, then my neighbour. Where's the fifth one, Hannes? Tell me! Otherwise I'm going to… God you make me furious!”

Him: “Wonderful. That's the right sequence. I knew you'd make a detour to your car before going home. I know you, Darling; I know you and thought you'd be pleased.” Her: “Where's the last bunch? Tell me!” There was a pause. Him: “The last roses… Where indeed are the last roses? Here, of course. I wanted to bring them to you personally. I wanted to…” Her: “You are not bringing me any roses, Hannes, nor anything else for that matter. We're not seeing each other today. Nor tomorrow, nor the next day. I don't want it. Please understand!”

Him: “There's no need to shout, Darling. It hurts me. I understand what you're saying. If you don't want me to come, then I won't. If Venice was too much, if you need a break, then I'll respect that.” “Hannes,” she said, now very calmly, “I don't need a break. I–finished–with–you–yesterday. Don't you remember? Please get it into your head.” And to drive the point home she hung up.

For three days she heard nothing; there was no trace of him at all. They were three rainy, humid days. Oppressive, which matched her frame of mind and physical state. She woke early feeling dull and sluggish, as if someone – Hannes, for example – had lain on her stomach with their full weight. In the mornings and evenings she stole beneath the protection of her umbrella to the lighting shop and back home again. During the day she entrenched herself for as long as she could in the back-room office, to avoid contact with a certain potential customer. She survived the evenings at home with books, films and music by the light of her lamps. Every few hours she thanked the telephone for not having rung.

On the fourth day after the abrupt termination of their relationship, she made her first efforts at being something approaching “sociable”. Lara and Valentin, the hand-holders, had been in touch to say they wanted to bring round her birthday present a week and a half early, as they were about to go to France. No doubt a Gmundner porcelain pot for hot chocolate. Over the last few years Valentin (then without Lara) had given her Gmundner porcelain vessels for tea, coffee and fruit juice.

But no. In fact it was a quite beautiful set of Bohemian wine and water glasses from an antiques shop in Josefstadt. (Lara had clearly made her influence felt.) Judith was intending to tell them about the failure of her relationship the moment Hannes' name cropped up. After all, she had to begin somewhere. But his name didn't crop up. Maybe they suspected what had happened since he didn't feature in Judith's stories, holiday plans or her talk of the future. She only mentioned Venice in passing, as if the minibreak had been a tedious business trip, which explained the crammed programme of cultural obligations.

All in all it was an entertaining two-hour chat, which distracted Judith from her corrosive thoughts. As they left Lara surprised her with the consolatory remark, delivered with a wink: “It'll be fine!” And Valentin hugged her considerately and supportively, as if she were a disaster victim. Maybe you don't have to talk about everything to know what's going on, she thought.

Feeling pleasantly tired and harbouring the hope of seven dreamless hours, she entered her bedroom and switched on the brass chandelier from Prague. For a few moments she looked mistrustfully at the bed until she realised what was disconcerting her: the bulge at the foot of it which hadn't been there a few hours previously. When she pulled back the duvet the only reason she didn't scream was because it couldn't be true. The window was closed and there was no way he could have slipped past the door.

Nonetheless, there on the bedsheet lay this crazy, tall, narrow, conical thing. With three yellow flowers sticking out of the top. Grabbing the roses, she hurled them against the wall. She tried to calm herself, cowering beside the bed with her knees pressed to her chest, attempting to get her thoughts straight. First the note. She crawled to the damaged flowers and came across the fat, pencil-drawn heart. Beside it in capital letters: “… HAVE IN COMMON?” The damn puzzle was now complete: “WHAT DO THESE AND THESE AND THESE ROSES HAVE IN COMMON?” They were yellow. They were from Hannes. She was at their mercy. She was petrified. Shit.

Eventually a semblance of logic entered her mind. There was only one possible way the flowers could have got into her bed. Valentin's phone went straight to voicemail, but Lara's rang. Lara: “Hello?” Judith: “Hi there. Listen, did you put those roses under my duvet?” (She disguised her voice to sound at least a bit normal. She didn't want anyone to suspect the crisis she was in.) Lara: “Who did you think it was? The Holy Ghost? Of course it was me. Quite a surprise, eh?” She giggled. “We just wanted to do our little bit to help you get back together.” Judith: “Get back together?” And then Lara told her the story.