Adam and Evelyn (17 page)

Michael flipped his cigarette away like a firefly and lit another.

“Inhale deep, go quick.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it, or not a lot. There’s a clock inside each one of us, and when it runs down, that’s it, the end, unless you keep winding it up again. In principle we’re already able to calculate how long you’ll live, fairly precisely in fact.”

“So you mean that it’s feasible, rewinding the clock?”

“Yes, sure, just a matter of time. In forty or fifty years we’ll have the knack of it, for the most part.”

“In forty years?”

“Approximately. At least you’ll be able to wind it up so that you’ll live to be two hundred or maybe longer.”

“And you’re looking for the wind-up key?”

“Have you ever heard of telomeres?”

“Some kind of little animal?”

“Telomeres are the ends of the chromosomes, a kind of overlap, like the plastic tip on your shoelaces. Each time a copy is made they get shorter, if you want to picture it that way—that’s the ticking clock. We’re pretty close to it with pinworms.”

“And you guys are gonna pull this off.”

“More likely the Americans.”

“You say that as if it was the most natural thing in the world. But doesn’t that mean we’ve had the rotten luck of being the last people who are going to die?”

“Or the good luck; depends, I suppose. Maybe we’re the next to the last, or the next to the next, but in a hundred years we’ll have done it.”

“And why don’t we hear anything about this, if you’re so close?”

“It’s not all that simple either, but take cancer cells for example. Cancer cells are immortal, they don’t come to an end, they keep on copying without any loss. We have to transfer what cancer cells can do to healthy cells. We’ve got the model, so to speak.”

“For immortality.” Adam massaged his chest. “So people who get themselves pickled or frozen—they’ve got the right idea.”

“Might be, may well be.”

“I’d be satisfied to grow as old as Elfi.”

“As your turtle? As pets they never get older than fifty, life’s too stressful living with us.”

“No older?”

“In the wild they can live to a hundred or more, but Elfriede definitely won’t. Didn’t you know that?”

“No.”

“If I could still be alive at the moment when we turn off the death switch … that’d be something!”

“I don’t know. If you’ve got some who are going to die and others who won’t, or at least will live five times as long—”

“It’s already that way. Fear isn’t going to get you anywhere. We have to free ourselves from life’s brevity, from mortality. That’s the only categorical imperative—escape from your own self-inflicted mortality.”

“Sounds strange somehow.”

“It’s like a drug, once you’ve been up there with it, you never want to come down.”

“Do you live to work, or do you work to live?”

“That’s not a legitimate question.”

“Yes it is. You’re spending your whole life working for eternity.”

“For me work is life. Isn’t it for you?”

“Yes, but we don’t mean the same thing.”

“Why not? What you do is great work.”

“Precisely because I can do what I want.”

“But if she wants a dress, you can’t make her a pantsuit.”

“Sure I can, if she looks better in a pantsuit.”

“You’re sure sure of yourself, I’ll give you that.”

“Do you love Evi?”

“Do I love Evelyn?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t be here otherwise. I ought to have been in Hamburg long before now.”

“Are three weeks too long?”

“Do you have any idea what it means to disappear for that long? Three weeks can mean letting go of everything, the whole shootin’ match—not just your own existence, but that of the others, and of the project.”

“Or of immortality.”

“Right, of immortality too.”

They both nodded, as if they were finally in agreement.

“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?”

“Listen—what’s that?”

“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!”

EVELYN, KATJA, AND ADAM
were sitting in a little corner café on Népstadion út, about halfway between the embassies of the GDR and the Federal Republic.

Katja pushed her empty cup away. “All this coffee is putting me to sleep.”

“I think it’s funny we’re sitting here guzzling coffee at their expense,” Evelyn said.

“What do you mean? I have to pay the embassy back,” Adam said.

“Damn, and here I thought you’d finally stopped footing my bill,” Katja said.

“That’s what money’s for, to spend.”

“No reason to throw it out the window, Adam. We can’t even pay for a night at a hotel or a decent meal.”

“Anything you guys are doing without? I don’t feel like I’m having to cut corners. We couldn’t have it much better than this.”

“You don’t even notice anymore just how degrading it is.”

“If you’d be happier at the Hilton, go ahead. But you won’t experience anything like last night, that’s for sure.”

“You mean our soused countrymen? I can do without them.”

“They’re all just standing and waiting in the exit line, as you yourself heard.”

The waiter arrived, exchanged ashtrays, and removed empty plates.

“I’m ashamed to say it,” Katja remarked, “but I feel better with papers.”

“Perfectly normal.” Adam pulled out another cigar. “Will this bother you?”

“Not me.”

“Wait till we’re outside. Shall we pay?”

“I wouldn’t mind something else to drink. Some juice maybe.”

“But the really awful thing is …” Katja propped her elbows on the table and hid her face in her hands.

“What?” Adam asked, the cigar already in his mouth, and shook the box of matches.

“You’ll think I’ve lost all my marbles, but once I was outside again, I was on the verge of tears—”

“What amazed me,” Evelyn said, “was that you were even willing to give it a try.”

“I thought I might need diapers.”

“That close to fudgin’ your undies?” Adam said and lit his cigar.

“Well, the main thing is it went all right,” Evelyn said.

“I was on the verge of tears—that same old familiar smell.” Katja shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re right, somehow it reminded me of … school or something.”

“Lunchboxes,” Katja said. “As if they’d all just opened their lunchboxes. And then the way they tried to buck us up.”

“They weren’t unpleasant,” Adam said.