Seven Years (2 page)

I stopped outside the dormitory to get my bearings. I couldn’t remember which way we’d gone the night before. The birds in the trees were fantastically loud, and for a moment I had the ridiculous idea that they might attack me. I asked myself what I was doing here, and how things had ever gotten so far. The whole business was embarrassing to me, and I hoped no one had seen me leave with Ivona. At the same time, though, I felt strangely exhilarated. Everything I’d previously experienced with women struck me as a sort of game in comparison to the night I’d just been through. I had felt grown up with Ivona, and responsible, and perfectly free.

I lived in one of the bungalows in the Olympic Village. It was a tiny place, but my friends in shared apartments or student dorms were all jealous of me. There were hundreds of these bungalows along narrow lanes surrounded by towering apartment buildings, and they really were like a sort of village. They had been built for competitors at the Olympics. After the games, the area was handed over to students. I paid three hundred marks a month for a little house that was roughly 250 square feet. Downstairs there was a walk-in closet, a kitchenette, and the legendary “Nice” shower, a plastic bath unit where you felt you were in a spacecraft. Upstairs was the bedroom and study. One wall of the study was glass, and there was a little veranda outside. To save space, a bunk bed was installed at the top of the stairs. The village was full of stories of couples falling out in the course of wild nights, but presumably that was just student talk.

The bungalows had been run up quickly and weren’t in good condition. The windows were poorly insulated, and even so you had to air out the space all the time, because otherwise you got mold in the walls. The student union had provided us with paint for the facades. Some people had made proper works of art, others had scrawled political slogans on the walls. Some of the paintings looked like children’s drawings.

There were always parties in the village, and spontaneous barbecues. It was noisy, especially in summer, which made it hard to concentrate on your work. You could hear everything from the bungalows on either side. I had a German lit student next to me. I barely knew his name, but I knew all about his sex life, and I heard every quarrel and every reconciliation with his girlfriend. Sonia, who was taking the same courses as me, sometimes came to visit. She was interested in the architecture of the village, and later on she would come and study with me. One hot summer afternoon, when we were both cramming architecture history, we could hear shouting from next door. I was about to knock on the door to complain when it got quiet. Shortly after that, there were the loud shrieks of pleasure of a woman. Sonia didn’t understand at first, and said shouldn’t we check up on what was happening. I don’t think they need help, I said laughing. Only then did the shoe drop. I said I should have studied German, where you didn’t have to work so much, and had time for other things. Sonia blushed, and said she was going to the bathroom. When she returned, the noise still hadn’t stopped, and after a few more minutes, she said she had to leave, she had a date. From then on we did all our cramming in the library.

It was before seven a.m. when I got home. Everything was peaceful in the village, and the paths were deserted. I put on the coffee machine and took a shower, then I set off for nowhere in particular. I felt euphoric and needed exercise. I headed for the city center and thought about the future. Everything seemed possible, nothing was going to get in my way. I would find a position in a big architecture firm, in time I would set up on my own, and realize big projects all over the world. I walked through the city, staring at the windows of car dealerships, and already pictured myself at the wheel of some luxury model, going on tours of inspection from building site to site.

I went to the library and read a long newspaper article about a wave of refugees from East Germany, and somehow that went with my feeling of freedom and adventure. Everything seemed possible, even if the commentator urged caution and doubted the imminent collapse of the GDR. At noon I had a sandwich, then I moved on. I bummed around the city, bought myself a pair of pants and a couple of white T-shirts. When I returned to the student village in the evening, I was tired and satisfied, as if at the end of a long day at work.

I went to bed early, and even so I didn’t wake up until noon the following day. It was the telephone that woke me. It was Sonia. She asked me if I was doing anything. No, I said, just recovering from the strains and stresses of the final project. We agreed to meet for lunch near the library.

My relationship with Sonia wasn’t altogether straightforward. She had caught my eye on the very first day of school, but I had only got to meet her through Rüdiger. We got along well, and sometime we started doing our drafting together. She was more gifted than me, and had more application. But she was generous-spirited, and would never have trashed someone else’s work, the way Ferdy and I did. She wasn’t uncritical, but she was always fair, and whatever her critique might be, it always seemed to be positive. She was just as popular with the professors as with the students. She was able to admire people, and maybe that’s why she was admired herself by others. She and Rüdiger seemed to be a dream couple. They could have been married, the way they planned parties and asked us to their parents’ homes, as though they had already come into their own. At one of those parties, I met Alice, and we had been going out for several months now. Then Sonia and I broke up with our partners at about the same time, in the middle of exam pressures—maybe that brought us closer to one another. My breakup with Alice was rough, and Sonia, who was a friend of Alice’s, had spent nights hearing all about what a son of a bitch I was, and how badly I had treated her. Remarkably, none of that seemed to affect us in any way. Quite the contrary, it was at that time that we grew really close. First I thought it was Sonia’s intention to bring Alice and me back together, until one day she said Alice mustn’t hear about us meeting, because it would wreck their friendship. Rüdiger knowing didn’t matter, they had ended it amicably and with no bad feelings. When you saw the two of them, you might have been forgiven for thinking they were still an item. I asked Sonia what had caused their split. Oh, she said, and made a vaguely deprecating gesture.

Sometimes I entertained the idea of falling in love with Sonia myself, but however plausible it was as an idea, it didn’t seem at all appropriate. Perhaps we knew each other too well, and our friendship was too cemented. One time I tried to hint at something. Wouldn’t it be perfect, I said, if Alice started going out with Rüdiger, and the two of us … What an idea!, said Sonia laughing. And she was right. I couldn’t picture her as my girlfriend, not in bed, not even naked. She was certainly very beautiful, but there was something unapproachable about her. She was like one of those dolls whose clothes are sewn onto their bodies. Although, Sonia said, Rüdiger and Alice would make a good couple. So would we, though. It would finish Alice, said Sonia. Anyway, I don’t have time for a relationship at the moment. She first had to concentrate on getting a job. She wanted to go abroad, and a serious relationship would just get in the way. I’d like to see you head over heels in love, I said, so badly that it hurts! She laughed. Trust me to say something like that.

I got to the café before Sonia, and watched through the window as she crossed the street toward me. She was wearing white pants and a white sleeveless T-shirt, and she was tanned. When she walked into the café, the whole place turned to stare. She came up to my table and brushed a kiss on my cheek. As she sat down, she looked briefly around, as though searching for someone. The waiter was at hand before I could even call him.

Sonia talked about a competition she wanted to enter, a day care for a big industrial company. She put on her glasses, which I liked her even better in, and showed me her sketches. I made a couple of suggestions, which she turned down. I’d had better ideas before, she said. I told her I hadn’t been sleeping well. She looked at me with mock sympathy, and went on talking about her project and integration and shelter and the personality of the children and their uniqueness and potential. My client is the child, she said, and pushed her glasses up over her hair, and laughed.

Sonia was the absolute opposite of Ivona. She was lovely and smart and talkative and charming and sure of herself. I always found her presence somewhat intimidating, and I had the feeling of having to try to be better than I actually was. With Ivona, the time went by incredibly slowly, full of painful silences. She gave monosyllabic replies to my questions, and it was a constant struggle to prolong the conversation. Sonia on the other hand was the perfect socialite. She came from a well-off background, and I couldn’t imagine her doing or saying something unconsidered. She was bound to have a successful career. She would find a niche in the design of social housing, and get a seat on various boards, and bring up two or three children on the side, who would be clean and just as well-behaved and presentable as she was. But Sonia would never say to a man that she loved him, the way that Ivona had said it to me, as if there was no other possibility. Ivona’s declaration had been embarrassing, just like the idea of being seen in public with her, but even so the thought of her love had something ennobling about it. It was as though Ivona was the only person who took me seriously and to whom I really meant something. She was the only woman who saw me as something other than a good-looking kid or a rising young architect. Ever since waking up, I kept thinking of her, and I was sure I would have to see her again, if only to free myself from her. She had told me she worked in a Christian bookstore. It couldn’t be all that hard to find her.

Sonia was talking about a torchlight parade that she had gone on, for the victims of the Tiananmen massacre. The night I had spent with Ivona she and a few like-minded people had marched from Goetheplatz to Marienplatz, and had marked the Chinese sign for sorrow in lighted candles on the square. According to Buddhist beliefs, the souls of the deceased would go looking for a new body at the end of forty-nine days, she said. It was so moving, I cried. She seemed to be surprised by her own emotional outburst. I only hope your soul doesn’t find a new body for itself, I said, that would be a shame. Sonia looked at me as if I’d personally shot down the Chinese students. I’ve got to go, I said. She asked me if I planned on going to Rüdiger’s farewell party. I couldn’t say yet.

I found three Christian bookstores listed in the phone book. I went to the first of them, but they said they didn’t give out information about people who worked there. I took a look around the place. When I didn’t see Ivona anywhere, I went to the next place. The manager here wasn’t so cagey. He said he didn’t have any Polish girls working for him, and there wouldn’t be any at the Claudius bookstore, the third one on my list, either, because that was Protestant. He thought about it for a moment. The parish church of St. Joseph in Schwabing had a small shop attached to it, where they sold books and knickknacks. Maybe my girlfriend worked there. She’s not my girlfriend, I said.

I had to go once around the church before I saw the store. It was in an adjacent building, in a small recess. A couple of steps led up to the door next to a display window with a few candles and a couple of yellowed-looking pamphlets.
Jesus and TV, I Lift Up Mine Eyes to Thee, The Everlasting Bond
, things like that.

I looked through the glass door but saw no one. When I walked in, I set off a little bell. It took a moment, and then the velvet curtain parted at the far end. The back room was in bright sunlight, and for an instant Ivona looked like an apparition, bathed in light. Then the curtain fell shut behind her, and the room was once again in dimness.

Ivona looked at me attentively, and without a trace of recognition. She sat down on a chair behind the counter and busied herself by straightening some stacks of miniature saints’ pictures. I looked at the books, which were arranged by theme on a couple of shelves: Mission, Help through Faith, Marriage and Family, Sects and Other Religions. There was even a category called Witty and Provocative. I pulled down a book of clerical jokes. On the cover there was a drawing of a lion kneeling down before a priest, paws folded in prayer. I put it back and turned to Ivona. She still wasn’t noticing me. I went over to the counter and stared at her until she raised her eyes. My image of her had changed in memory, and seeing her in front of me now, I wondered how I could possibly have wanted her so much yesterday. Her expression was anxious, almost submissive, and I felt disgusted by her again. Without a word I left the shop. After a few feet, I turned and looked back. Ivona was standing pressed against the glass door, she looked satisfied, or perhaps just apathetic, as though she really didn’t care whether I stayed or left, as though she knew for sure that I would be back.

I went home and took out my thesis again. In three days’ time I would have to defend it, and I had the feeling I had forgotten everything I had pondered over the last few months. I leafed through the drawings and sketches. Rüdiger was right, my design was derivative, it lacked originality and force. While I’d been working on it I’d been conscious of a vague energy, a creativity, but I hadn’t known in which direction to take it. And then, without my really knowing it, I’d followed my idol. It wasn’t even Rossi’s buildings that impressed me so much as his polemics against modernism, his melancholy which maybe wasn’t anything more than cowardice. Sonia had often poked fun at my old-fashioned taste. She said Rossi’s buildings looked as if he’d taken out his children’s building blocks and played with them.

My work looked shallow and unimaginative to me. Even so, I felt pretty sure I would pass. But it bothered me just being mediocre, and to have to admit to myself that I wasn’t the genius I always dreamed of being. Feeling rather disgusted with myself, I put away the papers. I thought of Ivona and tried to sketch her face from memory, but it was more than I could do. I called Sonia, but there was no answer. I ate a snack, and then took myself for a walk. I avoided those places I normally went to with Rüdiger and Ferdy, I didn’t feel like running into them in case they asked me some uncomfortable questions. I walked through the city, feeling very much alone. I was shocked to realize that there was only one person I wanted to see, and that was Ivona.