Seven Years (3 page)

It took me a while to find the student residence. The doorbells only had numbers next to them, no names, and I had no idea what Ivona’s number was. I stood in front of the residence, smoking. Finally a young woman came out, and I managed to wedge my foot discreetly in the door before it snapped shut. I stood there while she unlocked her bicycle and rode away.

The buildings must have been from the fifties, the floors were tiled gray, the white on the walls had yellowed, and the banisters’ plastic insulation had been worn away in places, showing the metal below. Even though I’d been pretty drunk on the occasion of my first visit, I found Ivona’s room without much trouble. On the door was a little number plate, like in a hotel. Below that, Ivona had put her own name, with a difficult surname written out in a childish hand, which I forgot right away and don’t know how to spell to this day. I knocked, and Ivona let me in. She didn’t say anything, but she stepped aside and let me in, as though she’d been waiting for me. The TV was on, some historical costume drama with romantic music. I shut the door behind me and went up to Ivona, who shrank back, with a sort of cunning expression on her face. When she reached the window she couldn’t go any farther, and I seized her hands and kissed her palms and her soft whitish arms. Ivona squirmed a little, then she seemed to give in, and dragged me away from the window. She moved to the bed and fell back into it without taking her eyes off me. Her expression was vacant, like an animal’s. I lay down on top of her and went on kissing and embracing her and felt through her thin top for her breasts. She let it happen, only when I tried to undress her she resisted, just as determinedly as the first time. In the background, the music swelled to some sort of crescendo, the film was reaching its high point, or perhaps it was just over. I was very turned on, but it wasn’t the standard feeling of being with a girl, not a physical excitement, but excitement of feeling, a warm, dark sensation, a kind of overwhelming safety. I felt no shame as I pulled off my clothes, even though I guessed how ridiculous we must look, a naked man rubbing himself against a woman in ugly old-fashioned clothes. I couldn’t care less. Ivona was breathing deeply in and out, her hands were clasped across my back, as though to hold me to her. Without anything happening, I had the feeling she was giving herself to me.

This time I didn’t stay overnight, though again when I left it felt like a sort of flight. Ivona had said nothing most of the time, she didn’t say she loved me, only from time to time emitted a little gasping sound I was familiar with. When I took her hands and tried to lead them to me, she pulled away. When I finally gave up, tired and unsatisfied and still aroused, and we were lying together side by side in the half-darkness, I naked, she with creased, loose clothes, I asked, what are we doing here? What’s happening? Then she said she’d prayed that I would come to her. Her voice was the voice of a little girl who was completely convinced her prayer could change the world. I don’t believe in God, I said. That doesn’t make any difference, Ivona said. I laughed. Do you really think God’s got nothing better to do than attend to your love life? She didn’t respond, but when I looked at her, she again had that proud and rather simple expression on her face that she had had that afternoon at the door of the bookstore. I was mad with her, I could see myself tearing the clothes off her body, holding her by the hair, and taking her against her will. Her expression didn’t change. It was the self-complacency of the saints in the little pictures in the shop, which seemed to be saying any wrong you do me will only tie you to me even more tightly.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes, full of shame at what I was thinking. When Ivona touched my back, I jumped. She said she had prayed that I would talk to her. She had sat close to me a couple of times in the beer garden, but I hadn’t noticed her. I shuddered. The notion of being Ivona’s chosen one had something eerie about it. Why me? She gave no reply. I have to go, I said, and quickly got dressed. I tied my laces on the stairs.

For the next few days I avoided Ivona. I should have been preparing my defense, but instead I started again from scratch. I got up early in the morning and made a new set of sketches. At first they weren’t up to much, but in spite of my continual failure, I got the feeling my thoughts were getting sharper, I was starting to understand something that was more important than form or style or structural engineering, and against all reason I felt optimistic, and was enjoying my work. It was as though I had the answer in my brain, and just needed to lay it bare, clear away all the debris of my training and find the single gesture, the single line that was true to me.

My original blueprint had been elaborated from the geometry of the floor plan, I had worked it up from the space afforded by the size of the plot and the permitted height of a building, the way a sculptor might conceive a figure from a block of stone. The result was a purist construction, not without some appeal as a model, but completely unoriginal and unthought-out as to its interior. This time I tried to work from the inside, from the exhibition space, not the front elevation. I pictured myself as a visitor to the museum, and developed the structure of the building in an imaginary tour of the rooms. I was proceeding not from construction so much as from intuition, trying on the different rooms like clothes. Often I would stand in my study with eyes shut, pushing the walls this way and that, checking the angle and the quantity of the light, groping my way forward. If someone had seen me, they would surely have thought I was crazy. But over time what evolved was a system of rooms, corridors, and entrances that was more like a living creature than a building. Only after that did I turn to the shell of the structure, which really was pretty much just that: a shell.

It was very hot in the bungalow, and I spent whole days in my underwear behind closed blinds. I drank great quantities of coffee till I broke out in cold sweats, and didn’t eat till I felt almost sick with hunger. In the evenings I would go out to get a couple of bottles of beer and to pick up a kebab, which I had wrapped and took home with me. In the student village there was loads going on just as the term was ending, every night there was loud music and the sound of festive parties from nearby bungalows and the central plaza. I kept out of everything, sat on my little terrace, looked at the sky, and thought of Ivona. I pictured her in front of me, standing in the communal kitchen of the student lodgings, making herself a simple dinner, scrambled eggs maybe, or boiled potatoes, and taking them to her room and eating alone at her little desk. When she was finished, she went back to the kitchen and cleaned up, maybe she exchanged a few words with another Polish girl she knew to talk to. But before long she said she was tired, and she went back to her room and sponged herself down with a washcloth. That was the most erotic vision I had of her, standing at her sink and washing her belly with brisk movements, her shoulders, her soft pendulous breasts. Even though the room was hot, the cool washcloth gave her goose bumps. She pulled on a thin oversize T-shirt that showed the impress of her nipples. I wondered whether she would kneel down to pray or slip straight into bed. She lay there in the dark, on her back, as if dead, and listened to the sounds of the other students, the flush of a toilet, the ringing of a telephone in the corridor, and then a voice calling out someone’s name, and after that another voice, just a murmur, and maybe music or traffic from outside. She lay there awake, thinking of me thinking of her. The thought made me strangely happy. It was as though we were guarding each other in a world full of strangeness and danger.

The next day I went on working. I didn’t answer the telephone, I already had half a dozen messages on the machine. There was Sonia, telling me her presentation had gone really well, and wishing me good luck for Thursday; there was Rüdiger, Ferdy, my mother, all of them wishing me good luck.

The day before the examination I had worked long into the night on my new project. On Thursday morning I got up early and took a last look at my old blueprint, which I would have to defend in a few hours’ time; it didn’t look possible to me.

On the way to the train, I saw a kite being attacked by a crow. The bird of prey was calmly tracing its circles, while the crow flapped around, then climbed higher and dropped onto the larger bird. With a minimal adjustment of its tail the kite altered its course. I stood there fascinated for a long time, watching. One time the kite appeared to give up, headed off in a different direction, and disappeared behind some trees, but then it was back again, and the crow continued to harass it. What have I got to be afraid of, I thought, it’s just an exam. If worst comes to worst, I’ll just have to retake it next year.

I was glad I had an early slot. It was still cool in the hall and there was hardly anyone there. Sonia had offered to come, but I said I’d rather she didn’t, she would only make me nervous. In one of the rows at the back I saw my parents. They waved to me when I walked down to the front.

During the presentation I stumbled once or twice and mixed things up; I spoke of my debt to Aldo Rossi, as if that might take the wind out of the sails of my critics. To my surprise, the first expert on the panel expressed a fairly positive view of my work, even if, as he said, my debt to certain models was pretty obvious. The second examiner spent a long time on one detail, the staircases, which in his view were too narrow, but he closed with a few words praising the overall design. The other professors declined to comment, I had the feeling either they were bored or they were saving themselves for the students who were following me. After a quarter of an hour it was all over, and I left the room, followed by a couple of assistants who carried out the presentation table with my blueprints and model. The next candidates were already lining up outside, among them Rüdiger. There was a gleam in his eyes that made him look drugged. I patted him on the back and wished him good luck. He smiled uncertainly and said nothing.

My parents came out of the hall shortly after I did. They stood off to the side, beaming with pride. I talked to some other students for a bit, and then I went and joined them. That seemed to go all right, said my father, with a questioning rise in his voice, and my mother nodded, even though I was sure she couldn’t have understood the half of what was said. Unlike me, they had dressed up, and they insisted on taking me out to lunch. I could feel their uncertainty. They seemed much older to me here than when I saw them at home in the familiar surroundings, and I felt a bit sorry for them. We went to a moderately priced restaurant. When we said good-bye after lunch, all three of us seemed relieved somehow to have gotten through it.

On Friday I got my grade, 2.0, which was better than I’d expected. Ferdy got the same, Sonia got a 1.0, while Rüdiger had lost his way in the course of his presentation, and when he realized, petitioned the committee to retake his finals next year, which had been granted.

The evening after we received our grades, there was a great big party. We danced into the wee hours, and I had much too much to drink. It was getting light already as I crawled home. For a long time I was unable to sleep, all sorts of things were racing through my head; I was relieved and at the same time felt apprehensive. From now on no one was going to tell me what I had to do and what not. I thought about my new blueprint. It must be possible to create space that would allow feelings, that would enable and communicate the sort of freedom and openness I was thinking of. I envisaged lofty transparent halls, open staircases, the play of light and shade. I wasn’t quite sure whether I was awake or dreaming, but all at once I saw everything before me, very clear and distinct.

I woke up in the early afternoon, still reeling from so much alcohol. I hadn’t said I would show up to Rüdiger’s party, and come evening I dithered over whether to go or not. I didn’t feel that great, and I was afraid I’d run into Alice. In the end I went.

Rüdiger’s parents had a house in Possenhofen, right on Lake Starnberg. His father was a business lawyer who worked in the automobile industry; so far as I knew his grandfather already had had money. Rüdiger never boasted about how well off his family were, but you could feel it in the casual way he treated people and objects. At the time I was impressed; later on I felt sorry for him.

When I arrived, the sun was already low in the sky, and Rüdiger was just lighting some wax tapers that were dotted around the garden. He greeted me exuberantly. Hey, haven’t seen you in ages, he said, thumping me on the back. He seemed perfectly relaxed, even though he was the only one of us who’d been tripped up in the exams. On the lawn between the house and the lake was a long trestle table with a white cloth, but the guests were down on the shore, a few still in the water. If you want a swim, you’d better get a move on, said Rüdiger, I’m just starting the grill. He left me, and I looked out to the others. I had the sun behind me, and everything was gleaming darkly. The scene overpowered me with a sort of timeless meditative quality it had. There was actually someone playing a guitar, and if it hadn’t all been so exquisite, it would have seemed preposterous. I strolled down to the water’s edge and was greeted by cheers. Sonia was lying on a blanket on the grass, she held out her hand to me and I pulled her up. She was wearing a white swimsuit with a light blue man’s shirt thrown over it. She hugged me, and kissed me on both cheeks, more warmly than usual, I got the feeling. With her hand still resting on my shoulder, she whispered into my ear, look, and nodded her head to the side. Only then did I see Alice, with her head pillowed on Ferdy’s belly. He was toying with her bikini top.

Those two?, I asked. Do you feel bad?, Sonia asked, and took me by the hand. Come on, let’s go for a walk. At first I didn’t know what she meant. It didn’t feel bad at all to see Alice with Ferdy, quite the opposite, I was glad she had someone. Even if I didn’t think Ferdy was right for her. I had been anxious about seeing Alice, been afraid of her sad face and her reproachful looks. Now I felt relieved. I walked through the grounds with Sonia, and she told me the story of how Alice and Ferdy had gotten together. That old pimp Rüdiger had a part in it. He brought you and her together too, remember. I never noticed, I said. Anyway, I’m glad she’s not alone anymore. Me too, said Sonia, and she looped her arm through mine. Now we just need to find someone for you. And for you, I said. Sonia laughed and shook her head. I don’t have time for things like that. I said I didn’t believe a word of it, and she laughed again, and lowered her eyes, as though she’d spotted something in the grass. Are you all right?, she asked. Yes, I said, I think I am.