Seven Years (9 page)

It was very simple. I told them in the office that I had a dentist’s appointment, and went to the bookstore just before closing time. Ivona came out from the back of the store, just as on the occasion of my first visit. She stood silently behind the counter and straightened the saints’ pictures and the little books compiled from nature photos and quotations from Scripture. She wore beige knickerbockers and a sort of folksy embroidered blouse. I could feel her eyes on me, but when I looked over, she looked away. I felt an incredible desire to sleep with her, in the midst of this Christian kitsch and self-help and inspirational literature. Are you on your own?, I asked. She didn’t reply. I lifted the curtain and peered into the back room. In spite of the drawn curtains, the space was murky this time. The window opened onto a tiny yard that probably caught the sun only for an hour or two in the middle of the day. In the center of the room stood massive old oak desks, and on the walls were shelves containing cardboard boxes and stacks of plastic-sealed books. There was a smell of dust and paper, and more faintly of candle wax and human sweat. I sat down on one of the desks. Ivona followed me, and stopped in the entry. Come on, I said. She said she was closing in five minutes. The bell chimed in the shop, and Ivona disappeared. I heard her speaking, and couldn’t understand a word, it must have been Polish. I looked through a chink in the curtain and saw a pretty blond woman roughly Ivona’s age. The two of them clasped hands, and the blond woman was laughingly trying to persuade Ivona of something, who shook her head, and seemed to be explaining. I sat down on the desk again, and waited. Shortly afterward, the bell went again, and then I heard the key turn in the lock.

I had expected Ivona would complain to me about what had transpired at our last meeting, or that I hadn’t been in touch for such a long time, but she stopped an arm’s length in front of me, and stared into space. I stood up, took a step toward her, and embraced her. She didn’t resist, just freed herself quickly to switch off the light, and pull the curtain across.

I took off her pants and underwear, and kissed and stroked her. She moaned and turned her head from side to side. She almost looked to me as though she was faking, but I didn’t care. I got undressed, and we lay on the bare floor, and Ivona started kissing and stroking me back. Only when I tried to enter her did she refuse me. When I finally turned away from her, she whispered something in Polish. I didn’t ask what she was saying, I could imagine it well enough, and I didn’t want to hear it. Don’t go yet, she said. I’ve got lots of things to do, I said. Do you want something to eat?, she asked. I said I didn’t have the time, and got up. Will you come again? Yes, I said, and I went.

I went back to the office to finish a couple of things. My boss had already left. At eight I called Sonia. She wasn’t home. Two hours later, after I was finally finished with my work, I tried again. This time, Sonia picked up, and I asked her if she was so busy. But I wasn’t jealous, and I listened patiently as she told me about some new project she was working on. Then I talked to her about my work. Sonia said she hadn’t heard me in such a good mood for ages. And it was true, I was perfectly calm, and made jokes, and told her I missed her. I miss you too, said Sonia. We’ll see each other at Christmas. I was astonished not to feel guilty at all—on the contrary, I felt more connected to Sonia than I had in a long time.

When I turned up in the shop the next time, Ivona asked me to go back to the student residency with her. It was one of the few times she ever asked me for anything.

From then on, I only saw her in the dorm. Her room seemed like it might belong to an old woman or a little girl. It was stuffed full of junk, faked memories of a life that hadn’t happened. At the head of the bed was a small plastic crucifix, the walls were covered with postcards and framed Bible sayings. On the bed were any number of soft toys in garish colors, the kind you can buy at railway station kiosks. On the floor were piles of romance novels, Christian manuals, and Polish magazines. In amongst them were scattered clothes and tights, clipped recipes, and cheap costume jewelry. The pokiness, the untidiness, and the absence of any aesthetic value only seemed to intensify my desire. There was nothing there to inhibit me, by reminding me of my life and my world. It was as though I became someone else in that room, an object in Ivona’s chaotic collection of treasured and neglected knickknacks.

I turned up whenever it suited me and whenever I could. Ivona was there every evening, she didn’t seem to have anything to do but wait or hope for me to come. Usually the TV was going, and when she made to turn it off, I said no, and we undressed and kissed and embraced to the soundtrack of some schlocky film or other. Usually I was gone before the film was even over. I never spent the night there, for fear Tania or Birgit might tell Sonia about it. Anyway, I couldn’t imagine waking up beside Ivona, I could only stand her company when I was aroused.

My third or fourth meeting with Ivona was the day after the Wall came down. I had sat up half the night in front of the television and was tired when I went to her place the next evening. I asked her what she thought about it all. She shrugged her shoulders. I said I wasn’t sure I agreed with reunification, and totted up the pluses and minuses as though the future of Germany were somehow mine to give. Ivona listened to me hold forth with an apathetic expression, as though it was all no concern of hers. She seemed to live in her own little world, not registering what was going on around her.

I noticed that Ivona took steps to make herself prettier. She started to apply makeup and did her hair, and took trouble with her clothes. When I said I didn’t like her dolling herself up, she stopped. She seemed to take it as proof of love that I noticed her appearance and bothered to comment on it. Sometimes she showed me two outfits and asked me, which do you like best? I pointed to one of them, even though I was completely indifferent, and then she disappeared behind the closet door to put it on, and I followed her to watch and pulled her back to bed, still in her underwear. When she went to the toilet too, I sometimes followed her, her sense of shame provoked me until she had completely lost it and accepted everything I did, and did everything I demanded of her. With one sole exception.

When I stayed longer, Ivona would start to talk. She had an inexhaustible supply of abstruse stories, featuring the Black Virgin of Czestochowa or some other sacred figure performing miracles in the lives of ordinary people. It would start with a lost bunch of keys, and end up with a miracle cure or a surprise late pregnancy. She talked hastily and not looking at me, it was as though she was talking to herself, an endless litany. At those moments, I got a glimpse of what a terribly lonely person she was. Sometimes she would talk about her Pope, whom she revered, and who was something approaching a saint in her eyes. When I criticized him, she wouldn’t say anything, and when I’d said my piece, she would resume where she’d left off. My words seemed not to have reached her.

Our encounters always followed the same pattern, rarely lasting for longer than an hour and sometimes a lot less. Ivona wasn’t a sophisticated lover, she had no experience and no imagination. When she touched me she was either too hesitant or too rough, when I touched her she barely reacted, or faked a reaction. The thing that kept me fascinated with her was her utter devotion. Her unconditional love for me, however purely random, drew me irresistibly to her and, by the same token, repulsed me the instant I was satisfied. Then I would feel the need to hurt her, as though that was my only way of breaking free.

Do you think your Holy Father would approve of what you’re doing?, I asked her one time, do you not think it’s a sin even if we don’t technically make love? I accused her of bigotry. She didn’t understand the word, I had to explain it to her.

I don’t know how I can excuse my behavior, I can’t remember how I justified it to myself at the time. All I know is that I got to be more and more dependent on Ivona, and that while I continued to think I had power over her, her power over me became ever greater. She never demanded anything from me, was never hurt when I stayed away for days on end because I was busy in the office or didn’t feel like visiting her. Sometimes I’d tell Ivona about other women to get her upset, but she took it, and listened, expressionless, while I raved about the beauty, the wit, and the intelligence of other women. Perhaps she didn’t know she had power over me. Perhaps she mistook my submissiveness for love.

The situation in the apartment had deteriorated to the point where we only communicated by means of little notes that we stuck on the fridge door. Tania had come up with a roster of household duties, which Birgit and I strenuously ignored. The whole apartment reeked of disinfectant, and it was often cold, because Tania would turn down the heat to keep the germs from multiplying so quickly, as she explained. Her visitors stayed longer and longer, and began to take a hand in our business. When I returned from a weekend with my parents once, my bed had been stripped. I brought it up with Tania, and she said a friend of hers had spent the night in my room, surely I had no objection? I stood by silently while she sprayed my bed with disinfectant and put on new sheets. From that day on, I locked my door when I went out, and belatedly became serious about looking for somewhere else to live.

Finding a new place wasn’t easy. I was on three thousand marks a month, which wasn’t bad for an intern, but that sort of money didn’t buy you much. I looked at all sorts of apartments without being able to decide. Over time, I started to take pleasure in inspecting places that were obviously hopeless. When I told the landlords that I was an architect, they treated me with respect and left me all sorts of time. A few of the apartments were still occupied, and it was fascinating to see the different ways people arranged themselves, and how much you could infer about their lives from a few objects. It was always embarrassing being taken around by tenants, peering into closets that were stuffed with junk and inspecting kitchens full of dirty, food-encrusted plates and withered herbs on the windowsill. One tenant had locked himself in the bathroom. The super took me around and knocked on the bathroom door, but the tenant didn’t make any noise. He’s been given his notice, said the super, and I can promise you he’ll be out by the end of the year, even if it means calling the cops.

In the end I found a small three-room apartment on the top floor of an old building in Schwabing. I’d fallen in love with it on the spot. It was unrehabbed, and just had an old oil-fired stove, but the layout was good, and the rooms were light and had the sort of attention to detail that you don’t often find in newly built homes. I told Birgit about it that same evening. She wasn’t too thrilled about the prospect of having to deal with Tania and her loopy friends on her own. She said if she could afford it, she would move out tomorrow.

The holidays came nearer. Lots of my friends were going to spend Christmas with their families, and had announced their visits. Ferdy and Alice were coming, Rüdiger wrote from São Paulo, the last stop on his South American tour, even Jakob the vet called. He had accepted a job as an assistant in Stuttgart, and said he would be in Munich briefly on his way to the Bayerischer Wald, and did I feel like going out for a beer with him. Sonia would be the last to return, she still had lots of work to finish, and booked her flight for the morning of the twenty-fourth.

I made a date with Jakob. Before I saw him, I went to Ivona’s. As we sat on the bed and got dressed, on some whim I asked her if she felt like going out and having a beer with me. I don’t know what got into me. It was risky, I had to consider the possibility of Jakob running into Sonia on one of the days after Christmas. Perhaps it was a similar impulse to the one that prompts people to show off their scars, some absurd pride in damage.

Not since that first evening had I gone anywhere in public with Ivona. The notion of being seen together by one of my acquaintances was at once terrifying and beguiling. Whether I walked fast or slow, Ivona always trailed a couple of paces behind me. On the bus, she didn’t sit down, but stood in front of me at my seat. When we reached our stop, I got out without a word and just glanced back quickly to see if she was following me.

I had arranged to meet Jakob in a bar we would never have gone to as students, one of those soulless beer halls in the inner city, beloved of tourists. Ivona sat on the bench along the wall, and after a short hesitation I sat down next to her. Jakob was a quarter of an hour late. We shook hands and I introduced the two of them. Ivona’s from Poland, I said. I looked Jakob in the eye but saw no reaction. He just smiled, and shook hands with Ivona. Then he started talking about his dissertation, which was something about morbid changes to cow udders. It was bizarre watching this peasanty guy drinking beer and simultaneously holding forth about some complex diagnostic procedures that I was a long way from understanding. He asked me about my work. I kept my answers short. Then he asked Ivona what it was she did, and she said she worked in a bookstore. He asked where in Poland she came from, and why she had come to Germany, and whether she intended to go home ever, now that the East was opening up. Ivona said she didn’t know. I was waiting the whole time for Jakob to make some remark, or give me some look, but he talked to Ivona as though it was the most natural thing in the world. He even tried out a couple of Polish phrases he had picked up on his parents’ farm from migrant agricultural workers: left and right, and watch out, and postage stamp.

What was strange was that I felt a kind of jealousy when I heard the two of them talking together so easily. It wasn’t that I was scared of Jakob taking Ivona away from me, but I sensed a sort of harmonious understanding between them that I couldn’t account for. Jakob wasn’t even especially attentive toward Ivona, he just treated her normally. She seemed to blossom in his company, whereas she was clumsy and inhibited when she was with me. I started to stroke the inside of her thigh under the table. She moved slightly away from me, but I didn’t stop, and did little to hide what I was doing from Jakob. It was childish, but I couldn’t stop till Jakob finally got up and smilingly said he didn’t want to impose on us anymore.