Love in Case of Emergency, page 2
Back in bed, Ludger snuggled up close. He put an arm around her and nuzzled into her hair. His fingertips caressed her belly. When a shudder ran through her body, he stopped, then fell asleep soon afterward.
Paula listened to the flapping of wings and the bird’s short, shrill cries as her fingers moved between her open legs. She had carefully shuffled out of Ludger’s embrace. She lay on her tummy and pressed her face into the pillow.
When the alarm went off, she woke with a start. She got up at once and searched the room. The bird had disappeared.
* * *
Paula returned pleasantly exhausted from their honeymoon, which they spent hiking in the Vosges. Starting in Sainte-Odile, they walked to Kaysersberg via the Col du Kreuzweg and then headed south to the nature reserve, in ever-changing weather and negotiating, in Paula’s view, endless perilous ascents and descents. Sometimes they walked for hours in silence, one in front of the other, because the paths were narrow and talking wasted too much energy. Then they were side by side again, imagining their future together.
For long stretches they wouldn’t meet another soul. They picnicked on sun-warmed rocks, in ruined castles and old war fortifications.
As soon as they took a break, Ludger would unpack the maps. He had several in different scales, and he kept pointing out to Paula exactly where they were. As they ate bread, cheese, and apples he explained the route they would be taking over the next few hours. There was no limit to his enthusiasm for the precision of the hiking maps, which showed even the tiniest path.
They spent the nights in fermes auberges, sharing dormitories with other hikers. Only on the first and last nights of their ten-day trip did they sleep in hotels, with their own bathroom and a comfy double bed, and those were the only two nights they made love. Ludger had a habit of curling up afterward and nestling his head on Paula’s chest. This was how he liked going to sleep. Whenever Paula, who couldn’t sleep in that position, carefully turned away, he followed her. Even in the deepest sleep he would snuggle back up to her the moment their bodies lost contact. Paula would then get up and move round to the other side of the bed. All the same, she liked this physical confirmation of his love.
* * *
On the first day back at work after the honeymoon, Paula’s colleagues greeted her by her new name: Paula Krohn. And when Marion, who also worked in the fiction department, called out at the end of the day, Paula, your husband’s here!, she stood up and smiled.
It was a moment she would cherish, even in hindsight.
In jeans and a T-shirt, Ludger stood beside the table with the new releases and waved to her. She could not have said why this made her feel proud.
* * *
The hormonal fog lifted.
Paula spent many evenings alone in the loft. If she opened the window that looked onto the canal, the brackish odor of the filthy water wafted in, but if she closed the window, it went eerily quiet. Her own voice echoed around the cavernous space. There were no separate rooms, just a cube in the middle that housed the bathroom.
Every evening she waited for Ludger to come home. The tempering job took up his time like no other project and he often got back late. While she waited, she cooked, read, made telephone calls, or stood by the window, never forgetting that everything she was doing was merely killing time. The tension only ended when she heard his key in the lock and Paula wondered whether it was really just down to the apartment and its emptiness.
Birds kept straying into the loft. Not all of them found their way out. One day she found a pigeon with a broken wing sitting on the floor beside the dining table. A dead sparrow lay beneath the window through which it had flown.
From then on the windows remained closed.
* * *
Every Sunday they had breakfast at Café Telegraph.
Ludger would read the F.A.Z. and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Paula Der Spiegel and Die Zeit.
They rode the cycle paths along the Saale and the Mulde, visited exhibitions, went to the cinema and bickered about which film to see. Ludger preferred documentaries; Paula, biopics of artists. Ludger said critically that Paula wouldn’t have lasted a single day in the life of Georg Trakl, or a week with Camille Claudel. She, on the other hand, complained that he took everything too seriously. He had no sense of humor, no levity, she said, while he retorted that it was levity and carelessness that was causing the world to go to ruin.
They argued about things that neither would have imagined one could argue about. When they went cycling, he rode quicker than she did. He didn’t look back to see where she was. He raced across lights that were turning red and kept going, while Paula waited for them to turn green again. He also decided where they would go. He always knew the best route from any point in the city to any other. Resistance would be broken by a glance at the map that he always had on hand.
Sometimes she would deliberately fall behind and go her own way. She knew how much this annoyed him and she knew that the reconciliation would occasionally occur in bed.
When Ludger was angry, he did not put a check on his physical strength. The sex was freer than usual. And those were the nights that gave Paula hope. On other nights she would lie awake, wriggle from his embrace, and not know what to do with her desire.
* * *
The first decision that Paula forced through was to move out of the loft.
It wasn’t a sensible place to live. Rental prices were increasing and Ludger was facing a crisis.
Despite his success, there hadn’t been any more tempering commissions. His goal had seemed so close. Ludger had been sure that Brinkmann & Krohn were on the verge of gaining the reputation as the best architectural practice for sustainable building. He had turned down other, more lucrative contracts and quarreled with the Brinkmann brothers.
At that time the child inside her belly was about three inches long. It could stick its thumb in its mouth and hold the umbilical cord between its fingers, and it moved animatedly.
The ultrasound image lay on the table between them. Paula was crying. She’d been talking, begging him. Walls and rooms!, Ludger had parroted back at her, shaking his head. Their bed was big enough for three, he claimed, and the loft was ideal for a small child. It could ride a bike, trampoline, swing—what more did she want?
When Paula got up from the table, she wiped the tears from her face, grabbed the ultrasound image, and put it in her pocket.
Over the months that followed she rode her Gazelle bike the length and breadth of the city. She spoke to estate agents and private landlords, viewed endless apartments, and narrowed down the list that she presented to Ludger in the evenings.
It then turned out that the apartments were in areas of the city that were absolute no-nos for Ludger: streets without trees and therefore unacceptable; in states of redevelopment he couldn’t live with; neighbors he didn’t like the sound of. He refused to live next door to lawyers, accountants, or estate agents. He hated their SUVs, from which they looked down on everyone else, violated the traffic laws, and double-parked. He dreaded their status symbols, their felling of trees to create new parking places, their complete ignorance of real life.
One day, as they were standing on the balcony of a partially renovated four-room apartment, looking out at the southern end of the floodplain forest, Ludger finally relented, but Paula didn’t feel any happiness. The damp, musty smell of the ramsons made her feel sick. She leaned against the balcony railings and closed her eyes.
The apartment was at the rear of the development. There was no street noise, no rattling of trams, just the green crowns of the trees and birdsong. It was ten minutes to the center of town by bike and both their workplaces were just as quick to get to. The stairwell was full of bicycles and no matter which window you looked out of you couldn’t see a single car. It was perfect.
On the day of their move Paula could only watch and give instructions. The baby was due in four weeks. Her legs ached, and her shoes pinched her swollen feet. All she wanted to do was to withdraw to the refuge of her shell like a snail.
At the end of that day, however, the only thing in its place, amid all the chaos of boxes, suitcases, and furniture parts, was the bed. And when she finally lay down, Paula thought of those nights she’d spent in it sleeplessly, and of the child in her belly who was still without a name.
The baby was two weeks premature and it arrived in that same bed. The home birth had been Ludger’s idea. She didn’t tell Judith, who was now a junior doctor in Hanover. Paula knew her friend’s opinion. Medieval, she would have said, totally nutty.
She had calmed her own anxieties with the certainty that a doctor could be there within minutes if necessary. Her colleagues had encouraged her to have the baby at home too. Stories went around about drug-resistant germs. A hospital was no safer place than one’s own bed.
Now she kneeled beside the bed and looked up. A bare bulb hung from a cable. Lamps still needed to be connected and shelves put up. It had been twenty minutes since her phone call. Take a taxi, she’d said without much hope. But, as expected, Ludger came home by bike. She heard his key in the lock, his footsteps in the hallway, the sound of the bag tossed aside and then—nothing more. She breathed through a contraction, her focus now restricted to her back and womb.
For the next nine hours he kept going out and coming back in. Kneeled beside her, lay next to her, held her hand, and wiped sweat from her brow.
Hairband! she cried. Music off! she ordered and Shut the window! When the midwife finally allowed her to push, she had no strength left to talk.
But how quickly the details faded, how quickly the pain was forgotten. The midwife laid the baby on Paula’s tummy, and when Paula saw that it was a girl she sank back into her pillow with a smile. Ludger cut the umbilical cord and soon afterward Leni Antonia Krohn was suckling at Paula’s breast.
* * *
Ludger stayed at home for three weeks.
During this time he, she, and Leni were the whole world. Even when the baby fed, he lay beside them. All the necessary trips out were completed as quickly as possible. The three of them were like a force field that lost its energy the moment one of them left the closed circle.
When she came for her final visit, the midwife remarked that she’d rarely worked with a family where everything ran so smoothly.
On their last day together they got up at dawn. Paula would have liked to stay in bed, having fed Leni every couple of hours during the night. She felt so exhausted that even going to the loo felt like too much effort.
The park was deserted. An early mist hung above the grass. There was an autumnal chill to the air. When they got to the oak tree where they’d always met, Ludger took off his rucksack, unpacked the pickax and spade, and started digging the hole. When the pick hit a root, it rebounded, almost hitting his head. He looked for another spot.
Leni had begun to cry. She lay in the pram, wrapped up warmly. Her arms were flailing and her bawling tore through the silence. Paula pushed the pram back and forth. A bicycle shot past. Soon the paths would be filled with cyclists, joggers, and dog owners. She slowly moved a few feet away from Ludger, acting as if they weren’t together, as if she were just another passerby.
After about ten minutes, Ludger had dug a hole a foot deep. He reached into the rucksack and from a plastic bag took the placenta that was thawing. He held it in both hands for a while before placing it in the hole. Then he stretched out his arm to Paula.
His hand was wet and Paula noticed a sweet taste in her mouth.
Leni was still crying when Ludger had filled the hole. Paula turned around and briskly pushed the pram across the grass to the park. She only looked back once. A large dog was bounding purposefully to where the fresh earth stood proud of the green grass.
But before it reached the spot where they’d buried the placenta she turned away.
* * *
Everything was different now that she was alone with the child.
The rhythm of her day followed the infant’s feeding and sleeping needs. Paula’s body seemed alien to her. The breasts belonged to Leni, the limbs were heavy, the hair lifeless, and her belly took ages to return to its old shape.
When Ludger came home, he had eyes only for his daughter. If Paula was carrying the baby in her arms, he would reach out and grab Leni without asking. Papa was at the construction site, he would say, or Papa’s just got a new contract. Then he would explain to Leni why low-energy houses were prone to mold, the advantages of clay panels, how he was trying to persuade his client of the benefits of tempering, and which grasses and herbs were suitable for a green roof.
In the evening he would potter around the apartment. Whatever he touched became beautiful. The illuminated shelves he designed for the storage room, the coat stand in the hallway, the extravagant lamps—everything was perfect in its imperfections.
Whenever he finished something, he would call Paula. She would come and praise him, and his hand would feel for hers.
Only later, in bed, with Leni lying between them and Ludger gazing at her in adoration, did Paula feel uneasy. The tenderness in his eyes was for their child alone. Every tiny sound she made delighted him.
She was ashamed at what she felt. But his emotion disgusted her.
* * *
As often as she could she met up with Judith again, who was back in Leipzig having started her specialist training.
Paula enjoyed these hours with Judith, when she was able to be witty, ironic, and confident. But the more time she spent with her, the harder she found it to readjust when she got home. And it became ever more difficult to hide the truth from her friend.
She didn’t mention the nights when she woke up because her heart was beating too quickly. Nor the times when she felt everything was wrong, like a mistake that couldn’t be rectified. Nor that Ludger and she hadn’t made love in months. Before the birth it was the baby in her belly; after the birth the baby in the bed. A fleeting kiss in the mornings, a brief hug in the evenings. And nothing in between.
In those weeks Ludger often told her how happy he was. Paula got the impression she was paying the price for that happiness. As if he were living off her. The more energy he possessed, the weaker she felt. The more obsessively he forged his plans, the less motivated she became.
This was the period when he grew a beard, when he stopped eating meat and killing insects. When he installed a water filter and bought a grain flaker. When he began donating a significant proportion of his monthly salary to animal welfare and human rights organizations and switched his account to an ethical bank. His argument for all this was as simple as it was true: doing the right thing couldn’t be wrong.
He spent many evenings thinking aloud about how they ought to live. About how they could further reduce their ecological impact. Paula sat at the table with him. A silent listener, giving the occasional nod.
At the same time his despondency toward the world and humanity grew. He wouldn’t go into a café without earplugs as he couldn’t bear to hear scraps of other people’s private lives, being forced to participate in the lives of strangers. Paula could see his disgust from the tension in his face.
Essentially she shared his views. She had always admired Ludger’s moral integrity and his willingness to practice self-denial. Unlike most people, he stood up for what he believed in and accepted the downsides. She understood his sensitivity, too. And like him, she wanted Leni to grow up in a better world. Wasn’t this harmony of views the love Ludger spoke of?
But none of it had anything to do with her personally. With her—Paula.
* * *
Paula, he whispers, stroking her hair from her tearstained face.
Wenzel understands. He seems to understand everything. He doesn’t despise her, he doesn’t judge, he doesn’t even frown.
Before she first had sex with him she went to the doctor. She was certain she was ill. Paula had slept with fifteen men within the space of a year. According to the infidelity website, they were all married. Paula knew their first names and their ages, but nothing more. When they said they were healthy, she’d believed them.
The men hadn’t wanted to know anything either.
By the time the results came back she’d known Wenzel for eight weeks. They’d gone to listen to a Brahms symphony and a Rachmaninov piano concerto, had been to the theater, taken long walks, and kissed on benches in the park. In the past she’d started and finished a relationship in eight weeks. But Wenzel hadn’t even seen her naked.
To begin with she worried he would run off the moment he realized how damaged she was. But when he kept appearing punctually at the appointed meeting places, her anxiety gradually abated.
Standing by the desk at the doctor’s office, Paula tried in vain to gauge the results from the face of the receptionist. The woman’s eyes scanned a sheet of paper; her expression gave nothing away. She answered the telephone when it rang, scheduled an appointment, then glanced at the sheet of paper again. Everything’s fine, Frau Krohn, she said without looking up.
Paula was riding her bicycle. The wind in her face was warm.
At the market she bought fish, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, radishes, lettuce, onions, garlic, fresh herbs, lemons, and saffron. Her panniers full, she stopped at the wine shop, tried a Grauburgunder, a Weissburgunder, and a Sauvignon Blanc, enjoyed the pleasant buzz from the alcohol and left the shop with a Silvaner from Franconia.
Back home she tied on an apron, put on some Chopin ballades, and started cooking.
It was the day the swifts suddenly appeared, as they did every year. Flying from south of the equator they arrived in the first week of May, tearing along the streets at breathtaking speed. Their shrill cries rang out in the evening and could even be heard through the closed windows.
Paula went into the living room and sat on the windowsill. For a few minutes the evening sun was reflected in one of the windows opposite. Her three-quarter profile was cast like a paper cutting onto the curtain that divided the room, the shadows of the swifts darting over it and away.
That night they made love for the first time. Wenzel didn’t do anything Paula was unfamiliar with, and yet something about the sex was out of the ordinary. It was like a piece of complex music, with different, finer sounds emerging upon subsequent hearings, the beauty revealing itself in the quietest note and even in the pauses. And when she opened her eyes the next morning, Wenzel was still beside her.
