To the Back of Beyond(38)

For a couple of years he had a dog, a stray like himself, who had followed him and whom he kept with him, even though it made for a lot of difficulties. One night his dog died after not eating for several days. Thomas buried him in the bushes at the side of the road. This was in Greece somewhere. That was the farthest away he got; he didn’t want to leave Europe, the rest of the world felt somehow too remote to him, and too far from home.

In his choice of places, he followed his instincts. Sometimes he went south, then north, sometimes closer to home, sometimes farther away. In all those years he never crossed into Switzerland, but it wasn’t a decision as such, it just happened that way. Not everything you did had a reason.

It was the end of May, two months after Thomas’s birthday; he had now reached retirement age, though in his false passport he was two years younger. When the forgers had asked him for his date of birth, he had given them Astrid’s— he had no idea why.

He had spent that winter in Spain, minding a holiday home north of Barcelona that belonged to one of his previous employers. Two weeks ago, he had gone into the city and hopped on a bus, the first one going, and that had taken him to Freiburg im Breisgau. Although he had a bad back and could no longer lift heavy weights, he needed money after the months of idleness in Spain and took a job as a house-painter, as there was nothing else going just then.

It was a cold, rainy day. Thomas stood up on the scaffolding, painting under the eaves of a single-family home. Below him, the others were applying an undercoat to the front. Thomas heard a car draw up. In turning to see who it was, he took a step back and knocked against the bucket, sending some of the paint splattering onto the asphalt below. The boss had climbed out of the truck, looked up, and called out, You fucking idiot, can’t you watch what you’re doing. Thomas draped himself over the rail, and the cold and rain and the gray asphalt and the green of the grass took him back twenty years to the edge of the grike he had fallen into. A wind splashed a few raindrops into his face, and while his boss was still effing and blinding down below, his voice seemed to be getting quieter, and Thomas had the feeling that the rain was letting up, and there was a break in the clouds, and he was falling into a sky full of dazzling light.



Astrid stood in the kitchen, washing up from lunch. The day before, Ella and Emilie had been to visit, and Astrid had baked a cake because it was Emilie’s first day at school. She had given Ella what was left of the cake, and at her insistence kept a little piece for herself. She took the cling wrap off the plate and set it down on the kitchen table. The window was open over the sink, all around it was peaceful, just a blackbird was breaking the silence with its irritated twitter. Astrid went outside to put the vegetable peelings into the compost. She shooed away the cat that was slinking about around the plum tree. Back inside, she put on water for coffee, tipped some grounds into the filter, and stood there to watch small and larger bubbles forming in the water. Her dog, an old Labrador, came trotting into the kitchen and sniffed at its empty dish. Astrid saw him lift his head and prick up his ears even before she had consciously taken in the squeak of the unoiled gate. Then she knew he was back. She gave no thought to the hurt and the offense, or to what had been and what might be. She ran into the living room and through the window caught sight not so much of the man as of his movements, his typical walk, slightly leaning forward, slightly stiff, but swift and resolute. She heard his footsteps on the gravel, then they stopped, and Astrid had the sensation that her heart had stopped with them. He might still turn back and disappear forever. But he was only hesitating or perhaps savoring the moment. With a bewildered smile he looked around at the blooming garden, taking stock of the changes, marveling at the huge rhubarb patch, the plum tree that twenty years ago when he left had been a little sapling. He noticed that the elder bush was gone, that the wire-mesh fence had been removed and the adjacent gardens had been allowed to grow together, as though they belonged together, that new people had moved in next door, who had left their own traces too, a swing set and a small wooden sandbox, the tricycle by the door and the ball on the lawn. His stopping felt unendingly long to Astrid, in the complete silence she could hear the rushing of the blood in her ears. Then there were his footsteps again, labored, as though he found it difficult to go up the stairs. And suddenly Astrid felt perfectly convinced that in all those years Thomas had led no other life, that he’d had no other relationship, not fathered any children, not even practiced his profession, further qualified himself or grown in any way. Just like her he had been awaiting this moment, this brief moment of happiness in which he would put out his hand and turn the doorknob. This moment of the door opening, when she would see his indistinct form in the dazzling noonday light.





PETER STAMM is the author of the novels Agnes, All Days Are Night, Seven Years, On a Day Like This, and Unformed Landscape, and the short-story collections We’re Flying and In Strange Gardens and Other Stories. His prize-winning books have been translated into more than thirty languages. For his entire body of work and his accomplishments in fiction, he was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, and in 2014 he won the prestigious Friedrich H?lderlin Prize. He lives in Switzerland.

MICHAEL HOFMANN has translated the work of Gottfried Benn, Hans Fallada, Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, and many others. In 2012 he was awarded the Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His Selected Poems was published in 2009, and Where Have You Been? Selected Essays in 2014. He lives in Florida and London.