Adam and evelyn, p.2
Adam and Evelyn, page 2
“This flaw here in the fabric, I’ll tuck it under, it’ll as good as vanish,” he said, and inserted a couple of pins beside the box pleat.
“When I get home they can always smell that I’ve been here with you. Although I always wash my hair.”
Adam gave the skirt a gentle tug. “Sits and fits like a glove. Once around.” And when she threw him a questioning look, he repeated: “Once around. And take this thing off!”
Lilli undid the clasp of her bra, brushed the straps aside, and let it dangle between her thumb and index finger.
“Satisfied?” she asked as she let the bra fall to the floor. Adam removed the suit jacket from the big tailor’s dummy. Lilli stretched her arms behind her, slipped into the jacket, pulled it up over her shoulders, and spun around. She looked straight at him as he pinned the jacket closed. “I found a couple of buttons for it in an antique shop, scarce as hen’s teeth, my old man would’ve said, real mother-of-pearl, prewar stuff.” Adam took a step back.
“Well, what do you say? Stretch your arms out in front of you, both of them, and to the sides … I fitted the waist. Is it too snug?”
“Not a bit,” Lilli said, looking at herself in the second mirror.
“Either find yourself a decent bra or wear nothing under it—nothing would be best. The middle button a tad higher, and a little less here, give some, take some, see, that gives it its shape all by itself.” He stepped to one side and watched Lilli turn back and forth between the two mirrors, hands pressed flat at her waist, stroking the fabric.
“Oh, Adam,” Lilli said, just as the final duet began. “I ought to bring you a bouquet of roses every time I come.”
Adam blew little clouds in the direction of the skylight. For a while music hung in the air, as if they were both listening closely to the voices.
“You deserve a whole rose garden.”
Adam laid the cigar on the windowsill, the tip jutting over the edge. “I’ll make sure,” he said, “that everybody has a great view, from in front and from behind and in profile.” He picked up a half-full tea glass, gave it one last stir, licked off the spoon, drank it down, and moved in close behind Lilli. For a moment he eyed the countless copies of her in the mirrors. Then he thrust the spoon handle between her breasts, it stuck there.
“You see, what did I say, you don’t need anything else.”
The spoon even stayed there once Lilli was lying on her back atop the table and Adam, after carefully working her skirt up, was moving inside her.
“Slow down,” Lilli said. “And be careful, you’re dripping on my suit!”
Adam wiped his brow with his sleeve and shoved the button box and her photo farther back.
During the final bars of the last chorus Lilli grabbed the tape measure still hanging around Adam’s neck and pulled him down to her, until his eyes were looking right into hers. “Adam,” she whispered, “Adam, you’re not going to cut and run, are you?” She fought for air. “You’re coming back, Adam, you’re staying here, right?”
“What a lot of baloney!” Adam said. He saw the sweat on Lilli’s upper lip, felt her breath against his face, under his right hand her heart was pounding wildly. “Promise me, Adam, promise me!” Lilli suddenly cried so loudly that he covered her mouth out of pure reflex. That’s when the spoon slipped from her décolleté. Adam removed it from her shoulder and put it back in his glass, which responded with a low, clear, almost bell-like ring.
3
ADAM, WHERE ARE YOU?
WHEN ADAM HEARD her voice and then her steps on the wooden stairs, it came to pass that he squeezed behind the cupboard to the right of the door. Squatting in the bathtub, frozen with fear, Lilli stared at him. There was a knock, Lilli turned the sprayer off. Evelyn entered.
“I just quit,” she announced—and then almost toneless—“my job.”
Foam clinging to her arms and shoulders, Lilli got out of the tub.
“I’m sorry,” Evelyn said and turned around.
“Adam?” she called as she left. “Adam, where are you?”
She climbed to his workshop. He knew what it looked like up there. Lilli tried to pull up her panties, which had got rolled up and twisted at her knees. Adam looked over her glistening back and out to the garden. Hopping about on the freshly mowed grass were blackbirds, sparrows, and a magpie. Over the last few days he had weeded the bordering flower beds, the fence had been freshly painted in May. The garden hose lay neatly coiled up between the driveway and the spot where he burned trash. The turtle in its little pen had crept out of sight. Evelyn came slowly down the stairs. She stopped at the bathroom door.
“Adam, are you in here?” She opened the door. “Adam?”
“I’m sorry,” Lilli whispered. She had yanked her panties up to where they hugged her hips like a cord, and was now clamping a towel under her arms to cover her breasts. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Have you seen Adam?”
Lilli glanced toward the window as if she might find him there in the garden. Why didn’t she say something? I’m far, far away, Adam thought. There was Evelyn standing right in front of him now. He couldn’t help smiling—she still had on her white blouse, black skirt, and waitress’s apron.
“Who’s she?” Evelyn asked, jerking her head back toward Lilli. She picked up a towel draped across the washbasin and threw it at Adam’s chest. It fell to the floor.
“Who is this woman?”
He picked up the towel and held it to him like a loincloth.
“I’m sorry,” Lilli whispered.
“Is this your fitting?”
Lilli looked up briefly, then back at the floor.
“It was so hot,” Adam said.
“Tell her to finish her shower, that won’t make any difference now either.”
Evelyn hesitated briefly at the door and gazed at Lilli, who with upper arms pressed to her body was standing there bent slightly forward, trying to unroll her white panties and tug them up over her butt.
Adam counted Evelyn’s steps. They seemed to linger at the threshold to her room. He was afraid she might turn around and return to the bathroom. Then the door slammed. Her old sofa groaned audibly in the silence of the house.
Adam was sitting at the kitchen table, brushing at breadcrumbs with his fingers. It felt good to prop his head in his hands. In front of him, beside the opened jar of stewed quince, was a paper bag of fruit that looked like little purple onions but felt soft through the paper. He didn’t want to risk taking any out. Maybe he had gone too far just carrying the bag up the steps into the kitchen.
Adam, barefoot, a towel around his hips, had gathered up his and Lilli’s things in the workshop, but she had to send him upstairs again because he had returned without her bra, and without the photograph too. He had to pass Evelyn’s room again, move up and down the creaking stairs again—but only with the photo. Evelyn had probably stashed her new bra somewhere, Lilli had hissed, and then broken into tears.
She kept saying, “What can I do? What can I do?” to which Adam could only respond with whispers of “It’s not so bad” and “It’ll be all right.”
But what he had really wanted was for Lilli to finally shut up. Every word she spoke only chained him to her all the tighter. And no, he hadn’t been in his right mind. Otherwise why hadn’t he put clothes on, instead of trailing after Lilli in his bathrobe, and then picking up Evelyn’s bike from where it had slid down to the base of the quince tree. So that his bathrobe had spread wide open. He couldn’t have made it any clearer to the neighbors what had just happened. Lilli should have done her talking before, not after it was too late: “He’s in the garden. I think he’s outside in the garden.” Just that. He would have slipped upstairs to his workshop—and fine. Nothing would have happened, not one thing.
Back in the house, Adam had for one brief moment actually believed that everything would be all right—just as everything was always all right once he was inside his house. That’s why he had hung up Evelyn’s keys and carried the bag into the kitchen. She was always leaving stuff lying around. He had found the half-eaten bowl of quince preserves on top of the breadbox and put it in the fridge. Instead of the cutting board, she had sliced bread on a newspaper—she had taken to buying a copy of that fish wrap of late. As usual it had been left to him to shake the newspaper out over the sink, fold it up, and add it to the stack in the cellar. He’d been brought up short by the felt-tip circle around the museum tour: “History of the Laocoön Group,” even though Evelyn knew she wouldn’t have time for it.
Upstairs Evelyn was moving back and forth. She had slammed doors and flung them open again, books had fallen to the floor. Hadn’t it been his responsibility to go upstairs, to take that first step?
But it was quiet again now, except for the hum of the fridge. Now and then Adam would brush more breadcrumbs away, only to return to the same position. He was thankful for every minute that he could sit at the kitchen table without having to say anything.
Suddenly he felt the pain. A burning under his breastbone, as if a hard lump had got stuck there. Adam could see himself stretched out on the kitchen floor, unconscious, Evelyn at the door.
Suddenly he became frightened that Evelyn might harm herself. But then almost immediately came the sound of the toilet flushing and her footsteps, and that was just as frightening. Adam stood up. Holding the bag in one hand, massaging his chest with the other, he looked up at the ceiling as if he could see Evelyn. All he could think to do was say he was sorry, to apologize. He went to the stairs, sat down on the second step, and placed the bag beside him. Adam was disappointed to notice the pain easing. His elbows on his knees, he propped up his head, which felt unnaturally heavy the longer he held the pose.
4
OUT OF HERE
ADAM GOT to his feet as if about to fight a duel. Evelyn came to a halt a few steps above him and set down her suitcase. The green tent was wedged under one arm. She smiled. “I’m going to Simone’s, for now.”
“For now?”
“Well yes, and then I’ll see. She has a visa too, maybe we’ll take the trip together.”
Adam wanted to correct her—what was pasted in their papers wasn’t a visa. So instead he just asked, “And where to?”
“Why, the Caribbean, where else?”
Adam let go of the newel so it wouldn’t appear that he was barring her way. He would have liked to put both hands in his pants pockets, but in getting to his feet he had grabbed the paper bag of fruit, and it was still there in his left hand. “Don’t you want to wait?”
“What for?”
“Shouldn’t we talk?”
“What about?”
Adam grimaced in agony. “About what happened.” He could barely take his eyes off the bright red toenails sparkling at the tips of her sandals.
“If you have something to say to me.” She cradled the tent in her arms like a baby and sort of halfway sat down on her suitcase.
“I’m so sorry, I apologize.” He looked directly at her, for as long as it took to get a nod. Then his eyes fell to her feet again. While he was dealing with the fear that she might harm herself, she had evidently been painting her toenails.
“I’m so very, very sorry.”
“Me too, Adam, very, very sorry.” Evelyn said this with exaggerated nods, as if speaking to a child.
“And if I were to tell you that it wasn’t anything, nothing at all like what you think it was. Lilli and I have known each other—”
“Are you kidding?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re lying.” There was resignation in her voice, as if she had been afraid it would go like this. “I’m leaving, before you can come up with more nonsense.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“You’re the one who wanted to talk.” Evelyn stood up.
“You’re going to cut and run, just like that?”
“ ‘Just like that’ is good. I’m trying to get out of here before the other shoe falls.”
“What shoe?”
“When it finally hits me what actually happened.”
“It meant nothing, not a thing.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“To me it means practically everything.”
“Go ahead and shine a light in every corner—it means nothing, nothing, do you understand? You can ask me anything you want.”
“About what? How long it’s been going on? Is Renate Horn from Markkleeberg the only one? Do the plump ones turn you on? Do you need something slutty to get you up to speed? Some things you don’t trust me with? Or is it just about variety? Does the designer want proper pay for his work? Is it your services that make them so easy, or do they come to you because they’re not getting enough at home anymore?”
Adam sucked in his lips and massaged his chest with his free hand.
“I’d always hoped I’d never be exposed to any of it, that I wouldn’t be forced to seriously think about what’s going on when silk blouses touch naked skin, about the plunging necklines you create, about those asses that you can tighten better than any plastic surgeon—”
“Evi—” he said, banging his right hand on the knob of the newel post.
“I had hoped that the betrayal only went as far as my shoes, or the garden or the couch, for all I care they could have … if that’s what you need, fine by me. But I didn’t want to know about it, didn’t want to see it or feel it, understand? As I was running away from the rathskeller today, suddenly there was this little man in my ear, who said, Watch out, be very careful! But I didn’t listen to him. And now I’ve seen it, and felt it, and that’s that. End of story.”
Evelyn picked up her suitcase, shoved the tent under her left arm, and descended the last few steps until she was almost touching Adam. Her gaze swept past him. She waited for him to make room for her.
Adam stepped to one side, holding the paper bag against his chest with both hands, like a bouquet.
“And why are you quitting your job?”
“Now’s not the time.”
“Come on, tell me.” Adam leaned against the wall.
“They stole something from me, if you must know, and then they blamed me for getting so upset about it.”
“And what was it they stole?”
“Perfume.”
“Your perfume?”
“My perfume.”
“That I got for you?”
“No. I’d just been given it.”
“Aha.”
“Simone had stopped by, with her cousin, he brought it along for me, because—”
“The guy from last year? That smug little prick? Put down your suitcase.”
“At least he noticed how much I liked the perfume. I put it in my locker, and then it was gone.”
“Did these goodies come from him too?” Adam held out the bag to her.
“You don’t have to look so disgusted. Those are fresh figs.”
“Even after he hit on you like that, you said yourself—”
“Why shouldn’t I let someone hit on me?”
“Somebody like him?”
“You mean I should have reported to you about my contact with the West. I really wanted to, but you were busy. Too bad. A real shame!”
“I’ve told you—”
“And told them I’d be happy to talk about the whole thing, but first I wanted my property back. And that’s when Frau Gabriel said that she doesn’t allow vague suspicions like that. I asked her if that was her final word, and when she stuck by it, I said that I would take my vacation starting now. She demanded I stay to the end of the shift, and work tomorrow too. And with that I quit. Over and out.”
“And the swanky cousin was waiting outside to greet you with a smile.”
“Baloney. They’d left long before that.”
“I thought you said he was pushy?”
“Should I have said I won’t accept it, that I first have to ask my husband and my boss?”
“And now you’re moving in with him?”
“Oh, Adam. If that’s all you can come up with.” Evelyn picked up her keys in the entryway and opened the front door.
“You could at least have dressed right for the occasion,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well … stripes and plaids.” Adam followed her out and helped her clamp her suitcase and tent onto the bike’s rack.
“Want me to give you a lift?” he asked. “That’s not going to stay on.”
“Wait a sec,” Evelyn said, and now walked back to the garden, where she sat down on the low bench and scratched under the turtle’s neck with one finger.
“Be good to Elfriede,” she said, giving her right pants leg a couple of rolls. “Fresh water every day. And lay the grating across at night, on account of the marten.”
Adam preceded Evelyn, opened the garden gate for her, and handed her the bag of figs.
“Thanks,” Evelyn said and rode off. After a few yards the tent slumped to one side. Adam watched Evelyn reach back with the same hand holding the figs. He strode back into the house and closed the door behind him as carefully as if he were afraid to wake someone. “It’s not going to stay on,” he suddenly said, and repeated the sentence several times while he went back to massaging his chest.
5
WHY DOES ADAM LIE AGAIN?
ADAM WANTED to lie down and close his eyes, at least for a few minutes. But the realization that at some point he would have to get up again kept him on his feet.
He climbed to his workshop. He carefully smoothed out Lilli’s skirt and pinned it on the dummy, draping the suit top over it. He slipped the record back in its jacket, turned the record player off, closed the window, left the skylight open just a crack. When he picked up the tray with the empty glasses and sugar bowl and turned to leave, he spotted something dazzlingly white in the space between the wall and the open door—Lilli’s bra. On one cup was a dark semicircle, his shoeprint.
