Background for Love

This is it: we’re really on our way. Blankets and big suitcases and coats, a pile of maps, sunglasses to protect us from the dust and the glare. Chocolate, hard-boiled eggs, cognac, bananas: it’s going to be a long journey, a journey without lunch, instead we’ll have a quick bite when the gates are lowered at railroad crossings, and there’ll be irritated chewing when we’re delayed at the border.
We’ve put a long winter behind us, full of work and anxie- ties, rain, fog, hail and snow. It’s five in the morning. We have the feeling we’re running from something, toward the easy life, toward a sunlit world. It’s almost a kind of betrayal, this journey through the gray morning haze, betrayal of the friends who have stayed behind to freeze, betrayal of the morning and evening papers that from now on will only ever reach us late, hardly any scent left to them, hardly even true anymore. We feel guilty as Germany slips by beneath us, devoured by our accomplice’s four wheels, as the windshield wiper, eager accessory, busily shoves away a fine mist of rain.
We’re on our way: the car, you and I.
Oh yes, in spite of it all it’s sheer joy to be on the road. Anything could happen to us, a flat tire, an accident might call us back, like a gendarme hard on the heels of a fugitive—but each kilometer makes us feel safer. The uncertain early light grows surer, more confident. We really are on our way—I move closer to you. You wear thick gloves, a good camel traveling coat, you’re hidden in its warm skin and you watch your turns closely, you watch for slippery streets and for obstacles that might get in the way of your progress. Later on it will get easier, I know, clearer, your strained attention can relax once the world crosses from the early hour into plain morning, the spell broken. But at this hour shrubs still look like haycarts, haycarts like shrubs, danger lurks, the farmers have long poles on the sides of their carts hidden by the early light. We have to just keep going, we can’t afford to get tripped up now, we’re on our way.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ I say. ‘Not completely real yet.’
The car veers sharply to one side. A prehistoric creature lumbers against us, bangs and clatters past.
‘We could have been killed,’ you say. ‘You should have used the horn.’ ‘At this hour?’
The roads are an adventure, like a jungle. Something could be lying in wait round any corner, ready to leap out at us. But we love adventure, we surrender to her winds as they come at us over the radiator.
‘Annemarie said to me, how can you go to that fashionable, crowded seaside—’
‘Just wait.’
I sink into silent exhilaration. We count kilometers and calculate hourly averages. You tell me about the wide, long, straight avenues in France—tout droit, tout droit, comme un billard, Madame—the mottled trunks of plane trees to the right and left. We talk about the journey and not us, though here too we are marking a departure from old habits to new. Up till now we’ve met for meals together, been to concerts together, danced with each other, talked deeply, fought and loved each other. You are familiar to me from those many hours; but how you look while shaving, that I don’t know. I’m still not acquainted with your morning mood or your working quiet; I only know your exceptions, not your rules. This trip is meant to lead us to common ground, we want to weather new adventures, dif- ferent from the old. We’re no longer challenging each other to small war and small peace, we are braving the dragon called everyday that dwells in the cavern every night. How long until I’ve exhausted all my reserves, everything I’ve read or can remember, until I won’t be able to enchant you with words anymore because you’ll know all of mine already. And you’ll notice how quickly I get tired, and—but I’m not afraid of what I’ll notice.
‘What are you thinking?’
No, I don’t tell you what I’m afraid of. ‘How many kilom- eters to the border?’
‘Take a look at the map.’
I get the map out. I comb over it for the villages and towns and can’t find the road. Finally I find it, but can’t add up the distance in kilometers. I fall in your esteem. You tell me to take the wheel. No, I am no Diana on these country roads, no bold knight of the steering wheel, you’ve found me out too soon. I daydream easily and see trees instead of milestones, rooftops instead of signposts. If you’ve taken me for competent—
‘What are you thinking?’
‘I’m wondering whether we’ll find a cottage.’
‘Wouldn’t we be better off in a hotel? It’s much more comfortable.’
‘Everyone lives in hotels. No, it has to be a cottage. And it should stand on a small meadow and a white cat should sit on the well and purr as soon as you look at her. And I want a fig tree in front of the doors, then we’ll want to grow old like Philemon and Baucis and never go back to Munich or Berlin.’ ‘Of course,’ you say seriously, and step on the gas, now that the road is straight and widening. ‘Yes. Never again. Not until fall.’
He said until fall, I think: that could be September or November. But I don’t ask. Until fall is a long time, more than just months, more than a quarter of a year. With a few words you’ve cut a fat slice out of the round year and put it on my plate. I look wonderingly, because it’s still whole, only the crumbs of an hour have fallen off it.
Meanwhile, because the day is now bright, you place your arm round me and drive with only your left hand. I’m lost in admiration.
We are free. We are happy. We have money for a few months, you more, I less, as is the way with us. I’m nearly certain that you love me and that it can last perhaps for a summer. Especially in the south, where they say it’s in the air. Yes—step on the gas pedal, cut into the fog and rain, soon we’ll be in Switzerland.

 
Already we’re at Lake Constance, and here and there you can see trees blossoming.
One border guard asks us how much money we have and whether we don’t in fact have more. Another wants to see our car’s registration number, to know how much tobacco we have, how many cigarettes. The car rattles impatiently, because you can’t bring yourself to turn the motor off. The tollbooth attendants are wet and freezing and show some understanding. They grasp at least that we have to keep moving, and already another country is opening up for us.
It’s welcoming here, it’s peaceful. But we hardly take it in. We can’t stop for the gorgeous blue lakes of Zürich, Vierwaldstadt, Geneva. We don’t stop to rest in the surrounding villages. It’s beautiful, but we drive past and the landscape doesn’t sink in. Only small fragments, scraps of mountains, a pretty rising curve, all the flags on the hotels in Geneva. We’ve devoured all of Switzerland. The day grows tired like us, but you still want to get to France before it’s over, drink warm red wine and sleep in a wide bed like you’ve promised.
We haven’t spoken, haven’t paused, only pushed on, onward, onward. You sit doggedly at the wheel and take the curves hungrily. The mountains to you are obstacles, you curse at the slower cars and want to clear the train crossings like hurdles. You only open your mouth when I stuff a hard-boiled egg or a banana into it, or when I entice you with a chicken leg. You don’t look my way. But I know we’re of one mind, we’re silently fixed on the same goal, strung on the same bow, I’m grateful beyond words to have been brought along, to be allowed to sit mounted here alongside you. And while you gallop I hold on breathlessly, just as women have always clung full of joy and fear to the manes of horses bearing them away.
You’re still wearing your winter face, rather furrowed, simul- taneously tired and impatient, but a new skin is already growing underneath. Forty years old, I think, amazed: to have eaten your fill so many times and yet still be so hungry. To have seen so much, and still want to see more; loved so much, and yet be seduced again and again.
Out of the blue you say, ‘Remind me I have to write to Eva, she always worries.’
This again. I’m brave and ask cheerfully: ‘Why with me this time, anyway?’
‘I want to spend a summer with you.’ ‘And with Adelheid?’
‘Holy Week,’ you respond, pleased with yourself. ‘And now let’s talk about today and tomorrow. Have you ever eaten bouillabaisse?’
No, I have not. I’ve seen absolutely nothing, eaten absolutely nothing interesting or exciting.
‘You’ve run off with a virgin,’ I say.
‘We’ll soon take care of that. This is France, after all.’ You say this grandly, as though handing me the country on a serving platter.
Each country welcomes us with the same words of greeting: Cigars—Cigarettes—Tobacco. France is no exception. The customs agent is appealingly lazy. Ça ira becomes ça va, the republic consolidated. We’re allowed to drive on and now all borders are behind us. In a truer sense, we’ve arrived. Already the French country roads are all around us. They’re not country roads at all, actually, but boulevards, absolutely straight and arched over with still-barren branches. The distance markers are adorned with red caps and they’re numbered, Route Nationale 201—now even I can find my way—and we’ll stay on this road until we reach Chambéry.
‘Chambéry—a good place for truffles,’ you instruct me. ‘It’s a crime to drive through truffle country without stopping, only excusable in this case because these aren’t the real truffles. Those grow in Périgord.’
French place names fill the mouth wonderfully, there is something savory in their sound. We become bold. We forget the thunderclouds brewing back home in Germany. You talk about truffles and express a desire to drink a warm Châteauneuf du Pape this evening—these are the borders now to be crossed, a lust for life growing up from the earth. The billboards cry out Cointreau, Pernod—Hitler and Hindenburg seem far away.
We hardly saw each other in the days leading up to our departure.
‘How long has it actually been?’ you ask. ‘So long that I’m practically like new,’ I say. ‘Tonight,’ you say.
But tonight you’ll be tired, full of food and wine, and you’ll want to rise early in the morning, so no, not tonight.
We kiss. Evening draws nearer. We plan to spend the night in Grenoble. Grenoble, by the Isère River, which flows to our left along the avenue. This is my first time in France. The roads are beautiful, the trees beautiful, one of divine creation, the other human, and it’s good. I’d like very much to kiss you again, but the city’s outskirts are busy with cyclists and you have to drive carefully to avoid them.
We quarrel fiercely over the hotel. You want to stay at the Majestic and I think it’s too grand. At last we ask a policeman to referee the debate. We land at the Majestic.
This is France. Our room comes with a gigantic bed. It’s a matchmaking hotel, I discover. No one asks for my name. C’est la dame à Monsieur. No one wants to know whether we’re married; if what we want is to sleep together, all is well.
We freshen up. The windows are open wide, noise echoes up from the plaza below, some festival with a circus and carousel. You want to go down and take a look, have a go on the see-saw, but I’m too much diminished from the journey, unwillingly I confess I’m more fatigued than you are. Then comes the food— the whole menu, actually. The waiter sets the chicken on the side table and we sit across from the giant bed and drink wine. Now you tell stories about Monte Carlo. You get very ani- mated and sketch out the gaming table and draw rouge et noir, pair et impair, passe et manque. My head spins like a roulette wheel, I say yes and nod and don’t follow.
‘The bank has better odds than the player,’ you say. ‘You see, when you roll a zero…’
You fill my glass. I’m not used to this much wine and it draws its circle around me, I feel like a stone dropped in the water, now I’m sinking deep and then it lifts me back up lightly to the surface, where I stay buoyant, tipsy.
 
The waiter has cleared our dishes away. We’re alone in a strange town, I haven’t even seen it, it was already night when we arrived, I only know that Stendhal was born here: mere literary reminiscence, no more of that, just sit quietly.
‘Time for bed—come here, I’ll help with those clothes.’ ‘But I thought—I thought you still wanted to write a card.’ While the bath is running you sit at the desk wearing a bath- towel and do in fact, remarkably, write a postcard, despite the hour. I’m in awe. Eighteen hundred kilometers at the wheel, plus the wine, but you can still write postcards—right now writing a postcard sounds like climbing the Matterhorn to me. ‘Hmm,’ you say, licking a stamp—yes, you’ve miraculously conjured French stamps from somewhere—‘the card has to go out tonight. I really can’t go downstairs like this. Would you?’ I walk the length of the hallway to the stairs apprehensively. Oh God—the stairs! They’re horrifyingly wide, down the middle runs a narrow red strip. I’m to walk along this strip, it’s clear, and the strip leads into the great hall, where everyone looks at you. It stretches like a tightrope. I think desperately of my guardian angel, wondering whether he’s invisibly steadying me so I don’t tumble onto the smooth white marble on my right and left. And all for Eva, I think, all these terrors for Eva, these awful trials for Eva. I’m filled with rage and suddenly I’m on solid ground, as a small attendant—there’s my guardian angel—takes the card from me and sticks it into a narrow slot that’s somehow both a little higher and a little lower than you’d expect. I marvel at this young page and the angel helps me on
my way, I reach the elevator and go back up, emerge at the correct floor, now the final adventure: I have to choose the right door, then there you are, my love, and you’ve taken possession of the enormous wide bed, legs spread far apart: I hunt for a small corner to fold myself into, and see that you’re already asleep...