it was not the last time, but they no longer spoke at work. Each time before parting, they had to decide the location for their next date: in the shadows where streetlights did not reach, by which wall, or under which tree. Once on the street, they would get onto their bicycles separately, and cycle ten or twenty meters apart. The greater the secrecy the greater was the feeling that it was an illicit affair, and, more and more, he sensed that the relationship would end sooner or later.
The telephone wakes you and you wonder if you should answer it.
“It’s probably a woman, have you forgotten a date?” She is sitting propped against the pillow and turns to look down at you.
“More likely it’s for some reception,” you say.
“Someone was knocking while you were asleep.” She sounds tired.
You raise your head to look up. The sun behind the velvet drapes is shining through the gauze curtains onto the back of the sofa, a newspaper had been pushed under the door. You reach out to pick up the phone, but it stops ringing.
“Have you been awake long?” you ask.
“I feel rather hollow. You started snoring as soon as you fell asleep.”
“Why didn’t you give me a shove and wake me up? Didn’t you sleep at all?” You caress the curves of her shoulders; her body is familiar and intimate, even the warm smell of her body.
“You were so fast asleep. Go back to sleep, you haven’t had a decent sleep for two nights.” Her dull eyes have dark shadows beneath them.
“Isn’t it the same for you?” Your hands glide down her shoulders, grab her breasts and squeeze them hard.
“Do you still want to fuck me?” She looks at you with a wretched expression.
“What are you saying! Margarethe. …” You can’t understand.
“As soon as you had ejaculated, you fell fast asleep right on top of me.”
“That’s awful, just like an animal!”
“It’s really nothing, people are animals. But what a woman needs even more is a feeling of security.” She gives a weak smile.
You say you feel very relaxed when you are with her, she is very generous.
“It depends on who it is. Not everyone who wants it, gets it.”
“You didn’t have to say that!” You say that you are deeply touched by how kind she has been to you.
“But you will forget sooner or later,” she says. “The day after tomorrow, no, it should be tomorrow—another day has gone by and it’s probably already midday—I’ll go back to Germany and you’ll go back to Paris. We can’t live together.”
“We are sure to see each other again!”
“Even if we saw each other again it would only be as friends. I don’t want to be your lover.”
She takes your hands from her breasts.
“Why, Margarethe?”
You sit up in bed and look at her.
“You already have a woman in France, it’s not likely that you don’t.”
Her voice is harsh and you don’t know how to respond. The sun has moved from the back of the sofa to the armrests.
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“But surely you also have a boyfriend? You must.” This is the only response you can come up with.
“I don’t want to keep up this sort of sexual relationship with you, but I think we can be friends, no doubt, good friends. I didn’t think it would suddenly become so complicated.”
“What do you mean?”
You say that you love her.
“Don’t, don’t say that, I don’t believe it. Men always say that when they make love with women.”
“Margarethe, you are very special.” You want to reassure her.
“Is it because I am a Jew, and you’ve never had one before? It was just a whim, you don’t understand me at all.”
You say you want to understand her, but that she keeps everything to herself. You have told her a great deal about yourself, but she won’t open up. You remember how she kept mumbling something while you were making love.
“All you want is my flesh, not me.” She shrugs.
But you say that you really want to understand her, her life, her thoughts, you want to know everything about her.
“For something to write about?”
“No, as a good friend, if I don’t count as a lover.”
You say she has revived many feelings in you, not just sexual feelings. Memories you thought you had forgotten have come back to life because of her.
“You just thought you had forgotten, it’s just that you had not thought about them. However, pain can’t be obliterated and forgotten.”
She is lying on her back and her eyes are wide open. Without eye makeup, her eyes look a deeper gray-blue. Her nipples are pale red, and the aureoles an even paler red. She covers herself with the sheet and says not to look at her like that. She hates her body. She had said this while making love.
“Margarethe, you are truly beautiful and so is your body!”
You say you like the sensuous women in Klimt’s paintings and that you want the sun shining on her so that you can see her more clearly.
“Don’t open the curtains!” she stops you.
“Don’t you like the sunlight?” you ask.
“I don’t want my body to be seen in the sunlight.”
“You’re really unusual. You’re not like a Western woman, you’re more like a Chinese woman.”
“That’s because you don’t understand me.”
You say you really want to understand her, totally, not just her body, or, as she puts it, her flesh.
“That’s impossible. A person can’t totally understand another person, particularly if it is a man regarding a woman. And when a man thinks he has the woman, he does not need to understand her.”
“Of course.” You are frustrated and, holding your head in your hands, look at her and heave a sigh. “Would you like to have something to eat? We could get them to bring something to the room or we could go to the coffee shop.”
“Thanks, but I don’t eat in the morning.”
“Are you on a diet?” you ask pointedly. “It’s already midday!”
“If you want to, get them to bring something. Don’t mind me,” she says. “I just want to hear you talk.”
This moves you. You kiss her on the forehead, then pull up your pillow, lean back, and sit next to her.
“You’re very gentle,” she says. “I like you, I’ve given you what you wanted, but I don’t want to fall too deeply, I’m afraid. …”
“What are you afraid of?”
“I’m afraid of longing for you.”
You feel sad and stop talking. You think you should have a woman like this, maybe you should live with her.
“Go on with your story.” She breaks the silence.
You say that,