Alice by Judith Hermann Page B

needy. By reminding him of a name – pronounced as softly and gently as possible.
    Oh, Frederick had said. And what’s this all about?
    Still, Frederick had said, Oh, and what’s this all about, and Alice, grateful for the almost casual tone in his voice, had said that she didn’t really know what she was hoping for, but she’d like to see him.
    I’d like to meet you. That’s all. I can’t give you a good reason.
    He seemed to understand that. Or it seemed to be all right with him. He asked, Do you live in Berlin? – He meant: Do you live in Berlin, just as Malte had lived in Berlin, even though, unlike Malte, you’re obviously not dead – and Alice said, yes, she lived in Berlin, and as she was saying it, saw in her mind’s eye the picture of a plant in a clay pot on the windowsill of a ground-floor apartment that looked out on a dark rear courtyard, on dustbins and carpet rods. All around the pot were the crunchy shells of insects. That’s what came to mind. Who knows why.
    Well, I still get to Berlin, Frederick said. Frequently. Let’s meet in Berlin. Give me your phone number. I’ll call you the next time I’m in Berlin.
    He had set the conditions. His voice had suddenly become strong, alert. Alice gave him her phone number; he didn’t repeat it. And it might have gone no further. But two months later he had actually called her.
    Alice stumbled in her high heels, tripped, and was surprised by the brief jolt to her spine, an icy throbbing. She should have worn different shoes, should have left her shoulder bag at home. Her coat was already spotted from the rain and by the time she arrived, the right shoulder would be crumpled by her bag. Who was it she actually wanted to introduce to Frederick? Obviously not herself. Alice tipped back her umbrella and looked up into the black tree branches; her face got wet. The day was so grey that everything glowed: the orange of the refuse truck, the yellow of the mail trucks, the golden halos behind the fogged-up windows of the cafés. Roller shutters rattled. The bin men clanged dustbins into the entryways, as noisily as possible. From behind the scaffolding that covered the house facades came music from transistor radios, drowned out by an avalanche of construction debris. Fire-engine sirens, sounding a four-note interval, a helicopter hurtling across the sky with a deafening roar. Twilight. The temperature barely above freezing on this day in November. What is this all about? What’s it all about? Alice might also have said, Frederick, you know, it’s actually all about me. But she didn’t say it, and she wasn’t going to say it. Frederick would know anyway.
    Alice hadn’t known Malte. Malte would have been her uncle if he hadn’t committed suicide on a day in March – almost forty years ago. Alice was born in April, one month later. But by the time her life began Malte was already lying under the green grass – stones, jasmine and rhododendron around his grave. You are the light in our darkness, Alice’sgrandmother, Malte’s mother, had written on her calendar in a clear, deliberate hand.
    Alice shook her head, clicked her tongue. To be the light in someone’s darkness. She could see her car now. It was standing where she had parked it yesterday, next to the planetarium behind a row of shaggy forsythia bushes. She was always surprised to find her car exactly where she’d left it. There was a message clamped under the windscreen wiper. The bearer of the message was already ten cars away, a skinny gypsy in a black leotard. His shoulders were bare; his right leg dragged, and he was preaching at the top of his lungs – incomprehensible, full of rage or ecstasy, it could have been either. The dome of the planetarium was varnished with rain. Fat crows in the winter grass, and along the edge of the meadow, the clatter of the S-Bahn. Alice waited until the gypsy had