All Days Are Night by Peter Stamm

anything the next time she registered for a weekend course in psychodrama or breathing therapy.
    After a short while, she began to offer special coaching for entrepreneurs. She converted their basement into a sort of treatment room. On the walls she hung pictures by an Italian woman artist Hubert knew. The multiply exposed cityscapes through which anonymous individuals moved had always struck him as being on the cool side, but Astrid said no, they were perfect for her clientele. On a little corner table she put a rose quartz. She got a flyer printed up, full of executives and problem awareness, resources and parameters, and before long the first clients arrived, usually big shots from her bank, and disappeared downstairs with her.
    When I have a large enough customer base I mean to go full-time, said Astrid over dinner.
    She got terribly angry when Hubert said the only reason her bosses came to her for coaching was that she was so good-looking. Or is it an accident that you always seem to be in short skirts for your sessions?
    You need to think about your own life-work balance, she countered. It would be a start if you weren’t always mowing the lawn when I have clients.
    In objective terms, they were doing very well, but Hubert felt increasingly like an impostor when he stood in front of his students and critiqued their work. He always had something big planned for the holidays and then kept putting itoff, doing odd jobs about the house and garden or busying himself with vague research for projects that were never realized. He read a lot, and he saw colleagues. He still kept his studio in the old textile mill, but he rarely went there anymore. At first he had supposed his difficulties marked the beginning of a new productive phase. He put off his gallerist month after month. And he in turn asked less and less about what Hubert was working on now and instead sent him photos of the dog he had acquired and invitations to the openings of other artists in his stable. Hubert took a quick look at the postcards and laid them aside with a mixture of envy and irritation at the ardor with which his colleagues pursued their humdrum ideas.
    Then one day he got an e-mail from Arno, the head of a cultural center in the mountains where he had had his first and only large solo exhibition seven years before. To him it all seemed incredibly remote, and he had no significant memory of the place, the rooms or the people there, but this Arno guy still seemed to be full of their meeting. He addressed him by his first name, wrote enthusiastically about that show, and invited Hubert to come back. He gave him a budget and carte blanche, he could stay in the cultural center as long as he wanted, only the date for the exhibition was set, the end of June next year. Hubert felt like turning it down immediately, but then he printed out the e-mail and left it with a pile of other stuff in his in-box.
    After dinner, he told Astrid about the invitation from Arno. That was a nice time, she said, do you remember?I helped you hang the paintings. I was pregnant then. We had this little room right at the top of the building with a creaky bed. Arno once made some remark about it, but you weren’t bothered. She smiled quickly, then her face took on an expression as though she was confused by what she remembered. Could be, said Hubert, who could remember nothing of all this.
    They had been sitting in the garden, Lukas was playing in the meadow with a neighbor’s son. Hubert collected the dirty dishes and carried them into the kitchen. He was barefoot and felt the chill of the grass at approaching nightfall. When he came back, Astrid asked him why he didn’t want to accept the invitation.
    Because I’ve got nothing to show, he said.
    It doesn’t get any easier, she said. Sometime you’ll need to start working again. The scenery up there is beautiful.
    Beautiful landscapes are no use for good paintings.
    There are lots of radionic power places around