The Safety Net by Heinrich Böll

they had all smiled at; well, they had taught him to dance—and how they had whirled around there, outdoors on summer evenings, indoors when it was raining.…
    All this she told him that summer night, but not a word about Fischer, not a word about Helga, not a word about Kit, not one about Bernhard, nor did she tell him then that she was probably already pregnant by him, and the next day they had nearly gone crazy when he was on night duty again, but Kit was sleeping with her, and Fischer, back from his trip, was sleeping in the next room. She was sad yet relieved when he was transferred the following day to Tolmshoven. She also told him about Bleibl’s third wife, Elisabeth, how she had made friends with her, but then she had soon gone off for good to Yugoslavia. “When any of that lot happen to be nice, they soon disappear. She has a hotel down there now and is always inviting me, but I can’t very well go there with a swarm of security men.” And she also told him about their villa near Málaga, where boredom piled up—she told him a lot, almost everything, more than she had ever told anyone before.
    Of course she hadn’t given herself to Hubert at once, at first sight; she had liked this young police officer right away, liked him more than the others, he was about her age too, maybe even a year or two younger. She didn’t know how old Bernhard was, but nowadays they went to their First Communion very young, and perhaps Hubert was thirty after all, two years older than she. And it was with him that she had done what she would never have thought possible, that with a thousand oaths she would have sworn to be impossible: that shewould go to bed with a man other than her husband—someone who would never, never, have asked: “Did you remember to take it?” There had been plenty of opportunities, approaches too, you might even call them propositions, at the Riding Club, the Tennis Club, at parties; and the occasional one, like young Zummerling, was really charming, nice, not too serious, a real tease: “Why so serious, Sabine dear—why always so serious?” No, just Hubert, and she hardly knew how it had happened, whether it had evolved somehow or simply come about, whether it had been avoidable or unavoidable, whether it had been her initiative or his—it had come about, and whether unavoidable or not, let the gods kindly decide that—he had stood there, walked about, for weeks, almost two months, in the daytime, at night, and one thing was certain: with either of his two colleagues, Zurmack and Lühler, it would have been absolutely unthinkable, although they were nice enough fellows too, knew every bush, every tree, every little bump in the ground, every nook and cranny in the house, garden, and neighborhood, had the exact plan in their heads, including the cloakroom, storeroom, ironing room, garages, and tool shed, driveway and kitchen terrace, where Miss Blum sat on fine days shelling peas or peeling potatoes, with Kit beside her, intensely interested in such labors; and of course the hobby room—Fischer had once taken up carpentry but hadn’t set foot in the hobby room for a year—the sauna in the basement, the two bathrooms—they knew every nook and cranny in house, garden, and neighborhood, and none of them felt comfortable about all that glass in the picture windows.
    Things had become more difficult when she was advised to stop sending Kit to kindergarten, and since she no longer enjoyed shopping. There was simply no way the kindergarten in Blückhoven could be protected with an absolute guarantee of safety. Children were constantly being dropped off and picked up, food deliveries were made, there were a number of entrances and exits, bungalows scattered throughout the grounds, shrubberies, flower beds, playground equipment—ithad been deliberately designed and constructed as an open area with no fences between school and swimming pool; cars were constantly driving up, and it was impossible to