I laid my head on the pillow, fixed my eyes on the ceiling, and began to wait. Restlessness churned inside me. I wondered how she would look at me when she woke, what she would say—yet, without knowing why, I was afraid of her waking. There was none of the calm and security I had hoped to find the moment I opened my eyes. For the life of me, I couldn't understand the reason. Why was I still trembling inside, like a defendant awaiting judgment? What more could I possibly want from her? What was I still waiting for? Hadn't every single one of my desires been fulfilled to its utmost?
I felt that there was an empty space inside me, and that this void was giving me an almost physical ache. Something was missing—but what? I was as troubled as someone who, after leaving the house, realizes he's forgotten something, stops, searches his memory and his pockets, and, unable to recall what it was, resumes his journey with reluctant steps, his mind left behind.
After a while I noticed that Maria's steady breathing had stopped. I slowly lifted my head and looked.
She was staring at some indefinite point. She hadn't moved at all—hadn't even pushed back the hair that had fallen over her face. Even though she knew I was watching her, she kept looking at that unknown place without turning her head. She wasn't blinking. I realized she had been awake for some time, and I felt the anxieties inside me suddenly swell, as if an invisible hoop were tightening around my chest.
Thinking about how all these senseless feelings and groundless fears were completely unnecessary at this moment, and how irrational it was to darken the brightest day of my life with delusions and bad premonitions, only made me more agitated.
Without turning her head, she asked, "Are you awake?"
"Yes. Have you been awake long?"
"Just a little while ago."
Her voice gave me courage again. That voice—the sweetest, most familiar sound my ears had known for so long, the one that stirred only good memories in me—suddenly brought relief, like a trustworthy friend appearing out of nowhere. But the effect lasted only a moment. She had said, "Are you awake?" True, in the last few days we had been addressing each other sometimes with the informal sen, sometimes with the formal siz, at random. But on the morning after this night, should she have spoken to me like that?
Maybe she was still half asleep.
She turned toward me in bed. She was smiling. But it wasn't her usual warm, close smile. It looked more like the smiles she reserved for customers at the Atlantik.
"Aren't you getting up?" she said.
"I will. And you?"
"I don't know... I don't feel so well. I'm a bit under the weather... maybe from the drinking... My back hurts too."
"Maybe you caught a cold last night," I said. "What was the need to run out into the streets stark naked?"
She shrugged and turned her back to me again.
I got up, washed my face, and dressed quickly. I could sense her watching me out of the corner of her eye from where she lay.
The room felt oppressive. Trying to be witty, I said, "A silence has fallen over both of us... What's happening? Have we started getting bored with each other, like a married couple?"
She looked at my face with eyes that didn't understand what I meant. I felt even more awkward and fell silent. Then I moved closer to the bed. I wanted to caress her, to break the ice between us before it thickened. She too sat up, swung her feet down, and slipped a thin cardigan over her shoulders. She still kept looking at me. There was something in her demeanor that prevented me from coming any closer. Finally, in a very calm voice, she said:
"Why are you uncomfortable?" A flush of pink I had never seen before suddenly covered her pale face. Her chest rose and fell heavily as she continued:
"What more do you want? Can you want anything else? But I can... There are many things I want, and I can't get any of them. I've tried everything—no use. You can be satisfied now. But what am I supposed to do?"
Her head dropped. Her arms hung limply at her sides. The tips of her bare toes touched the carpet. She raised her big toe and curled the others under.
I pulled up a chair and sat facing her. I took her hands. My voice trembled with emotion, like someone about to lose his most precious treasure, the very reason for his existence:
"Maria," I said. "Maria, my Fur-Coated Madonna! What's suddenly come over you? What have I done to you? I promised I wouldn't ask for anything. Didn't I keep my word? At this moment, when we ought to be closer than ever, what are you saying?"
She shook her head.
"No, my friend, no," she said. "We are farther apart than ever. Because now I have no hope left. This was the last attempt. I thought, 'Let me try this once. Maybe this is what's missing.' But it isn't. That emptiness is still there inside me—even bigger now. What can we do? It's not your fault. I'm not in love with you. And yet I know perfectly well that I ought to be in love with you, that if I can't love you, I can never love anyone, and that I must abandon all hope. But I can't help it. So this is how I am. There's no choice but to accept it. How I wished... how I wished I could be different... Raif, my kind-hearted friend... Believe me, I wanted to be different as much as you did—even more. What can I do? I feel nothing except the bitterness of last night's drinks in my mouth and the growing ache in my back."
She was silent for a moment. She closed her eyes. Her face softened into a gentle calm. In a voice as sweet as if she were telling a childhood fairy tale, she said:
"Last night—especially after coming here—I had such hopes... I thought I would be completely transformed by a magic hand, that I would feel emotions in my soul as innocent as a little girl's, yet strong enough to consume my entire life, and that I would wake up this morning as if born into another world. But how different reality is... The sky is overcast as usual; the room is cold... Beside me, a person who, despite everything, is still a stranger to me, separate from me, other than me, for all his closeness... Fatigue in my muscles and a headache..."
She got back into bed and lay on her back. She covered her eyes with her hand and continued:
"So humans can only approach each other up to a certain point, and after that, every step taken to draw nearer only pushes them farther apart. How I wished there would be no limit, no end to the closeness between you and me. What upsets me most is that even this hope has been disappointed... There's no need to deceive ourselves anymore... We can never speak as openly as before... We can't walk hand in hand like two carefree friends... Why did we sacrifice all that? For what? For nothing! We tried to possess something that doesn't exist, and in doing so, we lost what did exist... Is everything over? I doubt it. I know we're both not children. We just need to rest for a while and stay apart. Until we feel the need to see each other again so strongly that we can't bear it... Go now, Raif. When that moment comes, I'll look for you; maybe we can be friends again and act more wisely this time. We won't expect or demand more from each other than we can give... Go now... I want to be so alone..."
She had taken her hand away from her eyes. She looked at my face almost pleadingly. She stretched out her arm. I took her fingertips and said, "Goodbye."
"No, no, not like this... You're leaving angry with me... What did I do to you?" she cried.
Making a tremendous effort to stay calm, I said, "I'm not angry. I'm just hurt."
"Don't you think I'm hurt? Can't you see? Don't go like that... Come here!"
She pulled my head toward her chest and stroked my hair. She rubbed her cheek against mine.
"Smile at me once, then go," she said.
I smiled, covered my face with my hand, and rushed out.
I began to walk aimlessly through the streets. It was deserted; most shops were closed. I was heading south. Trams and omnibuses with steamed-up windows passed by me. I walked on... Houses with darkened facades, cobblestone pavements began to appear... I kept going... I was sweating, so I unbuttoned my coat. I had reached the edge of the city. Still I walked... Under railway bridges, over frozen canals... I walked on. I walked for hours. I wasn't thinking about anything. I blinked against the cold and moved forward with quick, almost running steps. On both sides were orderly rows of pine forests. Occasionally chunks of snow fell from the branches—pat!—onto the ground. People on bicycles passed me, and in the distance a train shook the earth as it roared by. I walked on... I spotted a large lake on the right, with a crowd of skaters on it. I turned off through the trees and headed that way. Everywhere in the forest there were long, tangled ski tracks. In groves surrounded by wire fences, tiny pine saplings, laden with snow, trembled like children in white cloaks. In the distance stood a two-story wooden lakeside pavilion. On the lake, girls in short skirts and young men with tied-up trouser cuffs skated tirelessly. They lifted one foot in the air, spun around on the spot, joined hands and glided away toward a promontory beyond. The girls' colorful scarves and the boys' blond hair flew in the wind; their bodies swayed gracefully left and right, seeming to stretch and shrink with every turn.
I took note of all of this. I walked through snow that came up to my ankles, and I observed everything. I went around behind the pavilion toward the trees on the far side. I remembered having seen this place before, but I couldn't recall when or what this place was. A few hundred meters from the pavilion, on a rise, stood several old trees. I stopped there and began to watch the crowd on the lake again.
I had been walking for maybe four hours. I had no idea why I had left the road to come here, or why I hadn't turned back. The burning in my head had subsided; the tingling at the bridge of my nose had stopped. Only a terrible sense of emptiness remained inside me. A period of my life that I had thought was the fullest, most meaningful, had suddenly drained away and lost all meaning. I felt hollowed out, like someone waking from a sweet dream where his dearest wishes had come true, into bitter reality. I truly wasn't angry at her; I wasn't furious at all. I was just hurt. "It shouldn't have been like this," I told myself. So she simply couldn't love me. She was right. No one in my life had ever, ever loved me. Anyway, women were strange creatures. Whenever I tried to gather all my memories and pass judgment, I always concluded that women could never truly love. They don't love when they are capable of loving; they only grieve over unfulfilled desires, try to repair their wounded pride, lament lost opportunities, and all this appears to them under the guise of love.
But I quickly realized that thinking this way was unfair to Maria. I couldn't, despite everything, consider her that kind of creature. Besides, I had seen how much she was suffering. There was no way she was this upset just out of pity for me. She too was burning for something she sought and could not find. But what was that? What was missing in me, or rather in the relationship between us?
It was a bitter thing to realize that at the moment we imagine a woman has given us everything, she has actually given us nothing; and to be forced to accept that when she seems closest to us, she is as distant as if beyond all distances.
It shouldn't have been like this. But, as Maria had said, there was nothing to be done—especially from my side...
What right did she have to do this to me? For years, I had drifted along without clearly seeing the emptiness, attributing my avoidance of people to some quirk of my nature, and I had no idea what kind of life would make me happy. I felt my loneliness and was saddened by it, but I never hoped it could be overcome. That was my state when Maria—or rather, her painting—appeared before me. She had suddenly torn me away from my silent, dark world and led me into the light and into true living. Only then did I realize that I had a soul. Now, as inexplicably and suddenly as she had come, she was withdrawing. But for me, there was no going back to the old slumber. For as long as I lived, I would travel to various places, meet people whose languages I knew and didn't know, and everywhere, in everyone, I would look for her—Maria Puder, the Madonna in a Fur Coat. I already knew I would never find her. But I wouldn't be able to stop searching. She had condemned me to spend the rest of my life searching for an unknown, for something that didn't exist. She shouldn't have done that...
The years ahead seemed unbearably bleak to me. I could find no reason to bear this burden. Just at that point in my thoughts, a veil seemed to lift from my eyes. I remembered where I was. This lake was the Wannsee. One day, when I was going with Maria Puder to Potsdam to visit the park of Frederick the Great's "Sanssouci" Palace, she had pointed this place out from the train window and told me that under the very trees where I now stood, the unhappy German poet Kleist and his lover had committed suicide together over a hundred years ago.
What had brought me here? When my eyes had chanced upon this area during my aimless walk, why had I turned aside? Why, from the moment I left the house, had I headed in this direction, as if by prior agreement? After parting from the creature I trusted most in the world, after hearing her say that two people can only approach each other up to a certain point, was I, by coming to the very spot where these people had left life together, somehow giving her an answer? Or had I simply wanted to convince myself, to remember that there are loves in the world that don't stop halfway? I don't know. I can't even clearly determine whether I thought about these things at the time. But suddenly, the ground beneath my feet began to burn. I could almost see them lying side by side—a bullet in her chest and a bullet in his head. I imagined stepping into their blood, which had flowed in winding streams through the grass and mingled into a small pool. Their fates had mingled like their blood. And there, just a few steps ahead, they lay. Still together... I turned and ran back the way I had come.
Down below, from the lake, came laughter. Couples holding each other by the waist circled endlessly, as if on a never-ending journey. Through the pavilion's door, which opened every now and then, music and the stamping of feet poured out. Those tired of skating climbed the slope toward the pavilion, probably wanting to warm up with a grog and dance a little.
They were having fun. They were living. And I realized that by shutting myself inside my own head and my own soul, I was not above them but beneath them. I felt that separating from the crowd, as I had thought, was not a mark of distinction or superiority, but a deformity. These people were living as they should live in the world, doing their duties, adding something to life. What was I? What did my soul do except gnaw at me like a woodworm? The trees, the snow covering their branches and roots, the wooden building, the gramophone, the lake and its layer of ice, and finally all these different people—they were all busy doing the work that life had given them. Every one of their movements had a meaning, a meaning not visible at first glance. I, on the other hand, was wobbling like a carriage wheel that had come off its axle and was spinning uselessly in the air, and I was trying to derive privileges from this state. I was surely the most useless man in the world. Life would lose nothing by losing me. No one expected anything from me, and I expected nothing from anyone.