SIDEWAYS IN LOVE

SWEET DANAË, WAKE UP!

I call Jan the following Tuesday. Now that my mind has calmed down, I see fit to speak to him personally again. He reacts in amazement, not annoyance surprisingly, and asks if we can settle this over the phone.

Of course, we could. Theoretically, even an SMS would have done it, because I won’t need many words. Even less than originally thought, given his reaction. I tell him it won’t be long and he should come to the jazz club for an hour or less.

He’s already there when I arrive, drinking a coffee like last time. I order cherry juice again and tell him right away that I’m here to clear some things up with him today. He just shrugs his shoulders and in his eyes, I see the request to get to the point.

“You said something in the Sound Shed,” I begin. “You said I wouldn’t see a dime without a paternity test.”

Jan picks up his cup and looks at me over the rim as if it offers him protection.

“Precisely. And I’ll stick to that.” He takes a sip and puts the cup down again.

“Now, I want to clarify something.” Since my drink is being brought, I wait for the waitress to leave. “I never wanted a dime from you. And if one day you should think of sending me a cent or two, I won’t accept the money.”

Since he hadn’t expected that, he reacted with uncertainty. “I’m just saying… If a paternity test says I’m the father of the child, of course, I’ll pay. As you can imagine, I don’t make much money as an artist. But a fifty, I could maybe make that a month.”

How could I? How could I have s*x with this man? Tipsy or not. How could I!

“With or without a paternity test,” I try to go on calmly, “I don’t want any money from you. If you want to see your child, you can contact me and we’ll see what can be arranged.” I look at him expectantly, but there’s no reaction. He stares at his cup as if his answer were swimming in the coffee. “Though something tells me you won’t want that.” He looks at me for a moment, then his gaze slips away. “Well, as I said, I’m really short on time.” I take two long gulps to finish the glass as quickly as possible.

Everything is cleared up now. In less than ten minutes.

“Just forget it, okay?”

He nods and rubs his forehead. “Everything went a bit stupid.”

If Sam were here, he would declare war on Jan for that phrase. I keep the white flag flying, finish the cherry juice and motion to the waiter to bring the bill. After paying, I get up.

Even though we live in the same city, there’s something strangely final about saying goodbye to Jan - almost as if we’ll never see each other again.

“Chin up!,” he says and doesn’t bother wishing me well with the birth, as I’ve been hearing lately from people.

“Take care,” I reply. “And good luck to you and Just Borrowed! Think about writing your own songs.”

“We already have… We’ll get started on that soon. I compose. Leon is writing.”

I nod encouragingly and give him one last smile before turning around, opening the door and pushing Jan out of my thoughts.

Sam is busy picking apples in the garden. Sitting in the tree, he throws the rotten and wormy fruit in a heap and collects the unharmed ones in a bucket that he has hung on a branch.

“Hey, how did it go?” he calls.

“As expected. But I feel good telling him it.” I step under the tree and blink up at Sam. “If you give me the bucket, I’ll bring you a new one and use these apples to make apple pie.”

“How delicious,” he says happily, taking the bucket and climbing down branch by branch. “The guy deserves a good beating…” Unwilling to talk about Jan, I shake my head and try to take Sam’s bucket.

He keeps it away. “I’ll bring it in myself. It’s too heavy.”

I’m about to tell him not to wrap me in cotton wool when my eyes fall on the clothesline. There’s a piece of clothing hanging there that I’ve never seen before. It’s a tiny, dark blue t-shirt with the New York Yankees initials embroidered in white across the chest.

“Oh, Sam!” I go to the clothesline, take off the t-shirt and hold it up for a closer look. “Did we wash it too hot?” I ask jokingly, trying to say something.

“No.” Sam comes to my side. “I wanted Paul to have his own. He can drool on it as much as he likes.”

He quickly takes command of the kiss I give him. Within a short time we are entwined and about to disappear into the house when we hear a familiar voice.

“Oh!” Lena stands on the path between the borders, squinting at us against the sunlight. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.” I pull away from Sam and go over to greet her. “You’re not disturbing me.”

“I wanted to see how you were,” she grins. “Apparently fine.” She looks over my shoulder at Sam, who’s also approached. “And you, too.”

I ruffle my curls. “Actually, I was about to bake an apple pie. But now that you’re here…” The sudden urge to talk to Lena makes me feel like I’ll explode if I don’t. “Would you like to go for a walk?”

“Phew!” Lena puffs out her cheeks. “In this heat?”

“Let’s go to the city forest! It’s cool there. I haven’t been there in ages.”

Taken over by snow sports enthusiasts in winter, the city forest mainly belongs to bikers, runners and Nordic walkers in the snowless months. While the walkers claim the wide, smooth main paths for themselves, the cyclists chase their mountain bikes over hill and dale, through hollows and over the hills of the side paths - past the ruins of the former weapons factory, springs and streams, sequoia trees and feeding places for deer.

Lena and I park the car near the roadside and walk along the main path in the direction of the Catalan Fields and the radio tower, which is commonly called the Telecom Tower in the region. Dark green, the conifers stretch all around into the sky, whose blue is unclouded.

Small animals rustle through the undergrowth and the knocking of a woodpecker alternates with the calls of a jay.

“I totally knew there was more between you and Sam,” Lena says. “I knew that when he fought that verbal duel with Jan.”

“It wasn’t until now.” I get two apples that Sam had just picked out of my pocket and hand one to Lena. “Last Saturday we were at the dam. Well, and there…”

“And there?” She takes a bite and looks at me curiously. “So you accidentally had s*x?”

“Something like that.” I nibble on my apple. “Oh Lena, what am I supposed to do? I think Sam would stay if I told him how much I love him.”

“You don’t want him to stay, even though you love him?”

“I want him to stay. I can’t imagine that he’s no longer with me.” I look at her, somewhat at a loss as to how to explain this. “But I feel bad if he gives up his life in New York... because of me, you know?”

Taking another bite, Lena shrugs. “You do things like that when you love someone. Be glad he’s like that. Others have been in a long-distance relationship for years that eventually end.” She thinks about her next statement for a while. “Besides, I’m sure Sam deserves you to tell him - if he loves you too.”

“It scares me though…”

“Does it scare you more than the thought of losing him?” Lena starts kicking a pine cone in front of her. “And look at it from his perspective: Sam visited you in Berlin after you quietly disappeared from New York. He came here for you and is there for you as if he were the father of your baby. He traded his New York life for that of this rather boring province. How many more steps should he actually take? Don’t you think he’s afraid to tell you he loves you too? I’d say he doesn’t want to be graciously invited to stay here, he wants to stay here because he’s loved.”

The realization sends a shock through my limbs. More than ever I feel pressured. “Imagine if I were to tell Sam right now, just before the birth or in a few weeks for that matter, I wanted him to stay. This could appear as if he serves as a kind of emergency partner. As a much-needed father.”

Lena looks at me as if I don’t have all the cups in the cupboard. “You’re crazy!” she says as if her look doesn’t convey enough meaning. “I think Sam knows your attitude as well as anyone who’s friends with you. Sorry, but I think it’s totally stupid that you put obstacles in your own way with this argument of all things.”

“So you think I should…” Lena cuts me off.

“You definitely should! If Sam stays, he stays because he loves you. So stop worrying and get going before the poor guy starts having doubts and gets on a plane to New York tomorrow.”

I accept Lena’s words and try to push aside my fear, which she thinks is unfounded. We trudge side by side in silence along the path that describes a curve. Looking up, I spot something white on the trail some distance away. Lit by the sunlight, it is a bit dazzling. A suspicion creeps up on me and I slow down. Finally, I stop and grab Lena’s arm so that she doesn’t go any further either.

“Damn it,” I whisper, feeling my pulse racing. I watch as if through a veil as Lena runs to the letter and picks it up.

“Your name is on it,” she calls, looking around. “He’s here, Hannah…”

My head is pounding. I’m shaking all over when I get to Lena and take the letter from her. As I read, a sob rises in my throat.

Sweet Danaë, let it be!

Wake up and run!

You’re never good.

Soon you will sleep forever.

Lena takes me in her arms and whispers words of reassurance that only make me cry louder. I also sense that she herself has lost her calm and is panicking.

When footsteps suddenly sound, we both look up in alarm and discover two police officers coming toward us. Their eyes alternate between us and the trees on either side of the path. Shortly afterwards they are with us.

If Lena didn’t stand behind me and hold me with both arms, I would surely fall over at any moment.

“Who knew you were walking here?” asks one of the men.

My teeth are chattering and I can’t get a word out. Lena answers for me. “Just Sam. That’s her boyfriend.” She goes on speaking a little briskly: “How did you know we were here?”

“Surveillance,” one says curtly. “Hoping for a lead.”

“The letter, please!” demands the other. I hand it to the man. He looks at it and peers through the trees again. “We’ve been watching the main entrance to your gardens for a few days. Not continuously. Whenever someone’s free. We saw the two of you leaving and decided to follow you.”

My tremors increase. “I have to sit down,” I gasp and squat down.

Lena crouches behind me and continues to hold me tight. Her hands brush mine.

“Whoever put the letter here,” explains one of the police officers, “can’t be far. There’s a good chance he’s still in the woods. We just called for backup. It should be here any minute.”

Sirens sound in the distance. There seem to be a whole lot of emergency vehicles on the road, and soon there are echoes from all directions. Apparently, the entire Mühlhausen police headquarters had swarmed out to arrest the author of the Danaë letters.

15 minutes later, uniformed men stalk through the forest. Radios crackle and incomprehensible things are mumbled into them. Glances and comments are exchanged. More and more officers gather around Lena, me and the two plainclothes police officers.

One of the uniformed men, a short, stocky man, comes running excitedly out of the woods and calls out: “There has just been an arrest up at the telecom tower. He ran quite a bit, the lad. His car is parked near the women’s.”

Another turns to Lena and me: “Well then, ladies. Would you walk back with us, please?”

Lena stands up behind me. I, on the other hand, don’t move.

“I want to know the name,” I say.

The officer gives the stocky one a sign, whereupon he activates his radio and speaks into it. “Has the lad a name yet?”

The loudspeaker boomed. This time I understand the words very well, but that doesn’t mean my brain processes them.

The policeman repeats what his colleague has just told him. “According to his ID, his name is Leon Kirschberg.”

Lena makes a startled noise. I rest my elbows on my knees, cup my face in my palms, and gasp to blow the nausea away.

“You know him?” asks one of the plainclothes officers.

Again I’m frozen and unable not only to move but also to speak. Again Lena answers for me. Her cool: “Yes, Hannah knows him,” finishes me off.

What interests me most after the fact has entered my consciousness, I only find out five days later when I’m sitting on the terrace with Sam. Leon’s motive is brought to me by registered mail and is set out in factual terms that make it almost ironic to read. I would laugh if I felt like laughing. I haven’t laughed once in the past five days.

I pass the letter on to Sam without a word. It takes him a little longer to grasp the content and finally he looks at me in disbelief.

“The guy is completely crazy,” he summarizes the content of the text.

I nod. “It’s all just awful.”

“Well, to use words I can understand... Leon has fallen in love with you and since you’ve been out together every now and then for a drink, he’s hoped that you are interested in him,” he concludes and puts the letter on the table. “When you were in Mühlhausen you used to go out together here, but he went to Berlin with Just Borrowed a couple of times for gigs.”

At my confirmation, he looks up at the stripes of the marquise stretched across the terrace and continues to summarize the circumstances. “Then came the evening you had s*x with Jan. After that you met Leon. He knew what happened between you and Jan, found out from you.”

“Yep.” Driven by a constant inner restlessness, I get up and walk up and down in the garden. “I fell asleep with Leon and the next morning he led me to believe we had s*x too.”

“It wasn’t until you were pregnant and he was a possible father that he clarified that. However, he already put two letters in your mailbox beforehand…”

“Because he was angry that I had s*x with Jan. And he chose Danaë as a motif solely because of her red hair?”

“Seems so…” In order to better understand Leon’s thoughts, Sam closes his eyes and clasps his hands behind his head. “So there was the party on New Year’s Eve, where he corrected the mistake, but he was even more upset that you’re going to have a baby from Jan. He’s seen his chances of winning you over diminish. The next letters followed in quick succession.

I come back to the terrace and sit down again, because I’m short of breath, agreeing with Sam’s interpretation: “However, he saw his chances increasing through my return to Mühlhausen and Jan’s refusal. He made an effort to smooth things over between me and Jan, although he knew his opinion too well. Apparently, he had planned to stand in for him and be there for me when Jan finally got cold feet. To confuse me more, he sent me the fifth letter from Berlin. Actually, that should be the last one.”

Sam carries on my thought. “It was an own goal because that letter was my ticket here. From that point on he saw his hopes go down the drain. So Leon wanted to take advantage of Jan’s unwillingness to become a father, but you hardly noticed him because I was here.”

“So letter number six made it clear that I was under surveillance.” I still can’t understand what went on in Leon’s mind. “Apparently he was obsessed with winning me over. My rejection, which actually wasn’t even a rejection because he was never more than a friend to me, was unacceptable. So he got more and more involved in his insane actions, and in the end, he actually took some satisfaction in seeing me unhappy. After all, I should be happy with him and with no one else.”

Sam sits up in his chair, pulls his baseball cap off his head and bends its peak. “I can’t imagine what would have happened in the woods if those two cops hadn’t been following you and Lena.”

“Nothing would have happened,” I reassure him and myself. “Not this time. He wasn’t armed, and Lena was with me. Once again, it was just to scare me.”

“That’s really sick.”

“It is. I think it’s terrible that he could deceive me like that.”

For all his wrongdoings, this is indeed the cruellest of insights. I thought Leon was a good friend.

Sam stretches out his hand for mine. I take it.

He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses it.

“It’s all right now,” he murmurs.

Maybe everything is fine now, I tell myself.

Sam came here because he was worried about the letters. Now there’s nothing to worry about... and his paid vacation is over...

I want to tell him something, but I bite my lip.