Читать книгу Time Lies - Magnus Stanke - Страница 8

Dagmar heard unfamiliar footsteps on the concrete staircase outside her studio flat. Somebody was coming up to see her, but it wasn’t him. A glance at her alarm clock confirmed that it was still too early; he wouldn’t be able to get away without arousing suspicion at this time of the evening. She had no rational right to feel disappointed, but there it was. It just so happened that she had been ready for him and keen with time to spare. Never mind. She quickly pulled a pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt over her negligee. As it stood now she knew she mustn’t arouse suspicion – advice that was easier to give than to heed in this small town where life followed simple rules. If you were branded with so much as a smudge of a reputation or a label, it stuck, was neigh impossible to shake off again, especially if you were a Catholic. Once a slut, always a slut. Dagmar appreciated the distinction between being promiscuous and being, well, horny. The latter was biological, a survival mechanism of practically every living species on earth; the former was unforgivable in Eschershausen unless you were a man.

There were nights when Dagmar wanted to be left alone, without male companionship at least, but tonight wasn’t one of them. She had been horny for a long time – not constantly horny, that would have made her a nymphomaniac, but frequently horny nevertheless, hornier than her friends. Hornier than anybody she knew, in fact, boys included. But she had never been promiscuous, had said ‘nay’ a hell of a lot more often than ‘yay’, and had been stringently selective about the men she chose to go to bed with, even if not all her choices had been wise.

She let her eyes wander around the room once more before she opened the door. Just as well. The red candle in the window, her ‘all clear’ for the man she was waiting for, had to go. This accomplished, she made one mistake. She failed to change the LP for something more modern, something less sultry. Sarah Vaughn’s raspy voice crooned about broken promises and love for sale.

Dagmar peeked outside and discovered Anika, once her best friend, smoothing a cigarette and chewing gum at the top of the stairs. Anika was sporting a trendy-trashy wavy perm, new-New Romantic, and too much make up for a Tuesday night. Or for any night.

A few years earlier Anika and Dagmar had hung out together at lot on the Hüschebrink near the entrance to the graveyard, and Dagmar had never explained why she had stopped going.

‘Hello, sister – you all right, babes? I saw the light in your window,’ Anika said between attempting to catch her breath and taking a puff from her cigarette. She spat out the gum. ‘Yuck, they should do flavours that mix better with Marlboro, don’t you think?’

‘Come in,’ Dagmar said and moved aside.

Right then she wasn’t in the mood for any company but his. What’s more, Anika had the annoying habit of outstaying her welcome. Still, Dagmar didn’t want to give the landlords any excuse to eavesdrop on their conversation. When she closed the door behind Anika she inhaled, albeit involuntarily, the intense chemical mist that surrounded her former pal. Anika’s taste in hairspray wasn’t much better than her taste in men. She valued quantity over quality. More was always better.

‘Babes, you waiting for someone or something?’ Anika said, taking in the atmosphere and noticing the smell of candle wax. ‘What’s that tune you’re playing – Zarah Leander? You want to get with the times a bit. Trio, Nena, Markus.’

Dagmar decided to ignore the questions. Anika talked a lot and rarely remembered what she said from one second to the next.

‘I’m joking, babes. Who would you be waiting for, right? I hear you’re living a real nun’s life these days. You don’t hang with us anymore, with the cool crew… But all that’s going to change, babes, that’s why I came,’ Anika said.

Dagmar relaxed. Anika hadn’t noticed anything – not the negligee under Dagmar’s t-shirt, not even the tub of lubricant next to the bed.

‘See, me and Carsten, we’re off to Holzminden tonight. You remember Carsten, right? Well, he’s got this really bodacious friend over, the one with the wild tattoo. We were kind of thinking you’d want to join us, babes, on like a double date. What do you think?’ Anika said.

Dagmar didn’t think Carsten was particularly bodacious, especially not when he was drunk and trying to stick his tongue into her ear. His mullet didn’t help and neither did his flimsy excuse for a moustache. Back in school he used to shave the skin above his upper lip three times a day, sometimes more, because somebody had told him when he was twelve that shaving would stimulate his follicle growth. He’d often come to school with shaving cuts, but as a method for growing a bushy beard it had failed miserably. Now he wore his moustache, such as it was, in long wisps of blond hair, the strands of which could be counted on two hands. As far as the friend with the tattoo was concerned, he had to be Volker, a guy from the next village who showed off a headless, big-breasted torso on his bulging right bicep each time he inhaled a lung full of glue fumes from a paper bag. Even on their best behaviour Volker and Carsten were no match for the man Dagmar was waiting for.

‘It’s sweet of you to think of me, but I can’t tonight. I’m…indisposed, and besides’

‘You’re on the rag, really? That sucks, babes, like Dracula. Unlike the count, I don’t think Volker digs blood. He says he doesn’t mind but he almost fainted when I chucked my tampon at Carsten the other day, just for a laugh. It wasn’t even used but you should’ve seen his face,’ Anika said.

‘Why don’t you ask Regula? She might be up for it,’ Dagmar said.

‘No dice, babes, I already asked. And Beate and Ursula and Heike. No joy with that square bunch, if you know what I mean,’ Anika said.

Two minutes later she was gone, probably continuing to scrape the bottom of the barrel of available girlfriends. That was if she hadn’t already exhausted her list by asking Dagmar, which wasn’t all that unlikely.

Anika was a near-stranger to Dagmar now, and they hadn’t clicked for what seemed like an eternity. They had met at school after Anika failed her final exams for a second time. She was two years older than Dagmar and had sat next to her in the last year of classes, during which time she benefitted immensely from the fact that Dagmar’s handwriting was easily legible, even from a distance. As a thank you for letting her copy difficult answers in several exams, Anika, who had started growing breasts at the tender age of nine and had had a following of hormonal teenage boys ever since, had taken Dagmar under her wing, introduced her to lipstick, eye liner, cigarettes, canned beer, and, equally importantly, to the ‘graveyard shifts’ at Anika’s favourite spot for hanging out with the boys. Until then, Dagmar had been fatally introverted, shy and lacking all kinds of self-esteem. She had a huge complex about the size of her nose on her otherwise symmetrical face and would never forget how Anika, with the help of a little make-up and not a little magic, brought out the vivacity of Dagmar’s eyes and the sensuous fleshy quality of her mouth. Under her friend’s guiding hand her nose actually seemed to retreat, at least in noticeability.

But all that was now at least four years in the past, in which time Anika had stagnated in her interests and hobbies while Dagmar moved on. She would always be grateful for the push her confidence had received when the boys and men – and even the women – started looking at her face before checking out her smallish boobs, but she knew that Anika would always be Anika. She knew this because Dagmar had tried and failed to help ‘work on her brain’ in Anika’s words.

‘Brain in vain. Men don’t really want a brain in a woman, babes. They want something they can grab, hold on to, squish and nibble on.’

‘Brains are squishy,’ Dagmar said.

‘Brains may be squishy, but they’re not sexy,’ Anika said.

‘I wonder,’ Dagmar said, but now she was long beyond wondering. She knew she liked sex, but she also liked using her brains, even if she hadn’t done much of that in school. She had drifted through with the least possible effort and in the shortest possible time in order to achieve independence from home such as she knew it – although that in itself had taken some kind of brains.

At fifteen and a half she was free from it all, free to start a dead-end apprenticeship for a dead-end sales clerk position in a dead-end village. The money had been surprisingly good, all things considered – good enough to feed her growing interest in photography and home movies. Using black out curtains and candlelight she had built a small darkroom in her studio flat and had even acquired a JK Optical Printer to allow her to duplicate eight-millimetre film. All her spare time was now dedicated to photography and home movies.

Being a foundling – somebody left her on the steps of the local Catholic Church when she was about two – and having grown up in the care of the local priest and his sister, she still felt slightly uneasy about the circumstances under which she had moved out of the vicarage. Being a girl had barred her from becoming an altar boy. When she was eleven, Father Thomas had gifted her with her first camera to take pictures of church-related events, and Dagmar took to it immediately. She never stopped taking photographs and her aptitude had given her a first taste of success and recognition within the community. Her innate eye for strong compositions and her acquired technical know-how had attracted the ire of the village photographer Rainer Werner who feared for his livelihood when he learned that Dagmar didn’t charge for her pictures.

But Dagmar was never interested in becoming the local portrait snapper. Reluctantly Rainer Werner ended up trusting her and occasionally even asking her advice. He paid her by passing on unused film stock and equipment he no longer had use for. Life continued unstoppably and sometimes unnoticeably. All in all the small community had been good to her, and she wanted to repay that kindness as best she could.

*

Dagmar hadn’t moved from the window since she’d watched Anika get into Carsten’s VW Polo and drive off. For now, at least, her sexual appetite was forgotten. Sometimes when she heard her lover’s steps on the stairs, she would be so hungry for the act of sensual physicality that she’d leap onto him, into his arms the moment the door closed behind him. There was no single surface in the room that they hadn’t used for lovemaking, not one. And positions, let’s not get started on positions. When coupling, Dagmar liked to display the one part of her anatomy she was proud of – her eyes. Her unknown biological parents had also gifted her with plenty of hip and torso flexibility. She had yet to discover a position where she couldn’t twist around far enough to glimpse into the mirrors of her partner’s soul during coitus.

Her love affair had begun years ago, when she still spent time with the graveyard shift gang, soon after she had laid eyes on the man for the first time. Well, she had seen him uncountable times before, at mass, but somehow those times didn’t count, hadn’t affected her. No, the first time that did count was a little over three years ago. She had lost her virginity to Detlev, Carsten’s older brother, days after making out with Carsten at a birthday party. She had been tempted to make it with Carsten too, just to see what it was like. In hindsight she was glad she’d resisted the urge. Detlev was four years older than her and more experienced with girls, probably more than Carsten would ever be. He had been reasonably gentle and attentive. However he had also been too immature or square or macho-brained to entertain the thought of a prolonged, no-strings sexual affair after that first time. By nature or nurture he was the hit-and-run type. Dagmar was never in love with Detlev, but would have happily continued experimenting with him.

That is, until she saw Albert Hoffmann. She never quite understood why he’d had such a devastating effect on her that day when she watched him saunter up the Hüschebrink, chatting with a neighbour on the way before walking over to their little group rather than continuing up the path towards his house.

‘He’s going to chase us away,’ Stefanie said.

‘Let him try,’ Carsten said, feeling manly with his can of beer, spitting on the ground.

Occasionally people passing by, on the way to or from the graveyard, gave them judging looks, muttering something disparaging about youths drinking and smoking and spitting a lot and generally disrespecting the dead. But hell, there wasn’t much else for youths to do in Eschershausen.

‘Babes, if that Herr Hoffman, the neat one there, wanted me badly enough he wouldn’t have to chase me much,’ Anika said and laughed dirtily.

All told, the adolescent group on that day consisted of three girls and five boys, a big enough number to intimidate most passersby. Not so Albert, who approached with firm steps and a serious, though not unfriendly face. Carsten and Thorsten took deep breaths to make themselves appear bigger. The two smaller boys hid behind them, and Heinz got busy with his shoelaces.

Albert got close.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said and smiled right at Dagmar. The smile was interrupted by a brief frown when he glanced at her company, but reignited it almost at once.

Birds were chirping and the air took on a sweet spring scent that Dagmar hadn’t noticed earlier.

Nobody spoke at first, and Carsten deflated his puffed-up chest with a cough.

‘I was going to ask you a favour, Dagmar. It’s to do with those fabulous pictures you take. I wanted to speak to you in church, but then I haven’t seen you much lately,’ Albert said.

‘I…I have been busy,’ Dagmar said.

It was all she could do not to faint. What was wrong with her? Or rather, what was wrong with him? He was being so nice and in front of her friends. He’d even called her photos ‘fabulous’.

‘I see. Well, maybe next Sunday, then, after mass, we could talk when you’re less busy,’ Albert said and smiled one last time.

Then he disappeared up the path to his house.

Dagmar felt all eyes on her, eyes that wouldn’t forgive her if she swooned too obviously or swooned at all; eyes, she suddenly realised, she didn’t care about anymore. No, she only cared about one pair of them, and they had gone away.

‘Yes, next Sunday at church,’ she said, much too late for him to hear.

But then, when Sunday came around, she didn’t go, and neither did she go the next Sunday. In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever go again.

*

However, two weeks after that, Dagmar began attending mass again on a weekly basis. Still, she felt ridiculous and ugly. Each time she went she made sure she wouldn’t be seen by Albert Hoffmann. She took the seat on the balcony next to the organ which was played by Herr Donnersberg because from up here she felt like she was behind a one-way mirror that allowed her to watch without being seen.

Albert never came alone, and it was almost impossibly hard to see him with his gorgeous wife and young son by his side. Dagmar nearly imploded with jealousy. She always arrived before everybody else and was last to leave, or last but one. Donnersberg usually stayed on after the faithful had left, tinkling Bach sonatas on the pipe organ and minding his own business. He was a lean, not altogether unattractive bachelor in his mid-thirties who worked for the local notary and wore big glasses that magnified his eyes. But he was far-sighted only in a literal sense.

Like most people of his generation, Donnersberg had known Dagmar by sight since she was little, and he didn’t misunderstand the look in her eyes the day she took his hand off the pipe organ and placed it under her skirt between her legs. There was no misunderstanding her desire, and Donnersberg was not unhappy to heed the call once he got over his initial surprise. She snuck into his car, cowered down as low as possible in front of the passenger’s seat and let him drive her the few miles up to the Ith.

After the withdrawal of the occupying British army from Lower Saxony in the late 1960s, who had used the Ith as a manoeuvre ground since the Second World War, the residential houses on the two streets were now rented privately. The other buildings had once been used for the leisure activities of British colonels and their families. They had stood empty until they were reconditioned in the mid-seventies to house refugees from the escalating civil war in Lebanon. Last but not least, a mile or two up the dirt track there was a local gliding club for small, engine-less planes. Mostly, however, the Ith provided heaven for nature lovers, caves and trees and paths for ramblers and amblers alike, and sometimes an off-road playground for clandestine sweethearts.

At least that’s what Donnersberg hoped when he drove up there with Dagmar, filled with desire by now despite the protests from his inner voice.

This girl is almost young enough to be your daughter…If anybody sees you, your professional reputation is blemished…You haven’t been with a woman for months…

However, on the curvy road uphill the moralising voice had the opposite effect. After all, he hadn’t started this. And she wasn’t a child. He would be careful, show her a good time, wouldn’t get her into trouble.

The road finally started to level and crest. If he stayed on the main stretch they would soon reach a junction with the two residential streets leading off to the left and right. It was best to avoid that part, as, this being Sunday, other people were sure to be out for a stroll or fur lunch in the Boeing Restaurant, located in a disused aircraft that stood at the top of Segelflugstrasse. Donnersberg took the first turn right, veering onto a dirt track and continuing into the pine forest. He stopped after about half a kilometre next to a rosehip bush, though neither Dagmar nor he got out of the car or rolled down the windows. It felt safer this way, even if it wasn’t.

‘Shouldn’t we go a bit further?’ Dagmar said.

During mass, fantasising about Albert Hoffmann’s smile, she had become so blindly excited that she’d reached out for literally the only man around after the service was over. Donnersberg wasn’t particularly sexy, but he seemed to be good with his hands, at least on the organ. He’d have to do; she’d burst otherwise.

Only now, alone with him and far from Albert, she wasn’t quite so sure anymore.

‘Here is good. It’ll do,’ he said and placed his hand between her legs under her skirt once more.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

The moment was gone. Albert was far and she was dry.

‘Come on, girl. First you make me drive all the way up here and now you give me the run around?’ he said, but she took his hand and removed it from her leg.

‘I think this was a mistake,’ she said and shoved his hand away again.

Donnersberg sighed. This was bullshit. He had better things to do on a Sunday afternoon than be pushed about by a little girl. She had taken him for a ride and he was merely the chauffeur.

He got out of the car with a huff and lit a cigarette.

Dagmar didn’t move and only relaxed a little. It wasn’t over. Was she turning into what Anika called a ‘prick tease’? Well, that certainly hadn’t been her intention.

She looked out at Donnersberg and became aware that he was gesturing urgently, hands behind his back – get down! Somebody was coming. They hadn’t done anything, but it would look suspicious to be seen together.

Dagmar sunk into the legroom space, made herself as small as possible. Then she heard the voice and her heart somersaulted and her adrenalin glands pumped and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention. The dryness between her legs became clammy.

Donnersberg was speaking to Herr Hoffmann.

Only it wasn’t Albert, it wasn’t quite him. Or was it?

While the men exchanged awkward, polite greetings and said something about Elvis Presley, Dagmar realised that this had to be his twin brother, Tobias Hoffmann. She risked a peek out the window and saw his back.

Albert had been wearing a suit and tie to church not half an hour ago. This man wore rubber boots and a brown parker. He had to be Tobias. Already he continued on his walk, was probably returning to the maisonette he shared with their old man up here somewhere.

Before he disappeared around a bend in the path, he glanced over his shoulder towards the parked car once more. It was enough to ascertain that the brothers were two different, albeit identically-featured, people. Albert and Tobias Hoffmann.

And yet, and yet…

When Donnersberg sat back into the driver’s seat, Dagmar was ready for it. She straddled him and didn’t even think about the fact that he penetrated her without the protection of a condom.

*

But she was lucky that time as her period returned days later as though nothing had happened.

And a few days after that her life changed for good when Herr Hoffmann walked into the Hamachers’ shop while she was at work. It was mid morning, a quiet time, nobody else around. She saw him before he entered, watched him approach through the glass window, and her heart accelerated. Dagmar had no doubt – this was the right Hoffmann. Albert Hoffmann.

‘Morning,’ he said and started filling his basket in the aisles.

He didn’t even look in her direction. Dagmar’s heart shrivelled and sank as though somebody had let the air out of an inflatable raft.

‘Good morning, Herr Hoffmann,’ she said, but still there was barely a glance in her direction.

She knew that Albert rarely ever shopped in the Hamachers’ corner shop. Didn’t he realise she worked here? Hadn’t he come to talk to her? Had he already forgotten all about their conversation at the graveyard? He’d said he wanted to ask her something about photography, the one field Dagmar knew she excelled at. Well, she certainly hadn’t forgotten. She’d bring it up when he paid at the checkout, just slip it casually into the small talk, the banter they’d be having. Maybe she’d even invite him up to her flat above the garage, the one the Hamachers let her have for next to nothing. She’d show him her photographic equipment and her Super 8 collection. Then, alone with him, maybe she could inspect his equipment. The photographic and the other kind.

Stop daydreaming. Snap out of it, Dagmar, or he’ll take you for the village idiot. Here he comes.

Hoffmann approached the till, his eyes on the items in his basket rather than on her, and Dagmar feigned disinterest by looking out the window.

A strange sensation invaded her. What the hell was she doing? This was a happily married, god-fearing man. What possible interest could he have in her, an ugly little shop girl, an orphan-outcast, a horny little teenager who hadn’t quite turned eighteen? And adultery, wasn’t that a mortal sin? A sin that, even confessed, barred you from access to paradise, just like murder?

Now he was close and she didn’t look away, couldn’t take her eyes off him even if she tried. She remembered what her face looked like when she smiled. She had seen it on a photo Anika took of her. Her smile could light up her ugly mug, and her eyes could sparkle, make the onlooker forget about that schnozzle of hers.

When he raises his eyes to look at me, let me sparkle, let me dazzle him.

She was ready. She smiled, put everything into it.

But he didn’t look up.

‘Do you have batteries?’ he said.

What was wrong with him?

‘Batteries? Sure.’ She pointed to the right of the counter. ‘What size?’

‘Ah, let me have a look,’ he said and veered away from her.

Dagmar tried to hold on to the smile, but felt it turning to stone on her lips, the light going out of her eyes. She knew if she didn’t do something, and quick, she would forever regret missing this opportunity.

A concupiscent thought brought a deeper glow to her cheeks and her groin.

Equipment. Picture his equipment.

‘Herr Hoffmann, one question. Didn’t you want to ask me something?’ she said, not knowing where she got the nerve.

He hesitated. ‘Huh?’

At last, though, he raised his eyes and met hers. Initially there was no recognition in them – he might as well have been seeing her for the first time in his life. But then something changed, crumbled almost tangibly in his expression. It was his distance, his restraint.

‘Remember?’ she said when he didn’t reply, just looked at her, taking her in.

‘You mean…?’ was all he said.

‘When we talked, outside your house? You said something about my photography?’

It only took a few more hastened heartbeats in her chest before, at last, he reacted verbally.

‘Yes, I remember. Your photography. Of course,’ he said.

‘You wanted to ask me something about it at church, I think. But then I never saw you there. You see, I always sit upstairs, next to – next to the organ,’ she said.

Her glow deepened as she thought of his sex organ.

‘Yes, I remember,’ he said, and finally Dagmar believed him.

There was recognition in his eyes, at last. And maybe something more. It emboldened her to go further.

‘Well, let me know. Anytime you want to see the collection, even today. Tonight. I’d be pleasured…honoured. It would be my…a pleasure,’ she said.

‘Tonight?’ he said, at last fully master of himself, fully himself, Albert Hoffmann again, turning that famous smile on.

That was the day. That night they became lovers.

*

That night was long gone. Years ago, more than three. The torrential affair had never ceased, not even after the accident that robbed Albert of his wife and child, and throughout the prolonged mourning period that followed the tragedy. At first, Dagmar thought he’d never come again. Hadn’t the accident paralysed him, bound him to a wheelchair? Several weeks went by. When she heard the familiar sound of his steps again outside her door she rejoiced. From then on, at least for a little while, she was proud to be the only person in Eschershausen to know that Albert could walk like before. There was nothing wrong with his legs. He maintained the wheelchair for the sake of the general public even after the rumour spread that his legs were fine. Still, nobody bore him a grudge over the deceit. He was Albert Hoffmann, after all. And as far as Dagmar was concerned, nothing had changed. He told her he would always come back for her.

She looked at the clock again. It was now past ten. He would come very soon or not tonight.

The candle had burned down and she had got wet again thinking about the day in the shop when he didn’t seem to recognise her at first, and how she seduced him – and there was no doubt that it was she who had taken the initiative that day, had made him her lover.

A lover with an impressive amount of stamina, loving her several times in the short while he would spend with her.

Thinking of his stamina increased the warmth she felt emanating from the space between her legs. If he did show up tonight they wouldn’t need to break the seal of the brand new tub of lube that sat on the nightstand. Not tonight.

If he did show, that was.

And then, at last, the sound of footsteps on the stairs. His footsteps. Dagmar could distinguish them from thousands.

She was ready and open.