Unformed Landscape by Peter Stamm

Author:Peter Stamm [Stamm, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59051-408-5
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2004-11-09T05:00:00+00:00

She walked back to the main street, and the bus stop. The next bus didn’t leave for another half an hour. There was a café by the bus stop, called Aux Travailleurs de la Mer. Two men were sitting, playing lotto. The numbers were flashed up on a screen. Kathrine drank a café au lait, and then she went out. Two children were staring in at the café through the big windows, others were sitting on wooden benches alongside a bumper car, which was not yet or no longer in operation. Kathrine had liked the music in the café, men with gentle voices, singing in French. Everything was gentler here, the language, the voices, the children’s games, the weather, the air, which was damp and wrapped itself around her, and the wind that blew in off the sea, and wasn’t cold, but still took her breath away.

She wondered how her life might have been different if she’d been born here, and had lived here. Randy would be sitting on a bench beside a bumper car. She would speak French, her name would be Catherine. She would be a better cook maybe, and dye her hair. But I wasn’t born here, she thought, so there’s no point in even thinking about it. I am as I am, and that’s it. For always.

A line of cars emerged from a side street, decorated with white ribbons and flowers. When they had turned onto the main street, they veered about dangerously. The drivers must be drunk, and the people in the cars looked very serious as they passed the bus stop.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, thought Kathrine. What did I borrow when I married Helge? With Thomas, it was a pearl necklace of Veronica’s. And blue? A little blown glass bird that someone had given to her when she was a little girl. And old and new? Thomas didn’t get it, he called it all a superstition. The best day of my life, thought Kathrine.

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