Simple Stories by Ingo Schulze

Author:Ingo Schulze
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307427755
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

beer cans

How Jenny, a student nurse, and her patient Marianne Schubert meet near the Virchow Clinic in Berlin and talk about a dead man. Maik, a young waiter, waits on them. Jenny’s cigarette is left in the ashtray. Transient and eternal values.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I thought that if you knew—”

“I don’t believe you.”

“That’s up to you,” Jenny said.

They were sitting side by side at the bar. The young waiter behind the counter had made coffee for them, plus a gin and tonic for Jenny, and then taken the chairs down off the tables. He had vanished into the back through a curtain and only came out now and then to empty the ashtray. He had strawberry blond hair, looked pale and despondent, or simply just exhausted. Almost no light came in at the window, because outside the building was scaffolding draped with canvas. It was close to nine in the morning.

“Although you really ought to,” Jenny said.

“What?”

“Know that what I’m saying is true.”

“No.”

“He said that as far as you two went—”

“Now listen here—”

“Nothing was happening anymore.” Jenny put out her half-smoked cigarette. “That’s really why I told you, so you wouldn’t worry that somehow you were—”

“I want—to stop talking about all this. I’ve never talked about such things. With anybody. It’s none of your business. You’re simply being rude.”

Jenny drank. “Sorry,” she said. There were still some ice cubes in her glass. “I just thought—”

“You’re making all this stuff up. . . .”

“So why’d you call me then? You could’ve slipped the letter into a mailbox and that would’ve been that.”

The woman closed her eyes a moment, then gazed over her shoulder into the empty room.

“The police gave me his things, number one.” She thrust her right thumb up. “Two, I found the letter in his travel bag, no stamp on it. I didn’t know a Jenny Ritter in Berlin. The address didn’t mean anything to me. I got out the phone book and called you.”

“You wanted to know who Jenny Ritter is.”

“No.” The woman stared at her nails. “I didn’t want a dead man sending a letter.”

“But after that . . .”

“You don’t talk about things like this on the phone. As a nurse you should know that. I wanted to tell you what had happened to my husband.”

“Didn’t my voice sound familiar?”

“So what? Who’d suspect a thing like that? Besides, I didn’t know your last name.”

“Aren’t you the least bit curious what’s in it?” Jenny pulled the gray envelope from her leather jacket and laid it between the coffee cups. “I would’ve wanted to know. I always want to know the truth.” She lit a cigarette and blew out the match.

“I’ve heard all I want to hear,” the woman said, looking aside as the waiter appeared.

“Another,” Jenny said, and shoved her empty glass forward.

“What about you?” he asked. “Coffee?”

“No thanks. Wait, some water, no fizz or anything, tap water, is that a problem?”

“No problem,” the waiter said. For a moment his face brightened. They didn’t say a word until he had served Jenny her gin and tonic and retreated again with the empty glass.

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