Adam and Evelyn Read online

  ALSO BY INGO SCHULZE

  One More Story

  New Lives

  Simple Stories

  33 Moments of Happiness

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK.

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF.

  Translation copyright © 2011 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Originally published in Germany as Adam und Evelyn by Berlin Verlag GmbH, Berlin, in 2008.

  Copyright © 2008 by BV Berlin Verlag GmbH, Berlin.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.

  Schulze, Ingo, [date]

  [Adam und Evelyn. English]

  Adam and Evelyn : a novel / by Ingo Schulze ;

  translated from the German by John E. Woods.—1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  “This is a Borzoi book.”

  eISBN: 978-0-307-70144-2

  1. Germany—Fiction. I. Woods, John E. (John Edwin) II. Title.

  PT2680.U453A3313 2011

  833′.92—dc22 2011009554

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket illustration by Emilio Brizzi / Millennium Images, U.K.

  Jacket design by Peter Mendelsund

  v3.1

  For

  Clara and Franziska

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1 DARKROOM

  2 LILLI

  3 ADAM, WHERE ARE YOU?

  4 OUT OF HERE

  5 WHY DOES ADAM LIE AGAIN?

  6 THE MORNING AFTER

  7 UNDER WAY

  8 DETOURS

  9 THE FIRST BORDER

  10 ONE GETS THROUGH

  11 SUSPICIONS

  12 ANOTHER WOMAN

  13 NEGOTIATIONS

  14 RISKING IT

  15 HANDS HALF OPEN

  16 HERO’S LIFE

  17 PREPARATIONS FOR A FAREWELL

  18 FAILED FAREWELL

  19 OFF-LIMITS CAMPING

  20 FIRST REUNION

  21 AN INVITATION OF SORTS

  22 ANOTHER ATTEMPT

  23 FIRST DAY’S REPORT

  24 TREASURES

  25 BLOWUP

  26 COUPLES

  27 ADAM AT WORK

  28 SHADOWS AT PLAY

  29 DAMN WOMEN

  30 EVENING BY BLUE LIGHT

  31 ON THE ROAD

  32 WORKING FOR ETERNITY

  33 LADIES’ CHOICE

  34 A FAIRY TALE

  35 TOWED

  36 A SUNDAY

  37 A BONFIRE

  38 ON THE ROAD AGAIN

  39 THE MISUNDERSTANDING

  40 BEDTIME STORY

  41 FAREWELL

  42 KNOWLEDGE

  43 TWO PROPOSALS

  44 IN THE PHONE BOOTH

  45 SPIES

  46 SPIES, TAKE TWO

  47 KITCHEN TALK

  48 AFTER THE PHONE CALL

  49 TWO WOMEN

  50 JEWELS

  51 LAKE ZURICH AND GREEN LIGHT

  52 BROTHER AND SISTER

  53 FAILED RETURN

  54 LAST THINGS

  55 FIRE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHRONOLOGY

  A Note About the Author

  A Note About the Translator

  In our deepest convictions, reaching into the very depths of our being, we deserve to live forever. We experience our transitoriness and mortality as an act of violence perpetrated against us. Only Paradise is authentic; the world is inauthentic, and only temporary. That is why the story of the Fall speaks to us so emotionally, as if summoning an old truth from our slumbering memory.

  —CZESLAW MILOSZ, Milosz’s ABCs

  The church fathers, and not only Augustine, condemned as heresy the assertion that Adam, along with Eve, was damned for all eternity. They in fact became saints, their day falling on December 24. They ultimately advanced to patrons—not as might be expected of the planters of orchards, but rather—of the guild of tailors. After all, they were the first human beings to wear clothes. And God the Father had sewn their garments Himself.

  —KURT FLASCH, Eva und Adam

  1

  DARKROOM

  ALL AT ONCE there they were, the women. They appeared out of the void, attired in his dresses, pants, skirts, blouses, coats. At times it seemed to him as if they were stepping out of the whiteness, or had simply emerged, finally breaking through the surface to reveal themselves. He just had to tip the tray of developer the least bit, that was all it took. First there was nothing—and then suddenly something. But that moment between nothing and something could not be captured—it was as if it didn’t exist at all.

  The oversize sheet slid into the tray. Adam turned it over with plastic tongs, nudged it deeper, turned it again, stared at the whiteness, and then at the image of a woman in a long dress draped in a spiral around her ample body, but leaving one shoulder bare, found himself gazing at it as devoutly as if a miracle had happened, as if he had compelled a spirit to assume form.

  Adam briefly held the photo up with the tongs. The black surface of the background was softer now, but the dress and the armpit held their contour. He picked up his cigar from the rim of the ashtray, took a puff, and blew the smoke across the wet image before dipping it in the stop bath and from there into the tray of fixer.

  The squeak of the garden gate unsettled him. He heard the footfall growing louder, taking the three stairs, heard the soft thud of the shopping bag meeting the front door as it opened.

  “Adam, are you home?”

  “Yes,” he called so loudly that she would have to hear him. “Down here!”

  The sound of her heels passed overhead as he blew on the negative, wiped it with a chamois cloth, and then slipped it into the enlarger again. He pulled the image into focus and switched off the light. The kitchen tap opened, then closed, the steps returned—suddenly she was hopping on one foot, pulling off her sandals. The empty bottles in the basket behind the cellar door clinked.

  “Adam?”

  “Hm.” He removed one sheet from the package, 18 by 24, and squared it in the enlarger.

  Tread by tread Evelyn descended the stairs. Her fingers would be dusty again, from running her hand against the low ceiling to keep from bumping her head.

  He picked up his cigar again for a few more quick puffs that left him completely enveloped in smoke.

  Setting the timer for fifteen seconds, he pushed the big square button—the light came on, the timer began to buzz.

  With a stirring motion Adam waved a flattened aluminum spoon above the woman’s head, pulled it away with catlike speed, and as if going for a wade in the water, extended his fingers to shadow the woman’s body, but drew them back before the enlarger’s light went off again and its buzz fell silent.

  “Whoa! Damn, that stinks! Do you have to smoke down here too, Adam?”

  Adam picked up the tongs to immerse the paper in the developer. He didn’t like to be disturbed when he was working with his photography. He didn’t even have a radio down here.

  Barefoot, Evelyn was still a good half head taller than Adam. She groped her way over to him now, tapped his shoulder. “I thought you were going to fix us something to eat?”

  “In this heat? I spent the whole time mowing the lawn.”

  “I’m going to have to leave again.”

  The woman in the long dress appeared on the white paper. It annoyed Adam that she was evidently sucking in her stomach, he thought he could tell from her smile that she was holding her breath. But then maybe he was mistaken. He used tongs to dip the image into the stop bath and from there into the fixer. Now he tugged a new sheet from the package, folded it down the middle, and ripped it in half against the table edge. He stuck one half back in the package.

  “What are you eating?” he asked.

  “Close your eyes. You’re peeking, stop it.”

  “Have they been washed?”

  “Yes, I’m not trying to poison you,” Evelyn said as she pushed a grape into his mouth.

  “Where’d you get these?”

  “Kretschmann’s, the old man slipped me an extra sackful. I didn’t know what was in it.”

  The enlarger light went on.

  “What do you want me to tell Frau Gabriel?”

  “Put her off.”

  “But I’ve got to tell her today. If they’re going to give me vacation time in August, then I’ve got to take it.”

  “She’s nuts. We’ll take off when we want to take off.”

  The light went out.

  “We wanted to go in August. You said August, and Pepi said August was better for her too. Without kids nobody ever gets vacation time in August. Besides, the visa will expire.”

  “It’s not a visa.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you call it. We applied for August.”

  “It’s good till September tenth.”

  Adam dragged the paper through the tray, turning it twice.

  “No
w she’s sexy!” Evelyn said, as the woman in a pantsuit emerged, hands braced against her back, breasts thrust forward.

  “Any mail?” Adam asked.

  “Nope,” Evelyn said. “Why don’t we take the train?”

  “I don’t like being stuck in one spot. It’s boring without the car. You got any more?”

  Evelyn shoved the rest of the grapes into his mouth, then wiped her wet hands on her jeans. “And so what am I going to tell Frau Gabriel?”

  “One week at least, she’s got to give us a week.”

  “By then August is as good as over.”

  “You can turn on the light,” he said, once he’d laid the proof in the fixer. He stepped across to the rectangular sink, where several more photos were swimming, fished one out, and hung it on the line with some others.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Lilli.”

  “And in the real world?”

  “Renate Horn from Markkleeberg. Got any more grapes for me?”

  “You’ll have to go upstairs for them. And this one here?”

  “You know her. Desdemona.”

  “Who?”

  “Sure you do. Andrea Albrecht, from the Polyclinic, the gynecologist.”

  “With the Algerian boyfriend?”

  “There’s no Algerian boyfriend. You’ve met, shook hands once. I made this outfit for her”—he pointed at a photo on the line—“back in June.”

  “Wait a sec—” Evelyn stepped up close to the shot. “Is she wearing my shoes? Those are my shoes!”

  “What?”

  “Those are mine, there, on the toe, that scratch. Are you crazy?”

  “They never know anything about shoes, they show up here wearing clunkers that ruin everything. It’s just for thirty seconds—”

  “But I don’t want your women wearing my shoes. I don’t want you taking shots of them out in the garden, and certainly not in the living room either.”

  “It was hot upstairs.”

  “I won’t have it!” Evelyn was now giving other shots a closer look. “So are we leaving tomorrow?”

  “As soon as our new chariot arrives, we’re on our way.”

  “I’ve been hearing that for three weeks.”

  “I’ve called. What am I supposed to do?”

  “We’re not ever going to go on this trip, I’ll bet you.”

  “You’ll lose.” Adam pulled photo after photo from the water and hung them up. “I guarantee you’ll lose.”

  “We’ll never get another visa. They wouldn’t give us one now. They’ve moved the age limit up to fifty, Frau Gabriel says.”

  “Frau Gabriel, Frau Gabriel. She’s always got lots and lots to say.”

  “This one’s beautiful. Is it red?”

  “Blue, silk.”

  “Why don’t you ever do color shots?”

  “She had someone bring the silk back with them, and this material here”—Adam held up a photo showing a young woman in a short skirt and loose blouse—“expensive shit, even in the West. You can’t feel it against your skin, it’s that fine spun.”

  Adam folded up a wet photo and threw it in the wastebasket.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “Wasn’t any good.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too dark.”

  Evelyn reached into the wastebasket.

  “The background is all black dots,” Adam said.

  “Is this Lilli?”

  “Sure is.”

  Evelyn tossed the photo back in the basket and returned to the entryway, where the shelves of preserves were.

  “It’s like they multiply. You want pears or apples?”

  “Is there any stewed quince left? And close the door.”

  Adam turned off the light and waited till the door clicked shut.

  “Some from eighty-five, if this is a five,” Evelyn called from the other side of the door.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Adam chose a new negative, focused, pulled the half page from the package, laid it under the enlarger, and pushed the timer button. He hummed along with it.

  “You want a bowl now too?”

  “Later.”

  “Are you going to the museum today?”

  “Have the tours started up already?”

  “Yes, and I’m going to have to miss it again.”

  “I can’t go either, I’ve got a fitting,” Adam called out.

  For a moment everything was quiet. He let the page slide into the liquid, pressed it down. There was the snap of the light switch in the entryway.

  “Evi?”

  He heard the clink of the empty bottles again.

  “Evi!” he shouted and was on the verge of following her, but then in the next moment he bent down deeper over the tray, as if trying to make sure that the woman emerging there with her laugh and outspread arms was really looking at him.

  2

  LILLI

  A FEW HOURS later that same Saturday—August 19, 1989—Adam was kneeling, with a half dozen pins in his mouth and a tape measure around his neck, at the feet of a woman in her midforties. She had taken off her blouse and was fanning herself with an issue of Magazin. The heat had nestled into the finished attic, despite open dormers and skylights. The cover had been pulled over the sewing machine, the cutting table tidied up, with shears arranged by size and lined up with spools of thread and ribbons, triangles, rulers, stencils, tailor’s chalk, a cigar box full of razor blades, and another small box for buttons, a photo propped against it. Even the tray with two half-full glasses of tea and a sugar bowl had been squared with the tabletop. Rolls of fabric were stacked under the table. From the record player’s speakers came music, along with a few scratches.

  “Is that Vivaldi?” Lilli asked.

  “Haydn,” Adam managed to say through tight-pressed lips. “Don’t suck your tummy in.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t suck your tummy in!” Adam repinned the skirt’s waistband.

  “I don’t understand why you won’t take on Daniela as a client. She’s beautiful, she’s young, and she can pay your prices. She just wants to wear something chic for once. Besides, her father has a repair shop, for Škodas I admit, but they’d lend a hand when you need one. There’s no rush. Daniela will go to the end of the line.” She tossed the Magazin on the table. “When are you two taking off? Have you got your new Lada yet?”

  Adam shook his head. Lilli looked in the mirror, at her left bicep, already half raised, and began to tweak her hairdo. Adam’s finger traced along the inside of the waistband.

  “You don’t have to grumble,” she said. “I’m not sucking my tummy in, I’m no beginner.”

  Their eyes met in the mirror.

  “Shorter, I think,” Lilli said.

  Adam turned up the hem, checked the mirror, and shook his head.

  “You don’t agree? People won’t see any leg at all,” Lilli said.

  Adam pinned the hem length and smiled, which made him look curiously sad.

  “What’s with you?” she exclaimed. “What about the belt loops? Those could be bigger.”

  Adam grabbed Lilli by her hips, turned her around, and removed the pins from his mouth. “There’ll be a slit right here—a slit, do you understand? You want them to stare at it, put a crick in their necks. And make sure you find a narrow belt, something elegant. Here are your eight inches, about eight from here down.” He fastened another pin and finally got to his feet. “So now the shoes, take a couple of turns.”

  Lilli slipped into her brown pumps, walked to the window, where she spun once around on her tiptoes, then strode to the dormer opposite, and started back again.

  Adam took his cigar from a copper ashtray and puffed away till the tip began to glow.

  Lilli stopped in front of him, her hands on her hips. “I can’t believe that’s me there. Even I look photogenic here with you.”

  “Keep moving, keep moving,” he said.

  When Lilli passed him again, she waggled a hand, and in reply Adam took the cigar from his mouth and blew smoke on the back of her neck. “That’s enough, come here,” he called. “And you did suck your tummy in.” Adam tried to tap a finger on the little bulge just above the top of her skirt. Lilli backed away. She pretended not to have heard him, and brushed her hair back. She was sweating, too.

  Adam pulled the second mirror over. “Here, I need to take a little out of the box pleat. Otherwise it falls very nicely.”

  She tensed her butt under Adam’s hands. “Actually I’m glad you don’t want to take Daniela on. You’re liable to take a shine to a spring chicken like her. The lining is marvelous, feels so good to the touch. Where’d you get it? If it weren’t so stifling up here I’d purr. Can’t you put that smelly stogie out? You’ll get lung cancer.”