3

It was not the first time Rudolf Plischke had felt himself recoil from a woman he had slept with. It was as though he were the victim of some romantic judgement whose workings lay fathoms below what he could see, but whose decisions were final. One woman, one day, might be worshipped; but until then, others must be put aside. It was not a reflex he could control.

Sometimes he cursed the way it was. After all, he didn’t enjoy seeing the look of disappointment in a lover’s eyes. At other times, he thought his reactions were part of an idealism whose models of womanhood were as pure as his philosophical beliefs – and then he was more inclined to forgive himself.

He had always found it hard to conduct what other men thought of as a normal affair, but Lena had intrigued him for a long time. There was an innocence about her on the first day he saw her in the hospital corridor. She was like a morning in May, he thought, when the air was so fresh that it made you light-headed. The fact that she was uneducated was more intriguing than off-putting; their dinners together had encouraged him to believe he might help her.

When she threw herself at him, it had been hard to know what to do. He didn’t think that someone of Lena’s background could be a partner in his life’s work; he didn’t really believe that she embodied the feminine ideal he had imagined. But he was aroused; and if the girl had made her wishes so clear, who was he to think he knew better?

Lena was pleased that Rudolf still asked her to have dinner with him on Fridays, though puzzled that Tuesdays were not mentioned again. He was polite and kissed her on the cheek when they met, but made no reference to what had happened in her room.

One day she saw him with another woman, walking towards the Belvedere Gardens. He was laughing in a way that she had never seen before; the woman, who was dressed in clothes Lena knew to be expensive, was clinging to his arm.

For days, Lena couldn’t think clearly. She was late for work and there were dark smears beneath her eyes. Relying on her life’s experience to that point, feeling that the circumstances, and the man, could not be better, she had pushed open a door to find – not the welcome she’d expected, but some sort of wilderness where she had no bearings. Then the door had closed behind her.

She couldn’t confide in the women at work, though one of them seemed concerned and asked after her; nor could she consult her employer, Frau Haas, a genial but remote old woman, widow of the once owner, who spent her days in a back office, doing no one knew quite what.

A turmoil took over her mind, a panic that she was stranded in a lightless place. Living with her mother would have been preferable; or heaving the damp hospital sheets out onto the line, then scratching the skin from her hands on the rough waistband of her skirt.