It had arrived like something inevitable, like something destined for the husband she had lost grip of, like a riddle she couldn’t solve, like a skein of knitting that was hopelessly tangled. She must have overlooked countless warnings, small signs which attentive women knew to interpret and adjust for, so the impending danger would be averted. But Edith had been completely consumed with her home, her children and her girlfriends, and with her own bird-like, babbling chatter with people who didn’t interest her in the least. Hospitality, books about child-rearing, attention to their diet, their teeth, their souls. After the failed vacation she had only really lived through her children and seen things through their eyes. The children’s reality. All three of them resembled her. Light skin and hair, with golden freckles around the bridges of their noses; and they had friendly, unhurried dispositions. She often compared them to a couple of pictures she had of herself as a child. When Klaus was in a good mood, he would say: So how are my four girls today? But once in a while it seemed as if he had forgotten them. Edith figured it was because he was busy. She hadn’t seen anything; she hadn’t noticed anything. He left in the morning and came home in the evening, swinging like a pendulum between two poles, like all other men. And a young woman met him and knew something about him which Edith had forgotten – or maybe never knew. Because we only bring out in others what we need ourselves.

Edith made up the divan and crawled under the comforter, curled up like an infant. She thought: Why did we absolutely have to go on that trip? But she had been looking forward to it as much as he had. They had saved the money – it was before they bought the house. The kids were taken to his parents. She remembered remarkably little about the journey there. Klaus had slept quite a bit on the train through France. And once she had peered carefully at him and was shocked at how old and tired he had come to appear. She had taken his hand and was stroking it, moved by a kind of motherly tenderness, and she had whispered in his ear that soon, soon they would be standing in front of the blue mountains of longing, and they would forget all the gray dust that daily life had strewn over their love. Back then it was natural to say something like that. They had shared their expectations with one another. They had done everything together. They had almost been happy.