Sleet: Selected Stories

“Alright, I’ve been a little careless,” said the forester calmly as he tried to look out through the tear-blinded window. “I admit it. Maybe we’ve both been a little careless. You didn’t have to wear my scarf into the store. But listen. There’s nothing that can’t be fixed — not even carelessness. You fix that by being twice as careful as before. We’re going to be so cautious that everyone will feel stupid about their suspicions. If we’ve ever looked at each other when we’re having our coffee at night with Arne, then from now on we’ll never give each other as much as another sidelong glance. Do you think you can control your eyes?”

“If you can, I can,” said Alice. Suddenly she felt very tired. She watched the rain as it ran down the window. A butcher’s shop window, she thought and laughed a little — just a small laugh, barely noticeable. Not that the forester noticed it anyway. He was busy unzipping his tobacco pouch. He took out a small pinch and crumpled it to separate the leaves.

“We’ll be polite to each other,” he said. “But no more. Definitely no more.”

“Definitely not,” she said. “Definitely not. Definitely not.”

The forester was surprised to hear her say it a third time. Sometimes she would tease him with her goddamned superiority by repeating his words in her voice, but with his tone. It was like looking at yourself in a broken mirror. “How long are you going to keep that up?” he would ask her. “As long as I damn well please,” was her usual reply. And she would damn well please for a very long while until at last he threw her violently to the bed, her lips, like charged magnets, dragging his own helplessly toward them.

The rain poured and poured. The forester had just lit his pipe and was drawing smoke in through his childishly rounded lips. On his desk ticked an alarm clock which usually rang at one in the afternoon when the blinds were drawn. “Definitely not,” thought Alice, though she couldn’t remember why. The forester took the pipe from his mouth.

“The trick is simply to wait,” he said, fingering its stem. “Do you think you can learn to wait?”

“For what?”

“For the right moment. Isn’t Arne going on some school trip?”

“June sixth,” said Alice. She was now sitting on the edge of the bed, looking out at the sky, which had begun to clear over the yard. Her eyes were fixed in the middle of a cloud, beyond the forester’s head. He had to stand up to compete for her attention. He paced back and forth in the room, each time stepping barely to the side for her feet, but never touching her.

“Two weeks,” he said, stopping in front of the window. “Can you wait that long?”

She was looking at his back as he said this. “Shake just a little,” she prayed. But the forester’s back was completely still. She rose from the bed and moved across the silent carpet toward the door, looking back over her shoulder to see if the mute back would notice her. But it was blind and noticed nothing.

Yet when her own back brushed against the door, the forester stirred and turned slowly. He sat back on the window sill.

“Alright,” he said. “For two weeks we’ll forget about each other. Do you think you can manage?”

But Alice didn’t exactly respond as he’d expected. Curtseying in the doorway with grace and mockery, she said, “Until we meet again, Herr Forester.”

When he was alone, the forester sat down again at his desk and began to leaf through a book about hunting. He decided to go out on a night hunt, so he wound up the alarm clock and set it for midnight. Then he stole to the door and turned the key. In one of his desk drawers was a small bottle of brandy, something he saved for special occasions, to help stiffen his resolve in difficult times. He took a glass down from the shelf and poured a little, very little, into it. He poured the exact amount that a man of character would pour. Holding the glass up to the light, he was pleased with himself that he had poured such a moderate amount. Then he tossed it back in one painful gulp. He poured out the same amount a few times more, and each time he was equally pleased by the strength of his character.

All at once the sun appeared and struck him in the eyes. As he leaned over the desk to pull the blinds down, he saw Alice coming out of the bower toward the house. She was carrying the remains of their interrupted meal on a red tray, which cast a friendly reflection on the grass where she was walking. Her shoulders looked tired and she appeared to be leaning on the tray for support, bearing her fatigue and the beginnings of despair before her as she kept her eyes desperately fixed on the tray, trying to keep it all from tumbling out of her grasp. As he saw her there, the forester was moved by a sudden feeling of tenderness for the teacher’s wife. Leaning over the desk, following her quiet path to the house with his eyes, he felt the pleasure of this tenderness awaken in his body.