Free Alice by Judith Hermann

It’s good for me if you stay, why should you leave now. Yourfriend is very nice. He can take me to the hospital, and pick me up. You ought to stay. Conrad would have wanted that too.
    Not looking at Alice she said, You’re the last person who spoke to him, you know that.
    Yes, Alice said. I know.
    And how did that go, Lotte said.
    He said he had thought he was invulnerable, Alice said. Grateful that she was able to say that much, and grateful that Lotte now laughed, softly, but still.
    He said that Lotte said. She shook her head.
    That’s what he said, Alice said.
    They have laid him out in the hospital; that’s one of the good things about Italy. I’ll go there and sit with him. There are other dead people in the room too, a small chapel, other families, it’s actually quite wonderful. He can stay there like that for two days. Or three. Wouldn’t you like to go with me?
    No, Alice said. No. I can’t.
    All right, Lotte said. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to.
    Come with me, Lotte said, I want to show you something.
    They stood next to each other on the large terrace with the chair and the stone sphere. Lotte pulled the green hose from the drum, turned on the water. She aimed the broadly fanned glistening stream into the lavender bushes; it took a little while. Lotte said, Wait. Then cardinal beetles began pouring out of the lavender bushes by the hundreds, a redand-black-spotted flood of fleeing insects, seemingly endless. They inundated the terrace, running in all directions.
    Look at that, Lotte said. Just look at that.
    In the middle of the night, long past midnight, maybe already in the grey of dawn, the Romanian went up the stairs from the terrace to the first floor in the yellow house, past his own room and up to the second floor, through Anna’s room, into Alice’s room. Conrad’s room. Alice’s room. He closed the door softly behind him. The room was dark because Alice had closed the shutters tight. In the dark the Romanian groped his way to Alice’s bed. The narrow bed with the metal frame. Alice stretched her hand out to him; it was the most affectionate of gestures. Because she knew that this would be the most affectionate gesture, she guided her hand as explicitly as possible, explicitly for her and explicitly for the Romanian, whose hand was small and familiar. She couldn’t see his face. He couldn’t see hers. She took his hand with all the expressiveness she had. Drew him to her. The rest was rough and angry, unrestrained.
    That afternoon they took a boat. Anna, Alice, and the Romanian. They had only a few days left, but no one cared. The lake remained dark blue, ice cold, sometimes misty, occasionally a clear view. Aggressive swans, ducks with four, five, six, or seven ducklings, the water always soft. Every hour the ferry went from west to east and back again, and the pebbles on the beach got hotter and hotter. That afternoon Anna wore a grey dress with green flowers, sandals with cork heels, her hair in a child’s pigtail. Alice wore a white blouse and a lilac-coloured skirt. TheRomanian had on a light-coloured shirt and the torn jeans with traces of melon juice on the seams. The boy at the boat-rental place next to the Mussolini villa with the pretentious view of Monte Baldo and its cloud-enveloped peak felt he had to finish his apple and fling the core to the swans before he could hand over the oars for a boat. A flag hung limply in the shadow of his little boathouse, and the clanking of the chain with which the boats were tied together scared away the swans. The Romanian rowed the boat out of the little harbour, confidently and almost elegantly. Alice saw the boy raise his eyebrows before he sank back into his plastic chair. The Romanian rowed the boat far out, probably dangerously far out; there was no one there who could have told them anything about it, but they could clearly feel the current. A wind had come up, water