Free Alice by Judith Hermann Page A

splashed into the boat, they were all quite exhausted anyway. The Romanian ignored Anna’s oblique references to their distance from shore, showing a casual indifference that didn’t suit him.
    Who’ll go swimming?
    Not me, Alice said.
    With his back to Anna and Alice, the Romanian took off his shirt, then his jeans. Standing naked in the prow of the boat he bent his knees for a moment. Alice looked at him, his back, his arms. Narrow shoulders, slender neck. Bite marks, scratches. Black and blue marks all over. Then he jumped into the water, dived down, and was gone.
    Good heavens, Anna said, raising her hand to her mouth; she was truly shocked. Good heavens. Did I do that?An insect had drowned in the milky foam of Alice’s
latte macchiato
on the terrace of the café in Salò. Alice had felt it on her tongue – very light, a multi-legged body concealed in the white foam. Gagging, she’d spat it out, sticking her tongue far out, had spat it back onto the spoon. What are you doing there? Anna asked, leaning forward, interested and sympathetic but disgusted at the same time.
    Alice said, If it’s a spider, I’ll scream. It wasn’t a spider. It was something else, maybe a cricket, or a cicada? Small, black, cute, with little bent legs and a shiny abdomen.
Il caldo, il tempo
, the waiter had said, pointing up into the sky, shrugging and removing the plate, the spoon, the foam and the little animal from the table. Didn’t bring another coffee. Maybe I almost swallowed a cricket, a cicada, a head-cricket, Alice thought. What was the difference between them again? Conrad would surely have known. But Conrad was
morto
.
Lui è morto
. He was being taken to Germany by cargo carrier across the Alps, in July of all times.
    Strange. Anna said, We didn’t even get to know Conrad, the Romanian and I, we never even saw him. What was he like? What had he been like?
    While … To think that while they had stopped at the petrol station, and while the Romanian was looking up into the sky at a falcon, an eagle, or a buzzard. While Alice was sliding open the top of the chest freezer, and Anna said the word
cornetto
, and the gas station attendant was drumming with his fingers on the counter and Lotte was sitting in thecar, unmoving behind the tinted windows, her profile outlined against the mountain, and Alice’s hand was deep in the chest freezer, in slow motion tearing open a cardboard box full of ice-lollies, raspberry, lemon and sweet woodruff – What flavour is it? the Romanian had asked. And Alice had replied
Dolomiti
– Conrad had passed away. In a hot room at the end of a corridor with glittering light, his heart had at first fibrillated and then stopped beating, just like that, and no goodbye, that was all. While they paid, walked out into the dusty plaza in front of the petrol pumps, nettles and grass growing between the stones. Thinking about it. Over and over again. I can’t tell you what Conrad was like. I can no longer tell you.
    One afternoon Alice packed her suitcases, then sat down for a long time on the chair at Conrad’s table, gazing at the guest book, finally took the pen and managed to draw a dash on the paper; even that was embarrassing. Drinking a last Aperol on the terrace with the red cushions, the cold-blooded lizards, the unbearably beautiful view of the landscape. The Romanian and his indifferent, unchanging politeness. Should I marry you now or what; but we’re much too old to get married – Alice asked herself and came to no conclusion. Go for another swim. One last time. Sandals in hand, she walked to the little dock near the wall and the gate to the overgrown garden. When Alice, alone on the beach, undressed completely, and went cautiously into the water, tripping on the slippery stones, she remembered what Conrad had said about the lake, back then when heinvited her to come for a visit. He had said, the lake was always ice cold, she