Cont'd …

Jennifer replaced the handset with a deep sigh.  She looked at her watch.  Twenty minutes until the taxi was due.  She went over to her shoulder- bag and ritually examined the contents for the fifth time that morning: passport, ticket, money, chequebook, passport, ticket, money, chequebook …

A shunting train whistled and the telephone rang at the same time.  Jennifer jumped out of her skin, spilling the contents of her shoulder-bag on the floor.  She decided to ignore the call until she had picked everything up and carefully replaced it in the correct order in the bag.  Passport, ticket, money, cheque book, but the phone went on ringing, it went on and on ringing, and so, after closing the shoulder-bag and placing it with the rest of the luggage once more, she went over to the telephone and picked it up.

“Good morning,” said a bright, clear, eminently respectable voice in crisp High German.  “My name is Eimler.  I’m ringing up about your flat.” The voice almost sang.

“I’m afraid it’s gone,” said Jennifer automatically.

“Ah.”

“Yes, it went some time ago, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, I see.”

There was a pause.

“Sorry,” said Jennifer.

“Ah.  Well.  Thank you very much anyway.”

“Not at all.”

“Goodbye.”

“Yes, yes, goodbye …”

Jennifer let the handset slip slowly back into its cradle.  There had been something so sad about the young man’s voice, so disappointed, so empty, that she felt a great wave of compassion for him.  He must be like so many other people in Heidelberg this Saturday morning, she thought: scanning the paper for flats and washing-machines and second-hand cars, for pianos and baby-sitters and kitchen cupboards, people on the move, people going nowhere, buying and selling, renting and letting, scheming and manoeuvring and trying as best they could to improve their existence here in this overcrowded little town, this narrow little Heidelberg, with its claustrophobic mountains and its oppressive climate and its lack of space, of space, of space …

Yet there had been space for her, she reflected, looking around the little flat that was still officially hers.  For five years, she had had a place here, she had had a life here, with a home and a job and friends; and if it had not been much, if it had not been very glamorous and not been very successful, it had at least been hers.  That mark on the wall was hers.  That stain on the carpet was hers.  This flat was hers, and she was leaving it.  The doorbell rang.  Jennifer started towards the door, but stopped halfway.  It must be the taxi driver on the street below.  The doorbell rang again.  She stared at the house telephone, and as she did so, a new possibility occurred to her.  Walking over to the window, she discreetly peeped down at the street below.

There, visibly impatient, was the driver of a cream Mercedes taxi.  He was parked in a no parking zone, two wheels up on the pavement, and the traffic was whizzing past the tail of his car at high speed.  Jennifer noticed with a detached curiosity that he was going bald, that he had a gold chain at his neck, that the laces of his training shoes were undone.  Sudden staccato bursts of information issued from the radio of his car, crackly instructions that ceased as abruptly as they had started and she could make out several place names. Tiefburg … Ziegelhausen … Turnerstrasse 51 …

The driver shook his head – he was indeed going very bald – went over to the front door of Jennifer’s house, and rang again, using visible force to push the bell.

Jennifer let the bell ring, once, twice, three times.  From the taxi in the street below came more names, more places she knew, more of the Heidelberg she had come to love.  Neckarwiese … Danteplatz … Bergheimerstrasse 39 … She watched as the driver, with an audible curse, got into the taxi and drove away.

And then she settled down at the window, at her window over the station, to watch her train depart.

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