The Boxer (18 page)

“No, no, that’s fine.”

When she saw Aron walking toward her Nurse Irma stood up and smiled, embarrassed. Aron was also embarrassed; the arrangement through the doctor had lent the rendezvous a certain weight. Aron describes Nurse Irma. (He has many photographs of her. Irma was an average-sized woman, blond as mentioned, thirty-one years old at the time. A good figure, as one can well see from the photos; she smiles in all of them. Her face looks pleasant, with really big eyes — whose color, as Aron tells me, was a greenish gray — a small nose, a mole on the right side of the chin. The plucked eyebrows bother me; on all pictures they look as if they weren’t real but drawn in pencil. A good-looking woman, unobtrusive.) Aron thought that the best means against embarrassment was a
quick
beginning; he said, “My name is Arno Blank.”

“I know.”

They sat on the bench; there was a lengthy pause. Aron fished cigarettes out of his pocket; Nurse Irma was a nonsmoker.

“I came to see you,” Aron said, “because to this day my son, Mark, hasn’t stopped raving about you.”

“We did get to like each other,” Nurse Irma said. “I’m glad he still thinks about me.”

She looked straight ahead toward the trees, Aron still recalls, her face attentive. Aron observed her closely, in profile; for a few seconds he compared her with Paula, then immediately dismissed this comparison as unreasonable. His first impression,
I honestly confess
, was very good. In spite of all Aron’s reservations, Mark’s reports had already won him over; he was also, he says, relieved to discover that she wasn’t an ugly woman. And quite suddenly he had the idea of solving, with Irma’s help, several personal problems
all in one go
. “Would you do me a favor?”

“Yes?”

Aron found that her “yes?” betrayed a little too much expectation, considering his unrevealing question. He told her about his promise to organize a meeting between her and his son on Mark’s birthday. She said, “Why not? If I can work it out, I’ll come.”

This statement was an even clearer hint, because he had originally thought of bringing Mark to her. Now she wanted to take on the trip herself. It was her business, he told himself, what her expectations were, while his own wishes were his affair. Counting on their fingers, they figured that Mark’s birthday fell on a Saturday, one of Irma’s days off, or so she
claimed
. Aron described the way to his apartment and said that he and Mark were already looking forward to her visit. Coincidentally he looked at the home and noticed that a man who till then had been standing at an open window stepped back into the room as soon as Aron raised his head. It may have been the doctor. Aron wanted to leave. Nurse Irma asked if she could walk a little way with him, she had plenty of time.

“With pleasure.”

Between the home and the station Aron learned that Irma had been a nurse only since the end of the war. Before that she had wanted to become a pianist, which never came to pass because her parents didn’t have enough money. The lessons were too expensive and her talent was, she admitted with a smile, not great enough to justify going into debt.

“And what did you do before the war?”

“I gave piano lessons until I was married.”

“You’re married?”

“I was,” she said. “My husband fell during the war.”

A detail that had almost made all other words unnecessary, but
fallen means fallen
. Aron asked if she lived with her relatives. She said no, she was
independent
and lived with a colleague in a room in the sanatorium; her parents lived in Thuringia. “Listen,” Aron said, “I want to make you an offer. You know that I have a son. He doesn’t have a mother, she died during the war. Since he left this home, no one takes care of him except me, and that isn’t enough. Every day I clearly feel that I need someone who has more time for him than I do, and more patience. Until now I have never hired any help because Mark won’t be helped by a woman who just does her job. Now that I know you — and above all I know what Mark thinks of you — how would you feel about moving in with us?”

Aron wondered if he should immediately raise the financial question himself, yet he felt it was inappropriate, perhaps even offensive. Everything had happened so suddenly, he says, and was so unhoped for that there had been no time to contemplate the details. Instead he said, “Obviously I won’t get angry if you decline.”

Nurse Irma took a long time to answer; her eyes stayed fixed on the road. Aron says she hadn’t wanted to
keep him in suspense
, and yet she had a look, she seemed rather confused. However, he had noticed that he had not pressured her into an embarrassing situation; he had almost
made her wish come true
. And the more firmly he reckoned that she would accept his offer, the more the pause she made seemed appropriate. It would have been highly awkward for him if she had immediately stretched out her hand and said, “Okay.”

“By when do I have to decide?” she asked.

“Whenever you want,” he said. “There are no other applicants.”

“May I give you an answer when I come to Mark’s birthday?”

“That’s actually a very good idea. First you should see where I want to abduct you.”

Then he sat in the train and was satisfied with the results of the trip. When he first met Nurse Irma, he says, it wasn’t clear to him why he had looked her up. Everything had come to light only during the course of the conversation and actually without his assistance.

*  *  *

F
or a couple of minutes now I’ve been sitting at the living room table. Aron went to the kitchen to get some refreshments; it’s a muggy day I hear ice cubes clink. Aron brings two tall glasses of lemonade; he sits across from me and lets his hands fall on his knees as if now he’s ready to start. He asks, “Where did we stop yesterday?”

I drink, then I say, “If you won’t get too upset, I’d rather cancel today’s session.”

“Why, what’s the matter?” Aron asks.

The real reason has nothing to do with him, personal troubles, I say. “There are days on which one simply doesn’t want to do a thing.”

“Yes, I understand,” Aron says. Suddenly he looks amazed at me and says, “Do you know what I just realized? What a balanced fellow you are. Until now, if there was someone who didn’t want to do anything it was me, never you. Why is that?”

I shrug and say, “No idea. I have plenty of other faults.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Aron says, “it isn’t necessarily an advantage.”

He lights a cigarette. After the first puff he starts coughing horribly and snuffs it out in the ashtray. I ask him if he would agree to go for a little ride. I came by car today, it’s right in front of the house. Aron walks over to the window and leans out a little. “The yellow one?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“Okay then,” he says. It sounds as if he wouldn’t have accepted had it not been the yellow one.

The airstream makes the mugginess bearable; Aron holds his hand out the window to cool off. The driver in the car behind us honks vehemently, probably because he thinks that an idiot like himself could be irritated by this hand and think that we want to turn right. Aron withdraws his hand and I turn right. I don’t have a destination, I want only to drive a little way out of the city, but at the sight of the first fields an idea forms in my mind. We could drive to Mark’s home, I think, without expecting any revelations, there is nothing to reveal. I only think, instead of simply driving out into the blue, we could visit the children’s home. At first I don’t tell Aron; otherwise he might think I already had the home in mind when we were sitting in his room. I more or less know the direction. When we reach the train station I’ll look surprised and ask him if it this isn’t the station. And he will say yes and perhaps be a little surprised himself, and then I’ll ask him, “Don’t you think that while we’re here …”

Aron seems to feel good. After a couple of miles he even starts whistling, quietly; I never heard him whistle before. He’s not very musical; I don’t know the melody, but in any case he is whistling it wrong. I ask if I should stop at the ice-cream parlor; he shakes his head, without interrupting his whistling. I’d like to know what’s making him so jolly all of a sudden.

When the tune ends he asks, “Where are you taking me?”

“For a ride,” I say. “What did you think?”

“That you have a precise destination.”

“Then you know more than I do.”

“All right then.”

Aron turns on the radio, a Russian folk song. He says he had the feeling that I suddenly started driving more resolutely than before, determinedly, as if I had decided on a route. I tell him that he is wrong, that I definitely don’t have a secret destination, and if he wants, from now on he can decide the route. Again he says, “All right, then.”

We drive until the day comes to an end, no more thoughts of Mark’s home. In the afternoon we eat at a village inn; Aron insists on paying for both of us. When I drop him off at home, it’s already dark. He says, “For once that was a good idea.”

T
HERE IS NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT IRMA
.

She appeared punctually, at the stipulated time. Mark was delighted and forgot about both the toys and the birthday cake. He made such a fuss about the handmade rag giraffe she had brought that all the other presents faded into the background. Aron was very pleased with Mark’s liveliness; never before had he been able to make Mark so euphorically happy. He repressed a momentary pang of jealousy by resorting to logic. Either he hired a woman who meant nothing to Mark, he told himself, and then such joyous outbursts would never materialize, or the woman would be lovable in Mark’s eyes, like Irma. With his choice, he told himself, he had wanted to create the conditions for jealousy, and that was exactly why being jealous made no sense. And, furthermore, he says, the way children love is unpredictable.

Aron avoided the topic of Irma’s decision, which was still pending. He would have preferred that she bring up the subject, but she did not. She had her hands full with Mark. There was also the distinct possibility she might have felt restricted by Mark’s presence, but now and then, by a couple of glances she cast in Aron’s direction — which he calls meaningful — she showed that she hadn’t forgotten his offer. In any case, the shyness that usually came over Mark as soon as guests arrived had vanished into thin air, so much so that the grown-ups could hardly get a word in edgewise. At one point Aron asked his son to go and play in the other room for a while, to no avail. Evidently Irma guessed the reason for his request and smiled.

Only when Mark was in bed that evening did they have a chance to sit down alone at the table, across from each other. Aron had bought a bottle of champagne; he wondered if the right moment had finally come to fetch it from the kitchen, or if it might lead to some kind of misunderstanding. Still, he thought, what kind of misunderstanding could it possibly cause? In the last few days he had become conscious that the offer to run his household, live in this apartment, and take care of Mark
in the end
boiled down to a marriage proposal. And if Irma had her wits about her — and nothing said she didn’t — she must have come to the same conclusion. And if she had, Aron thought, then the very fact she had come that day was a clear answer. Her friendliness, he says, her determined dedication while playing with Mark, were only meant to prove that he would never find anyone better. He didn’t get the bottle. Irma said, “You’ve fixed up the apartment very nicely.”

“Why are you beating around the bush?” Aron asked. “Is that what I’m doing?”

“Yes.”

“You Ve been watching me all day.”

Aron admitted to himself that Irma’s words, although he found them inappropriate, rang true; of course he had been watching her closely. More than ever, he believed that they would get along well; therefore her saying yes was important to him. Contrary to this was his brusque tone; after all, he had asked a favor of her, not she of him. He decided that from that moment on he would offer her the image of a man with whom she could picture a pleasant life.

“Whether I watched you or not,” he said, “you owe me an answer.”

“Yes,” Irma said, but Aron didn’t know if she was accepting his offer or only confirming that she still owed him an answer.

“If I understand you correctly,” Irma asked, “you would like me to live here?”

“That’s right.”

“The apartment has only two bedrooms?”

For the life of him
, Aron couldn’t bring himself to say that he had the intention of sharing the bedroom with her. It would have been the most practical solution, he says, yet he simply couldn’t say it. Instead he suggested that she should take the living room while he and Mark would share the bedroom.

“Wouldn’t that be impractical?”

“Perhaps,” Aron said. “Do you have a better suggestion?”

She shook her head as if to say she honestly didn’t; she didn’t give Aron the impression, it occurred to him later, that his question was
profoundly suggestive
, or she simply hadn’t noticed. Aron said, “Don’t forget, you’re also bringing us many advantages. All in all, Mark and I are making the better deal.

“When can you start?” he asked.

“The first of next month.”

This answer indicated that Irma’s vision of her future with Aron was devoid of emotion — a contractual relationship between employer and employee. For reasons of salary, it is usually convenient to start on the first of the month. However, it could also be that she had to give notice at the sanatorium. Aron asked if he should pick her up. That wouldn’t be necessary, she answered, her possessions fit into two small suitcases, which she could manage nicely herself. Detailed conditions, meaning pay, insurance, or annual vacation, weren’t spoken of. Aron tells me I should picture the following scenario. What if Irma had asked one simple question? A question that in all cases is cleared, possibly early, between a housekeeper, particularly a relatively young one, and her employer — the question of male visitors. He would have had a stroke, he says, but she did not raise the matter.