Also by Daniel Glattauer in English translation
Love Virtually (2011)
MacLehose Press
An imprint of Quercus
New York • London
© 2009 by Deuticke im Paul Zsolnay Verlag Wien
Translation © 2011 by Katharina Bielenberg and Jamie Bulloch
Originally published in German as Alle sieben Wellen
First published in the United States by Sterling in 2012
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e-ISBN 978-1-62365-344-6
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER ONE
Three weeks later
Subject: Hello
Hello.
Ten seconds later
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Returned)
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status
Notification.
THIS EMAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED. THE RECIPIENT CAN NO LONGER RECEIVE MAIL SENT TO THIS ADDRESS. ALL INCOMING MAIL WILL BE DELETED AUTOMATICALLY. FOR ANY QUERIES, PLEASE CONTACT THE SYSTEMS MANAGER.
Half a year later
Subject: (no subject)
Hello!
Ten seconds later
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Returned)
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status
Notification.
THIS EMAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED. THE RECIPIENT CAN NO LONGER RECEIVE MAIL SENT TO THIS ADDRESS. ALL INCOMING MAIL WILL BE DELETED AUTOMATICALLY. FOR ANY QUERIES, PLEASE CONTACT THE SYSTEMS MANAGER.
Thirty seconds later
Re:
Will this never stop?
Ten seconds later
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Returned)
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status
Notification.
THIS EMAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED. THE RECIPIENT CAN NO LONGER RECEIVE MAIL SENT TO THIS ADDRESS. ALL INCOMING MAIL WILL BE DELETED AUTOMATICALLY. FOR ANY QUERIES, PLEASE CONTACT THE SYSTEMS MANAGER.
Three days later
Subject: Query
Good evening, Mr. Systems Manager. How are you? Quite chilly for March, don’t you think? Still, after such a mild winter I don’t think we should be complaining. Oh yes, since I’m here, I’d be grateful if you’d answer a query. We have an acquaintance in common. His name is Leo Leike. Unfortunately I appear to have mislaid his current email address. Would you be so kind and possibly … ? Many thanks.
With my warmest virtual wishes,
Emmi Rothner
Ten seconds later
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Returned)
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status
Notification.
THIS EMAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED. THE RECIPIENT CAN NO LONGER RECEIVE MAIL SENT TO THIS ADDRESS. ALL INCOMING MAIL WILL BE DELETED AUTOMATICALLY. FOR ANY QUERIES, PLEASE CONTACT THE SYSTEMS MANAGER.
Thirty seconds later
Re:
Do you mind if I give you some constructive criticism? You’re being a tiny bit repetitive.
Enjoy your night shift,
Emmi Rothner
Ten seconds later
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Returned)
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status
Notification.
THIS EMAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED. THE RECIPIENT CAN NO LONGER RECEIVE MAIL SENT TO THIS ADDRESS. ALL INCOMING MAIL WILL BE DELETED AUTOMATICALLY. FOR ANY QUERIES, PLEASE CONTACT THE SYSTEMS MANAGER.
Four days later
Subject: Three questions
Dear Mr. Systems Manager,
I’m going to be honest with you: this is an emergency. I need the current email address of “User” Leo Leike, and I need it badly! I have three questions I urgently need to ask him: 1) Is he alive? 2) Is he still in Boston? 3) Is he involved in an email relationship with someone else? If the answer to 1) is yes, I would forgive him 2). But I could never forgive 3). I don’t mind if over the past half year he’s tried to get it together again with Marlene fifteen times. I don’t mind if he’s flown her in to Boston on a daily basis. I don’t mind if he’s spent his nights hanging out in sleazy Boston plush bars, and woken up every morning wedged between the rock-hard breasts of some boring Barbie-blonde. I wouldn’t even mind if he’d pulled off three marriages and had three sets of nonidentical triplets. But there’s one thing I would mind: IF HE HAD FALLEN IN LOVE, BY EMAIL, WITH ANOTHER WOMAN HE HAD NEVER SET EYES ON. Anything but that, please! That has to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I need to be sure of this if I’m going to get through these nights in one piece. The north wind is blowing relentlessly.
Dear Mr. Systems Manager, I think I can guess more or less what your reply will be, but I’ll ask you anyway: be a devil and pass on my message to Leo Leike. I’m sure you’re in regular contact with him. Tell him it’s about time he got in touch. Do it! You’ll feel better for it. O.K., now you can say your piece again.
Best wishes,
Emmi Rothner
Ten seconds later
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Returned)
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status
Notification.
THIS EMAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED. THE RECIPIENT CAN NO LONGER RECEIVE MAIL SENT TO THIS ADDRESS. ALL INCOMING MAIL WILL BE DELETED AUTOMATICALLY. FOR ANY QUERIES, PLEASE CONTACT THE SYSTEMS MANAGER.
Three and a half months later
Subject: Please forward
Hi Leo,
Are there new tenants in your flat? In case you’re still in Boston, I thought I should warn you: don’t be surprised if you get a massive electricity bill. They leave the lights on all night long.
Have a nice day—have a nice life,
Emmi
Two minutes later
Re:
Hello?
One minute later
Re:
Yoo-hoo, Mr. Systems Manager, where are you?
/> One minute later
Re:
Should I be worried, or can I be hopeful?
Eleven hours later
Subject: Back from Boston
Dear Emmi,
Your intuition is uncanny. I’ve not been back in the country a week. As for the electricity, it’s me using it. What I’d like to say, Emmi, is … what would I like to say after such a long time? Everything I might think of saying sounds pretty banal. The best I can come up with, even if it’s five months early, is: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I hope you’re well, at least twice as well as I am.
Adieu, Leo
One day later
Subject: Baffled
What was that? Was it anything? And if it was something, and whatever it was, was it the same thing as before? I don’t believe it.
E.
Three days later
Subject: Stunned
Leo, Leo, what has happened to you? What has Boston turned you into?
E.
One day later
Subject: Closure
Dear Leo,
How you’ve made me feel over the past five days is worse than you’ve ever made me feel, and you’ve made me feel truly terrible before now. It was thanks to you that I discovered for the first time quite how terrible terrible feelings can be. (Good ones too, I should add.) But this one is new to me: I’ve become a burden to you. You get back from Boston, open Outlook, relishing the prospect of reconquering your home country by email. In pour the first thrilling messages sent to you in error by female magazine subscribers. Perfect fodder for fresh spiritual adventures with anonymous women, and who knows, there might even be an unmarried one among them. And then: oh look, an email from someone called Emmi Rothner. The name seems vaguely familiar. Wasn’t she the one you practically wrote into bed, like some kind of ace ratcatcher of the cyberworld? You very nearly had her in your arms. But then reason got the better of her at the last minute, and by a twist of fate she never turned up, she let you down, so near and yet so far. Nine and a half months pass, both the woman and the frustration are long since forgotten. And then she gets in touch, out of the blue she turns up in your in-box. And you wish her—this is very funny, Leo, reminded me of you at your best—a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, in the middle of summer. And good-bye! She’s had her chance. Plenty more where she came from. She’s in the way, she’s bugging me. So you’re simply going to ignore me, Leo, is that it? She’ll give up eventually. She’s already giving up. Well, she will give up, that’s a promise!
Emmi
P.S. You say you hope I’m “at least twice as well” as you are. Unfortunately I don’t know how well you are, Leo. Feeling twice as well as I do at the moment wouldn’t amount to much, because I’m feeling at least ten times worse than I deserve to. But don’t let it bother you.
P.P.S. Thanks for listening to me. Now you can send me your nice Systems Manager again. At least he and I could have a decent chat about the weather without being disturbed.
One hour later
Re:
I shouldn’t have written back, dear Emmi. I’ve upset you (again), which I didn’t mean to do. YOU COULD NEVER BE A BURDEN TO ME. You know that. Otherwise I’d have to be a burden to myself, because you’re a part of me. I carry you around with me always, across all continents and emotional landscapes, as a fantasy, as an illusion of perfection, as the highest expression of love. That’s how you existed for me for almost ten months in Boston, and that’s how I brought you home with me.
But, Emmi, in the meantime my physical existence has moved on; it had to move on. I’m in the middle of getting something started. I met someone in Boston. It’s still too early to talk about … well, you know. But we want to make a go of it. She’s thinking about taking a job here, she might move over.
That dreadful night, when our “first and last meeting” failed so miserably, I cruelly broke off our virtual relationship. You had come to a decision, even if you didn’t want to admit it until the very end, and I helped you execute it. I don’t know how things stand with Bernhard and your family at the moment. And I don’t want to know, because it’s got nothing to do with the two of us. I needed this long period of silence. (Maybe I should never have ended it.) We needed to protect the one-and-onlyness of our experience, to preserve for the rest of our lives our private, inner, intimate non-encounter. We took our relationship to the brink. It didn’t get any further. It doesn’t have a future, not even three-quarters of a year down the line, particularly not now. Please see things the way I do, Emmi! Let’s cherish what we had. And let’s leave it at that; otherwise, we’ll ruin it.
Yours, Leo
Ten minutes later
Re:
That was a star performance, Leo, a real treat. You seem to be back on peak form already!—“You may well be the illusion of perfection, but I don’t want to have anything more to do with you.” I get it, I get it. More tomorrow. I can’t let you off so lightly, sorry.
Good night.
Your,
I. of P.
The following day
Subject: A fitting conclusion
O.K., I cherish what we had. And I’ll leave it at that. I won’t ruin anything. I respect your position, my dear ex-email boyfriend Leo “it couldn’t go on” Leike. I’ll content myself with the fact that you want to retain lovely memories of me, and of “our thing.” To tell you the truth I feel rather imperfect for an “illusion of perfection,” and I’m massively disillusioned, but I’m still your “highest expression of love,” even if I’m clearly from another planet. Because the thing about Cindy—I bet she’s called Cindy, I can just picture her whispering “I’m Cindy” into your ear and giggling: “But you can call me Cinderella,” giggle, giggle—the thing with Cindy is that you might not get the highest expression of love, but you do get the physical side. You get it, and more importantly, you can live it. You carry me around with you like some kind of “dream,” as a natural balance between body and spirit, and of course, I completely understand that you have to be careful that I don’t become too heavy. You don’t want that dream to be shattered.
O.K., Leo, I’ll make it easy for “us,” I’ll make it easy for you, I’ll make myself scarce, I’ll stop, withdraw from your life. I won’t send you any more emails (soon!). I promise.
Do you mind if your “dream” asks for one last wish? One very, very, very last wish?—I want ONE HOUR, one hour face-to-face. There couldn’t be a better way of preserving our shared experience. The only sensible conclusion to our intimate not-meeting would be a meeting. I won’t demand anything of you, I won’t even expect anything of you. But I have to see you at least once in my life. I have to speak to you, and smell you. I have to watch your lips say the word “Emmi” at least once. I have to have seen your eyelashes once, the way they bow down to me before the curtain falls.
You’re right, dear Leo, there is no meaningful future for us. But there could be a fitting conclusion. That’s all I’m asking of you!
Your Illusion of Perfection
Three hours later
Re:
Pamela.
One minute later
Re:
???
Thirty seconds later
Re:
Her name is not Cindy, it’s Pamela. Yes, I know, it sounds pretty ghastly. It’s always dangerous when fathers are allowed to choose their daughters’ names. But she doesn’t look at all like a Pamela, honest.
Good night, Emmi.
Leo
Forty seconds later
Re:
Dear Leo, I like you so much for that! Please forgive my sniping. I feel so, so, so weak.
Good night,
Emmi
CHAPTER TWO
The following day
Subject: All right then
Let’s meet.
Leo.
Three minutes later
Re:
One man, two and a bit words! Excellent idea, Leo. Where?
O
ne hour later
Re:
In a café.
One minute later
Re:
With ten escape routes and five emergency exits.
Five minutes later
Re:
May I suggest Café Huber? We’ve never been as close anywhere else. (Physically, I mean.)
Forty seconds later
Re:
Are you going to send that nice sister of yours again, for a bit of Emmi probing?
Fifty seconds later
Re:
No, this time I’ll come straight up to you, alone and just as I am.
Three minutes later
Re:
I find your unfamiliar resolve rather irritating, Leo. Why, all of a sudden? Why do you want to meet me?
Forty seconds later
Re:
Because you want to.
Thirty seconds later
Re:
And because you want to get it over with.
Two minutes later
Re:
Because I want you to get over the idea that I want to get it over with.
Thirty seconds later
Re:
Stop being evasive, Leo. Admit you want to get it over with.
One minute later
Re:
Both of us want to get it over with. We want to get it out of the way once and for all. It’s about giving it a “fitting conclusion.” Your words, my dear Emmi.
Fifty seconds later
Re:
But I don’t want you to meet me just so that you can get it over with. I’m not your dentist!
One and a half minutes later
Re:
Although you often hit right on a nerve. EMMI, PLEASE!! We’re going to go through with this now. It was your explicit wish, and it was a reasonable wish. You made a promise that it would not destroy our “us.” I trust you and your “us” and my “us” and our joint “us.” We’ll meet face-to-face, for an hour, over a coffee. When are you free? Saturday? Sunday? Lunchtime? Afternoon?
Three hours later
Subject: (no subject)
Am I not going to hear any more from you today, Emmi? If not, good night! (If I am, good night!)
One minute later
Re:
Do you feel anything at all when you write to me, Leo?
Because I have the feeling you don’t. And this feeling of mine doesn’t feel good at all.