All Days Are Night by Peter Stamm Read Free Book Online

look his most natural. He seemed at least to like her, and over time he unwound, and even started flirting with her a bit. They filmed him sitting at his desk and in front of his bookshelves, out walking along the waterfront, in a smart café he would never dream of going to, as he explained. Gillian asked him to write something down for her, but it turned out he had nothing to write on. She lent him her black Moleskine, and he scribbled something in there. Then they trooped back to his house to film the interview. Gillian sat beside the camera. When she opened the notebook to review her questions, she saw what he had written: This engenders such a clichéd view of the writer: television is the pits. She didn’t flinch and asked her first question.
    The author seemed offended that he was getting more critical attention, and more readers, for his autobiography than for his ambitious experimental oeuvre.
    Even though this book is just as fictitious, he said.
    And what is reality?
    If it’s reality you want, I suggest you look out the window.
    Then why write?
    He looked at her with a pitying smile. For professional reasons, a colleague of mine used to say. And another said it was lust, greed, and vanity that motivated him. In my own case, it’s presumably …
    The soundman said he had picked up a noise in thebackground, could he possibly repeat the last few sentences, but this the author refused to do.
    That’s the thing with reality, he said, you can’t repeat it to order, you can’t correct it. Perhaps we should read more books.
    Would you do something else if you had your time again? Gillian asked.
    The writer was suddenly angry and said he was tired, and gave monosyllabic replies to her remaining questions. At the end of four hours, Gillian said goodbye. She would manage to knock her material into a four-minute feature, but it would have even less to do with reality than the three hundred and fifty pages of the autobiography (not really) under discussion.
    While in Hamburg, she didn’t check Miss Julie’s e-mail. She no longer felt comfortable with her part in the correspondence.
    When she got home four days later, though, she did. Hubert had written to her twice, once immediately, moments after she had turned off her own computer, and then the next day. In the first he offered a detailed description of how he would kiss her. He had assembled a pretty accurate picture of her, and wrote about her cropped hair and slender waist. In the second e-mail he apologized for the first. He said he had allowed himself to be carried away and was sorry. Gillian didn’t know which of the e-mails to be more upset about. She decided she would meet Hubert. She wrote that she didn’t want him to paint her or kiss her, but she would agree to have a drink with him. As avenue she suggested a café in an outer suburb where she had once met a curator. She looked at the time.
    I’ll be there at seven tonight, she wrote. You’ll have no trouble recognizing me. Yrs, Julie. Hubert’s reply came quickly, and was friendly but reserved.
    Normally Matthias didn’t get home till late. Gillian scribbled a message on a Post-it, she had to go back to the office, she couldn’t say when she’d be back. She spent a long time wondering what to wear, and in the end decided on the most unspectacular things she could think of, a pair of tan cords and a white T-shirt with lace trim. She knotted a gray sweater over her shoulders. She didn’t put on any makeup, even though she didn’t normally set foot outdoors without at least a dab of powder and some mascara.
    Gillian was early. There was no one in the café except two women and a young couple who were preoccupied with themselves. The women looked at her curiously, perhaps they recognized her. She took a table at the back and ordered a mint tea.
    Hubert turned up shortly after six. When he spotted Gillian, he seemed relieved. He walked up to her table and smiled.
    Oh, it’s you, I might have