We're Flying by Peter Stamm Read Free Book Online

she said in disappointment. She said she would try and sleep a bit now, so that she didn’t look like shit in the morning. She climbed back up the ladder.
    Heidi gathered up her papers, returned them carefully to the folder, and put the folder next to the small backpack with her things. Then she lay down, without undressing. She still felt ashamed. At the time she had done the sketches, she had done them somehow automatically, not even thinking about what she was doing. For the first time, she had had the sense that she wasn’t just copying something, imitating, but making something original. It had been effortless, a wonderful feeling, one line after the next, as if the drawings were simply growing. Organic shapes, was the most she had thought, the organs of some creature or other. Even now she couldn’t see what everybody else seemed to see. Maybe she was just naive.She pictured herself standing in front of the selection committee, the experts looking on, and what they would make of it. She pictured herself standing naked in front of a group of old men, and one of them pointing at her pudenda, and saying that looks like a cunt, and the others cackling.
    The train slowed down, and then picked up speed. It was warm in the compartment. Heidi got a water bottle out of her backpack and took a small swallow. She thought about Renate and the life she was leading. An art teacher in a small town, painting in her free time, and every couple of years or so getting a show of her work put on in some cafe room, or the staircase in an office building. Heidi had attended one of the openings, and even she had seen the full absurdity of the event. A local newspaperman had said a few garbled words about Renate’s art, and a flushed-looking Renate had gone around pulling corks and filling glasses for the few people present, all of them outsiders like herself, and listened to them say how great they thought the pictures were. It was strange that Heidi had never had any doubts about Renate before, that she had never stopped to think whether her teacher’s pictures were any good or not. Nor had she questioned Renate’s judgment either. She thought about the works of the great masters she had looked at in the library. What,compared to them, were her pencil drawings, her childish sketches?
    The train had entered a station, and a cold neon light came in through the cracks in the blinds of the compartment window. Heidi looked at her watch, it was twenty past two. Without stopping to think, she jumped up, grabbed her backpack and folder, and ran down the corridor. The sleeping car attendant was standing in the open doorway, talking to a railwayman. I want to get off, said Heidi. We’re only in Innsbruck, said the conductor. I want to get off, Heidi repeated. The conductor muttered something that didn’t sound pleased, and strolled back to his compartment. He seemed to be doing everything deliberately slowly, thumbing through the envelopes that contained the passports of the travelers. At last he produced Heidi’s passport and ticket, and handed them to her. Outside, the whistle blew. Heidi jumped out of the car and the train pulled away. The railway employee was gone, there was no one in sight.
    Heidi stood on the empty platform for ages. She was tired and confused and didn’t know where to go. On the schedule she saw that a train back to Switzerland was due any minute, but she couldn’t go home just yet. She picked up her things and left the station. She walked through the almost deserted city, which seemed very dark to her andrather frightening, with massive buildings and narrow lanes. There was the occasional light still on in a bar, and voices and laughter were audible, and sometimes music. But Heidi didn’t feel like being with people, she couldn’t have handled the nosy looks, the noise, and the drunken cheer of the night owls. On the banks of the Inn she sat down on a bench. She was cold, and put on her sweater.
    That was the night