Whispering Shadows by Jan-Philipp Sendker Read Free Book Online Page A

he said was nothing more to her than another opportunity to prove her intelligence and her sense of humor. Christine was different. She took in what he said and it moved her, he saw it in her eyes, and she was fine with his silences. It did him good but it felt strange too.
    Paul thought about how much silence there had been in his family and how oppressive, unhappy, and suffocating he had found it. It had never been a communal silence, more a brooding over things unsaid. He talked about the six-day voyage from Hamburg to New York, when this family had been even quieter than it usually was. “We spent most of our time on deck. We stood by the rail, looked at the sea, and imagined a new beginning. My father dreamed, I think, of a flourishing business that would make us forget about the debts and the bankruptcy in Germany that had forced us to move. My mother must have dreamed of a marriage without fighting, and I dreamed of a school I could go to without the pit of my stomach aching with dread, and of having a friend.”
    He stopped talking and waited to see if she would say something, but she was wise enough to stay silent.
    â€œAfter a week,” he continued, “I knew that I would remain a stranger in this new world. The place I came from was not just Munich, it was also, in the New York of the 1960s, a black mark that I would never be free of, no matter how I tried. Here, I was the German, the Nazi, the little Hitler, and hardly any of the boys on the street or in the school playground cared that my surname was Leibovitz, that my father was a Jew and had fought against the evilGermans. My accent gave me away as soon as I opened my mouth. That’s why I only ever spoke after being asked to do so several times, and even then only very reluctantly and hesitantly.”
    He looked at Christine as if to make sure that she wasn’t laughing at him, to make sure that she understood what he was saying. She nodded, but instead of continuing, Paul stood up and began walking up and down the terrace, saying nothing.
    No, she had not done anything wrong. No, it was not that she should have interrupted him or said anything, expressed her understanding or sympathy in some way. Why had he suddenly fallen silent, then? He himself did not know.
    At the ferry, when they said good-bye, she asked him for his telephone number, but he ignored her request. When she came to the house again the following weekend, he lay on his futon and did not move.
    He knew that he was hurting her, but he did not have the strength for explanations. He had burned himself out the previous Sunday, and had suffered from it the whole week. She called his name a few more times, knocked on the door, and waited a few minutes, which seemed endless, until she finally went. The next morning, he found her business card, which she had posted through the slot in the door. He rang her ten days later.
    And so the last six months had passed. Pleasurable Sundays, filled with harmony, were followed by days of silence, difficult weeks in which he could only bear to hear her voice on the telephone, in which he asked her on Saturdays not to come but spent Sundays walking up and down on the pier impatiently, full of longing, full of trepidation that she might have come against his wishes. He could only talk to her about Justin in the sketchiest way, and he could hardly bear any physical contact. Their only attempt to sleep with each other had ended after a few minutes. No part of him had moved; he had lain next to her rigidly like a plank of wood. Over and over again, he told himself that he had to end this relationship; the reason he did not do so was Christine’s patiencewith his moods, the considerateness with which she reacted. She did not accuse him of anything. She did not ask him for anything. Why not?
    â€œBecause I can feel that you’re giving me what you can right now,” she had replied.
    â€œAnd that’s enough for you?”
    â€œI