You Should Have Left

by Daniel Kehlmann

That road is steep, with many hairpin bends and no side barriers, and Susanna is a horrendous driver. It was hard for me not to say anything. Well, and then, unfortunately, I did say something, and so we yelled at each other the rest of the way.

I love her, and I don’t want any other life. Why do we fight all the time? Again just now. She stood up reproachfully from the carpet, and I thought: Here we go. And she really said exactly what I had known she was going to say: We just got here, do you really immediately have to, couldn’t you first spend a little time with, etc.

Then she took a step back and laughed as cuttingly as only actors can, when they’re having an off day. It sounded so artificial that I shuddered, and at that very moment we were interrupted, because Esther had broken the arm off her doll and was bawling and demanding glue, and where are we supposed to get glue up here?

Marriage. The secret is that you love each other anyway. I wouldn’t want to be without her—I’d even miss her actor’s laugh. And she wouldn’t want to be without me. If only we didn’t get on each other’s nerves so much.

And so we thought together back to what it had been like when we had first met: everything as always, everything as if for the first time, candlelight and narrow glasses and this and that bar, the movies, the theater, finally your apartment and then my apartment and then yours again; everything as usual, everything as never.

Most people think of themselves as good drivers. Not me. I’m clumsy and absentminded and have slow reflexes. Whenever I drive, even under the best conditions, I have the feeling of letting myself in for something reckless.

This is how it is: You have to be completely unimaginative to sit down without fear in a fuel-filled capsule. One second you’re firmly ensconced in everyday life and thinking about dinner and your tax return, the next you’re wedged in deformed metal while the flames devour you, and all that lies between the one state and the other is a clumsy turn of the steering wheel, half a second of inattention. But I didn’t want to be someone who can’t cope with everyday life. People have simply agreed that driving a car is something harmless.

I sat down, my reflection did the same. I wrote It stopped.

Even though it just happened, it seems to me as if it were a long time ago, and I know that in a moment I’ll no longer be sure whether it really happened. Write it down so that you remember, so that you can never claim it was only your imagination. But even as I’m writing this, I’m thinking that it must have been my imagination.

Meanwhile Esther was telling us about a friend from preschool who is named either Lisi or Ilse or Else and either took a toy away from her or gave her one, at which point the teachers did either nothing at all or just the right thing, or something wrong; little kids are not good storytellers. But Susanna and I exclaimed That’s great! and Incredible! and How about that! and the relief when she stopped talking brought us closer together.

Even beforehand it was clear to me that a hike wouldn’t be a good idea. On the rather long list of things that you shouldn’t do with a four-year-old, hiking is very high.

Which movie? The one with all the Steadicam shots. Oh yeah, I said, Steadicam. It annoyed me that I didn’t know what a Steadicam was. I was a writer, not a cameraman, and I had nothing to do with technology. But it was still embarrassing. So which movie?

On the way back the rain stopped, the fog cleared, and the mountains rose majestically against the horizon. It almost made you want to stay.

I have to call the lawyer and ask whether we actually have separate or joint property; crazy that I don’t know that, but it’s probably still too soon to think about it, I mean, who thinks so quickly about divorce? Though I wonder, on the other hand, how this is supposed to disappear from the world. If I just picture it, her and him, but I’d better not, that’s the most important thing: that I don’t picture it.

I turn back the pages, and there we are in the living room, on the first afternoon, fighting in the old familiar way, and there we are standing at night by the window, as if everything were as always and as if she weren’t thinking about him the whole time, and there we are sitting at breakfast, and I describe her eyes, not actually blue, more turquoise, with a sprinkling of black, and the phone is lying next to her, and David is writing to her and she to him and he to her and she to him and he to her, while I—why does it say Get away there?

Why is the bear named Tumtwimbly? I asked. What’s that about? Because of his hat, she said. I looked at the colorful picture. The bear wasn’t wearing a hat. I decided to let the matter rest. In the last pages Tumtwimbly Bear doesn’t find the treasure, but realizes that there’s something more important than riches: that people are good to each other and live together in peace. But why people? I asked. What does he care about people? He’s a bear.

For the first time in my life, as I sang and jumped and clapped my hands, I seriously asked myself whether I had gone crazy. But how could you know that, how could you figure it out? Wasn’t the very fact that I asked myself the question proof that I hadn’t? I clapped and jumped, and Esther, who in her astonishment had forgotten about watching television, mimicked me. No, I thought, it’s not that simple. The fact that I’m thinking about it proves nothing.

And later they’ll say that these two also disappeared: His wife left him, who knows what was going through his head, and the mountains have a lot of crevices, you start having bad thoughts, and something happens fast.

It’s the place itself. It’s not the house. The house is harmless, it’s simply standing where nothing should stand. I suspect there are more places like this, but the others are probably unreachable, on the sea bottom or in mountain caves in which no one has ever set foot.

The thought makes your head reel—not a fictitious but a real infinity, filled with things and creatures and galaxies and galaxy clusters and clusters of galaxy clusters and so on and so on, without an end in either direction. And now and then spots where the substance gets thin. Words. They don’t capture how it really is.

I know now why they all have faces like that. Why they look the way they look. It’s because of the things they have seen.