You Should Have Left

by Daniel Kehlmann

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.

Esther showed me what she found outside. It was a rock that looked like any other rock, and I exclaimed Oh! and Ah! and Wonderful! Then I gave her a kiss, her skin was still cold from the evening air.

Like nine years ago, when we first met on Schmidt’s set. I had never seen such an exciting woman before. Susanna, in case you’re reading this, which I suspect you aren’t, because my work doesn’t particularly interest you, then you should know, it’s true: never in my life! I wanted to touch you and kiss you and know everything about you, wanted to spend my life with you.

Only I don’t see myself. In the room in the reflection there’s no one.

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.

Ella in the car. After the fight she turns off the speakerphone. Then she brakes, pulls over, and turns around. Get away get away get away before get away it’s get away too get away late get away

So why am I so uneasy? Why are my hands trembling so badly that my writing is scrawly, why this pounding of my heart, and why am I still so cold?

When you’re awake, you know that you’re awake. Am I dreaming? is not a question anyone asks seriously. I know I wasn’t dreaming. But I must have been dreaming.

I couldn’t do it. I wanted to keep it to myself and observe her and find out how deep her deception goes. I wanted to watch her lying to me and at the same time think and try to understand. I wanted to compose myself. At first it was going well too. For about three minutes.

In a movie it’s funny when a life falls apart, because the people say clever things while it’s happening, but in reality it’s only dismal and repugnant.

Do you want to deny it? I shouted, and only when she looked at me seriously and calmly and said that she didn’t want to deny it at all did I realize how much I had hoped she would.

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 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.

I put my arms around my wife, and I felt as if someone else were doing it, someone with whom I shared only a name.