You Should Have Left

by Daniel Kehlmann

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? In movies a character sometimes realizes that he was only dreaming the bad things, I’ve used the trick before myself, in Lola and Uncle, but the truth is: 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.

The phone, how obvious, she said, as she placed the baby monitor on the table. Whenever you hear about people getting caught, it’s the cell phone, because they couldn’t bring themselves to delete the damn messages. She brushed her hair back and gave me an exhausted look. Of course, she said, you think you would be smarter. You consider yourself clever, and then you develop such a ridiculous attachment to those saved messages that you can’t bring yourself to delete them. Like all the other idiots. You keep the thing with you at all times and never leave it lying around, but you underestimate the tenacity of the jealous husband, who swipes it from your bag. And the way things stand, you can’t even fault him for his jealousy.