“We all expect that. But three men are enough for anyone. Wouldn’t you give some other girl a chance?”

“Richard has always had girls around him,” she followed up.

“But it’s you he wants!”

“Listen,” she said, going right to his ear, “entering a sexual relationship is not the same as negotiating a contract. You either feel it, or you don’t. And I don’t feel that way about Richard. He’s like an — embryo.”

An embryo! But it was all too much — “Oh fucking Eros,” he almost mumbled, swearing, as usual, in English; “Go to the bedroom then, and lie on the bed. Ignore the bedspread please; I didn’t choose it, and I’d chuck it out if they wouldn’t then charge me for it. I’ll be through presently. But…”

“Yes?” she said, paused at the door with her large handbag slung over her shoulder.

“… We’re not going to make love.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she smiled, and moved out through the door.

In his later novella de ronde tafel (1983), Sebastian Beetjes places an assembly of esteemed guests at dinner; Henry James, Simone Weil, Jeanne d’Arc and Johann Cruyff, convened through space and time to converse in polite and referential style about matters of love and books. The idea, though, was better than the execution and Baummüller — removing his glasses to rub his tired brow — thought he noticed a certain dilution in the style. Throughout the late works the good ideas seemed too, well, ideational, the characters too representative of the external — compared at least to the erotic charge supplied by young Molly Dudgeon et al. Naturally Karl had never written a novel although, of course, that had once been his intention. Long ago, he had sold himself going into academia to support his creative life, but the poems, novels, plays, diaries and essays had never shown up.

Maria had briefly illuminated things, her startling body, her Hessian cries. There at least he had experienced a homecoming of sorts.

A photograph on the marble mantelpiece showed the young Karl Baummüller, fresh from his graduation at the University of Köln, just preceding his vow never to live on German soil again. The barely repentant materialism of the late Bundesrepublik had repulsed him out to Ireland. There followed an academic career of gradual but resolute distinction; of caped dinners in the old hall, lectures in concrete auditoria before rows of plastic chairs, and middle-aged dates at the cinema. Now, he drank most nights, or spent them re-reading passages from his favourites (Kleist, Brecht, Effi Briest by Fontane — in that order) and listening to the Cello Concertos on MP3. He had embraced a life of quiet achievement, and no longer felt particularly concerned about anything, seeing his own life now as simply rather better than its own alternatives.

Maria had briefly illuminated things, her startling body, her Hessian cries. There at least he had experienced a homecoming of sorts. He laughed at this, distracted from the novel entirely. For him it was all about sex, he could stand anything if he was having regular sex. To him it was as essential as a passport before embarking on a journey abroad; it was validation that he was still an attractive man. There was nothing, he was proud to feel, embarrassing about his middle-aged frame, his attire, his hair; he had kept it all in shape.

The emergence of young Richard onto the scene had offered some sport as the Elizabethans like to say. Sport; he’d lift up the little prick and throw him against the wall, more for amusement value than anything else. Th — whack! The complaint forms there’d be to fill out for such a deed. And for all of it, Maria’d move on regardless — Doctorate bagged, move on to lecture in the Anglo-German University like the provocative child she had always been at heart. And she’d never have to struggle in either tongue; as for himself, tucked up at the Western edge of Europe, Karl liked to joke that he’d have been bilingual but he didn’t have enough to say. Over the course of his time in Ireland he had developed a joke for most of the standard situations.

Suddenly he was out of sorts, unable to concentrate on the stack of novels on the table or the essays that had to be marked. Suddenly he was not an academic but a bullfighter, teeth bared, the blanket draped across his knees no more than a cape.

That evening, despite his generally calm attitude and like the first waves of a storm shaking the sea, his blood was stirring, and he found himself speeding to the phone after it beeped. No — simply an offer from his phone provider of free minutes. As if he had that much to say! As if anyone did! — How could people talk so much? On the train, on the bus, at the shop in the streets or in the pub — what was there to say? In Germany, people kept good quiet on the public transport; he missed that, along with a few other things; Leberwurst, Fasching, Bleigießen.^[17]

Suddenly he was out of sorts, unable to concentrate on the stack of novels on the table or the essays that had to be marked. Suddenly he was not an academic but a bullfighter, teeth bared, the blanket draped across his knees no more than a cape. He rose and paced the room, mouthing to the people in his life saying, “You had better watch out!” and “Ein Dichter — na und?”

What had brought about this sudden agitation? What had got Karl’s back up? He cooled himself at the window, where the rain and people were coming down the street. He had lived in this town for decades and considered it mean and untidy; disliked the back alleys, the vomiting, the drunken nouveau riche in their mock sportswear. He disliked this twee house, these narrow rooms.