Jenny Erpenbeck

Be seeing you, he said. Be seeing you. Didn’t even take her hand. Could she have been so utterly mistaken? But just then he says, behind her: Or shall we spend the evening together after all?

We mustn’t make each other miserable, he says, groping for her sex. She smiles: Isn’t it too late already?

My grandfather used to take me fishing when I was little, she says.

He has a sudden vision of her sitting on a pier, bare legs dangling, holding a fishing rod. The power of a simple sentence like that, he thinks. Makes you see something, whether you want to or not

It was her treat for the summer, but the summer is now a different summer.

Do you suppose a mirror remembers all the people it’s ever reflected?

Maybe, he replies, but you know I — I will remember the picture of you in this mirror as long as I live.

So will I, she replies.

And they go on

What is not written down has not taken place.

He recalls what he wrote a year ago: how he felt like an empty, vandalized house, with the wiring ripped out, the windows nailed shut, the curtains drawn, junk lying around everywhere.

The fact that you lied to me is one thing. Much worse is that you lied to yourself. You must ask yourself why you did that. To someone who is open to such self-deception, I can only advise one thing: keep your hands off art.