The drive from Munich to Stuttgart; the pronunciation of Schwbische Alb; the farmland with red and blue and green cabbages. In Stuttgart, the hotel is on the Schillerstrasse—a modern hotel with lots of glass. The pronunciation of Schlossgarten .
The questions from the young people in the audience, after my reading, are all about the social problems in the United States. Because they see my books as critical of American society, they invite me to express my perceived anti-Americanism. (The interviewers extend the same invitation.) And now—given their pending reunification—the Germans also want to know what I think of them . What do Americans, in general, think of Germans? Are we happy about German reunification?
I would rather talk about storytelling, I tell them. They wouldn’t. All I can say is that my lack of interest in what interests them is genuine. They don’t like my answer.
In the new novel, the prostitute should be an older woman—someone not too intimidating to the woman writer. Her bad boyfriend wants a younger, better-looking prostitute than the one the woman writer eventually chooses. The reader should anticipate the boyfriend’s awfulness, but the woman writer doesn’t see it coming. She’s concentrating on her observations of the prostitute—not just on the prostitute’s customer, or least of all on the mechanically familiar act, but on all the surrounding details of the prostitute’s room.
There should be something concerning what the woman writer likes and dislikes about men; possibly she asks the prostitute how she is able to overcome her physical abhorrence of certain types of men. Are there men the prostitute says no to? There must be! Prostitutes can’t be totally indifferent to . . . well, the details of men.
It should happen in Amsterdam. A.) Because prostitutes are so available there. B.) Because I’m going there. C.) Because my Dutch publisher is a nice guy; I can persuade him to see and talk to a prostitute with me.
No, stupid—you should see the prostitute alone.
What I like: Allan’s aggressiveness, most of the time. (I like the limits of his aggressiveness, too.) And his criticism, at least of my writing. I can be myself with him. He tolerates me, he forgives me. (Maybe too much.) I feel safe with him; I would do more, read more, go out more with him. He wouldn’t force himself on me. (He hasn’t forced himself on me.) He would be a good father.
What I don’t like: he interrupts me, but he interrupts everybody. It’s not that his eating habits, I mean his table manners, embarrass me; it’s more that I find the way he eats repellent. There is the fear that I would find him sexually repellent, too. And there’s the matter of the hair on the backs of his hands. . . . Oh, get over it!
[In a postcard to Allan, which was of an 1885 Daimler in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.]
DO YOU NEED A NEW CAR? I’D LIKE TO TAKE A LONG DRIVE WITH YOU.
LOVE,
RUTH
On the flight from Stuttgart to Hamburg, then in a car from Hamburg to Kiel. There are a lot of cows. We are in the state of Schleswig-Holstein—where the cows of that name come from. My driver is a sales rep for my publisher. I always learn something from sales reps. This one explains that my German readers expect me to be more “ political” than I am. The sales rep tells me that my novels are political in the sense that all social commentary is political. The sales rep says: “Your books are political but you aren’t!”
I’m not sure if this is offered as criticism or simply stated as a fact, but I believe it. And the subject comes up in the questions from the audience, after the reading in the Kunsthalle in Kiel—a good crowd.
Instead, I try to talk about storytelling. “I’m like someone who makes furniture,” I tell them, “so let’s talk about a few things that have to do with chairs or tables.” I can see by their faces that they want this to be more complicated, more symbolic than it is. “I am thinking of a new novel,” I explain. “It’s about that point in a woman’s life when she decides she wants to be married— not because there’s a man in her life whom she truly wants to marry, but because she’s sick and tired of bad boyfriends.” The laughter is sporadic and discouraging. I try it in German. There’s more laughter, but I suspect the laughter is because of my German.
“It could be my first book with a first-person narrator,” I tell them. Now I see that they have lost all interest, in English and in German. “Then it would be called My Last Bad Boyfriend .” (The title is terrible in German; it is greeted with more dismay than laughter: Mein letzter schlimmer Freund . It sounds like a novel about an adolescent disease.)
I pause for a drink of water and see the audience slipping away, especially from the seats in the rear of the hall. And those who have stayed are painfully waiting for me to finish. I don’t have the heart to tell them that the woman I’m going to write about is a writer . That would really kill their interest. So much for the craft of storytelling or the concrete concerns of the storyteller! Even I am bored with trying to entertain people on the subject of what it is I really do.
From my hotel room in Kiel, I can see the ferries in the bay. They are en route to and from Sweden and Denmark. Maybe one day I could go there with Allan. Maybe one day I could travel with a husband and a child, and with a nanny for the child.
The woman writer I’m thinking about: does she truly believe that marriage will be the death of her freedom to observe the world? If she were already married, she could have gone with her husband to see and talk to a prostitute! For a woman writer, having a husband could give her more freedom of observation. Maybe the woman I’m writing about doesn’t know that.
I wonder if Allan would object to observing a prostitute with her customer with me. Of course he wouldn’t!
But the person I should really ask to do this with me is my father.
[In a postcard to her father, which was of the prostitutes in their windows on the Herbertstrasse, the red-light district in the St. Pauli quarter of Hamburg.]
THINKING OF YOU, DADDY. I’M SORRY ABOUT WHAT I SAID. IT WAS MEAN. I LOVE YOU!
RUTHIE
The flight from Hamburg to Köln; the drive from Köln to Bonn; the grandeur of the university.
For the first time, someone in the audience asked about my eye. (In my interviews, all the journalists have asked.) This was a young woman; she looked like a student, and her English was almost perfect.
“Who hit you?” she asked.
“My father,” I told her. The audience was suddenly hushed. “With his elbow. We were playing squash.”
“Your father is young enough to play squash with you?” the young woman asked.