Marriage of convenience

 

 

MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

Third Place, Julia Fitzgerald Memorial Award

South Eastern Writers Association

Leigh-on-Sea, UK

 

 

“MARRY ME. WE don’t have to live together.” Maura holds a key large enough to anchor a small boat.

Dieter, the man to whom she just proposed is unlocking his own door across the hall.

The hall light goes out. Economically minded Germans may design apartment lights to stay on long enough to go floor to floor, but not long enough to negotiate a marriage. “Why do you want to marry me?” only it sounds like “Vhy do you vant to marry me”

“Footprints in the snow.”

He’s confused, a normal state when he talks to Maura. During the fall when the loneliness of Regina’s departure broke through his self-imposed discipline forcing him from his studies, he would wander across the hall on any pretext — clarification of a professor’s idea, the need to borrow an eraser. If Maura had been in and her roommate out, they’d talk long into the night. Her mind took twists he had problems following. Footprints and marriage was one of them.

“Explain, bitte.” He has less chance to speak English than she does German. They’d arranged that after she saw him sitting next to her in Political Economics 1900-1945.

“Don’t we live next door to each other?” They’d asked at the same time.

“You are an exchange student,” he’d said. That was October. This is February.”

“Come in. I’ll explain.” Her room had two single beds each with an eiderdown, two giant pillows, a gas stove, a Schrank, small table, two wooden chairs and a cabinet in a space that should have less furniture by half.

He waits while she finds a lighter. A Dinkalacker beer glass stolen from a fest sits on the table. Plucking a taper from it, she lights it, then the ceramic blue gas stove. They do not take off their coats until they can no longer see their breath.

“I was at the Alte Schloss when I saw a women’s footprints in the snow. She had high-heeled boots. Next to them was a child’s. There were three pairs of little steps to every one of her big ones. I imagined him running to keep up with his mother.”

“Vhy a little boy?”

“I just felt it. I pictured him wearing a green coat and beige scarf, his mother rushing him so they could have a hot chocolate.”

Dieter thinks Maura has an overactive imagination, but he likes watching her face. When he sees her talking in the Mensa he can tell her mood by the way her eyes and eyebrows move. Not for the first time, he thinks she’s pretty, although normally he doesn’t like dark-haired, brown-eyes women. Regina was blond and blue-eyed. Maura’s nose is red from the cold, not pretty.

“Then I looked in the big window of Das Zimmer.”

Dieter and Regina had gone there often for coffee before she fell out of love with him.

“Sitting a table was a little boy and his mother drinking hot chocolate. Steam rose from the cups. They blew on them and laughed.”

“Vas it the woman who made the footprints?”

Maura shrugs. “That’s not the point. I wanted some. The waitress brought a Fruchtkuchen, the kind of tart with four fruits.” Her stomach growls.

He takes of his gloves and hat and unbuttons his coat. He wears a sweater his aunt knitted. Maura unwinds her scarf and pulls off her Allie McGraw Love Story hat.

“Did he haf a green coat and tan scarf?”

“Beats me. He wore a nice blue sweater like you’re wearing. Do you know what I was doing there?”

He has no idea how a 700-year old castle used as a museum, market and café can have anything to do with a marriage proposal, footprints, a mother, little boy, hot chocolate and a Fruchtkuchen.

“When the market closes, the vendors throw out stuff. That’s how I eat. On garbage. I’m out of money. Totally. I could no more buy a pastry than sing the lead in Carmen.”

After taking off her boots, she tucks the pillow behind her back and puts her legs under her. He mirrors her actions.

“At the end of the semester, I wrote my folks that I want to spend the rest of the year in Germany. My mother wrote back with the official family position. She hands him the note.

The message is bordered with a violet design. “Violet is my mother’s name.

Maura, Honey,

We understand that you’re having a wonderful time, but we can only pay your tuition. With your brother in his senior year and your sister starting Northeastern next fall it wouldn’t be fair, even if we have the money, which we don’t. We love you and hope you can pay your own way and …

Dieter scans the rest of the letter with the news about the family cat and how Mrs. Dixon across the street fell and broke her hip. “Tuition here is almost nothing.”

“But I need to pay my university if I want the credits transferred. I’ve the wrong kind of student visa where I could work.”

He’d never thought about the problems of foreign students.

“I’ve applied at bars, restaurants, hotels. No one will hire me under the table.”

“Under the table?”

“On the black.”

 

Maura doesn’t tell Dieter how she picked up men, not to sleep with but to eat with. “Buy me a meal,” she’d say to an American businessman going into a four-star hotel. Most did. Some wanted sex. She said only once, to a man three years older than she was and wouldn’t take any money, only dinner.

Two days ago, she’d met John Adams who reminded Maura of her father, pipe-chewing, gray-haired, overweight and a face that broke into smiles regularly. He’d said she reminded him of his middle daughter, as they ate at Königshof.

As Maura finished her hot potato salad, Adams had said. “When I was young, I wanted to be a painter. My father thought I should be an attorney. I wonder what would have happened if I’d followed my dream. He knocked his pipe against the ash tray. Half burned tobacco fell on the tablecloth. “Maybe nothing. I wasn’t very good.”

When Adams left, he gave Maura enough money for a month’s rent. “Try your dreams.” He kissed forehead. As he got into the taxi, he added, “Don’t pick up men.”

Maura thought of another solution, but she wasn’t sure Dieter would go for it. As her sales manager father often said, “You gotta ask for the order.”

 

By now Maura’s small room is too warm. The stove has two settings: off and roasting.

If you marry me, I can get working papers. I’ll be a wife, not a pesky student. AND if you want to the States, you’ll be able to get a green card. We don’t have to change anything. I’ll sign a paper that I’ll pay for our divorce.”

Her words were tumbling over themselves. Having presented her last argument, she sits back on the bed.

Dieter removes his sweater and folds it.

She wonders what he thinks of her crazy idea. He thinks it’s crazy.

She pulls a bruised cabbage, a loaf of bread and a half-chewed sausage from her backpack which she’d fought a chubby dog for. “Want to stay to eat such as it is?”

He controls a shudder. “I’ve another sausage and an apple. Vait. I get them.”

“Bring a plate and fork. And maybe a knife.”

While he’s across the hall, she pulls a hot plate from under the bed. In the cupboard is a cast iron pot. I’m not so broke, I don’t have a pot to pee in, she thinks. Poverty, pots and peeing were her father’s description of his university days.

Dieter comes back carrying a bottle of wine. “A treasure. Let me cook.” He cuts the contaminated meat from the dog-rescued sausage and adds the cabbage.

They eat without talking. When they finish, she puts the plates in a string bag. The sink and toilet are down the hall. In a few minutes she’s back with clean dishes.

He looks up from a book which he’s thumbing through. “I vill marry you.”

“We don’t have to change anything.”

“Vhy pay two rents? I move here. It’s bigger. Besides, I like eating with you.”

They shake hands.

 

The marriage ceremony is at the Rathaus. Dieter buys Maura yellow roses. He wears his suit, his only suit. After the ceremony, he takes ten minutes to move his possessions. Since a classmate wants Dieter’s room, his landlady doesn’t complain.

Both agree to come and go at will. Afterall, it’s a marriage of convenience.

Maura finds a job at an export-import firm. Her salary is five times Dieter’s monthly stipend. She can save enough money to resume studying in the autumn. They celebrate her new wealth at a beer hall with an ompah-pah band. The musicians wear lederhosen.

They fall into a routine. While he studies, she knits or reads. Before going to separate beds she makes two cups of herbal tea. They talk until one or the other says, “We really should sleep.”

They have one fight — about money. Maura finds Dieter patching his spring jacket and says, “I’ve never seen a man sew.”

“Hmph.”

“Let’s get you a new one.”

He bites off the thread. They have no scissors. “I do not haf ze money.”

“I was just paid.”

“That’s yours.”

“I couldn’t earn it without you.”

They go back and forth, raising their voices until the landlady knocks. She’s an older woman. Dieter describes her bust as a shelf.

“Nah, she’s a victim of the mutti syndrome,” Maura says.

“Mutti Syndrome?”

“Haven’t you noticed, many women turn 40, go to bed slim and wake up with thick waists and big busts?”

“Jealous because you’ve haf nozing?”

“I don’t know why you’re fighting but keep your voices down.” The landlady’s hands are on her generous hips. She starts to leave but turns back. “Vhen my husband and I ver first married, ve fought all the time. Sooner or later ve vould kiss and make up. Much nicer.”

After she leaves they fight in whispers. “It’s hard to fight in vhispers,” Dieter says.

They shop at Bruniger’s basement where he picks the cheapest jacket. “I feel like a kept man.”

“How much money have you on you?” She asks.

“Ten marks.”

“Enough to buy me a wurst and brotchen. Kept men don’t buy dinner.”

They find a food cart where they are handed two paper plates with sausage, hard roll and mustard blob. They split a beer.

 

In April Maura accepts a date with a lawyer from the office next to hers. When he picks her up she introduces him to Dieter. “I didn’t know your roommate was a man.”

“I’m not her roommate: I’m her husband.” Dieter smiles at the lawyer’s discomfort.

When the lawyer asks about it, she tells him it is a marriage of convenience.

They go to a nightclub playing more American music than German. Gloria Gaynor sings about leaving a stupid key and Barry Manilow moans about Lola’s downfall.

The lawyer asks her back to his apartment.

She says no.

 

On Sunday, she wakes first. Dieter always sleeps with one foot sticking outside the duvet. His toes are hairy, contrasting with the baby flesh of the rest of his foot. When she looks at him, she thinks of a little boy.

Although she tries to make coffee quietly, the smell and bubbling wake him. She brings him a mug and sits on the edge of the bed. “Let’s go on a picnic.”

“Good idea. I do not haf much studying.”

They pack lunch in her string bag. He cuts up sausage. They find a spot in the garden behind the Neue Schloss.

They sit in wire chairs by the man-made lake. A mother duck and five babies float by. An older woman, another mutti syndrome victim tries to feed them, but a swan emerges from the lake, waddles up to her and nips her on the thigh.

They walk hand-in-hand around the garden. The State Opera, Theatre and Ballet buildings imitate a Roman forum.

Four street musicians play Beattle songs. A fifth, dressed in a clown suit, passes a derby. Still another mutti syndrome victim shakes her head no. The clown reaches into his hat and offers the women some of his money.

“Mates,” the clown says in a loud English accent. “This poor woman has no money. We’ll share ours.”

The crowd twitters.

The woman turns scarlet and gives the bill back with another 10 marks.

“What a nice day,” Maura says from her separate bed. The sheets are cool against her sun-soaked skin. She slips into Dieter’s bed. “Let’s cuddle.”

“I want to do more. Ve are married.”

The next morning they wake stiff.

“Last night didn’t change anything,” Maura says as she pulls on her jeans and goes out to buy their breakfast brotchen.”

“I know, but it vas still nice.”

 

Monday night, Maura goes to dinner with her lawyer. Dieter takes a girl of a movie. They both get home early.

“Did you haf a good time?” He wants to ask if they went to bed together. He hates the idea she would sleep with someone else within the same 24 hours that she slept with him.

Maura is already in bed reading Das Spiegel. “It was OK. We ate Wiener Schnitzel And you? He’s a little boring.”

“We saw a Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson film. Dubbed. Vant to play pick-up sticks?”

He wins.

“Skin of your teeth,” she says and has to explain the expression.

“Saturday night, one of my friends has a party. Vill you go with me?”

“Why not take your girlfriend?”

“I vould rather take you.”

Saturday rains all day. They keep their arms around each other under an umbrella.

“An umbrella snuggle,” she calls it.

“I haf not told anyone we’re married,” he says as he pushes the doorbell.

 

At the party Maura tries to match names with faces. She’s right about 90% of the time.

Gunther, a former roommate, greets Dieter with a hug. “You’re much prettier than I vas. But how can you stand …”

“Don’t believe anyzing he says.”

Gunther pouts. “How long haf you lived together?”

“Since February,” she says.

“So that’s vhen you stopped being such a grouch. He vas a bear all autumn. Don’t take my word. Ask Peter.”

Peter, who overheard comes over. “Your disposition sucked man. Now you’re more like old self.”

Dieter continues to deny the charge. The pain of losing Regina and his grandmother had been hard.

Gunther grabs a chair and stands on it. “Friends,” he says several times. No one pays attention until some bangs spoon against a pot.

“Someone calls speech, speech.”

“This is a survey,” Gunther says. Give me a show of hands. “Hasn’t Dieter been nicer since February?

All but one girl raises their hands. She says, “I don’t know Dieter.”

 

On the way home, they hold hands but say nothing until they have locked their door.

“Maybe we should make this more than a marriage of convenience?” Maura was scared to ask.

“You are right,” he says. “At least for now and …”

“Maybe the next couple of years.”

“Ve’ll see how it goes.”

She unbuttons his shirt.