How to Fall in Love with a Man Who Lives in a Bush

‘Munich,’ he replies. I tick box one.

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ I ask.

The guy looks surprised at first, then smiles boyishly.

‘Yeah,’ he says. After a few seconds he adds: ‘Sorry.’

I tick box two. In spite of this, I give him my phone number when he asks for it.

When I get home I watch eighties porn on RedTube and give myself an orgasm to help me sleep. But it doesn’t work. I lie on my side and stare at the dark wall. I decide that next weekend I will arrange my books in colour order.

3 (#ufdc6ca50-8079-536d-a306-47315ce5c654)

My first group the next day is an AMS group. When I come into the room they’re already sitting there like three wax dolls. There’s a woman with a double chin and gold rings that cut into her fingers. A young girl with white-blonde hair and dark roots is sitting tearing her cuticles with her teeth. The guy with a moustache and a checked shirt has a spookily absent gaze, but at least he’s ready, pen in hand.

‘Hi!’ I say. ‘My name is Julia and I will be teaching you today.’

None of them responds.

Once I actually had a job I loved. Just after Matthias and I moved to Vienna I got a position as a journalist. The paper was called VIenna frOnT – the capitals were meant to show the paper’s disregard for norms and traditions. We had a tiny office in the fifteenth district and we were fuelled by Almdudler, Leberkäse sandwiches and irony. Aside from covering the domestic news, I also got to write columns about right-wing politicians’ fondness for tying jumpers round their shoulders, and analyses of the German-speaking world’s relationship to yoghurt drinks. VIenna frOnT was supposed to hold a mirror to the world and make it draw breath. We lasted five months before the paper went bust.

‘Hello, what is your name?’ I say to the woman with the sausage fingers.

‘Bettina,’ she replies.

‘My name is …’ I correct her gently.

‘My name is Bettina,’ she says.

Bettina’s cheap, pink, butterfly-print viscose top strains over the bulges of her belly and her eyes have that desperate look that says ‘don’t hate me’. Because this group is Level Two, getting any information out of them is painfully slow. Once, an AMS student started crying when I asked what her last job was, so since then I’ve stopped asking what AMS students used to do for work, which has unfortunately halved the number of subjects we can talk about. But after three long classes I know that Bettina gets out of bed at 4 a.m. so she can have some time to herself before her kids wake up; Steffi has a bichon frise called Toto (after the band, not The Wizard of Oz) and Hans likes gardening. We’ve also practised common questions and greetings. All the way through I’ve tried to smile and be enthusiastic (‘Learning a new language = NEW OPPORTUNITIES!’)to avoid dashing any hope that these lessons will actually have an impact on their job hunt.

During the break, I light up when I see Rebecca in the staffroom. She walks up to me with wide eyes.

‘I think one of my AMS students is drunk,’ she whispers and takes my arm.

‘I have an AMS student who gets up at four every morning just to get some peace,’ I whisper back. ‘Why not just stay asleep and be undisturbed that way?’

‘Four?!’ mouths Rebecca.

I nod.

‘But what can you even do at four in the morning?’ Rebecca says at normal volume.

‘Says she reads magazines and does sudoku,’ I reply, also at normal volume. Being with Rebecca always makes me happy. She’s my Good Witch of the North – in contrast to Leonore who would have got the part of the Wicked Witch of the West if I’d been Dorothy. Rebecca and I met during the Berlitz training course, and I decided she was going to be my friend as soon as I heard she was a violin maker. Someone who makes violins can only be a good, sensible person, like people who help lepers. Sadly, building violins hardly pays at all, which is why Rebecca also became an English teacher. But just think – I know someone who’s a violin maker! One day I also hope to have the following friends: a lesbian, a computer geek and someone from Brooklyn. And Elfriede, of course.

‘How many lessons do you have today?’ I ask.

‘Just three,’ she replies. ‘With the same group. And you?’

‘Ten.’

Rebecca’s eyes immediately narrow.

‘Stop taking on so many lessons!’ she says. ‘You should be spending your time writing books or freelance articles and interviewing people and going undercover and so on.’

‘But I’m undercover here,’ I say defensively. ‘I’m pretending to be an English teacher.’

And with that the bell rings and I have to return for another lesson with Bettina, Steffi and Hans.

With two bags of groceries in my hands I walk slowly up the stairs of the art nouveau-style building in the seventh district where I live. On the second floor I stop and look, as I always do, at the door that leads to the flat on the left. The one that faces onto the street, rather than the back yard like my fourth-floor flat. It normally smells faintly of smoke and coffee outside the door, and a few times I’ve glimpsed a shadow moving behind the frosted-glass windows. By the doorbell there’s a little plaque that says ‘E. Jelinek’ in ornate lettering. It took a couple of months before I realised who it could be. Then I asked the Serbian caretaker if it belonged to the celebrated novelist Elfriede Jelinek.

‘Yes, yes,’ he nodded eagerly. ‘A great lady. But very shy. Doesn’t go out much. Very particular.’

Ever since, I’ve been desperately trying to bump into my famous neighbour, without success. From the street I can see that her windows are dirty even though there are some gaudy plants there. For some reason I just can’t picture Elfriede Jelinek carefully tending her azaleas, however much I try. It’s like my subconscious only wants to see her over-watering cactuses and feeding flies to carnivorous plants.

Sometimes I blame my neighbour for the fact I’ve not yet become an author. It’s Elfriede’s fault (in my rage I always address her by her first name). The house’s literature quota has been used up by her, leaving nothing for me, and if Elfriede didn’t live here then I’d have written at least three novels by now.

In happier times I dream of how we’ll become friends. She’ll come to my door to borrow a cup of vinegar.

‘I’m a writer too!’ I’ll exclaim and Elfriede will raise her eyebrows in surprise that a colleague – and possible future soulmate – is living in the house. Then her face will become serious again.

‘To observe is a male privilege,’ she’ll say.

‘Hmm,’ I’ll agree, nodding slowly.

‘My writing is a polemic against the tyranny of reality.’

‘But have you been to Prater? Sometimes it’s pretty good fun there, Elfie,’ I’ll say, getting a nickname in as quick as possible.

‘Follow my tears and the sea will soon take you in,’ Elfriede will say.

‘Now you’ve lost me, but do come in, Fifi,’ I’ll reply – an alternative nickname, in case she didn’t like the first one.

Then, over many cups of tea, or maybe whisky, we’ll sit at my place and talk about how tough it is being an author.

With a little sigh I shift my grip on the bags and carry on up the stairs. They smell of cleaning fluid and cold stone.

4 (#ufdc6ca50-8079-536d-a306-47315ce5c654)

For the rest of the week I hope the German guy from Passage will ring. But of course he doesn’t. I pretend it doesn’t matter and fill my time with teaching, going to the gym, eating uninspired meals and watching The Simpsons and Grey’s Anatomy dubbed in German. Verdammt noch mal, Meredith, hör auf mich! I take the train to a suburb and adopt a castrated stray cat called Optimus. With Optimus by my side I continue to eat uninspired dinners and watch attractive young doctors in Seattle fighting to save lives while learning all of life’s great lessons.

Sometimes I worry that the TV series I watch are more real to me than my own life. That the love life, family and work problems of Meredith from Grey’s Anatomy are more tangible than my own. Sometimes I even start thinking I am Meredith Grey and wonder why I’m sitting explaining the difference between ‘some’ and ‘any’ rather than standing in an operating theatre, repairing a ruptured mitral valve. Once I looked at Rebecca and got confused for a few seconds over why she wasn’t Cristina Yang. And I still catch myself feeling totally crushed over the deaths of George O’Malley, Lexie Grey and Derek Shepherd. There’s not an earthquake in Turkey or a collapsed factory in Bangladesh that can bring me to tears like the fact that Denny Duquette died without Izzie at his side. He died without Izzie. Died. Without. Izzie.

One evening I was sitting at my computer about to order a set of Grey’s Anatomy scrubs. But then I realised what kind of person I was turning into. I slammed the laptop screen shut and quickly rang Leonore to see if she wanted to go out. Sometimes I still dream of ordering them. Especially the short-sleeved light-blue tunic with two front pockets and a secret pen-compartment.

This evening, Rebecca is celebrating her birthday at O’Malley’s at Schottentor. When I get there the pub’s already full. The walls are dark green and covered with Guinness posters. I find Rebecca in the claustrophobic cellar and sit down beside her husband Jakob. Jakob is also a violin maker, and looks like Jesus. Even Jakob’s brother is a violin maker, and he too looks like he’s stepped out of the Bible.

‘I have to tell you something,’ Rebecca says, leaning across Jakob. ‘I saw Matthias on Kaiserstrasse.’