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208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
I remember my lover very clearly. I know what he looked like when he entered my apartment, reticent, with the measured steps of a high jumper taking aim for a precise jumping-off spot. I can still sense his smell as if he had just left this room; when I'm lying in the dark, tired and weary, I can feel his arms around me. I have forgotten only his name and why he left me.The woman who narrates this story is a hundred years old, perhaps only ninety, she doesn’t know for sure. She tells about her last loveŗ whom she now calls Franz. Her only daughter was already grown up when she met Franz, and is now living in Australia, or maybe Canada. She says her husband must have vanished shortly after she met Franz. This is because Franz was able to visit her anytime in the apartment in which she has lived forever. One day Franz walked out on her, and she is waiting for him to return ever since. She came from East-Germany, Franz from the West. She says they met by chance in the summer after the Wall fell, at the Natural History Museum where they both worked, beneath the towering skeleton of the Brachiosaurus. He said “A beautiful animal.” And she said “Yes, a beautiful animal.”