Obediently, I turned back to her.
“I accepted his proposal in a flash! Fine, I told him, just let me know when.”
She refilled our glasses, her tongue pressed between her teeth, and what a spell she cast over me now, Mieke Renes and her life story. The tale of a woman who, at forty, had a happiness she never counted on land in her lap, who for almost ten years had felt pretty much at home in that happiness, and who, when that happiness died, returned to the life she had known since girlhood, a life she perhaps thought suited her better.
Her voice had taken on a tone of surprise and of tenderness. She gave me the lowdown on Ton.
“… can’t say I ever remember him being reluctant to do his bit. Off he’d trot to the village or out onto the moor to gather moss for the Christmas manger. I could ask him to do anything. When he set off for school, he made a point of cycling past the kitchen,”—she craned her neck and took such a lively look over my head that I almost turned to see who was passing—“to give me one last wave. Of course, in my heart I always knew it was just his way, something he used to do when his mother was still alive, something he wanted to hold on to.”
She was quiet for a moment and then she said, “Sometimes, when I was standing at the stove, I had to be careful not to step on the toes of that wise and caring phantom who stood right behind me, helping me stir the soup.”
The loud noise came again. The sound of a stick pounding on the floor. I counted.
“Four knocks,” I said.
She nodded.
“Yes. Four. That means he wants me to plump his pillows so he can sit up and wave to Braams. He always comes by on his tractor around five, and turns on his flashing blue light by way of a greeting. My father likes to wave back.”
And she began to speak about the family life in which she had shared as a stepmother. Four years, five at most, until Ton and Lucia moved out and into their student digs. Even so, there were all those Sunday visits to enjoy, the pies, puddings, and pans brimming with food. The winter breaks, with skating, boots under the coat stand, and clotheslines strung across the attic where, when it rained, the smell of teenage laundry would hang in the air. Oh, and the weeks when Ton and Lucia came home to cram for their assignments and exams! My, those two could be grouchy, you bet your life they could, even with each other. But they never fought. Never. Except for that one time, she had never known things between Ton and his younger sister to turn nasty.
Now we were getting somewhere.
“That one time?”
“Yes. When that boy came over to invite Lucia to the polo party at the Technical College.”
“Polo party? What’s that?”
“Oh, some shindig for horsey students.”
She had been doing the ironing in the living room, had watched from behind the ironing board, witnessed the pain and the danger without being able to intervene. Lucia and the boy were sitting opposite each other at the end of the long dining table when Ton, working on an assignment at the other end of the table, without getting up, just sitting there in his chair, sent one dart after another whizzing through the air between them. There was a dartboard on the wall at the end of the table, a good twenty feet from Ton, but close to where the other two were sitting.
Mieke Renes gave me a searching look.
“You know the game?”
“Darts? Yes,” I said.
He had taken his time over every throw. The sharp, winged projectile poised in his hand for what seemed like an age as he rocked his lower arm back and forth, back and forth … Narrowing his eyes for focus, the way darts players do.
All the while, Lucia and the boy had tried to keep on talking. Lucia remained as cool as ever, but the boy turned white as a sheet. A few of the darts shot right past his nose before slamming into the board on the wall. Yet the boy carried on sitting there, hands outstretched on the table. It almost looked like he was begging.
“So—do you want to come?” he asked.
She pulled a face that hinted she was weighing the offer seriously, drawing out her decision. And—wham!— another dart came hurtling between them at eye level and drilled into the bulls-eye at the heart of the board.
“Oh!” I gasped.
“Yes,” Mieke Renes answered.
“And what about the look on Ton’s face?”
“Funny you should ask … To be honest, he looked exactly like his sister. The pair of them seemed to be completely in tune while that horrible scene played out. Only difference was that he, Ton I mean, looked tense. Only logical, I suppose. A blue vein was pulsing just above his temple. His back arched slightly. And that’s when he would throw, straight as an arrow.”
Mieke Renes and I looked at each other. I watched as her face, tight with unexplained fascination, began to soften. In the telling, her impression had changed, too.
“Oh, what a lousy thing for Lucia to go through.”
“I’ll say!” I exclaimed. “Downright mean!”
I stared down at my feet on the floral carpet. Bully. Jerk. Sneak. Asshole. Uptight bitch. Exotic words, insults we never exchanged. Never a slammed door or a car screeching out of the driveway, no floods of silent tears between the sheets. We never had time to get around to these things.
The growl of an engine approaching. I felt the floor begin to vibrate.
“Hey,” it occurred to me to ask. “Did Lucia end up going to that party?”
“Yes, I believe she did.”
Braams’s tractor came thundering past the house. A sudden swirl of blue light gave Mieke Renes the face of a sorceress. A sorceress who burst into tears.
I pace the perimeter of my living room in the dark and it pleases me to do so. The Russian Bundt cake needs at least another hour and a quarter of heat from the oven. I could just as easily turn on the light and devote this time to some chore or other. As they pass, the hours bring none of the calm I know so well from other nights of sleepwalking. I hear a succession of short, sharp cracks, which tells me that the wood of one of the ash trees over by the chicory greenhouse is splitting. All night the trees have been exposed to the east wind, its hostile breath well below freezing. Now, at the brink of dawn, it is more than their trunks can take and cracks begin to sound. Each time this happens, I see Anatole’s glassy eyes shining up at me. I know that he knows where my instinct is leading me.
Given the choice, I would rather dwell on what awaits me in ninety minutes or so, two hours at most: the prospect of easing my body into a heavy, drowsy warmth that—I’ll admit it, regardless of who is in my bed—leaves me feeling satisfied, deeply satisfied, time after time. Tonight, there’s an additional charge of pleasure building inside me, fueled by the pleasure of the afternoon.
Who would have thought I would find myself walking with a total stranger through a frozen forest ever again, without the need to say anything much at all? Convinced we are both seeing the same things? A strip of smoldering red above the trees to the west. Close by, a beech that ripped up a patch of the ice floor when it fell. To see such things and let them pass in silence. No knee-jerk responses to a crash in the fog, the snap of something breaking, splitting, falling, no trotting out things they remind you of, simply because you’ve had a few other notable experiences in your life. Wasn’t this the kind of silence that existed between old friends?
Since the night still has a ways to go and I am beginning to feel the cold, I step into the hallway and take the brown coat from the stand. I put it on. It is heavy and hangs almost to my feet. Men’s coats always smell more strongly of the man than women’s coats do of the woman. I find myself wanting one of his cigarettes. His pack lies abandoned on the table, among our plates and glasses. Wrapped in smoke and warmth, I pass the mirror again and turn up the collar of his coat, gazing into my eyes as my face falls away.
“Let’s head back,” I suggested before we reached the edge of the forest, knowing that the wretched view of the Oostink fertilizer silos was all that lay in wait farther on. And so, we began talking again,
this time about the sea. People who have grown up by the sea often share the same memories.
I enjoyed drawing out his recollections. The movement of his hands as he spoke described the scope and the speed of things. The path began to narrow and I ended up walking a few paces ahead. One ear turned back toward him, I carried on listening. A man hunched in a lopsided coat was relaying my own memories back to me. An effortless exchange.
“And in the winter?” I asked.
“Waves crashing over the boulevard above the beach. Lying in bed, weighing up your options. Planning what to take with you if the water rolled into the street. Up onto the roof first, then onto the raft.”
“Easter?”
“Traffic jams. Sun beating down on car roofs. A mountain of stripped hyacinth buds in the back garden.”
“Summer?”
He was quiet for a moment. Long enough to let me know he was tiring of this game.
And then he said “Once every summer, a little brother or some other kid you were supposed to look after would get lost on the beach.”
“Yes!” I interjected. “And you’d come home exhausted from searching and the little tyke would already be at the table stuffing his face!”
He shook his head. Again I thought, he’s had enough.
“Not always,” he said and began to talk about searching for hours. How the sand makes everything sluggish and strange. The sea, too, turns slower, stranger. Not the surf, he said, but the gentle motion farther out. The striped tents, the flags, the vacation-blue sky, they all seemed to change. To become unrecognizable. You have crossed into the scene of a disaster. And even so, you do not want to leave. The last thing you want is to leave.
When I glanced back to read his expression, he flashed a smile.
“Can you picture it?” he asked.
It was a time to be alone. Being with other people only wore me out. Idle chatter, social niceties, picking out clothes, applying makeup, I let it all slide. It was only in the classroom that I felt at ease. Sunbeams on my desk and hands. The children, daydreaming, the odd one nodding off from time to time, the rest listening intently to my crisp, lively account of the moors and how small blue flames could shoot out of the peaty ground at night.
In May, I decided to clean the house from top to bottom. That was in the second year, a time when I began to wonder whether, after someone’s death, you were entitled to stake a claim to that little piece of territory that, out of nonchalance or sleight of hand, had been kept off limits. After all, I had only been his wife for fourteen months.
I also began to curse my memory. Even with my eyes shut tight it salvaged next to nothing. Nothing of the intimacy I felt sure must have existed, having lived as man and wife for a full fourteen months.
Or …?
I had thrown out his clothes. Consigned the photos and documents to the attic. Locked up the chicory greenhouse. But my thoughts would not be thwarted. At the oddest moments they set to work, with the monstrous diligence of ants transporting a chunk of wasp or a length of straw to their secret lair.
So there I was, in the merry month of May, sliding upturned chairs onto the table. Heaving the bed and the closets to one side. Vacuuming, mopping the floors. I scoured doorposts, wiped down windowpanes with methylated spirits, and sloshed a pail of soapy water over the floor tiles in the hall. Anyone looking on would have sworn I was intent on wiping out my husband’s every last fingerprint, his every footstep.
The opposite was true. Clean a place up and something is sure to surface. As I dragged the kitchen table away from the wall, a stack of cookbooks toppled to the floor, and a handwritten note torn from a diary slipped from between the pages. I picked it up and sat down to read. On June 12, 1971, I had left my husband this note, told him I was sorry but I couldn’t wait till he got back from the auction, my mother was expecting me for dinner and I had to allow three hours for the trip. I reminded him to give the rabbits their medication and let him know I would be back before dark the next day. Beneath this I wrote “I love you” and signed my name with a swirly capital.
There could be no doubt.
I had loved my husband. Told you so. There it was. Signed, dated, written in my own hand. I gave a deep sigh and took my place among the exhibits.
The intimacy in the blending of our lives. Something slow began to well up inside me, to pound against the underside of my thoughts. Something real, something true. Dig in a little longer and I would know what it was.
A dress.
It came as a shock. A flood of green, taffeta, long since out of fashion, and here, now, before my eyes. In the same instant I recalled the stiffness of the buttons, made of green taffeta, too, and tricky to fasten. Then came a sky, heavy with an oncoming storm. And there was the question of whether I still felt like going out …
Peering at the torn page in my hand, I climbed the stairs. Slowly. My free hand on the bannister, pulling me up.
A stream of impressions came all at once. As I observed that the bedroom furniture was still in disarray and that, despite the open window, the air was still laced with the smell of spring cleaning—bleach, ammonia, methylated spirits, surprisingly pleasant—another image slotted in beneath the ceiling beams. Not all that striking an image: the same room, with all the furniture back in place and me by the dresser, studying my face in the mirror. And there behind me was Ton, alive and well, pressing button after button through the little loops on my 1920s taffeta dress.
I examined myself in the mirror. A bundle of nerves. The storm about to break. My lifelong fear of thunder and lightning. The sickening thud of my heart in the back of my throat. And all the while his fingers, dead calm, wrapping me, stroking the taffeta and the skin beneath, knowing exactly how to make me feel my own body.
But I shivered, took hold of his fingers, nibbled and then kissed them.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
I asked him what the time was.
“How come? It’s not even nine. We’ve ages yet.”
I hung around his neck. Whispered in his ear. Couldn’t we just stay at home?
Tenderness, amusement in his eyes. The storm tearing loose at that same moment. He turned my face toward it, and yes, it was beautiful. Windows open wide. But my eyes were drawn to the merest twitch, imperceptible I knew to anyone but me, as his eyebrows creased together.
Before the first clap of thunder, I was under the covers, dress, shoes, and all. And Ton was lying beside me, also fully clothed. What did we care? He pressed my body to his. “You’re overreacting,” he said softly and I laughed because it was true.
My God, the open windows. And all the lights still on. Not to mention the iron. Electricity pulls lightning from the air. From under the bedclothes, I peered out at those flashes of quivering blue. How would it feel to be touched by one, pricked in the back by a finger of ten thousand Fahrenheit? To melt, to char in a loving embrace that never ends. Hands slid the flimsy fabric from my shoulders, my arms, skillfully undoing the buttons they had only just fastened. But the skirt remained in place, it had to, had to be part of this, along with the gossamer-thin slip relished by the pair of searching hands that were already stirring up visions. “Why the kid gloves?” I whispered. He smiled and rasped his unshaven chin hard across my cheek. We belong to each other. We are passionately in love, as if that wasn’t clear enough. The sheets twisted along with our bodies, got in the way, trapping my legs, and we began to edge them down, shoes still on. Our heads bumped. I raised my eyes and looked into a pair of gleaming, slate-gray irises. The full length of him on top of me, tied and bound it seemed, and I knew he was out to imprint the weight of his body on me for good.
The storm beat a hasty retreat. One flash, then another, and I heard it stumble off into the distance like a stricken heifer. In the fever of a pleasure I had never known, I lay beneath my husband, my breath as shallow as I could make it. He grew heavier and I bore his weight proudly. Or tried to.
The telephone rang. A slap in the face. For al
though I was able to dive for the receiver and stop the racket—it was Lucia, and she began nattering away immediately—I could not stop the moment I had just inhabited from wrenching itself from me. From breaking off and floating away in time.
Yawning till the tears came, like I always seem to do when life confounds me, I heard Lucia say she had been invited to stay with friends in Groningen. Did I want to come along?
“Yes,” I said hurriedly, eyes resting on the torn diary page beside the phone.
She asked me again.
“Yes! Yes, I’ll come,” I said. “I’d love to!”
There was a moment’s silence.
“What’s up?” I heard her say. “Are you ill?”
“No. Just very sleepy.”
I realized she was used to coaxing me round. But I had no time to lose. Yes, fine! Now go, please! With any luck I might still be able to plunge back in where I left off.
Instead, I must have fallen into a deep sleep. One that lasted hours, the dreamless kind. I woke up staring into darkness, the lantern outside glinting in one of the linen-closet mirrors. My white housecoat shone blue. The memory of what had overcome me that afternoon was vivid. I knew it had been real and not a dream. There was enough corroborating evidence. I remembered the smell—still hanging in the air—the purple, storm-lit sky that had triggered the whispering, the lovemaking, the tangle of sheets. Above all, I remembered being in love. That, too, remained.
Only one thing confused me. Whatever I had experienced that afternoon, it had been in the company of a stranger. For I had never known a man who knotted his eyebrows with a telltale twitch. I had never gazed into indefinable, slate-gray eyes at such close quarters.
I nodded.
We had to step aside on the forest path to let a couple pass in the opposite direction. The man and the girl looked at us but seemed lost in themselves. They did not return our hellos.
“So you know, too,” I said. “What that circle of silent people at the water’s edge means.”
Sleepless Night Page 6