I get myself some breakfast, make a sandwich, put the coffee on. When I open the cupboard door under the sink where the trash bag is kept, a cloud of tiny flies swirls out and a heavy, sweet stench hits my nostrils. This is the time of year they call the dog days, and with the unusual heat as well, everything goes bad straightaway. Stella mentioned it at dinner last night, the fact that it’s barely possible to harvest anything because it’s ruined almost immediately, they’d been talking about it on the news, weary farmers in Skåne with rotting vegetable crops. I wave my hand in the air to disperse the swarm of flies, then I hold my breath and tie the bag tightly before placing it in the doorway between the living room and the patio so that I won’t forget to throw it out.
I eat my breakfast on the patio, I open Gabriel’s book and begin to read. It’s exciting from the very first page, creepily unpleasant, I think how strange it is that I don’t remember it more clearly. One of the chapters ends with a short sex scene between the principal male character and a younger woman, I read it several times, feeling my cheeks burn.
Gabriel comes out onto the patio after a while, he looks hot, his thick hair is tousled. He shakes his head.
“That will have to do,” he says to me, as if he wants me to agree with him, so I do.
“I’m sure it will.”
“It’s crazy, cleaning in this weather.”
Then he notices what I’m reading, he reaches for the book, regards it with a critical expression.
“It hasn’t aged very well, has it?” he says, looking at me.
“I was just thinking it was better than I remembered.”
“Stella hates it.”
I can tell from the tone of his voice that he isn’t joking, there’s the tiniest hint of bitterness there, and disappointment, a disappointment that has become a habit.
“Of course she doesn’t,” I say anyway, and he nods.
“She does. She hates the main character. I think she hates the story too, she hasn’t said so, but that’s what I think. Sometimes I don’t know …”
He falls silent, looking at me with a searching expression.
“What?”
“Sometimes I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to make her happy,” he says, more quietly.
“She doesn’t always show her appreciation very clearly,” I say, also more quietly, as if I am afraid Stella might hear, although she isn’t even home. “She never has.”
He clears his throat.
“The cover is good anyway,” he says cheerfully, drumming his fingers on the woman on the front.
“Absolutely.”
“Do you know the story of this painting?”
“No.”
“Her name was Elizabeth. She was married to Rossetti,” he says, placing the tip of his forefinger on the drowned woman’s chest. “And she sat for Millais. Or lay, to be more precise … in a bath full of cold water, looking as if she’d drowned, for several weeks. She got sick after that, she got pneumonia and died.”
You can almost see it in her face, I think as I gaze at the cover, it looks gruesome. Her mouth is open, and her eyes, open but motionless, her face looks paralyzed as if it has stiffened in a moment of panic, as if she screamed out loud at the moment she realized she was actually in the process of dying. A penetrating scream, I think, a scream that would frighten the birds in the nearby bushes, making them take off in terror in a surge of beating wings, making the slow worms wriggle beneath stones and ferns and the rabbits hide in their burrows.
“Rossetti went mad with grief,” says Gabriel. “He decided never to write poetry again. Perhaps he thought he wouldn’t be able to. He simply gave up. And then he buried everything he had ever written along with Elizabeth, placed it inside her coffin …”
He smiles briefly.
“And then he changed his mind … and dug up her grave one night.”
“What?”
Gabriel nods, looking very pleased with himself.
“It was several months after the burial, but when they opened her coffin she was still just as beautiful as when she died, her skin just as white and smooth, and her hair … You know that hair can carry on growing after death? She was lying there completely surrounded by hair, it was kind of … everywhere, filling the whole coffin, spilling out when they removed the lid, tumbling over the sides.”
I shake my head.
“That can’t possibly be true,” I say, looking inquiringly at him, but his expression is serious, he holds my gaze.
“Yes, it is. It’s true.”
“It’s just a story,” I mutter.
Gabriel says nothing, he looks at the plastic bag in the doorway.
“The trash smelled so disgusting,” I say quietly. “Something’s gone rotten in there.”
It takes an entire morning to read the rest of Gabriel’s manuscript. He has printed it out now, a thick bundle with text on both sides. The ending is missing, he still isn’t happy enough with it to show me. Perhaps he’s far too self-critical, I think, because the rest of the manuscript is good, I just can’t understand why he’s so dissatisfied with it. The story is set in a small town in the winter, the sense of desolation and the cold are so well captured that I almost feel frozen in spite of the fact that it’s 80 degrees outside.
He is cutting the grass in front of the greenhouse when I go out into the garden. It is cooler today, but it still seems like hard work. He smiles when he catches sight of me, but with a little hesitation in his smile, a hint of anxiety. I suddenly realize that perhaps my opinion actually does matter to him. I had thought that he had let me read the manuscript as a favor to me, so that I would have something to do—the way you treat a student intern, finding a job they can’t possibly mess up, but when I see the tense expression on his face I realize that he will take notice of what I say.
He switches off the lawn mower.
“So,” he says with a smile that looks strained, “what’s the verdict?”
“It’s really good,” I say. “I can’t understand what you’re worried about.”
He smiles, raises his eyebrows as if he’s wondering if I’m really telling the truth, I nod.
“Really good,” I say again.
Suddenly he no longer seems to be listening. Instead I can see that his eyes are fixed on my fingers, my nails. I am wearing a darker polish now, a deep cerise, like the darkest of the trembling cosmos flowers in the garden, their petals look almost like nails. Stella’s nails are short and unpainted, she can’t have long nails, they break when she’s working, they split and tear, dirt and soil get stuck underneath them, it’s not practical, it’s impossible. I meet his gaze, his eyes are always dark but now they look almost black, just as they did in the car. He takes a step toward me, pulls me decisively toward him, and kisses me. I think to myself that I knew he was going to do it. I knew it when I chose the color, I knew he would like it, it’s verging on the vulgar, I was thinking of him while I was painting my nails, like a magic spell. Perhaps I have known even longer, ever since that first evening when he was standing in the kitchen, when he met my eyes and held them fast.
His kiss is equally hard this time, almost violent. When I push my hands under his T-shirt his breathing becomes louder, I gently run my nails down his back and his breathing turns into a muffled groan, it arouses me, I press myself against him. We are leaning against the end of the greenhouse, he takes hold of one hand and locks it in a tight grip against the glass wall above my head, kissing me at the same time. I am also breathing loudly now. He holds on to my wrist as he draws me into the greenhouse, placing me firmly against the potting bench with my back toward him. Then he is behind me, quickly pulling up my dress, pushing my panties to one side. I was ready for this and yet I wasn’t, his hands clasping my hips and then one hand between my thighs, he is breathing heavily, pushing himself against me, thrusting inside me as far as he can.
It’s Saturday, Stella isn’t working. Instead she is sorting out the plants in the greenhouse. There are palms g
rowing in pots, a lemon tree and another angel’s trumpet, much bigger than the one on the balcony, several feet high, a proper little tree in a big clay pot. I stand beneath it looking up at the heavy bell-shaped flowers, the sunlight filtering through the leaves and making them appear greenish-yellow as if they were filled with chlorophyll, glimpses of the sky between the leaves like flickering blue jigsaw puzzle pieces. I reach out and touch one of the bells. It is so big that it looks artificial, something about it seems almost menacing, the opening is like a mouth. I gently stroke it with my fingertips, it is as fine as a butterfly’s wing but still feels strong, like parchment.
“That’s poisonous,” Stella says.
She is sowing seeds in a small propagator, meticulously making holes with a stick and carefully dropping a seed into each one.
“The flower?” I say.
“The whole plant. Every part of it is poisonous.”
I quickly withdraw my hand.
There is a white wrought-iron chair next to the potting bench, I sit down on it, the image of me leaning over the bench shimmers before my eyes, Gabriel behind me, the grip of his hands on my hips, I think about the way he was breathing, the way he felt inside me.
“We ought to do something,” Stella says suddenly.
The sound of her voice makes me jump.
“What?”
“Do something. Anything. Go somewhere, maybe.”
“Yes, sure. Where?”
“Into town? To the sea? I don’t know. Go and visit something, maybe. The palace?”
She looks at me with a challenging expression. I have to decide.
“Okay, let’s go and visit the palace,” I say.
As usual it’s impossible to tell what she thinks of my choice, her face is blank, but at least she seems full of energy as she brushes off the soil and heads across the lawn.
“Marina wants to visit the palace,” she says to Gabriel when we meet him on the patio, as if it was my idea. “You don’t need the car this afternoon, do you?”
It’s more of a statement than a question. He doesn’t need the car, he’s going to work. He takes a cup of coffee and disappears up the stairs.
Stella is a good driver under normal circumstances, but today she seems distracted. I notice that she forgets her turn signal at an intersection, and when she parks she is so close to the car next to her at first that I hold my breath and wait for the bang, nervously fingering my seat belt. But it’s fine, she seems completely unmoved when she gets out of the car.
“I haven’t been here for such a long time,” she says, twirling the keys around her forefinger.
“How long?”
She thinks it over.
“I haven’t been here since just after I moved in with Gabriel. We came one of the first weekends. It was fall then, it was so beautiful, all the different colors of the trees along the avenues. I thought it was so lovely, I remember thinking we should come here often. But we haven’t been here once since then.”
I nod.
“You’ll have to come and stay with us again in the fall, then we’ll come here so that you can see. You can have coffee and cake by the open fire. And you can pick chestnuts.”
I smile, she looks at me and smiles back. We used to pick chestnuts when we were little, bucketfuls of them. I remember very clearly the feeling of breaking open the prickly green shell, how it opened up along the seams in a way that seemed too good to be natural. And the inside, spongy and white around the dark chestnut. It always felt cold in your hand at first, it was nice to squeeze in your palm, smooth and shiny, and there was that smell of fall, sweet and earthy, like something beginning to decay. Stella seems to have thought exactly the same.
“I was always so disappointed when they grew dull after a while,” she says.
“Me too.”
“One year I decided to save a whole bag of chestnuts, I put them in a shoe box under my bed. When I got them out they were all dull and shriveled.”
“I did that too. I tried for several years in a row.”
“Yes.”
“I think I wondered whether you could varnish them to keep them shiny.”
“Me too.”
We laugh. The gravel path crunches beneath our feet, we’re wearing almost identical shoes today, espadrilles, just different colors.
The palace dates from the beginning of the eighteenth century, it is white with two wings. An author used to live here, Stella says, but she’s forgotten who it was. I tell her it doesn’t matter. We sit down on a bench, there is a park behind the palace. You can see water a short distance away and you can tell from the air that it’s the sea, the open sea rather than a lake, you can smell it, and you can hear it, there are gulls screaming far away, forming a backdrop of noise.
Stella clears her throat.
“I’m pregnant,” she says.
She is looking at me steadily. I have to lower my eyes, I can’t hold her gaze, the sound of the gulls seems so close now.
“What did you say?”
“I’m pregnant.”
The smell of salt is coming off the sea and something else as well, something musty, almost nauseating, perhaps it’s seaweed that has been washed ashore and is drying in the sun, glued to a rock.
“Congratulations,” I hear myself say. “That’s fantastic.”
It sounds as hollow as I feel, but Stella doesn’t appear to notice.
“You mustn’t tell Gabriel. It’s still very early and … well, I haven’t told him yet.”
“I promise.”
I give her a hug, she throws her arms around me.
“We’ve been trying for such a long time. Ever since I moved here, virtually. He thought there was something wrong, but it’s just taken a while, it’s perfectly normal,” she says, her face half buried in my hair.
“I didn’t know …” I say. “I didn’t know you were trying.”
“I’d like to wait a little while, I’ve got so much going on at work right now. But Gabriel really wants a baby. He …”
She lowers her eyes.
“What?”
“He’s almost become obsessed by it. He’s not feeling too good at the moment, all this business with his book … There seems to be no end to it and he’s never satisfied with it. And … he’s getting older, of course.”
I nod.
“I suppose it’s only natural,” she goes on. “But … I’ve had two miscarriages.”
“What?”
“Very early on, I mean it’s not uncommon … but he got so angry.”
“He got angry with you?”
“Not with me, maybe. But angry. Furious, almost.”
“Stella …” I begin without any idea of how I’m going to finish the sentence, I want to say something kind, that it’s not her fault, even though I know that she knows that and it sounds childish, but it’s the only thing I can come up with.
“It’s not your fault.”
Suddenly she has tears in her eyes.
“But what if it is?” she says quietly. “What if there’s something wrong with me, and it will never work out? There’s nothing wrong with Gabriel anyway, because I do get pregnant … it just doesn’t seem to want to stay inside me, somehow.”
She is crying now.
“Stella …” I say again, pulling her close, she weeps against my shoulder and I pat her hair, I feel awkward, I ought to say something wise and comforting but I don’t know what. It feels as if the situation is upside down: the fact that I am consoling her when she has always taken care of herself, and then I think it isn’t like that at all, because she has never consoled me, I have never wept on her shoulder. She shows that she cares by making demands on me instead, I think, she believes it’s as easy for everyone else as it is for her, you just make a decision and get things done: science options in school, part-time work in a market garden, disciplined academic studies with no dropped points or missed assessments, boyfriend with a permanent job and a place of his own. This business with Gabriel is the fi
rst illogical thing she has done, the first thing that doesn’t seem to have been part of a plan that was as straight as an arrow. And at the same time she entered into this illogical relationship with the same purposefulness she applies to everything else, convinced that it will work: a relationship with a considerably older man, the new job, the move to Skåne, the garden she has made exactly as she wants it. She has been talking about renovating the house too, doing up the kitchen and the bathroom, redoing the tiling, replacing the floors. Gabriel has opted out of the discussion, he’s too comfortable, I should think it probably annoys him.
I stroke Stella’s hair and she stops crying after a little while, she seems almost ashamed at having behaved with such a lack of control, and in public too. She glances around to check if anyone is looking at us, digs a handkerchief out of her purse and blows her nose, tidies her hair.
“Do I look terrible?”
“No, of course not.”
She gives a wan smile.
“I really want to wait before I talk to Gabriel about this. So don’t say anything to him. About any of it.”
“No, I promise,” I say again.
Peter rings in the evening, his voice loud and clear over the telephone even though he’s so far away, in Barcelona for the time being, they’re going to carry on along the coast, perhaps go down to Gibraltar. He sounds happy but slightly awkward, I can hear voices in the background, some of them female, the sound of high heels on a tiled floor, a woman laughing, he says he’s in a restaurant.
“Are you having a good time?” I ask.
“Absolutely. You’d like Barcelona.”
“I’m sure I would.”
I don’t know what to say to him. The realization that it has only been a few weeks since we last saw each other but he has almost disappeared from my mind already is liberating. I don’t even miss him when I hear his voice, I think, I don’t care who that laugh belongs to.
“So how are things with you?” he says in that new, polite tone of voice.
“Fine. I’m not doing much, really. Reading and eating, mostly.”
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