There are seventeen steps leading to the upper floor, I have counted them. Soon I will know this house inside out.
He is sitting at his desk with his back to the door, but spins around on the old office chair as soon as he hears me. He stiffens when he catches sight of me, he looks amazed for a brief moment, then his expression darkens.
“What the hell are you doing?” he says.
I don’t know how to respond. I don’t even know what he means until I see him staring at the cardigan, at the row of gleaming buttons.
“I don’t know, I thought …” I begin. “You did tell me to wear it.”
“I certainly did not.”
I put the tray down on the bureau.
“I’ve made something to eat if you’re hungry,” I say quietly.
“Take the cardigan off.”
His tone is sharp, and when he gets to his feet I recoil, he takes a step toward me.
“I thought you’d like it.”
It is impossible to read anything from his expression, for a second I almost think a smile flits across his face, a kind smile, as if he were doing this for my own good, or at least believed that was the reason. I don’t like not knowing, I don’t like it when something in his eyes is incomprehensible, incalculable. This isn’t normal, I think, but then nothing here is normal, I back away slowly. When he quickly moves toward me I turn around and run, through the bedroom and down the stairs, seventeen steps, my feet clattering down each one, I grab hold of the worn, shiny banister so that I won’t fall on the curve of the staircase, I run through the hallway and into the guest bedroom. I can hear his footsteps on the stairs, he is right behind me. I slam the door shut, place my hand for the first time on the big black wrought iron key in the lock. When I turn it to the right the barrel follows without any problem, sliding into place with a heavy click. I think about Stella’s words that first evening, Nothing works properly around here, perhaps she was talking about more than just the awkward window catch. I try the door, it’s locked. My heart is pounding.
The next moment the handle is pushed down from the outside, without success. He mutters something.
“Marina?” he says in a loud voice. “What are you doing?”
He pushes the handle down again, tugging at it to check that he really can’t get in.
I move backwards, sit down on the bed, on the crocheted bedspread, looking at the door, at the handle, which he pushes down experimentally several more times.
“Marina?”
His voice is gentler now. I unbutton the cardigan, pull it off, and throw it in a heap on the floor. Then I notice that I am crying, I wipe the wetness from beneath my eyes, looking at the door. It’s cold without a cardigan, it’s cold everywhere downstairs apart from the kitchen and living room. I gather up the crocheted bedspread, place it around my shoulders, curl up underneath it. I hear him talking on the other side of the door.
“You scared me,” he says. “You understand that, don’t you? You’re so alike sometimes, you and Stella. Open the door now. I didn’t mean to get angry, I’m sorry.”
He knocks tentatively.
“Marina? Open the door.”
After a while he gives up, I hear his footsteps in the hallway, running water in the kitchen, the clatter of dishes in the sink. I curl up under the bedspread and fall asleep.
It is already dark outside when I wake up, I can see only my reflection in the windowpane. It is still afternoon but the house is silent, it could just as easily be the middle of the night. I turn the key cautiously and open the door of the guest room, just a little crack. The hallway outside is dark and empty, I can see a light from the kitchen, a triangle of light falling on the rag rug on the hall floor. I can hear the faint sound of music, I don’t recognize it.
He is sitting in the living room, reading. There is an LP on the stereo, a fire is burning in the tiled stove. He smiles when he sees me in the doorway, closes his book.
“Darling.”
He’s never called me that before. Nobody has called me that before. You don’t say that unless you mean it, I think, that’s what he said to Stella last summer, the same tone, his voice can sound so soft. I still have the bedspread around my shoulders, I feel slightly dizzy, that’s what happens when you fall asleep in the middle of the day, it feels as if it ought to be morning. I meet his gaze.
“Did you fall asleep?” he says in the same kindly tone of voice. “Come and sit with me for a little while.”
He pats the sofa encouragingly, the way you entice a pet, he is still smiling when I sit down beside him. Then he kisses me, places his hand on the nape of my neck, draws me to him, runs his finger down my cheek.
“You’ve got a pattern on your face,” he says with a smile and I feel at my cheek, the bedspread has left an impression.
He puts his arm around my shoulders and picks up his book again, opens it and begins to read, he seems absorbed in it straightaway.
Were things like this between the two of them, I wonder? Quarrels and reconciliation, over and over again, always because he got angry about something, lost control, frightened her. It’s strange that she didn’t write more about it in her diary, I think, in its pages her life comes across as balanced, almost boring. I remember the entry about getting her hair cut, the laconic Gabriel wouldn’t hear of it. And suddenly I understand: she knew he would read her diary. He must have known it was there in the drawer of the bedside table, it’s unthinkable that he wouldn’t have opened it and read it. Perhaps more for his own sake than out of any concern over how she was feeling, more a kind of self-obsessed curiosity about whether she had written anything about him. And she understood that, of course. That’s why her entries were so short, so impersonal. That’s why she wrote Gabriel wouldn’t hear of it about something that frightened her so much she ran weeping all the way across the field to Anders and Karin. Because she knew that was the way he would want to remember it.
His arm around my shoulders feels heavy now, I shrug it off, get up from the sofa, he looks at me in surprise.
“I’ll go and let Nils in,” I say.
“He’s already in.”
“I’ll go and get something to read.”
His eyes follow me as I leave the room.
“There’s tea if you’d like some,” he shouts when I am already in the kitchen, I don’t answer him.
I can barely hide my relief when he says he’s going to drive into town the following morning. He has hardly pulled onto the little gravel road in front of the house before I am upstairs. I have already gone through all the closets and cupboards in the bedroom, all the piles of newspapers, magazines, and catalogs, all the books on the shelves, there was nothing there. I walk round and round the bedroom not knowing where to search, I sit down on the bed, open the drawer of the bedside table and look at the pale-blue notebook, feel at the base of the drawer. It could be a false bottom, I think, there could be a space underneath it where you can hide things, but there isn’t, it’s just a thin sheet of wood, I knock on it several times to prove it to myself, push the drawer shut.
I kneel down next to the bed, start feeling at the back of the bedside table, under the shelf that used to house books and magazines, there is nothing there. I glance under the bed, it’s an empty space, I feel inside the frame of the bed and there, right up at the top, my fingertips touch something. I immediately recognize the cool, shiny silk, I lie down on the floor and peer under the bed. Attached to the inside of the frame is a similar notebook to the one in the drawer, but this one is dark red, I try to pull it free, get a firm grip on it, it comes away with a tearing sound. There are two wide strips of Velcro on the back, and on the inside of the bed frame.
I realize my hands are shaking as I open the book, it is by no means full, but the pages are covered in Stella’s neat handwriting, short entries, all undated.
Perhaps it IS stupid just like everyone thinks, even if no one actually says it, I don’t know. In some way it feels as if I’ve made my bed and now I
have to lie in it—I don’t really like it when people portray themselves as some kind of martyr, I’ve seen it so many times, the way they seem to derive strength from a role that is in fact purely destructive. I don’t know what you ought to demand or what you ought to settle for, that’s a terrible phrase, “settle for,” but I suppose that’s the way it is for a lot of people, I’ve often had that feeling about couples I’ve met in town, in the stores, at parties; they don’t even seem particularly fond of one another, it’s more as if they’re simply used to one another, I used to think it was terrible but now I don’t know anymore. I have no intention of being a martyr, I have no intention of feeling like one, not even when things seem difficult; he’s just as much of a martyr as I am in those situations, he knows as well as I do that this isn’t perfect, but this is the way it’s turned out, perhaps there is some merit in making the best of the situation.
I am sometimes afraid of him when he’s angry. Sometimes it feels as if I’m provoking it although I don’t do anything specific, it’s as if my presence is all it takes. I’ve given a lot of thought to what kind of father he would be, although I’m sure there wouldn’t be any difference, he would carry on being just the way he is now: someone you try not to annoy, someone you try to keep in a good mood.
We have nothing in common whatsoever. Sometimes he isn’t even particularly pleasant, not even in the company of others, it annoys me and it embarrasses me. And yet no one ever asks what I see in him because he’s so good-looking, and that’s why no one wonders. If he wasn’t, they would ask.
He was too rough with me again yesterday. It’s not just in the bedroom now, he doesn’t seem to be aware of what he’s doing: I wanted to get up from the sofa, he wanted me to stay, it was playful at first, I think. I’ve got a bruise on my arm now, it doesn’t show if I wear long sleeves.
I have thought so many times that I ought to move away from here.
Everything he does, I think he believes it’s for my sake, in some way.
My period is late. I don’t know whether to tell him or not.
I miss M, there has been some kind of barrier between us, I don’t know if that’s normal between sisters, but now I think the relationship between siblings can take many different forms, just like other relationships: I am so much older than her, so it’s hardly surprising that we have never been as close as some other sisters. I enjoyed having her here, I would like us to see each other more often from now on. I said that to her before she left, she seemed pleased.
Stella did indeed say that, on the platform just as I was about to get on the train, the tears spring to my eyes as I remember. That was the last thing we said to each other, promising that we would try to meet up more often in the future.
It didn’t work this time either. I don’t know how I’m going to tell G.
It didn’t work, at first I don’t understand what she means, then I realize it’s exactly as I thought, ever since last summer in fact, even if I have never dared to think it through to its conclusion. Now I recall exactly how she wept in my arms on the park bench in the palace garden last summer, He got so angry. Furious, almost. That is the last entry in the book.
My heart is pounding now. Where shall we go then for pastime, if the worst that can be has been done, we have to be together. His grip on my wrists, I want it, in a different way from her. She says it herself, after all, I think, it’s as if her presence is all it takes to annoy him, more than mine, I can learn what to do, there’s nothing odd about that, you just avoid irritating him, avoid provoking him. The pictures are flickering through my mind now, when I see Stella down at the lake she is not alone, she is not trying to hold her breath underwater and misjudging the situation, she does not slip and bang her head on a rock, he is there with her, he is the one holding her head down, staring at her under the water, watching her hair billowing slowly beneath the surface, her dress opening out like a flower around her body, like a water lily, a lily, wasn’t that what he said. I am sometimes afraid of him when he’s angry, I won’t make him angry.
He suddenly shouts from downstairs that dinner is ready, I hadn’t even noticed he was home. He sounds pleasant, normal, I don’t know what to do with the diary, I am still holding it in my hand as I walk down the stairs, I have to ask him, I have to say something, he has to explain and I have to explain and then we can move on. I understand, I will say, I understand that you got angry with her, and not just angry, you were disappointed, upset, I understand that. Tell me what happened, I will say in my nicest voice, he likes telling me things. He likes the fact that I am a good listener. I put the diary down on the bureau in the hallway, sit down at what has become my place at the dining table, he smiles at me.
We eat in silence. I am afraid of saying things in the wrong way, I repeat sentences in my head, I will say that secrets bind people together. I will say that I understand. He has made a pasta gratin, ham, Feta cheese, a salad, simple everyday food, but delicious, everything he makes is delicious. We drink wine, the kitchen clock on the wall ticks loudly, I have never thought about it before, never noticed how loud it is, it bothers me.
“Is that clock new?” I have to ask even though I know it’s a completely unfeasible idea.
“No.”
“I just didn’t recognize it, that’s all. Or rather, I didn’t recognize the sound.”
I spear a piece of tomato with my fork, chew it for so long that it has completely dissolved in my mouth before I swallow it. If we are going to be together he has to know that I know, I think. That I believe things will be different now, that I am convinced things will be different. That I am better for him than Stella. I have known it all along, I have known it ever since she told me about him for the very first time, he has known it too, I think, perhaps he realized it straightaway, that first evening last summer, there was something about his expression when we first said hello, he held my gaze, held on to my hand.
“I’ve read Stella’s diary,” I say.
He raises his eyebrows, looks at me.
“Oh?”
“It says you hurt her.”
He shakes his head.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Not in the diary you read. She had another one.”
He looks surprised for a moment, but seems to recover himself quickly.
“So what did she write in the other one?” he says.
“Everything. Everything she didn’t write in the one she knew you used to read. How she really felt. The fact that she was afraid of you sometimes when you got angry, and how angry you were about her miscarriages. And that you hurt her.”
“I did nothing to her that she didn’t want me to do. You understand that, surely?”
“It says you did.”
I realize as I am speaking that I am not saying what I had intended to say at all, but he is not reacting as I expected him to react either, he is so defensive.
“I might have been a little careless on the odd occasion, given her the odd bruise by mistake … but never more than that,” he says. “If she wrote anything different, then I’m sure it was just fantasies. She had quite a lot of fantasies like that.”
I shake my head.
“No, obviously you don’t want to believe that.”
He gives me a wry smile.
“But the two of you are more similar than you think. She liked it, just as you like it. Although you do seem to like it more.”
“She was intending to leave you,” I say. “If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, she would have left you.”
“Is that what she wrote?”
“Yes.”
He has gotten up from the table, his glass clinks on the draining board as he puts it down. The clock on the wall is ticking loudly now, I think it sounds irregular, some seconds are far too long, as if the hand is hesitating before marking each second, unsure whether it wants to continue into the future or not.
“She would never have done that. She knew she was mine.”
I am still looking down
at the table, my fingertips tracing the lines of the ornate pattern on the cloth. There must be something wrong with the clock. Gabriel ought to change the battery.
“Do you hear me?”
He sounds a long way off now. Daffodils, narcissi, tiger lilies in the pattern on the cloth, I touch the anthers of the tiger lilies, thinking of the lilies behind the greenhouse, of that first evening when I arrived here in the summer, how clean the air felt, how vast the sky was in all directions, it was utterly still, a perfect summer’s evening. Stella showed me around, the greenhouse, the tiger lilies, the bluebells growing in the remains of the stone wall, she told me not to go too close, she said there were adders among the stones. When we were little we went to visit friends who had rows of tiger lilies in their borders, Stella and I touched the anthers, got rusty brown pollen all over our fingers, it was like pigment, difficult to wash off later, it stained our skin.
I think about his hand around my wrists, the weight of his body on mine, the firmness of his grip. He knows exactly how strong he is. I am suddenly disgusted by myself when I think about how much it aroused me, the feeling of not being able to free myself, of being totally at his mercy.
“What actually happened?” I say, quietly at first, and then I realize this is precisely the question he ought to answer, and I say it again, “What actually happened?” My voice is more confident now, it’s a question I should have asked before, as soon as they found her, or even last summer when I realized things weren’t right between Stella and Gabriel, I can hear Gabriel’s voice now, he tries to talk over the top of me but I shake my head, “You were with her, weren’t you?” I say, “Did she look like a flower afterwards? Under the water?”
He yells at me, telling me to calm down.
“You’re hysterical,” he roars. “You’re just like your sister.”
That shuts me up. I feel the tears spring to my eyes.
“No I’m not,” I whisper, I don’t know if he hears me. I feel feverish now, exhausted and frozen, the room seems to be spinning around, not just the floor but the walls, the cooker, the window overlooking the garden, the door leading into the living room, the cooker again, the door leading to the hallway, the windows, I can just see the apple tree at Anders and Karin’s through the bare fruit trees in the garden, it is misty outside, I can only just see it, the cooker, the door to the hallway again.
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