by Rein Raud
A week later, the banker invited both of them to dine in the club. One of his branch-office accountants had, as it turned out, borrowed a noteworthy sum from the bank without permission in order to invest it into a tempting but extremely risky venture in the hopes of rapidly doubling the money. It goes without saying that the man’s dreams met with disaster, but instead of repenting, he somehow managed to disappear together with the day’s till and a portfolio filled with documents, as a consequence of which the office had to be closed for the time being. Just like the notary, the banker realized immediately what was happening.
“It simply cannot continue on like this, gentlemen,” he said. “We have to do something about it.”
There exist dozens, if not to say hundreds of ways that a young woman can gain the attention of a young man. She can develop a cramp in her leg while swimming so that the young man has the chance to rescue her from death by drowning; her car could break down on the side of the road, so the young man can stop his own vehicle and see whether or not he might be able to help with anything. She can seemingly accidentally bump into the young man in a library while carrying a large stack of old volumes, and naturally the young man will help her gather up the fallen books; and on a snowy mountain slope, a broken ski can stop the young man whooshing past her. And so on.
But what can you do with a young man who doesn’t laze around the beach by a swimming area or whip around country highways; who doesn’t frequent libraries and isn’t interested in competitive skiing? Now that’s a question.
Dessa tended to prepare for things a long time beforehand, especially in the case of important matters. She had to know everything (or at least as much as possible) about the man, around whom her entire world would start to revolve over the coming weeks, because otherwise she wouldn’t be able to decide what she herself was supposed to be like. Blonde or brunette? Or a redhead? Should her perfume be more carnal, almost brutal, or vice versa—a mere waft that brushes those who enter her space as she passes? Should her clothing verge on vulgarity, or rather display an exceptionally well-developed taste? And her eyes? Genuinely-naïve blue eyes ready to believe every vow, or proud green eyes, or enchantingly brown instead? Those who knew her would say on occasion (rarely, when they were asked) that they had already forgotten what she actually looked like, but the truth was even more dreadful—for a long while already, she hadn’t had an appearance of her own at all; each and every one of her looks was a temporary adjustment to the man she was presently thinking of, and when she had finished with him, she allowed the look that had adhered to her to continue out of comfort until she needed a new one. But no matter. Her appearance was—albeit in a particular and unexpected way—the exact picture of what was inside of her.
She hadn’t been to this town before, as the kind of people her customers hated enough to contact her usually lived in more complex places. She hadn’t assessed the situation as being all that difficult when they had called her. Now, after making her observations for three days, she wasn’t so certain of this anymore.
The lawyer’s assistant—the rat-faced young man named Willem—loved order. Or, to be more precise: he was intolerant of disorder, and passionately so. Because although he saw it as his duty to enforce a clear and strict system everywhere that he had the opportunity for doing so (in the lawyer’s record room, for example), we would be wrong to use words like “loved” or “hated” in his regard. For to Willem, they were meaningless. Likewise, by doing so, we would be crossing our names off of the list of those worthy of respect in his eyes. And that error would be inexcusable. We are even being a little risky by employing the word “passionate,” but we’ll luck out this time, all the same.
For about a week, rat-faced Willem had expected his boss to issue the order to execute procedures, the need for which was logical and self-evident based on the events that had transpired. When this order didn’t come, Willem decided to set about it all on his own, although outside of working hours, since an investigation done in such a manner wouldn’t be official, of course. Regardless—what was to happen in due course could not fail to occur, even though his boss (whose mind was preoccupied by the splitting of his tiny personal worries to an impermissible extent) didn’t care about his own obligations sufficiently enough. There were still some untouched by the plight.
So, what did rat-faced Willem do? After work, he dined at Emma’s Pancake House two blocks down from the office, just as he regularly did, but abstained from going to the Philatelists’ Club. Instead, he made his way to the Vital Statistics Bureau and ordered a large number of thick, dust-covered volumes from the records department for viewing—several, because due to his lack of experience in private life, Willem wasn’t very skilled at gauging people’s age by eye. As there was no place for mistakes in his world, he moved only along definite tracks and wasn’t concerned by the fact that it took more time that way. Even so, the first find took him longer than he had counted on. He had just managed to ascertain Laila’s birthdate from a copy of her birth certificate when an official—a young woman with heavy glasses and long, dark hair worn in a ponytail—came to whisper into his ear that the archives would be closing in a few minutes, but he was welcome to come again the next day. Not a single other soul occupied the room apart from the two of them.
And the next day, he did return; although he arrived a little later than the first time, since he had taken his other suit to the cleaners on the way there. He began again from where he had left off before, and, poring over all of the documents carefully, determined over the course of the evening that the individual he was searching for couldn’t be found within the five years preceding or following Laila’s birth. That made him pause for a moment. It wasn’t impossible that Laila’s brother had been born in some other town; on their parents’ summer vacation, for instance. But in spite of that, it should still be noted in the local resident registration, which was kept at the city government. Rat-faced Willem breathed a little more easily because, although he had a dentist appointment scheduled for the next day—which would otherwise have extended the time he’d need by a day, since the dentist’s office was located at least a twenty-minute walk from the office and he definitely wouldn’t have had enough time to get back to the archive before it closed—he would instead be able to reach the city government building, which was in the same direction.
Yet, the trip to the city government was a disappointment. After Laila’s birth, no one else at all was registered at the Villa’s address—not even any new servants had come to replace those who had left four years later.
He first noticed the woman while descending the stairs of the hotel that morning, and it couldn’t have gone any other way, as the woman was there to be noticed. She had long, coal-black hair that spilled down across her shoulders; her eyes were slightly misty, like two poems; her skin was unblemished and creamy; and the dark red of her tight lips appeared to be their natural color. She had draped her light beige-colored suede jacket over the back of the chair, her golden-glinting silk blouse was loose and rested on her breasts in a way that one could just barely sense their curves, but indicated that she obviously shouldn’t be ashamed of them. She was sitting with her legs crossed, her long Mediterranean-patterned skirt spilling loosely over her small, soft boots. She was sitting and waiting.
Brother cast a momentary glance at her, and exited through the front door.
It had turned stiflingly hot overnight, not a single cloud dotted the sky, and even the clock-tower bell echoed back fatigue and exhaustion.
The next time came a couple days later, and the woman was already entirely different in appearance then. Her hair was now a reddish-brown hue, and it bordered her tanned bronze cheeks in arcs that bobbed friskily. Her eyes, on this occasion, radiated a calm ability to understand her fellow man. Her fitted, high-collared blouse was tightly buttoned, but a tiny, almost perfectly round birthmark graced the left side of her lazy, pouting upper lip. She was sitting on a stool at the bar counter and reading
, an espresso cup and an almost-empty glass of water in front of her. Sandals almost the same color as her bronze skin hung at the end of her long, straight legs. From a distance, it wasn’t actually possible to discern that she was reading a particular Italian author’s novella (which nevertheless required leisurely enjoyment) about a French silkworm merchant’s travels to Japan at the end of the nineteenth century; however, that very same book was recognizably on Brother’s nightstand—even though he had finished it long ago, he simply wanted it to be there, because the darkness meant more that way.
And yet, Brother said nothing this time, either.
Toward evening, he went out for a walk in the park just to pass the time, as he occasionally did. Truly, breaths came easier near the pond and the sounds of the park—the squeals of children playing, the chittering of birds, and a gentle rustling in the crowns of the taller trees made by an almost non-existent breeze—only caressed the silence he brought along with him.
The woman was already there. She was standing with her back toward him, her gaze drowned in the drops of water dancing in the air around the fountain. And she was waiting.
“Fine, then—let’s talk,” Brother said.
After a couple dozen words and steps, the woman hooked her arm through his like a lifelong acquaintance and, leaning slightly, would occasionally look up into his eyes like no one had ever looked at him before in all his years traveling, and after a short time, she laced her fingers through his. The woman’s hand trembled lightly, as if she were doing so for the first time ever; her long fingers were strong and chilled like metal, and her knuckles tethered the man’s hand to her own in a way that freeing it would have been painful. He allowed this all to happen, but not looking as if someone were just now showing him the edge of a secret hidden under the large gray tablemat of everyday life; a secret, the existence of which he had indeed long since suspected, but hadn’t allowed himself to believe. They spoke at length, but about nothing of consequence. A sidelong observer could easily have been left with the impression that they were a man and woman who were on the verge of falling in love with each other, or who have already done so without realizing it. Even so, when he proposed at their parting that they have dinner together the following day, he did it simply not to appear impolite.
The notary’s secretary accidentally knocked over an inkwell, which spilled across ten or so signed contracts awaiting archiving, and the layer’s wife was complaining of chronic headaches every evening. The banker was still in a bind with his branch office: customers were closing their accounts there en masse, and in order to resolve the temporary liquidity problem, he had been forced to cash in shares in an investment fund that had been stable for a long period of time; shares, which launched into an unexpected rise two days later. However, all those kinds of things shouldn’t have lasted for very much longer.
“And now?” the lawyer asked.
“We wait,” the banker replied. “He’s in good hands.”
“We’ve employed . . .” the notary inquired.
“An artist,” the banker said.
The banker was right. She truly was an artist, one of the greatest in her field.
Scores of homes wrecked, and in addition to the dozen or so who got off easily with suicide, a further countless number of cynical, burned-out human shells who were unable to believe in anything anymore, to be stimulated by anything, and who recoiled at every warm greeting, but nevertheless remembered her—Dessa, the only patch of sunshine in their dreary lives that followed.
There were no better hands.
When rat-faced Willem had undertaken something, he wouldn’t quit all that easily. Luckily, he had had to sit in the dentist’s waiting room an extremely long time, which provided him an opportunity to consider the situation more thoroughly. In the case that Laila’s parents had adhered to the norms of their union in the prescribed manner and the man was Laila’s brother notwithstanding, the absence of a corresponding entry in the population registry could mean only one thing: for some unknown reason, Brother had not gone to live at the Villa with his parents. Yet based on that, one could deduce in turn that the man might not be Laila’s full brother, and instead a half-brother born outside of wedlock and who was called a “brother” only in the interests of brevity, as people sometimes do. Proceeding from that, though, Willem could conclude that he must again review the birth registry for children born outside of wedlock, but it wouldn’t be possible to do that today anymore due to the late hour.
As always, the dentist had nothing for him other than words of congratulations for his impeccably cared-for teeth, in which not a single cavity could be found.
The man was waiting for him behind the Villa, and had apparently been there for an hour or more already, since his entire attitude emanated impatience, even though he was forcing himself to remain calm with obvious effort. When Brother finally came, quite exhausted and sweaty from the day’s work, he had no choice but to stop. He set his tools down.
“So, it’s you, then,” the man said.
“It’s me,” Brother nodded.
“Tell me, what do you want?” the man asked. “We purchased our house through an honest transaction, from a respectable person. It’s our home now. We like it here.”
“I’ve never doubted that,” Brother said.
“What the hell are you sticking yourself into our lives for, then?!” the man demanded, becoming more and more irritated, but then startled and looked around to make sure no one had noticed them.
“Your wife hired me to fix up your garden,” Brother said, shrugging. “I thought you knew.”
“So, you take me for a fool, do you,” the man said sulkily. “Don’t you go thinking that I don’t know why you’re here.”
“I told you.”
“I know what happened to the notary who drew up our purchase agreement,” the man continued, now almost at a whisper. “And to the lawyer. And to the banker. You don’t have to go trying to pull the wool over my eyes.”
“Why should that have anything to do with me?” Brother asked incredulously. “Misfortunes can befall anyone.”
“It does have to do with you,” the man said, raising his voice, “because this morning, a ship that’s carrying my cargo was arrested at the dock in Liverpool. That’s never happened before, never! I’ve always had everything in order! And if that ship doesn’t arrive here on time, then the fines’ll be so large that they could wipe me out completely—do you understand?”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Brother said, “but perhaps you might excuse me. I have another engagement ahead of me tonight . . .”
“Listen here,” the man exclaimed, grabbing Brother by the shoulder. “When we bought this house, we truly didn’t know. I give you my honest word! My wife probably doesn’t know even now, although I was informed of it later. But what could we do about it anymore? We aren’t the guilty parties! What do you want from us?”
“At the moment, only for you to let go of me,” Brother said, trying to politely remove the man’s grip.
“I swear—I’ve always done business honestly,” the man sighed, releasing him.
“I believe you.”
“And my ship . . .” the man groaned with so much distress that it was no longer a question or a plea.
“That must be some kind of a misunderstanding,” Brother said, slinging his gardening tools over his shoulder. “Good day.”
“I chose the dish according to who you are right now,” Brother said, filling their glasses. “But I selected the wine according to how you were when I saw you in the hotel foyer for the first time.”
The woman startled.
But maybe that’s the key to him, she thought, regaining her composure immediately. Being new every time. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t once called me by the name I told him? Staring at her from inside a rolled lettuce leaf were three snow-white cubes of goat cheese, as well as a massive green olive crowning a mound of diced tomatoes with coriander and basil.
&nb
sp; They were sitting along the ivy-covered back wall. Ell, who was serving the tables at the windows, was a distant relative of Laila’s landlord, and was therefore well aware of her mysterious brother.