She turns her glass on the table, trying to look distracted. She knows Dermot likes her. They each feel devoted to but also wary of the other, a shy trust.
Dermot closes the pill dispenser. He pulls his sweater sleeves down over his wrists – he always wears the same black sweaters, the wool at the wrists is always unravelled and full of holes – and looks at Stella, maybe slightly bemused but also surprised, forthright.
Did that happen to you? He says it as if he would be glad if it had happened to Stella.
No, Stella says, it didn’t happen to me. Maybe what happened to me with Jason was love at first sight, that’s what I had with Jason. But that’s not what I mean. I mean the opposite of that – the same feeling but with something destructive about it, something not good.
Dermot mulls it over.
Then he says, You mean coup de foudre. A Love Thunderstorm, that’s what you mean. The destruction comes from the lightning. From the force, the power of the lightning.
He smiles at that as if it were something quite wonderful. Wait. Wait a moment.
He gets up and goes from the kitchen into the living room, past the chaise longue, not touching Julia, he could straighten her blanket or touch her shoulder, but he doesn’t, and she doesn’t move; remains as this picture in soft colours, a woman sleeping. Stella watches as Dermot opens the drawers of his desk, rummaging around in a box for a while, putting it aside with a sigh, then going from there to the shelf and pulling out books. He blows the dust from their spines, opens them and closes them again, and finally comes back to the kitchen with a postcard. He pushes the pill boxes aside and puts the card down on the table in front of Stella.
A picture, an abstract painting, a figure the way Ava still draws them – a round head with braids, ears that stick out, and saucer-like eyes, from which arms and legs grow like feelers. The expression of the figure is sorrowful; she looks as if she had been bashed to pieces, destroyed and demolished, irreparably; nothing here can be healed. A bolt of yellow lightning flashes through the body. Arrows directed down from above, and in the background another figure, male and shadowy, one body and two heads.
Something like this?
Yes, something like that, Stella says haltingly. But maybe more the other way around. Is the girl with the braids experiencing the coup de foudre, the lightning? Or that shadowy figure in the background. The male figure. She points with her index finger to the two heads, to the head on the right.
You can see it either way, Dermot says. I don’t know. In any case, you can’t defend yourself against being loved.
Mister Pfister’s look at me must have been like this, Stella thinks. And now I’m like the girl in the picture; I’m falling.
Are you all right, Dermot says.
Oh yes, I’m all right, Stella says. I’m all right. I’m up against someone to whom this happened; you understand, this happened to him in connection with me.
She feels she is blushing, it embarrasses her to say this. I have to deal with it. I just have to learn how to deal with it.
Probably not easy, Dermot says. Oh my, this probably isn’t easy.
That’s all he says. And there is nothing more to say, Stella thinks. They sit together in silence and listen to the pounding of the construction workers, pounding on wood, stone and concrete, repeated, like a vague request to be admitted, a notification of some difficult task, and even if it’s just one single word.
Julia turns over on the chaise longue. Stella listens, but Julia doesn’t call her.
I think you always have to try to come to some arrangement, Dermot says. He says it as if he had thought about it for a while already. To find a midpoint between sympathy and indifference. Indifference is very important. I don’t mean coldness, I mean something more like cool-headedness, composure. Maybe you shouldn’t take it to heart? All this will pass, that much I can tell you.
Stella nods. Suddenly she has to think of Jason as clearly as if he had called out to her. As if he were falling from the roof at his construction site and calling to her. She has to think back to her first sight of Jason – serious and angry, on his part as well as on hers. Serious and angry; one of them shrank back from the other, and for the first time she realises that this is how it was.
She would like to ask Dermot whether he remembers his first glimpse of Julia. A glimpse that goes back more than sixty years. But she doesn’t have the nerve. She repeats his last sentence like a question, and she can tell from the expression on Dermot’s face as he turns around, that this isn’t the truth either. Not something that one could know with finality, once and for all. Not something for always.
*
That evening she is sitting at the kitchen table with Ava; they’re eating together. White bread and green tomatoes. Ava tears the bread up methodically and completely, drinks her juice in thirsty swallows; in kindergarten she drew a cat with long whiskers and big eyes. The cat now hangs on the wall above the chest. Stella can see the wild meadow through the window, storm clouds over the wild meadow. It’s not yet late; in spite of that, almost dark. Ava was allowed to light the candle on the table.
She says, The cat looks stupid.
She says, I would always like to sit next to Stevie in the morning circle. Always. I never want to sit anywhere else in the morning circle. Do you know what Stevie wants to be?
No.
A fireman. Ava leans across the table and whispers. He wants to be a fireman or a spy.
Aha, Stella says. Something about Stevie seems odd to her, and Ava senses it; she frowns angrily and changes the subject. I’d like to take a bath. And I don’t know at all what I should wish for my birthday. What should I wish for my birthday? I want to have a garden party. Go to the circus. Do you think the cat looks stupid? I like it when we sit in the dark. Oh, I wish it would rain soon.
Ava turns to the window.
Stella says, I think the cat looks clever. Like a magician. The doorbell rings. Hard, long and decisively.
Ava says, That’s Papa. Is that Papa?
She says it without turning around, and for one unreal moment Stella thinks that Ava knew the bell would ring. That she turned to the window so that Stella couldn’t see her face.
Stella says, No that isn’t Papa. Papa has a key. He never rings the bell.
Ava waits, listening. Then she does turn around to Stella and puts her hands on the table, looking at Stella, subdued; she sits there very quietly.
Why don’t you open the door.
Because we don’t want any visitors. We don’t want any visitors, do we. It’s late, we’re just having supper, you have to go to bed in a little while, you still want to take a bath, we have to pack your little bag because tomorrow we’re going to see Papa; we have no use for visitors now.
But who’s ringing, Ava says. Who’s ringing? She looks so alert, so wise; her eyes are shiny, round and strange.
Somebody or other, Stella says testily. Somebody or other, somebody we don’t know and don’t want to get to know. I don’t ever want you to open the front door without me, not the house door and not the garden gate either; do you hear what I’m telling you? Do you understand me?
But why don’t we want to get to know anybody, Ava says. She simply ignores Stella’s question. Why not? Maybe it is better if you let him in and we can get to know him then.
Ava, Stella says.
She tries to imagine it. Simply to imagine it. Mister Pfister in the kitchen. In this kitchen next to Ava, sitting at the table. It’s of course impossible.
She says, That’s not possible; it’s impossible; you have to accept this even if you don’t understand. We have to wait and see. See how it will go on from here.
But I do understand, Ava says. I understand it exactly. And the cat does look stupid, I drew an ugly cat. I know that, and you know it too.
*
Mister Pfister doesn’t ring again.
*
He rings the bell that night at two a.m., and Stella is instantly awake. She gets up and g
oes from the bedroom to the little room. She is awake because she has been waiting.
The street is dark. The storm has moved on; the street lamps are already out. In spite of that Stella can see Mister Pfister. This time he’s walking in the other direction, home, and she can hear his measured, imperturbable steps in the night-time silence. For a long while still. She thinks she can almost hear Mister Pfister’s garden gate slamming shut behind him. Where’s he coming from at this hour.
Eleven
The week after Stella and Ava return from Jason’s construction site the weather turns hot and summery. Twenty-eight, thirty, thirty-two degrees. Stella’s alarm clock rings at five thirty. She turns it off and stays in bed, lying on her back, awake in her empty-without-Jason bed, feeling the morning coolness like a touch, precisely because it is so brief. At six o’clock in the morning the grass in the garden is damp and cold. A thrush perches in the hedge. The morning sun casts Ava’s sandpit in shade so deep you could grasp it with your hands; at the edge of the meadow the first poppies are beginning to bloom. The sound of cars slowly rolling by the house, people on their way into the still-uncertain day.
*
Ava sleeps under a sheet; in the morning she lies there without the sheet, her arms stretched out in abandon, hair sweaty. The warm air enters the house like a guest. Stella breakfasts in the garden with Ava. She drinks tea, watching Ava engrossed in eating her porridge with berries, swinging her legs, then pressing her feet into the grass. All I need to wear is a dress, Ava says, serious. Just one single dress, nothing else.
At the kindergarten Stevie runs towards Ava, an expression of worried joy on his face; at any rate that’s what it seems like to Stella. He is thin, has a fox fur hat on his head in spite of the heat, and doesn’t give Stella even a glance. She holds Ava tight and says, Till later, Ava, till then. But Ava pulls away, has already turned away.
*
And where were you, Esther says. Where were you the entire weekend. You’re certainly not the brightest but really, the other girls from your awful nursing service are even more stupid; they’re all atrociously stupid.
Stella doesn’t answer Esther when she’s in this frame of mind, doesn’t talk to her at all. She opens the windows and closes them again; lowers the Chinese rice-paper blinds, puts fresh sheets on the bed, and changes the flowers in the vases; she washes strawberries, cuts them up and sugars them.
I won’t eat that, Esther says. I don’t eat anything any more; I don’t eat any of that stuff. Esther is sitting in her wicker chair, a wrinkled queen in sand-coloured underwear; she looks like an old, stubborn child. Her hair stands on end, her face glows. Stella lifts her into the wheelchair; for one moment they stand in a tight embrace in the middle of the room, Esther in Stella’s arms, an invitation to the dance. Stella feels Esther’s breath on her collarbone, feels Esther’s fragility. She pushes Esther into the bathroom, lifts her onto the edge of the bathtub, puts Esther’s feet into the tub and turns on the cold water; she washes Esther; then she sits on the toilet bowl and watches as Esther, eyes closed, lets the water run over the insides of her wrists, her arms, her knees. As if she were at a spring.
All right now, Esther says. Where were you. How was it. It’s easy to see that you have some sort of problem. Tell me about it.
Stella has to laugh at this. She believes that Esther has cheated her way all through life with this faked interest in others whom she doesn’t really want to know anything about, not about Stella and not about anyone else either. She is interested, but not in the details, more in the general, the overall picture. In world politics. The outcome of wars. War, in and of itself.
I was away in the country, Stella says. With my husband and my child. We went swimming. Everything’s OK. I’ll give you five more minutes here; then we have to go back to your room. You’re going to eat the strawberries; I’ll force you to.
Oh, what the hell. Go on, be like that, Esther says dully. Your husband and your child. I also had a husband and several children, and they’re all gone. Up and away. Life is horrible; have you already discovered that?
She pushes Stella’s hands away. Washes her face and neck by herself, still sitting on the edge of the tub, naked, an archetype.
*
During the lunch hour Stella cycles over to Paloma’s office. Paloma has turned the cooling fan on the windowsill to the highest setting; a vigorous, artificial breeze blows through the room. In addition, Paloma is also using a paper fan to fan herself; she’s barefoot, her tanned skin is shiny. She points to the chair in front of her desk; Stella obediently sits down. Paloma looks at Stella quizzically, then she folds up her fan and says, Well Jason isn’t here, as if there were some connection between Stella’s presence and Jason’s absence. This isn’t entirely mistaken. But it isn’t correct either.
No, Jason has left again.
For how long this time, Paloma says, not waiting for an answer. She says, Let’s go outside and put our feet in the fountain. Let’s watch the sparrows.
She locks the office door, and Stella follows her through the stuffy foyer and out to the park. Dazzling light. Paloma is still barefoot and Stella takes off her shoes when they reach the fountain and sits down on the rim next to Paloma; she puts her feet into the water, supporting herself with her hands on the hot stone. No wind; the trees along the avenue stand motionless. Stella thinks she hears the kindergarten children’s voices at the far end of the park. She’s afraid Ava might come by, hand in hand with Stevie, in a column lined up two by two for a walk. She thinks again that everything in her life is too close together. Work, house, kindergarten. She longs for distances, distances to be covered; only Jason, Stella thinks, is always far away, too far away for me to reach him.
The sparrows bathe in the fountain, at a safe distance. Paloma pushes up her dress, submerges her wrists in the water; Stella can see little gold particles glittering in the bends of her elbows. She thinks of Esther on the edge of her bathtub, of Esther’s dry skin, her sly look. Esther would have had something to say about the little gold particles.
I’m going on a trip this year, Paloma says. I’m staying at the summer house for a week; then I’ll close it and go to visit my mother, driving on from there by car simply straight ahead until I arrive somewhere. Wherever that is. That’s my plan.
They both shade their eyes against the sunlight and look down the park path as if something were coming towards them. The foliage is now dense and peacocks are calling from their hiding places. Stella imagines Paloma’s mother, an old woman on a balcony in a development where, fifty years ago, there were many children and where today the clothes lines neatly stretched between wooden posts are empty. Perhaps Paloma’s mother lives like that. Perhaps she lives completely differently.
Where do you sleep when you visit your mother.
I sleep on the sofa, Paloma says. I sleep on the sofa and wake up at night because the television set crackles. The housing of the TV crackles. Do you know that sound? Unpleasant. It’s unpleasant.
She shakes her head, stands up and climbs out of the fountain; her footprints evaporate quickly from the stones.
I have to get back to work. The phone is ringing; I can hear it even out here, probably only imagining it. But the old people go haywire in this heat and die like flies. Like flies. Come inside with me. Stay with me a while until you have to go to Julia.
Maybe Paloma wishes Stella would talk. But Stella doesn’t know what she should say. How she should explain her passivity, her waiting. What is she waiting for.
*
The tarpaulin outside the windows of Julia and Dermot’s house seem to shade it from the heat, and the atmosphere in all the rooms is diffused. Stella washes Julia, dresses her, and takes her to the kitchen. Dermot goes shopping, to the library, for a walk; Stella doesn’t know what he does when he leaves the house, when he frees himself for an hour from the togetherness with Julia. When he comes back, he has also brought strawberries. Julia is sitting on the bench in the kitchen leanin
g back against the wall, her head turned to one side, facing the blue light outside the window. In her lap is a silver spoon; Julia keeps putting her thumb into its bowl, feeling it. Dermot watches her. Then he says, I brought strawberries; naturally she says nothing in reply. Stella washes the strawberries; Dermot hands her a plate and then puts the plate with the strawberries on the table, in the exact centre.
Please sit down for another moment.
Stella sits down next to Julia. She wishes Dermot would ask her something, and he does, pleasantly. He clears his throat. Then he says, Did you get anywhere with your coup de foudre?
No, Stella says. She can’t help smiling, as if she were lying. No, I didn’t. We spent the weekend at the lake at Jason’s construction site. In the house he is just building.
Dermot looks at her expectantly. Stella shrugs. What is there to tell? The house is on the shore, the framing shows where the walls will be; the windows haven’t been set in yet; a house like an idea, a vision of a distant future. The opposite of Dermot and Julia’s house, as well as the opposite of Stella and Jason’s house. Views of the water, of the forest.
She says, It was the first warm weekend this year. We slept overnight in sleeping bags on the roof. Ate doughnuts, drank tea from a thermos; everything very makeshift; Ava liked it. Ava went swimming in the ice-cold lake.
Jays in the tops of the tall pines; warnings of something. Ava and Jason had vanished into the woods. Stella was sitting on an overturned paint pail in the middle of a room as large as a dance hall and thinking that she had lost one temporary arrangement after another in her life. Had thought about it with bitterness. But later Jason had laughed about it. He’d said, Changes will come again soon enough, Stella. Just wait. What is a temporary arrangement? Ava’s question, and Stella had said, Papa and I are talking about two different things. Ava’s hands, cupped together like a bowl, and in the bowl a stag beetle, iridescent and green. When they said goodbye, Stella had cried. Stella, not Ava.
Where Love Begins Page 7