Breathless

by Anne Sward

  I read everything I could lay my hands on. Books made time stand still, while the world was expanding. Everything is beautiful from a distance, like the river delta seen from above, free from the stench of rotting sediment and silt. Made clear and enticing like illustrated maps of inaccessible places no man can live on.

  I read about the Chinese method of describing the passage of time, with what logical beauty it elapsed in their eyes. Instead of four clumsily measured seasons they talked about the slight cold, great cold, beginning of spring, rainwater, waking of insects, pure brightness, grain rain, beginning of summer, grain fills, grain in ear. Then the summer solstice that led to the slight heat, great heat, beginning of autumn, limit of heat, white dew. And then the autumnal equinox followed by cold dew, the first frosty night when the migrant birds leave Peking and the chrysanthemums are at their most beautiful. And then the descent of frost, beginning of winter, slight snow, great snow, until light’s turning point is reached again.

  September arrived with its long shadows, migrant birds, autumn moon. Virgo’s month, my month, virgin, sapphire. We had never been so close together before as we would be when I turned fifteen. When I was a child he was a teenager, and when I was a teenager he was an adult. Soon for the first time we would both be on the same side of the crucial line. It would no longer be a case of exploitation of a child, Lukas said as we went down for what was to be the last dip in the lake that year—if something happened. “Happened?” Between us, he said.

  There was something in the air, I had felt it for a long time, perhaps just a faint tension, a hint of unrest and change when one season crosses over into the next. Lukas had commented on my fifteenth birthday many times, that it was a dividing line, but between what? I had already been a teenager for two years.

  “But at fifteen, Lo, no one’s really a child any longer.” The imaginary threshold between the possible and the impossible, as if the borderline itself would make something possible that had not been possible before. He seemed to be imagining this. He had built up a sense of anticipation that made me also believe that in a purely physical way I would feel I had passed a certain point.

  It was as if a sun had been scorching him from the inside the whole summer, plaguing him, parched and surly. To live is to wait. At least for Lukas, waiting for the snake to show its real face. It was the year of the snake the year I turned fifteen, which according to the Chinese calendar in Mama’s bookcase meant duplicity and betrayal: sign no contracts, don’t change the bedclothes, take care with fire, don’t participate in legal proceedings, don’t sell your soul to the devil, avoid open water and washing your hair, eat no peaches, only pay debts if absolutely necessary, avoid distress and family gatherings, inauspicious time to make new friendships, refrain from disruptive disputes and long journeys.

  As the day approached it appeared that Lukas had forgotten all about it. No special plans and no questions about how I wanted to celebrate, even though I was always full of ideas.

  “You know what day it is tomorrow, don’t you?” I couldn’t stop myself saying in the end.

  “The Japanese national day, or no, wait a minute . . . maybe it’s the world day for protection of the ozone layer—goodness knows how you’re supposed to celebrate that.”

  “I know you know . . . you’re going to give me a surprise.”

  “Hardly. I’ve got an extra shift at work to do.” He shrugged. We’d grown too big for having fun. Couldn’t play games for evermore.

  He had begun to work the night shift so that he had the house to himself while his father was at work. Lukas clocked off, rode home and slept for a few hours, and got up when Gábriel went off for his afternoon shift, the same time as I came home from school. The house was then ours until late in the evening, unless we went down to the pearl fisher’s place. I did my homework at Lukas’s, if I did it at all, while he sat and rocked on a chair, waiting. No matter how speedily I raced through it, he thought it took too long. That I went to school too often, read too much—not useful at my age, my brain wasn’t fully developed. It was to be hoped that his brain wasn’t either, I said, and how helpful was it to work every night in the chemical fumes of the factory?

  I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, only that factories didn’t figure in my plans, and that being the case, school couldn’t be given up altogether.

  “What do you mean, not in the factories? You’re not going to move?” Lukas looked utterly nonplussed. As if that thought had never crossed his mind.

  I wait behind the gas station as he asked me to do when he phoned the evening before. After the night shift he comes past in the car I didn’t know he’d bought, a blue Ford Taunus, far from new but not particularly rusty either. He can’t hide his pride when he swings the car in and opens the passenger door and invites me to climb in with just a nod. Gábriel has neither a car nor a driver’s license: this is Lukas’s own thing, and he has worked a long time to be able to afford the driving lessons, keeping it a secret the whole time.

  I have packed some essentials in an old military backpack, not sure what to expect. Left a note for Mama on the kitchen table: Celebrating the day with Lukas. Don’t worry. Regret the last sentence, but it’s too late now.

  It is oppressive and tense in the car. Lukas has an air of determination rather than expectation. So clean-shaven, as though the hair on his face hasn’t started to grow yet. A white nylon shirt in honor of the day. I recognize it, it is Gábriel’s. My neck is itching with sweat, but Lukas himself looks completely cool, or rather cold. Coldness as another way of saying I’m on fire? The gift lies unopened on the dashboard, a minimal package with a curly ribbon that has loosened in the heat. He has forgotten to say happy birthday. It can only be a piece of jewelry, and to receive a piece of jewelry from Lukas seems quite remarkable. I am happy as long as he doesn’t give it to me, just leaves it there.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “Where have you always wanted to go?”

  “The Atlantic?”

  He must know that.

  “Don’t spoil it all now!” he answers, irritated. I should have guessed . . . He asked me to pack for one night, not for a week.

  “Tivoli?” I say hurriedly. Now he doesn’t reply, just speeds up along the highway, looking purposeful.

  —

  As soon as I climb out of the car I hear music from Tivoli in the distance, shrieks of panic and euphoria, the music of a barrel organ, speeded up. How long has he been planning this? Saving up to take the car over on the ferry and down the coast road to Copenhagen, paying for the entrance, the restaurant, and then the hotel. Neither of us has been so far away before, especially not him. Courage and money, where did he get them? He brings bill after bill out of his jeans pocket until I dare not point at anything I like, frightened of ruining him.

  The only thing in the city we see is Tivoli, but that in itself is almost too much. I love it. Lukas resigns himself to it. Soon has had as much as he can stomach and is content to stand below and watch. The throng of people and level of noise seem to paralyze him.

  I ride alone in and out of the demon’s mouth, spinning backward in a terrifying whirligig, a whirlwind at a manic pace. The centrifugal force, the speed of the funfair, the cotton-candy kick: I feel as though I am an electrified giant baby with no control over up and down. It doesn’t matter, no one knows me here. I let go and let my skirt fly, my laughter, my hair, faster, higher, more, climbing, hanging, shrieking. Then to be sucked backward out of myself, catapulted away from Lukas, to open my eyes and see him disappear.

  I must have been born for this, to travel at speed and be flung out into a bigger place. Spin around among the deadly sins, ava-rice-arro-gance-lust-ful-ness. How am I ever going to be able to go back down to earth . . . be satisfied with firm ground under my feet again?

  At long last I have to be. The lights of the amusement park are turned off and it is empti
ed, and we are tossed out into the world beyond, which I have forgotten exists.

  Lukas looks resolute as we find our way to the hotel after midnight, until eventually we’re sitting on the double bed after what seemed like an eternity of checking-in procedures and suspicious looks from the staff in the lobby.

  “Like, what did they think?” I ask and drop, exhausted, full-length onto the bed. Lukas is silent for some time. Then:

  “Shall we dance?”

  —

  He finds music on the all-night radio, produces two beers from the little cocktail cabinet and plastic glasses that he fills to the brim. Normally he drinks from the bottle, but this is not a normal occasion; he seems to have thought of everything. The beer looks as though it is made for children, with elephants on the label. I am cross-eyed with tiredness, and he must be even more exhausted because he didn’t have time to sleep after his night shift. But he looks more tense than tired as he sweeps me around in the dance. I feel the music in his hips, feel him connecting with the music in a physical way that I don’t. Seems to absorb it through his body while I listen to it at most. He is good at dancing, but nevertheless it is hard to stop myself . . . I am ready to burst out laughing because he looks so serious. Particularly when the music changes tempo and expression and becomes softer. Soon I lose control, the giggle grows into a fit of laughter. Lukas doesn’t laugh, continues to look very serious, and I try to stop but only manage to half suppress it. He holds me harder. The music is slow, suggestive and sensual. It feels wrong, somehow doesn’t suit us. I can’t relax.

  I’ve had the best birthday of my life, but now I just want to sleep. The beer and tiredness and music and ferry that is still swaying under my feet and the spinning top that I rode on seven times seven times, my ears are ringing, the noise increases every time I take a gulp of beer.

  “Don’t drink any more,” says Lukas. But I’m not drunk. I feel horribly sober.

  —

  I’m woken at daybreak by the pigeons making a noise in the gutter outside the window. With the sensation of Tivoli still in my body, like giddiness between a dream and a nightmare. My lips are swollen, my head heavy. The clock radio next to the hotel pillow is showing ten past six, my back is cold, Lukas is no longer lying behind me. When I lift myself onto my elbows to listen for the toilet I see that his sneakers and his hoodie are gone from beside the door. He is always tired in the mornings, and I can’t for the life of me imagine what could have tempted him out so early. Possibly he hadn’t fallen asleep next to me last night as I thought, but got up again and went out, and . . . what then? He would never leave me alone here.

  The presents are on the bedside table, the perfume Escape and the silver heart with two hands, barbed wire, and a burning flame. I’m still full of all the strange things I stuffed myself with yesterday. My mouth tastes of last night’s cotton candy. My clothes are in an untidy heap on the floor. I have no memory of undressing, but I had been so beside myself with tiredness and still am. Pull the cover over my head, try to sleep while I wait. Let the hours go by.

  At some time in the middle of the day I hear ringing, far away in another world; the ringing comes nearer and nearer as I gradually surface from unconsciousness to half awake and then at last shake off my drowsiness. I grasp for the phone and pull the handset toward me so fast that it hits me on the forehead, a real crack. It is not Lukas but a stranger who asks me in English to come down to reception. A hint of irritation in the voice. I quickly drag on my shorts and T-shirt, throw together my things and grab the giant panda that is leaning against the minibar looking at me, and go down. It was checking-out time almost two hours ago, says the young woman in reception, the same one as yesterday but with a different shade of lipstick, and she looks stony when she sees me come down alone.

  “Where’s your brother? Has he sent you to pay?” Pay? I don’t have a single penny on me. The only thing I have is a headache and a giant panda that’s big enough to carry me. My head is throbbing, I’m screwing up my eyes to ease the pain, rapidly need to come up with a lie to get out of here, but I can’t find one.

  “He’s not here, he’s gone,” I say truthfully.

  “Your brother?”

  “No, the one who booked the room—he’s not my brother.” She looks at me, for so long that I begin to itch all over. There’s something in the way she looks at me that stings. Little friend, she says, and it’s impossible to avoid her eyes.

  “Sorry,” I mumble, for want of anything else to say.

  “No, don’t say sorry. I suspected he wasn’t your brother. He behaved oddly. I should have realized.”

  I have no time to pull my head out of the way before she takes hold of my chin and examines my face under the light.

  “What’s this?” My forehead. No doubt there is an obvious red mark by now. “What a swine,” she exclaims. “What else has he done to you?” Now she catches sight of the split in my lip, the spinning-top split, from the first ride when I wasn’t prepared for the force and the speed. Swine? Done? I have no time to reply, my mind as blank as an icy road. “Has he brought you here from Sweden?” I nod. “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “No, no, no. You don’t need to lie to me. How old?”

  “I was fifteen yesterday.”

  “You don’t need to lie, I said. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m going to help you. Is there someone I can call? Your parents?”

  That would be the end. Mama would report Lukas to the police for kidnapping, if she hasn’t already done so. Then she herself would be charged with retaliation. Something with the ax. I just have to try to get away from here, and then get home under my own steam without a cent.

  —

  Exploitation of a child—he’d said it would no longer be called that if he and I . . . if we. But we didn’t, would I not remember, however out of it I was? The labels on the beer belied its strength and Lukas was horny, I knew he was, but that sort of thing happened, it wasn’t the first time, he just used to hide it better. This is a man’s world, James Brown sang on the all-night radio. How could you stop yourself being aroused by that? I was too, but more . . . kind of mentally. Kind of mentally . . . Lukas bit my ear.

  “Kind of mentally? For God’s sake, Lo . . .” We were dancing, the elephants were dancing, the froth was dancing, the plastic chandelier in the ceiling was spinning. Lukas pretended I wasn’t stepping on his toes. This is a man’s world—but it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing . . . without a woman or a girl . . . I remember that, then I don’t remember much more.

  THE DAY’S WARNING

  After the year of the snake comes the year of the rat, the monkey, the dog. Let life run between your fingers like a red thread. Movement holds the promise of arriving one day, perhaps stillness does too, like here on Mama’s doorstep. Home is where nothing smells strange. Papa’s father could distinguish his trees by their smell. The cypress smelled of insecticide, the acacia of boy’s sweat, the sequoia of cheap Russian cigarettes after the war. The war was just a strand in time for me, however much Grandfather talked about it.

  I peer in between the trees in the arboretum. Mama is not there. I have waited, searched, called out. She should have been standing here in the doorway when I arrived home, when I swung the car in and parked under the white birch—she can usually tell when I’m approaching from miles away. The sun is strong but cold. I tuck my hands under my arms, my eye drawn down to Lukas’s house. It looks just the same as usual, at least from a distance. No, don’t think about Lukas now. Only good thoughts.

  I shut my eyes and let the men in my memory slide along like rosary beads. Hard, smooth, they resemble pearls, without blemish. “Perfect” means complete and by extension dead. Not like Lukas—nothing perfect about him. And neither before nor after Copenhagen could we talk about what happened.

  I must get up before I’m fixed to the spot, my backside numb as two deep-frozen ha
m steaks. I walk around the house, looking at Mama’s miniature world from the outside. Seeing her life like a very big girl looking into a very small doll’s house and wishing there was room for me inside. But there is no longer space for me here. Some things have shrunk and others have grown. All I can do is put my hand inside and touch the little velour sofa, the minute velvet lamp, the tiny radio, the miniature fruit bowl, the fringe on the rug, the hem of her skirt, the doll’s house full of objects and habits that have become her life. Long for the past. It seems so strange that the same word, “longing,” can be used for both wishing yourself away and wishing yourself back home.

  When I met Lukas I was still a small child in Wellington boots that were far too big, a hippie youngster without hippie parents. The feelings of the person I was when I lived here are roused as soon as I return. Not exactly unpleasant, but remarkable that this person remains inside me.

  I don’t like going into the house when Mama’s not at home. It’s her life now, not mine. But in the end I can wait no longer; I go and fetch the key from the garden shed. The sound of the wind reverberates in the long hallways even though all the windows are closed. It was never cold like this when the house was full of people. The rooms smell white. Like Mama’s almond soap, a tinge of scorched milk and the faint scent of new-fallen snow, though it is not the time for snow.