by Will Wiles
‘Yes?’ Oskar said.
‘Oskar, it’s me,’ I said.
‘I know.’
‘Oskar, there are some men here – they look like workmen,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what they want, but they’re asking me to sign something.’
‘They’re early,’ Oskar said. ‘I did not think they would be this quick.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘Who are they?’
‘I called yesterday,’ Oskar answered, ‘but you did not pick up. They are removal men. They are here to estimate how much it will cost for me to move out of the flat.’
I swallowed. It was like gulping down a rusty ballbearing. My lips were dry. Oskar sounded very calm.
‘You’re leaving the flat?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because of me?’
‘Yes.’
There were tiny noises on the line, perhaps the sound of Oskar switching the phone receiver from one hand to another.
‘I got your message,’ he said. I realised that I hadn’t spoken in a while. Wine-blurred memories shuffled around. I remembered leaving the message; I remembered asking the receptionist to be precise. But the details of its contents escaped me.
‘About the floors?’ I asked, partly a guess.
‘Yes,’ Oskar said. ‘I already knew. Michael mentioned it. So did Ada.’
‘Ada?’
‘The cleaning woman. I spoke with her yesterday evening.’ Yesterday evening? How was that possible? Perhaps she wasn’t dead after all. Hope and terror rose in me, a jolt like the final moment of a horror film when the killer is shown to have survived. Then I remembered the time zones.
‘Right, yesterday morning?’ I felt pinned to the spot, surrounded by tripwires.
‘Yes,’ Oskar said with a hint of impatience. ‘I wanted to tell her that the workmen were coming, so she would let them in.’
‘Right,’ I said, my mind spinning. The knife, the blood. ‘She was, uh, quite upset about the floor,’ I added cautiously.
‘Yes,’ Oskar said, his voice plain, hard to read. ‘I don’t suppose it matters now. Since I am going.’ I willed him to elaborate, to say more, to give some sign of what he knew about the floor, the cat, the knife. ‘Are the men still there?’ was all he asked.
They were still there, silently watching me on the phone from across the room, both wearing the same expression of guarded affability, as if I were a potentially dangerous mental patient. I wondered how I looked; not good, surely, after a night on the floor.
‘Yes, they’re here,’ I said.
‘Sign the form. Let them work while we talk. There are things I must tell you.’
I walked over to the workmen, took the clipboard, and signed. The after-effects of last night’s drinking – of the week’s drinking – made my hand tremble, and I made a messy job of it. The unnatural scrawl was hard to recognise as my name, but it would do. The men smiled and started to discuss something between them, like statues coming to life. Removal men – Oskar was moving, because of me. I sat on one of the soft leather chairs in the living room and picked up the phone again.
‘Oskar,’ I began, wanting the initiative in the conversation, ‘why are you moving out? What do you mean, it’s because of me?’
‘Because of you, yes,’ Oskar said. ‘There is a lot of damage to the floors, yes?’
‘Yes, but I’m sure they can be fixed,’ I said, hurriedly. ‘I can pay, if you want a professional...’
‘No, no,’ Oskar said. ‘I will have them sanded, but it’s not important. There was some damage already, I think you saw.’
I decided to play one of my cards. ‘I took up a board,’ I said, ‘to see if it could be reversed, to hide some damage. In the kitchen. I saw that the underside was damaged, too.’ As we talked, I was trying to analyse Oskar’s tone. It was a difficult job – there was a strange, suppressed quality to his voice, as if he was holding back from something. But it wasn’t the anger that I had expected, it was something else.
One the other side of the flat, the workmen were in the study, measuring the piano.
‘So you saw the note, then,’ Oskar said. ‘Laura threw a bottle at me...’ There was an unidentifiable noise on the line. It was not electronic – was Oskar crying?
No. He was chuckling.
‘I am sorry,’ he said, containing himself. ‘It is funny...You see, Laura and I have decided to make another try. We have stopped the divorce. I am moving because I am coming here, to America. We will try again here. I will finish my symphony and live with Laura. There is a great deal of space here.’ His tone was unmistakable now – he was happy. He was excited. It had been some time since I had heard him in this state.
But it was hard to believe. ‘Wow, Oskar, wow,’ I mumbled inanely. ‘What about the flat? Your job? The cats?’ I bit off the s at the end of cats.
‘The flat will be sold. The men will ship me some of my things, the rest can go into storage for now. The Philharmonic will have to find someone else. They will survive, I am quite replaceable.’ Modesty – he was in a rare mood indeed. ‘The cats...’
‘Oskar –’ I broke in. ‘The cats – one of the cats died. I’m sorry.’
Silence. And then: ‘Which one?’
‘I don’t know. I was never really clear which was which. Its tail had a white tip.’
‘Stravinsky,’ Oskar said solemnly. ‘That’s very sad. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.’
‘It was...no trouble,’ I said. Sympathy was not what I expected.
‘How did he die?’
‘Just an accident, I think,’ I said. ‘I left the piano up, and the lid somehow fell on him. I think. I didn’t see what happened. I found him dead.’ Another silence yawned open in the conversation. I couldn’t help myself. ‘It wasn’t my fault. Just an accident.’
Oskar laughed. ‘Of course, of course. Was the piano damaged?’
‘No.’
A contemplative pause. ‘It’s very sad. Poor Stravvy. He was a good cat. How is Shossy?’
‘He was fine the last time I saw him,’ I said carefully, wishing against follow-up questions. ‘I’m very sorry about Stravvy – it was an accident, you know, I found him dead, I couldn’t do anything...’ Stop talking, stop talking, fool.
‘Yes, I know,’ Oskar said. ‘It’s OK, really. I suppose it does simplify things – the cats will go to stay with Michael and now there is just one for him.’
‘What about me?’ I asked. ‘Do you need me to stay any longer?’
‘No, no,’ Oskar said. ‘The building is quite secure, Ada can look after the flat until it is cleared and sold. Michael will come later today to take Shossy. You can leave now if you want. Did Ada come up with the workmen? Can I talk with her?’
I froze. Of course he could not talk with Ada. Ada was not here. Maybe this was the moment to tell the truth. Every time I had lied, or concealed the truth, the misfortune around me had intensified. Candour had worked, though: I had told Oskar about the floors, about the cat, and had emerged unscathed.
‘Oskar...’
A fusillade of sound cut me short, making me jump, a cascading jangle that took a long half-second to process, to understand – ‘Chopsticks’ played loudly and without finesse in the study. One of the workmen was playing the piano with impressive gusto, if not much talent.
‘What, what’s that?’ Oskar said sharply. ‘Is someone playing the piano?’
‘Uh, yeah, one of the men,’ I said.
‘Well, tell them to stop!’ It was still the old Oskar.
‘Hey! Hey! Stop that!’ I shouted in the direction of the study. The impromptu recital terminated and clipboard man poked his head around the study door, a stagey expression of regret on his face.
Oskar tutted, a sound so crisp that for a moment I thought it was the click of the call being ended. ‘Do you see? Whenever there is a stranger in the flat, there is trouble. Maybe the flat is the problem.’
‘Oskar...’ I paused, trying to formulate my question. When I shifte
d in the seat, my shirt clung to my back. I needed a shower. ‘Oskar, if you don’t need someone in the flat, if Michael can take care of the cats, the cat, why did you need me to come here at all?’
A sigh was transmitted across the Atlantic. It would be getting late there, I thought. ‘A little of it is like I told you – I did not feel comfortable leaving the flat unoccupied for such a long time. But you are right, there was another consideration. After I had that final fight with Laura, when she threw that bottle of wine at me, at the floor...Much of that fight was about the flat, and the flat was a big subject in the talks we had before deciding to divorce. I had been very angry with Laura because she had damaged the floors, but she believed that I was being unreasonable. Accidents happen, she said...She felt it was wrong to devote so much effort to keeping the flat perfect. I told her that I did not feel it was too much to ask, and that she was being very careless about my wishes and my property. The disagreement was a barrier between us. Laura said that I had made my flat inhospitable, and it was a sign that I was not ready to share anything with anyone.’
He trailed off. The taller workman had joined me in the living room and was measuring the sofa with a metal tape. It added its hard little noises to the muted sounds of the street, closing at the push of a button with a hiss and a snap. The bell of a tram sounded below us, and I heard its juddering approach.
‘Faced with these problems, we formed a plan, an idea,’ Oskar continued. ‘A test. We knew that I would have to come to California to arrange things...rather than leave the flat empty, I would invite someone to stay. A third party.
‘If this third party damaged the flat – in particular the floors – then Laura was right, no reasonable person could live there and be expected to keep everything perfect. I believed that, with proper instruction, it was a simple matter to live in the flat without damage. Laura said I could leave whatever instructions I wanted. We had to agree on the right person, and you were perfect. She had met you, you see. You were perfect.’
‘A test?’ I didn’t know what else to say.
‘If something happened to the floor, to the flat, then Laura was right – the situation was too fragile, damage is inevitable, it’s not the fault of the culprit, the fault lies with me, with the flat,’ Oskar said. ‘If nothing happened, then I was right – it is possible for anyone to live in the flat and stick to the proper way of doing things and keep everything perfect. I could show her that even you could manage it, and you, my friend, are chaos.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said, although I understood perfectly. ‘I’m not a...rat in a maze. I don’t like to be tested to see if I measure up.’ Anger had risen inside me, but I wasn’t feeling it – it was an abstract, separated thing for me to contemplate. It was as if I felt I should be angry, and here it was, to be deployed if needed.
‘It wasn’t a test with a right or wrong answer, something that you could fail,’ Oskar said. ‘It just had two outcomes, A or B, and we wanted to see which it was.’ And I could see that this was a perfect joint venture between Oskar and Laura – his prissy pedantry combined neatly with her passive-aggressive non-judgemental therapy-speak.
‘Fucking hell,’ I said. I had felt myself coiling up with tension, but now that was passing – on an ocean of stress, the tide was going out. ‘Were you ever really planning to divorce? Was that just a ruse?’
‘No, that was real,’ Oskar said kindly. Earlier I had detected a note of triumph in his voice which had bordered on smugness or mockery – now it was gone. ‘We both thought it would happen, the papers are prepared...but when Michael told me about the stain, we started to talk properly again, and after I spoke with Ada it was clear that Laura had been right. Maybe it will not work, but we will try again.’
‘Wouldn’t you feel used,’ I said, ‘in my situation?’
‘I don’t think I would be in that situation,’ Oskar replied with total assurance. ‘I am grateful to you, anyway.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well, you’re welcome.’ I wanted very much to be enraged with Oskar, to shout and call him names. But I was not certain how I had been injured by him, other than the general insult of his behaviour. And he had absolved me of responsibility for the floors, the cat, everything – he did not seem to care. That, I felt, was fuelling my desire to be angry: I wanted us both to be furious, to scream at each other, to nuke the friendship and be done with it. Some sort of settling-up was needed – but I did not know where I stood or, really, what I thought about any of this.
‘It is a hostile environment,’ I said. ‘Your flat – it’s not relaxing. It made me very uncomfortable, from the beginning. In a way, I hate it.’
‘The flat, or me?’ Oskar asked. ‘I know that I am sometimes not the easiest person to know. This is something I will have to work on.’
‘In LA?’
‘In LA. This is not a bad place, I have decided. There is culture, after all. There is the ocean. It is good to be near the ocean.’ I heard a yawn being stifled on the Pacific coast.
‘Will you come back at all?’ I asked. However relaxed Oskar might sound now, it seemed inconceivable that he would let his flat be emptied by strangers without supervision. I hoped this was merely a new lease of life, not a nervous breakdown.
‘Sure,’ Oskar answered. ‘I’ll come back in a week or two to take care of things. There’s no need for you to wait for that.’
‘So what now?’ I asked.
‘What now?’ I heard Oskar exhale wearily. ‘Now, you can go home if you want.’
I remembered calling the airline, but only now did I feel as if I might actually be going to the airport.
‘There’s a flight this afternoon,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty sure I’ll still be able to get on it.’
‘I can arrange for a taxi if you want,’ Oskar said. ‘I know a number. Is noon good?’
That gave me more than two hours to pack. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘I’ll call them after we finish,’ Oskar said, back to a familiar, businesslike tone. ‘Leave the keys on the table in the kitchen. Give me a call when you get back. You should come out here some time and visit us.’
‘I’d like that,’ I said, finding such a trip hard to imagine.
‘Thanks again for looking after the flat.’
‘No problem,’ I said weakly. ‘OK then. Noon. I’ll give you a call.’
‘See you soon, then,’ Oskar said.
‘See you soon, Oskar,’ I replied, thinking that it was unlikely to be true. A moment of silence passed across continents, the last instant of the life of something, and there was a rattle and click.
I packed my clothes and toiletries on top of unread, unopened books. My passport was still in the inside pocket of my jacket, with the boarding-pass stub from my last flight. It took very little time to pack – I had brought little and picked up few souvenirs. Ticket stubs from the concert and strip club, a tram timetable.
After some thought, I collected up a handful of Oskar’s notes – from the kitchen table, from Novack’s book, from under the bed and under the floor – and slipped them into my bag.
There was food in the fridge – it would rot if I left it, so I ate a large, unusual breakfast and threw the rest away. On top of the discarded food, I put the balled-up half-finished notes I had written to Oskar the previous night. They were obsolete, there was nothing more to say. I had not been able to put down on paper what had happened with the cleaner. With Ada. It was all useless explanations of the state of the floor – but even those seemed empty without talking about everything else that had happened. The cat food was scraped on top of them, and I put a fresh can-load on the dish. Then I pulled the bag out of the bin, knotted it, took it from the flat, and dropped it down the rubbish chute. There was no one in the hall. The silence was patient, understanding.
The workmen completed their measuring and departed, with a near-mute charade of smiles and bows to indicate goodbye. Oskar’s flat had been reduced to a set of dimensions and estimated
weights, jotted by stubby pencil into black-bound notebooks. The place felt larger without them, but also finite, exhausted. With time enough to spare, I slotted the stained floorboards back into their place. The nails needed only the slightest tap-tap-tap with the hammer and they were driven home, back into their old holes. It was satisfying work, constructive and simple, and the result was no worse than it was before I took up the boards.
It was after eleven. I showered, and moved my bag into the hall. Then I roamed the quiet flat, looking at every room, making tiny adjustments – replacing CDs on their shelves, making the bed, cleaning my plate and glass, emptying the dishwasher, picking up the little steel paring knife with a napkin and returning it to its drawer. The courtesy seemed utterly futile, and was certainly more than I wanted to do for Oskar, but the little jobs needed to be done and I felt compelled to do them. In the light of what Oskar had said, returning things to the way that they were on the day that I arrived took on an unpleasant complexion. Everything had been in place for a precise reason. Oskar had built a machine – a device for proving his superiority over other people. He – and maybe only he – could move through this space without touching the sides, while lower forms blundered and thrashed about, leaving our shameful signature. It was like a sieve through which only Oskar’s higher sort of human being could pass.
But for the floors, and the sofa, and the porn, and the dead and missing, the flat was restored to order. I took down one of Oskar’s architecture books and sat in the living room. Pages of new museums flicked past, empty white spaces in expressive boxes scattered across the world. The light outside surged and failed as the high sun was repeatedly interrupted by clouds. Trams passed, their rhythm the same as it was every day, enlivened sometimes by the ringing of the bell.