Jon sees the cocoa in his cup has formed a skin. The girl turns up the sound. They’re still at the table, slouching a bit now, with their heads resting against the backs of their chairs. He studies her. The two small bumps under her sweater. Her mouth hangs open as she stares at the screen. He tells himself it’s late, time he was going, and lowers his feet to the ground so he can stand up. He thinks Vibeke must be finished baking now, she’ll be sitting in the kitchen with a cigarette. He hopes she’s left the bowl for him to lick.
Without taking her eyes off the screen the girl says he can’t go yet. There’s one more he’s got to see. She’s waiting for it and he can’t go before he’s seen it too.
He tells her about something that happened at the fair. Vibeke pictures him in her mind, they’re in the forest together, it’s summer and he’s walking in front of her, breaking off twigs, tasting a berry. He turns around to face her and smiles, silently, as if in a film, and more than just once. There’s a clearing in the trees and a bright light slanting down on him, and he becomes a white fleck in her mind, like when you look straight at the sun.
He laughs, obviously at something he’s just said. She smiles back and before thinking about it she’s risen to her feet and says she needs to use the bathroom. She dizzies from standing up so fast, for a moment the smells inside the trailer seem almost overpowering, the air’s still muggy from his shower, and his strong-smelling deodorant and the fact that she can’t see out of the windows makes it feel like her face is being pressed into her skull.
The walls of the tiny bathroom are covered in postcards from different places. She pulls her pants down and sits down on the toilet. She sees a card from the town they lived in before they moved here. The picture’s been taken at night and she can hardly recognize the place. Someone’s drawn a map and stuck the cards up according to the geography. She follows the land north. There’s a postcard approximately where the village is, an aerial photo. You can see the slack curve of the road running between the little buildings, the council offices, the school that’s now been closed down, a stretch of the highway. The sports ground where the funfair is has been marked with a red cross. She finds her own house. Someone else’s car is parked in the driveway.
“The fair’s been here before,” she says when she comes back out. He’s lit up a cigarette.
“Probably,” he says. “They’ve got various routes they follow, but usually they keep to the same places.”
He pauses.
“First time for me in this place.”
He utters the words abruptly while stubbing his cigarette out. He hasn’t finished smoking it; she sees the way his hand trembles slightly. He stares at her for a moment, unsmiling and rather nervously, she thinks. She wonders if he suffers from anxiety. It’s like he’s asking her something, or asking himself. She tries to convey with her eyes that she wants to be there for him and listen.
He says he’s hungry.
“I’ve got bacon and eggs, if you want some?”
“Yes, that’d be nice,” she says.
He squats down and opens a small fridge underneath the gas cooker, taking out eggs, bread, bacon, and butter. He seems smaller in here, she thinks to herself. Thinner. She thinks of him curled up at one end of the sofa with a book, the stillness, the affection she feels for him when he reaches up to get a frying pan from on top of the cupboard.
THE GIRL’S TURNED the sound up even more. It’s loudest in Jon’s left ear, he feels like his head’s one-sided. He stands at the window in the kitchen and watches as a dog trots up the driveway of the house over the road, sniffing its way up to a bin behind some bushes. Nearly everyone’s got one the same here, a white dog with black or brown markings. They run around loose, Vibeke says it’s a shame for people who are scared of dogs, they hardly get out. It disappears behind the bushes, popping into view again on the other side and going up to the front door. The outside light’s the only one on. The dog enters its beam. The door stays shut. There’s no one in, no one calling or whistling for it. It carries on around the corner until he can’t see it anymore. A few seconds later it comes out on the other side of the house. It stops and lifts its leg before scampering back through the powdery snow to the road.
He turns to the TV again. Now there’s a video on with a lot of people dressed in black plastic rubbing themselves against each other. One of the women has a hole in her jacket so you can see her titties, and safety pins through her nipples. One of the others comes over and starts pulling on them. Jon thinks it must hurt.
He must have felt a draft because he swivels toward the door. A woman and a man are standing there. They’re standing next to each other with their hands at their sides like an old photograph. All of a sudden they start to move, as if they ran on batteries.
The woman asks the girl to turn the sound down. She says hi to Jon and they sit down at the table. He thinks it must be the girl’s parents. They chat to each other about someone he doesn’t know. The mother gets up and fetches two cups, then pours the rest of the cold cocoa into them. She hands one to the man and drinks from the other one herself. Jon thinks they look older than Vibeke. They’re not in any hurry. The man’s hair is messy. He flicks through a sales brochure for some farm equipment while talking to the girl’s mother. His hands are big and tanned even though it’s winter.
“It’s on, look,” the girl says, pointing at the TV. “About time. This is great.”
She turns the sound up again so they can hear. Her mother gets to her feet and goes over to the counter. She takes a loaf of bread out of a plastic bag. She keeps talking to her husband as she cuts some thin slices off using the bread slicer. Jon finds her cheerful.
The smell of cooking mingles with the scent of the deodorant he used a short time ago. The bacon smells good, Vibeke realizes how hungry she is.
“You’ve fried eggs before,” she says, smiling as he cracks the eggs into the pan. He says the fair employs an odd-job man who cooks for them too, so he doesn’t bother that often himself. He gets the plates and the cutlery out while he’s talking, and two glasses, a mat for the frying pan. He leans across to put them on the table. Vibeke places her hand on the table top. Her slender hand with its deep-red nails, pale and delicate, such a contrast to the masculinity of his own.
He picks up on her movement and lowers his face to hers. She sees his eyes are grey with a touch of green, and feels his breath against her right cheek. His lips part as he leans closer, his tongue wet with spit. Perhaps he chews tobacco. Behind his head a light bulb dangles from a cord in the ceiling. It swings backwards and forwards. It seems to go faster.
The girl’s mother heaps the bread onto a plate and puts it in the middle of the table. She opens the fridge and gets out some liver paste, some jam, and two cartons of milk.
“Jon,” he says when she asks him his name. She smiles.
She asks if they’ve been to the fair, she says there were a lot of cars parked outside the community center when they went past. She remembers they saw someone they knew, one of the neighbors, he looked so funny. She does an imitation and laughs so much her belly jiggles up and down. Jon had forgotten all about the fair, now he remembers it was where he was going when he went out. He looks across at the girl, she looks back at him. He thinks she looks annoyed, as if he stopped her from going to the fair. He looks at her mother. She’s turned back to the counter now and is humming a little song.
Jon counts the rolls of fat on her back. Five. The girl’s father’s on the chubby side too. He thinks it must be nice for them to have such a thin daughter. Her parents have dark hair, but the girl’s hair is nearly white. Just like mine, Jon says to himself.
“Wait,” says Vibeke.
“What for?” he says.
“The eggs. They’ll burn.”
“Forget the eggs,” he mumbles, a laugh almost, and bears down on her. She twists away, her right hand finding the handle of the frying pan. She nudges it onto the back burner. He straightens up with a thin smile and run
s his fingers through his curls. He turns the heat off while studying her. His eyes send tingles through her body, injecting her with energy. Who said grey eyes don’t gleam, she thinks. He caresses her with his eyes, and she soaks it up.
She leans her head back and pulls some strands away from her face, neatening herself, beholding him with her entire being. She breathes out. It was close, but she’s glad she stopped it. It doesn’t feel right. Not yet, not here. He’s such a handsome man and when they succumb to each other it should be in a place that becomes them. Somewhere more befitting.
Her cheeks are flushed. She laughs and feels attractive and buoyant. Her blushing will only make him more excited, she thinks to herself, it forms a basis for later; he can see me glowing.
There’s a knock on the window behind her. She turns around and pulls the curtain aside. It’s the woman in the white wig. Her face is pressed against the pane, peering in.
Jon looks up at the wall by the kitchen door. There’s a picture of a peacock on it next to the light switch. It’s made from a wooden panel painted black with tacks hammered in to form the shape of the bird. Jon thinks of Jesus’s hands as the nails were hammered into his palms. Silk threads in all sorts of colors have been woven between the tacks. The bird’s outline is different layers of orange.
The girl’s mother sees Jon looking.
“Our eldest did that. There’s two more in the living room, but they’re just made up, not meant to look like anything. He did them when he was in school.”
She sits down at the table and butters a slice of bread, smiles and passes the plate to Jon.
“What does he do now?” Jon asks.
She looks at the man, who glances up from reading some text underneath a picture of a tractor.
“What’s he say? What he’s doing now?”
The girl and her mother chuckle at how he wasn’t listening.
“He moved down south and we didn’t hear from him for a while. He’s working on a farm now.”
The man looks down at his brochure again while the woman carries on.
“He met a girl in a cafeteria. He was waiting for a bus, she worked there and they got chatting. They had a little girl last year. They live together on the farm, all three of them.”
She gets up while still talking and pulls out a drawer full of papers and photographs. She rummages about a bit before finding a photo she hands to Jon.
“Sara,” she says with a nod at the picture. “After a singer, they said.”
Jon sees a little red face in a pale green blanket, in the middle of a great big bed. He feels tired. He hands it back and looks at the others she keeps finding in the crammed drawer.
The woman in the white wig has drawn her cape around her, clenching it together at the throat. Vibeke thinks she must have climbed up onto a pile of snow under the window, their faces are level, not even half a meter from each other. She wonders if she saw anything. The curtains were drawn, but the light inside is bright. She tries to look unruffled. There can’t have been much to see anyway, we’ve hardly gotten to know each other yet. The woman stares at her with a half-smile, Vibeke’s not sure whether to smile back. Then her eyes latch on to him. He’s standing behind Vibeke, so close she can feel his warmth against her back. They stand there for a moment, then the woman turns and walks off.
Jon asks what time it is.
“Eleven,” the man says right away, without looking up.
Jon thinks it must be later than that, but he doesn’t want to say so. The girl gets up and turns the TV off. The room goes quiet. She yawns and stretches her limbs. Jon sees a glimpse of her bare skin as her red sweater rides up.
“I’m off to bed now. See you,” she says to Jon.
She leans over the table and kisses her father on the cheek. Her pants stretch tight across her butt, Jon thinks she looks like a boy.
Vibeke stays seated, holding the curtain open with one hand. It seems darker out now, as if the lights have been turned off. She leans forward and presses her cheek to the cold pane, watching the woman as she strides off in the direction of the rides. A bit further on she stops at another trailer, opens the door and goes inside.
Vibeke turns back to the table. She asks who it was. He lifts the frying pan and divides the charred food onto the two plates with a knife. She sees him open his mouth and close it again. He looks at her, then throws up his hand in an empty gesture, still holding the knife.
“She works here.”
He puts the frying pan down on the mat on the table.
“I bought a raffle ticket from her earlier on,” says Vibeke. “She seems rather weird. A bit unhinged, even. It’s like she’s searching for something.”
“You might not be far off there.”
He smiles as he punctures the yolk with his knife, cutting the egg both lengthwise and sideways, and lifting the food into his mouth with his fork. Vibeke doesn’t fancy anything now.
“It can be okay in the short run, but after a while people like that just get on your nerves.’
His cheek bulges with food as he speaks. He looks at her as if wanting her to confirm what he’s saying. She nods.
She listens for sounds from outside, voices, footsteps, scraping.
All she wants is to tell him how good-looking he is.
Everything is still, apart from the bacon crunching between his teeth. Then a generator kicks in somewhere and starts to hum.
JON STANDS BY THE CHAIR. He ought to go now that the girl has gone to bed, but he likes it here. There’s a scorch mark on the table from a saucepan. The girl’s father has switched to leafing through the local paper, her mother stands with her back to them at the counter, dividing some leftovers from a pan into some small plastic bags. I’m not from these parts either, she says to Jon. She tells him she’s from Finland, further south, but her husband’s related to practically the whole village so she feels at home here anyway. Jon watches her as she works. It must be okay for him to stay if she’s still talking to him. Her fat body remains still, only her arms move, steady and calm. When the bags have been filled she twirls them and twists a thin fastener around each. She smiles at him. She takes the bags with her out of the kitchen. Jon hears a door creak on its hinges, then the sound of heavy feet going down a staircase. He supposes they’ve got a freezer in the basement. The girl’s father turns the page of his newspaper without looking up. Tomorrow Jon will be nine. He feels it in his tummy, he feels it wanting to come out of his mouth too, but he doesn’t say anything. He smiles. He hears the girl’s mother come up the basement stairs again.
Vibeke thinks he seems troubled now. Not at all like before. She wants them to talk about something important.
“How about a whisky?”
He’s standing at the open cupboard. Before she can answer he’s got two glasses in one hand and a bottle in the other. He puts them on the table and moves the dirty dishes over to the counter. He’s eaten her portion too.
“See you,” says Jon. The girl’s father says something he doesn’t catch in reply. On his way into the hall he walks straight into the mother. He feels her big belly against his arms, her heavy breasts hang level with his mouth. He tries to stop blinking as he mutters goodnight.
When he gets to his feet after doing up his boots he feels dizzy. He steadies himself with his left hand on the wall. Maybe there’s something wrong with his heart. The front door isn’t locked. He goes out and closes it behind him, giving it a push to make sure it’s properly shut.
The forest behind the house is dark. There’s a pisshole in the snow at the corner of the house, Jon wonders if the dog he saw earlier might live here. It’s not the dog, it’s the hair, Vibeke says whenever he asks if they can have one.
His hands are cold already. He puts them in his trouser pockets. He thinks about the girl and the whites of her eyes as she slept.
He goes down the driveway to the road. He thinks he’ll look out for her on the bus tomorrow, maybe he’ll tell her then.
ONCE IN A WHI
LE can’t harm, Vibeke tells herself, holding the glass while he pours. The whisky is golden, like distilled fire.
“Besides, the weather’s been so cold,” she says out loud.
“Exactly,” he says, raising his glass before knocking back its contents and pouring himself another.
They each light a cigarette. He picks up the cash box and says he needs to balance the takings while he’s still got a clear head. Vibeke leans back against a rolled-up duvet in the corner and puts her legs up on the sofa. She rests her glass against her chest, watching him through the smoke she exhales. He sits with his head bent over the money. He hums a tune, tapping out the rhythm with his foot. Vibeke thinks how agreeable he is to be with. Easy-going and unconventional at the same time. She listens to the sounds drifting in from outside, voices in high spirits, cars revving up and speeding off. She feels chosen, privileged to be here in this little trailer with such an unusual man. Suddenly he starts to sing in full voice, a jazz song, an upbeat standard phrase with a hectic chorus, the table is his drum kit, his fingers a cymbal flicking against his glass.
She smiles at him.
She feels warm, perhaps he’s turned the heater up. Not wanting to perspire, she takes her sweater off. Underneath she’s wearing a wide-necked top in blue and grey, a blend of silk and flax. She closes her eyes and listens to his song, glad that he feels so uninhibited, so relaxed and sociable.
Jon curves out of the driveway into the road. He walks in the middle now that there’s no traffic. There are some spent fireworks in the snow. He picks one up and puts it in his pocket, thinking he can investigate what’s left when a firework has been used, there’s a microscope he can borrow in the science room at school. He feels himself blinking again. Sometimes he forgets he’s doing it. He tries to see how many paces he can walk in between each blink. He hears the sound of a car and turns his head to see, it’s coming from the village and going fast. He steps to the side and jumps up onto the bank of snow. He looks at the car as it goes past. It’s red. He thinks he’s seen it before, but he can’t remember where. It was a man behind the wheel, with close-cropped hair and a long cigarette in his mouth.
Love Page 5