He stops singing and she opens her eyes. He’s sitting up straight now after counting the money. He looks at her. His gaze is deep and unfathomable.
“All done,” he says, and claps his hands together, a loud report in the air. “Now to find somewhere with a bit of life.”
She hadn’t thought of them going out. She pictures them together on a dance floor with the lights down, he holds her close and whispers sweet nothings in her ear. She wonders why the idea hadn’t occurred to her. It just goes to show the way we can free each other and release our respective potentials, she thinks to herself.
“Yes, let’s,” she says, her interest quickened. “It’ll be nice.”
He looks a bit surprised. Didn’t he think she’d want to? There’s a lot he doesn’t know about me yet, she thinks with a smile.
He puts a thick woollen sweater on and wriggles himself into a leather jacket, looking in the mirror as he pulls a knit cap down over his ears. His eyes look even bigger when his hair isn’t falling into his face. She feels a stab of emotion at the thought of him going away. There’s something in his eyes she needs to investigate, something she wants to get close to. She gets up and goes past him to the front door where she left her coat and puts it on. When she’s ready she turns and looks up at him, leaning back against the wall next to the bathroom. She’s waiting for something, listening to the voice inside him.
He opens the door and they step out.
It’s cold.
She hears a loud voice from inside a trailer, a man sounding angry.
She lingers a few meters behind as he knocks on one of the other trailers. An older man comes to the door, small and bony, she can’t see his face properly because he’s standing in the light from inside, it shines through his thin, white hair. She sees the cash box change hands and the two men exchange a few words, their voices a murmur. He stands with his weight evenly distributed between both legs, he’s tall and yet he has to look up at the older man, who’s standing a couple of steps higher. The older man takes a wallet from the pocket of a coat hanging inside the door, he opens it and gets something out which he gives to her man. She can tell from their jangle it’s a bunch of keys. The man in the door looks at her. She smiles back at him. She can hear children’s voices inside, a boy and a girl. It sounds like they’re playing a game.
SHE FOLLOWS HIM ACROSS the empty fairground. He moves elegantly as they pass between the rides, she thinks. Nimbly, like a man in form. He walks almost too fast for her. Because of the cold, she supposes; he wants to get to the car as quickly as possible.
He veers left outside the fairground entrance and goes over to a boxy, dark-green vehicle. Vibeke doesn’t know what they’re called. It looks like a jeep. Army surplus, perhaps.
He glances at her before unlocking the door. He gets in, leans over the seat and opens her door from the inside. Vibeke steps up onto the running board and climbs in. He looks at her as he turns the ignition. It’s like he’s asking her something, but she can’t figure out what. She smiles to put him at ease. She wishes he could be a bit clearer. She likes people to be straight about what they think, so you know where you are with them.
The engine starts first try. They sit for a moment and glance at each other before he puts his arm over the back of her seat, twisting around to look through the rear window as he reverses out, turning the steering wheel with the flat of his hand.
It’s a very powerful car. Most likely they use it to pull trailers with, she thinks to herself. She pictures the big chunky tires, they must have a good grip on the road. She leans back in the seat and finds it to be soft.
He drives out through the parking area by the community center and the supermarket, past the council offices. There’s no one around, though still a few cars parked here and there. People will be talking about the fair tomorrow, Vibeke thinks to herself. This is their idea of culture. This is what they want, but when was the last time there was a jazz concert in the church or a reading by an author at the library?
He turns out onto the highway, accelerating through the gears, the heater blowing out hot air. He leans forward and turns the radio dial until finding a channel with some choice, upbeat music. She buckles her seat belt. He starts humming again. She looks out at the road, her eyes following the reflective marker poles. There’s very little traffic on the highway at night, she thinks. Coming from the southerly direction in the dark it can look like someone inexplicably put lighting up on an empty stretch of blacktop. It’s not until after a few hundred meters of lit-up road that you come to a sign and the turn-off to the village, and realize that people actually live here.
They leave the illuminated stretch behind them and everything outside the beam of the headlights is immediately dark. She doesn’t know what song he’s latched onto, it’s a little snippet, he keeps humming it over and over, even with the radio playing something else. She feels they should sing something together, like they used to in the car when she was a child. She closes her eyes. He’s a good driver, she thinks to herself, the way he negotiates the wide bends is so effortless. She wonders if he can tell how contented she feels.
“Tell me something,” she says.
“Like what?”
“The first thing that comes into your head.”
He doesn’t say anything.
In that case she’ll have to help him. She thinks if she keeps on giving, then eventually she’ll get through to him.
“I remember a rhyme from a story,” she says. “It’s one of the loveliest things I know.”
“Really.”
“It goes like this:
Far, far away there’s an ocean,
in the ocean is an island,
on the island is a church,
in the church there’s a well,
in the well swims a duck,
in the duck there’s an egg,
and in the egg—’
She almost chokes up:
“In the egg is my heart.”
The words come out a whisper.
The voice on the radio is talking about a new film that’s premiering at cinemas in the cities. It all seems so remote. The car and the road and the beam of the headlights are the only things that exist. She looks at him, he’s staring straight ahead, unsmiling, severe almost. Perhaps what I said touched him and now he’s trying to grasp it, she thinks to herself. She feels like stroking his hair, running her fingers through his thick, unruly curls.
She reaches out and does so.
He gives her a look in return.
She looks out at the road ahead, at the banks of snow shoved aside by the snow plows, at the marker poles, the forest. Everywhere she looks there’s snow and more snow. They come to a yellow sign and she can see there’s still a bit to go before they reach the town.
It feels like it isn’t cold anymore, Jon thinks, though he knows it can’t be true. It’s always colder at night. The road is empty. It looks bigger now than in the day, wider somehow, it makes the way home seem longer. He hears a brisk padding of feet behind him and wheels around to see the dog from before. It stops and sniffs at something on the ground. Jon feels the blood pound in his head. There can’t be anything wrong with his heart after all. He pats his thigh and calls to the dog. It lifts its narrow head and looks at him for a second before going back to its sniffing. He gathers up some snow and tries to form a snowball. It’s as hopeless as before, only the snow’s too hard now. His hands are freezing, he throws it into the air. The dog comes bounding, excited by the icy shards as the snow hits the ground and disintegrates. He manages to call it over to him and pats it on the neck. It wags its tail. When he starts to run the dog follows.
THE FRONT DOOR IS locked. Jon is out of breath, his skin feels clammy underneath his scarf. He searches his pockets for the key. Normally he keeps it in the front pocket of his trousers where he can feel it against his thigh. But it’s not there. It’s not in any of his other pockets either.
He doesn’t want to wake Vibeke up. He thinks
she must have locked the door when she went to bed, maybe she got tired of waiting for him after baking the cake. He feels in his pockets one more time then presses the bell. He hears it ring inside the house, a long, determined trill. He pictures Vibeke’s face, without make-up, her thin legs below her pale-blue dressing gown. She’ll give him that tired look of hers. Maybe she won’t let him in, maybe he’ll have to stay out until morning now, for having been out so late. He didn’t want to wake her, he’ll say, only he couldn’t find his key.
No one comes. He presses the bell again, longer this time, his index finger holding the white button in. The lit-up recess for the occupier’s name is empty, he can see the wiring behind the cover.
He swivels around and leans back against the door. The key must be on the table in the living room, he thinks to himself, and pictures his keyring, Donald Duck encased in transparent plastic; when he makes it twirl it looks exactly like Donald is keeping his eye on him.
He thinks the space in front of the house has got bigger too. Then he sees the car’s gone. Vibeke isn’t in. Maybe something’s happened. An accident. Vibeke doesn’t like driving in the winter. Here it’s winter all the time. She’s crashed and maybe now she’s paralyzed and will have to sit in a wheelchair. Maybe no one’s found her yet and she’s bleeding to death. Or maybe the car’s about to burst into flames and she’s going to die from the pain. He tries to imagine how much it hurts when your skin is on fire. No one’s found her and she’s all on her own. He feels himself blinking, he screws up his eyes and presses his fists against his sockets, as if to press them into his skull. Maybe if he presses them far enough in they’ll dangle about inside his head and never find their way back to the hole where they can see out. Then I’ll have to have my birthday at the hospital, he thinks, with my head wrapped up in white bandages. Vibeke will have to bring him his presents and the cake there. Maybe she’s run out of something for the cake, he thinks. Eggs, maybe, or flour, and now she’s popped out to borrow some. That’ll be it. She forgets things all the time, she says she’s like a doddering old professor who thinks so much he can never remember anything. She’ll be back soon if that’s what’s happened, he tells himself. He should have known. If it hadn’t been his birthday in the morning she wouldn’t have needed to go out again. He realizes his toes and the front of his thighs no longer feel cold. He stamps around in the snow outside the door and jumps up and down. He tries to think what to do while he’s waiting. He hopes she isn’t angry.
At a distance up ahead they see the illuminated interior of a parked car. A little pocket of light in a shoulder on the left-hand side of the road. He slows down, they exchange glances. Vibeke wonders at first who might have stopped here in such an empty place surrounded by forest, then why they would turn the interior light on, making them visible to anyone driving by.
“Do you believe in UFOs?” he says with a chuckle.
“Perhaps they’ve broken down,” she says. She can hear how unlikely it sounds, anyone breaking down so close to the town would surely go for help. As they drive by, Vibeke glimpses two men in the front seats, their heads lowered as if they were looking for something on the floor. They’re in uniform, Vibeke thinks maybe they’re security guards on their way from one job to another. But by then they’ve left them behind.
“Good thing they were occupied,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“Police.”
“How do you know?”
“It was a police car. Didn’t you notice?”
Vibeke tries to remember what she saw, but there was nothing about the car or its occupants that made her think specifically of police. He picks up speed again, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. They’re playing a song she likes on the radio, she leans forward to turn up the volume. A bump on the road makes her lose the frequency, the radio hisses and squeals. He pushes a button and turns it off. There’s a lull now; she listens to the steady drone of the engine, the hum of the heater. They’re probably very conscientious about keeping their vehicles maintained, she thinks, being so dependent on them for getting around. She tries to think of how much they had to drink in the trailer. It can’t have been much, she thinks. She puts her head back against the headrest and closes her eyes, her right hand holding the handle of the armrest in the door panel.
The next time she opens her eyes they’re turning off the highway, leaving the forest and approaching the outskirts of the town.
Yellow street lamps hang suspended over the asphalt. Staggered rows of dismal, three-storey housing blocks recede back on each side. The gable ends visible from the road have been fitted out with billboards lit up by spotlights. Vibeke thinks the illuminated images with people in them make the place seem populated in the night. They drive past a deserted train station, ice-encrusted and floodlit.
As they near the town center the buildings become taller. Shop windows appear, and neon lights. They pass the hairdressing salon Vibeke’s begun to use. The lights are off inside. She pictures the woman who runs the place, the sheen of her neat, short hair, her lips when she talks. She was the one who talked Vibeke into having the stud put in her nose. She made it seem like the obvious thing to do. Her patter about breaking the mold, flouting the rules, putting like and unlike together. Her communicative skills are really quite remarkable, Vibeke considers. My mistake is to think too much when I talk, it slows everything down, repartee just isn’t there for me.
She turns her head and looks out the window on the driver’s side. She sees a middle-aged couple with a dog on a lead, the man unlocks a gateway door and pushes it open with his shoulder. They drive past too quickly for her to see inside. She thinks of the place they lived before, the rear yard there with the two fine oak trees she could see from the kitchen window. The echo of sounds reverberating between the buildings often woke her up in the mornings; the front door slamming, people standing talking down below. She remembers feeling they belonged together in a way.
The dog begins to whimper now that Jon’s just standing there by the door. He doesn’t know what it wants, he thinks maybe it’s hungry. He whimpers back, thinking it might understand he’s got no food. He tries to work out what time it might be if it was eleven at the girl’s house. He thinks it must be about half past twelve.
A car comes up the road. Jon hears the sound and sees the headlights before it emerges from the curve of the bend. It’s driving slowly. Maybe it’s someone who doesn’t know the way and now they’re looking for someone to ask. He runs down to the road and waves his arms in the air. As the car comes toward him he sees it looks like the red one that sped past when he was walking home.
He pulls in outside an all-night café and lets the engine run. Vibeke feels relieved at not having to talk, the silence between them is suggestive enough on its own. A song verse occurs to her, something about remaining meek, the you inside needs time to speak. Inside the café the young man behind the counter is on the phone, the receiver wedged between his cheek and shoulder. A couple sit eating at a table by the wall, hunched over their plates.
“Smoke?”
“Yes, please,” says Vibeke.
He lights up for her, then lights his own. They stare inside again. The man behind the counter is still on the phone, moving his upper body in a series of rhythmic jerks, flicking his wrists, making her think he’s listening to music.
“Do you know anywhere?”
“Not really,” she says, thinking of the few places she does know, but she’s never been here at night before, apart from a theater performance in the church.
They fall silent again.
“Maybe we could ask.”
She jabs her cigarette in the direction of the young man inside. He doesn’t say anything. He looks like he’s thinking. His strong, angular face; his thick hair, curl upon curl. She decides to go in and ask, show some initiative. In a way he’s her guest, a visitor to this place where she lives. She opens the car door without looking at him, shuts it quickly behind her and st
eps over the snow onto the sidewalk. Pressing the curved handle down, she opens the door and goes in.
A strip light floods the tall counter in a glare of light. Apart from that the place is dimly lit by small lamps on all the tables. She’s surprised by how loud the music is inside, a disc jockey on some local radio station introduces the next song, it’s one they’re playing a lot at the moment but she can’t remember where she heard it last. She goes up to the counter, finding it hard not to move in time to the music. She places her hands flat on the surface and leans forward. The young man isn’t there. She thinks maybe he’s gone to the bathroom, or perhaps to the kitchen to fetch some food. There’s a smell of burnt coffee from a coffee pot on a hot plate next to some stacked-up cups and saucers. She sways her hips to the music, it feels like ages since she last had a dance. A magazine has been left open on a table behind the counter along with a book. She stretches her neck to see what the book is. She doesn’t recognize the title, but the author is an American man. The category is one she tends to avoid. Next to the table is a swivel chair with tired green upholstery. The radio-cassette player where the music’s coming from is also on the table, turned to face whoever sits on the chair. She drums her fingernails on the counter, their deep red against the steel, peering toward the swing doors she assumes lead out to the kitchen. After a moment she turns around and looks out the window at the car. She can’t see him very clearly from inside. She glances at the couple eating, there are two dogs lying under their table, and next to the woman’s chair is a birdcage with a canary in it. They eat in silence. Vibeke thinks it’s as if they can’t hear the jaunty voice on the radio or the pounding music that just now comes to an end. Maybe they’ve been driving all day, she tells herself, and now they’re recharging before another shift. The woman shoves her plate away with her food only half eaten and gets a cigarette and lighter out of a packet.
Love Page 6