by Håkan Nesser
Apparently I managed to offend her through this simple information, because she blew her nose ostentatiously and returned to her knitting without another word.
I left her to her fate and made my way out into the city. Even though it was an ordinary Tuesday, there were ever so many people in motion, I could see, at least in the city centre and along the tourist thoroughfares. The cold was tangible, several of the canals were frozen and a biting wind came in from the sea. I slipped into a couple of bookstores and music shops, mostly to get a little warmth. Sat in some cafes with beer and cigarettes too, stared at people, and I soon noticed that it was Ewa I was searching for. All women with dark, straight hair immediately drew my eyes to them, and the thought that I actually could find myself eye to eye with her again felt both stimulating and a trifle alarming.
I thought about our last morning together in that little mountain village, before she took off on the final journey, and about what infinite tenderness I felt for her as she got into the car and drove off to meet her lover. I remembered how I stood on the balcony and resisted the strong impulse to call her back, while she crossed the courtyard and waved at me through the rolled-down side window. Warn her. Get her to stay behind instead of taking off on this fatal journey. When she disappeared behind the stone wall I was unable to hold back a cry, but naturally it had no effect. It only became a vain expression of the double-edged tension that was pulsing inside me. Not even the old caretaker who was raking leaves out of the flowerbeds below seemed to have heard it, and after having seen her start up the winding road along the mountainside, I went back into the room and took a long, refreshing shower.
No, first I crawled into bed awhile and tried to read, that’s how it was . . . but naturally that was a completely hopeless enterprise.
In this way – by stepping in and out of shops, and by sitting in cafes and thinking about Ewa – I moved slowly through the central parts of A.: down towards Vondel Park and the public library on Van Baerlestraat. From my last visit I had the idea that their doors didn’t usually open until sometime during the afternoon but in return stayed open until rather late in the evening, which would suit me extremely well. I have never been a morning person. Having to perform any important tasks before noon has been something of an Achilles heel ever since my teens. The evening and early night-time hours are my morning air, that is when my capacity is at its peak, both mentally and physically, and if you happen to be in circumstances where you yourself can determine your daily rhythm, there is naturally no reason to deny yourself those early morning and forenoon hours in bed.
That was correct. Monday–Friday from 2.00–8.00, it said on a notice on the door. Saturdays 12.00–4.00. Quite excellent, accordingly. I didn’t go in this first day, but decided on a visit the next one. As I had no great longing to go back to Translators House, I decided to while away the rest of the afternoon in town. After having wandered around more or less aimlessly for an hour or two, at the corner of Falckstraat and Reguliergracht I found a small housing agency. I stepped in and explained my wishes: a more or less centrally located room, preferably in the vicinity of Vondel Park. Shower and cooking facilities. Six months approximately. Not too expensive.
The dark-skinned girl browsed in some binders and made two calls. There might possibly be something that was suitable, she explained; if I had the opportunity to stop by in a couple of days, she would investigate in the meantime.
I thanked her and promised to return no later than Friday.
It was not until fairly late that I came back to Translators House that first evening. Thought it was just as well that I live it up a little before getting down to business, so I indulged myself both in a proper dinner at Planner’s and a few hours at the bars around Nieuwe Markt. As it was I probably spent most of the time thinking about how I should proceed with the search for Ewa, but I don’t think I managed to find any particularly viable plan of action. In any case nothing that I could later recall, and when I finally tumbled into bed towards midnight, I could tell that I still had not started to part the veils of either of the two sinister affairs that caused me to travel to A.
But I was on the scene. The foundation was laid, and on the other side of night it was of course high time to get started. I also remember that I liked imagining this untouched future. A tabula rasa, a snow-white field that I still had not entered and where all possibilities still rested side by side.
With these thoughts I fell asleep.
‘I know that I’m hurting you, but I have to go my own way.’
Her words came out just like that, they could have been taken out of any contemporary melodrama, and I carefully stroked a strand of hair from her cheek. It was the first time and it wasn’t the first time. We were lying on our sides, face to face in our comfortable double bed, and I remember that I thought about that dubious thing with the eyes. That suddenly, when you get too close, they turn completely blank. The expression, the oft-mentioned mirror of the soul, disappears as if by magic at a distance somewhere between ten and fifteen centimetres. Within this boundary there is nothing. No way and no promises. Not even the dormant hostility of cat eyes.
When we get right next to another person only this cell accumulation remains, this bitter thing. It is a hard experience to go through, naturally, and then it’s not always easy to find your way back to the right distance. Maybe it’s the sort of thing you learn over the years. I assume that you, Reader, know what I’m talking about.
In our case, I understood, of course, that she would not manage very long on her own, but the thought of simply letting her run was enticing anyway, that I must admit.
It was an August day. In the late morning, warm and promising as a sun-ripened plum. We had three weeks of holiday ahead of us, and it was in the next moment that she declared that she had a lover. I suppressed an impulse to laugh, I recall it as if it were yesterday, and I don’t think she noticed that. She had been in therapy all summer, it was less than six months since she was released from the institution and yet it was too soon to start planning for the future.
Much too soon.
‘Do you want me to get breakfast ready?’ I asked.
She hesitated slightly.
‘Yes, thanks,’ she then said, and we looked at one another in mutual understanding.
‘We’re leaving tomorrow?’
She didn’t answer. Didn’t change expression at all, and I got up to go through to the kitchen and prepare the tea tray.
That first night in A. I dreamt about Ewa, an ever-so-erotic dream evidently, because I woke up with a strong erection. It quickly passed and was replaced by a headache and nausea; while I sat on the toilet with my head in my hands, I tried to tally up how much alcohol I’d consumed the night before, but there were a number of uncertainties that would not become clear. I showered for a long time in the miserable stream that was offered at Translators House, and embarked into the cold sometime around lunch. With my briefcase firmly clamped under my arm I managed to get on board a tram that I hoped was going in somewhat the right direction. It was, it turned out, and when it reached Ceintuurbaan I jumped off. Slipped into a bar and got myself a couple of sandwiches and a cup of black coffee. Then wandered the remaining blocks over to the library; the wind that blew through the streets and across the open canals was murderously cold and I understood that I must at least see about buying myself a proper scarf, if it was my intention to stay healthy in this cold metropolis.
When I arrived at the library, there was only a thin woman in her sixties behind the counter, and I waited while she served a dark-skinned gentleman in ulster and turban. When he had his books stamped, I stepped forward and introduced myself. Explained that I was working on a translation project and that I needed a place where I could sit in peace and quiet for a few hours every day.
She smiled obligingly and a little shyly, and took the trouble at once to come around the counter and escort me over to the work tables, which stood four by four in rows in the reference departm
ent. She asked if I wanted to have a table reserved for my use – there was always plenty of room anyway, she maintained, and if I wanted to leave behind books and materials, or simply have paper kept there, there could of course be an easy solution.
I thanked her and chose a place furthest to the left, only a metre or so from the high, leaded window, through which you could look out towards Moerkerstraat and one of the entrances to Vondel Park. For the moment, besides the woman and me, there were only two other people in the place, and I assumed that this was how it usually appeared. She nodded, wished me good luck and returned to the counter. I sat down and placed the yellow folder to my left on the table. To my right I placed the spiral notebook and four newly acquired pens. Then I removed the rubber bands and prepared to get started with Germund Rein’s last book.
When I left the library it was dark. I must have been working for many hours and yet I hadn’t got more than three pages into the manuscript. It was a heavy, mysterious text and it resembled none of what Rein had written earlier, I could immediately determine that. If I hadn’t known that he was the one behind it, I presumably never would have guessed it. Yet it was too soon to make out either a setting or plot. The only sure thing seemed to be that there was a person with the designation R, in whose consciousness these first pages took place, rendered in a kind of interior monologue, where a woman, M, and another man, G, also seemed to play a certain role. I could sense that the whole thing would possibly develop into some sort of triangle drama, there were signs that indicated that, but the text could just as well take other turns and when I put a stop to the day, I felt that I still didn’t have much of a grasp on the whole thing.
The first paragraph alone must have taken me almost an hour, and when I later read it again (while I sat and waited for food inside De Knijp), it still seemed to me that I had missed the core of Rein’s text. Or the tone, rather: naturally it’s the chord that’s the important thing, then the individual words and expressions may be handled with a certain freedom, that’s one thing I’ve learnt over the years.
The totality [it started] of R’s time in the world is growing no longer, still exists, but merely, yes merely vanishingly thin, a gaping and a screaming for footholds and roses, always these roses, dew and dew, perishable as dew, a burning and a panting and M. Where is M keeping herself these days? Her profile always stays behind a moment even after she twisted her head and left the room, a bewildering woman. Stays behind also in R, image is added to image, edge to edge and overlapping, all these moments are always there in parallel, even the present. He has struck her, sure he has raised his hand, but as a tree lives from the rain and the storm, she is also his, the pain and the anger and the fire that purifies and heals and solders them together, and it was he himself, R personally, who introduced them to each other, M and G, years ago, still edge to edge that too, side by side and as the drop finally hollows out the stone now this too has come to this, this is what all this will be about. When R wakens in the morning he is confused. For some time now everything seems changed.
My food arrived and I closed the spiral notebook. While I ate I also felt the emptiness inside me, the feeling that always seems to appear after hours of concentrated work. As if the world and my surroundings no longer reached me; the people, the murmur and the quiet movements in the rather crowded place could just as well have been going on somewhere else – in another medium, another time; I sat in a deaf-mute aquarium and looked out towards an incomprehensible world.
Two, three glasses usually help, and so they did now. When I stepped out onto the street I felt like a normal person again and wondered whether it wouldn’t be just as well to slip into a cinema before I made my way home to Translators House. I had no great desire to spend more than the hours of sleep I needed in my gloomy room, and I decided to visit the girl at the agency again the next day, to see what they had to offer.
I was unable to find any particularly enticing film, it had got a bit too late, so instead I spent the rest of the evening at a cafe with South American music, while I brooded over how I should actually take on the problem of Ewa.
Just strolling around the city, hoping to catch sight of her somewhere in the throng, undeniably seemed futile, but it was hard to get a grip on what other paths of action were open to me. At least I had a hard time discovering any on my own. When all is said and done, there was probably only one situation in this city where she could certainly be expected to show up sooner or later.
Concerts. Classical music. As far as I knew there were two concert halls in A. with consistent classical repertoire. Concertgebouw and Nieuwe Halle. I had never been to either of them, but while I sat there with my beer and listened to the muffled flutes from the Andes, I decided it might be time to become acquainted with their programmes.
No further ideas showed up in my head that evening. Apparently Rein’s text had pretty much taken the steam out of me, and perhaps I also had one or two glasses too many. I left the bar around midnight, but still didn’t feel so intoxicated that I couldn’t go on foot all the way over to Translators House. The Finn – a massive guy who reminded me more than a little of some pre-Christian thunder god with a big, bushy beard and a voice like a bassoon – was sitting with the Irishman in the kitchen. They were entertaining each other with drinking songs and obscene stories, and through the floor I could hear their volleys of laughter and astounding oaths well into the night.
The wind from the sea. Temperature around zero. Occasional thin snowfall or rain turning to ice. January continued as it began. On Saturday of the first week I changed residence; through the agency I got hold of a small two-room apartment on Ferdinand Bolstraat, only ten minutes’ walk from the library. The owner was a young photographer who had just received a six-month commission in South America from National Geographic, and our agreement included care of house plants and a cat.
The latter was an indolent, spayed female by the name of Beatrice, who, besides a half-hour stay on the balcony overlooking the courtyard (where she passively and without any real interest sat and observed the pigeons) and a couple of walks to the food bowl and the litter box in the kitchen, barely did anything other than lie in front of the gas heater and sleep.
The smaller room was equipped as a darkroom and I never used it; because of the poor insulation I spent as good as all my time at home either in bed or in the armchair in front of the same heat source as Beatrice. It was the only one in the apartment, but I want to stress that I was completely satisfied with the situation anyway.
Perhaps, above all, the surroundings. On the street below there were all kinds of shops: an Albert Hijn, some bars and even a laundrette. I soon found that I could hardly have wished for a better location; the traffic and street life out there were busy and varied during most hours of the day, and if I just dressed properly, I could stand in the window and observe the dynamics from my lookout point on the third floor. Undeniably this gave me an illusion of control: standing there, admittedly separate, but yet not without contact with the movements in time and space.
With regard to the rent, it was reasonable; certain adjustments had been made considering the flowers and Beatrice, and when I spoke with Kerr on the phone, it turned out that the publishing house had no objections to the little extra expense this nonetheless entailed compared with Translators House.
After the move my days also acquired a more uniform and routine character. I often slept late, preferably until eleven or eleven thirty. Showered, got dressed and went down and bought a newspaper and fresh bread. Had a leisurely breakfast in the armchair with Beatrice across my feet, while I read the news about the world and my previous day’s translation. Made any corrections, and towards quarter to two I left the apartment. Walked first through a couple of small alleys sheltered from the wind, then out into the breeze over Ruysdalegracht, along Kuyperlaan and Van Baerlestraat, to arrive at the library a few minutes after the doors had opened.
Most often it was Frau Moewenroedhe who was sitting there –
the woman who had taken care of me the first day – but sometimes one of the two younger women, the one dark with a slightly alluring, shy beauty, the other ruddy and a bit overweight. Neither of them spoke to me, would just nod at me in some kind of unwritten mutual understanding; I did not exchange many words with Frau Moewenroedhe either, but as of the third day I always got a cup of tea and some biscuits at four thirty, which evidently was the time when they allowed themselves a little break.
During these first weeks I still had some control over the hours of the day, I notice that when I look back. In a way it was, of course, necessary too. Once I had gone through the programmes of both concert halls I made a schedule that meant that I attended four or five events a week, which in turn assumed that I departed from the library soon enough to have dinner before it was time for Concertgebouw or Nieuwe Halle.
By and by I realized that my treasury would hardly allow me to run to expensive concerts several times a week, and I changed instead to simply appearing in the foyer to see the audience arrive. Sometimes I watched the audience stream out instead, but no matter which method I applied, during these cold January evenings I never saw so much as a glimpse of Ewa, and even if I didn’t exactly start to despair, it was clear that I had to think of something better.
Otherwise I gladly spent a few evening hours at the cafes, especially a couple of rather motley ones that were located along my natural walking route home – Mart’s and Dusart respectively. Sat there in a corner and now and then struck up conversation with people, especially older and slightly worn gentlemen, who had lived most of their lives and achieved a degree of scepticism that I found liberating and gladly shared. I guess I also ran into women on these evenings, but even if there were certainly one or two who wouldn’t have had anything against spending the night with me, I never took any initiative in that direction. Anyway, it was unusual that I went to bed before one o’clock.