In the River Darkness (20 page)

I couldn’t bear to say another harsh word in reply. I felt sorry for her, the way she sat there, bent like an old tree growing on cliffs with its roots clinging to the sparse dirt. No matter how much Iris still clung to her infallible righteousness, she had long sensed that this was only
her
truth. She could recite the Hail Mary into eternity, but it wouldn’t undo the mistakes she had made.

Maybe that was why she had told me Katarina’s story, to receive some kind of absolution. But I couldn’t give it to her. We both knew that.

Looking lost, Iris continued her story. “When I came to visit, I often found Katarina at the river. She always loved to be down by the water. ‘The river is my heart,’ she would often say with a laugh. But that day she didn’t laugh as she stared into the stream. ‘Do you know where the water goes, Mom?’ she asked me quietly, throwing sticks in the water to be carried away by the current. That penetrating tone in her voice. But I didn’t have an answer for her. So she answered herself: ‘Away, just away from here. . . . If it weren’t for the boys . . .’ She didn’t end the sentence, and I didn’t ask her to. That was the last time I spoke with my daughter. A few days later, I moved in with them—my husband had already died by then. And you know the rest of the story.”

I nodded glumly and didn’t want to see the family photo anymore. Because now I knew that it was only an illusion of happy days that they had never had. This time I let Iris pat my hand. “I’m afraid when I have such an attentive listener I just babble on and on,” she sighed, and it sounded as if she almost regretted having told me so much. “Don’t worry your pretty head about an old woman’s talk! That’s all ancient history.”

Oh, how wrong she was!

But she meant well when she added, “Now go! The boys finished their work in the basement earlier. Alexander wanted to take a shower. I’m sure he’s already waiting for you.” So I stood up and left her alone with the faded picture of her daughter.

Before I left, I saw her dry lips start to form words again: answers that it was too late for now. I saw the mother call the beloved name without a sound, knowing she would never receive an answer. Then I closed the kitchen door behind me.

After that talk, and the feel of the elderly woman’s wrinkled hand on mine, it was good to be with Alex, who felt warm and alive.

He had just gotten out of the shower, and his curly hair was still dark with wet. Now he lay resting next to me on the bed, naked and entirely unself-conscious. I, however, still wore my underwear. In the beginning, Alex had had to woo me with a thousand sweet words every time he slipped the clothes off my body. That wasn’t the case anymore, but I was still always on my guard when we were together.

At that moment, though, as I lay in Alex’s arms and felt his calm breathing, I felt at peace. Even though it certainly was odd to know so much about his vanished mother . . . maybe even more than Alex himself. I would have liked to talk to him about it, but we had an unspoken agreement that the subject of Katarina—as well as questions about my ex-boyfriend—were strictly off limits between us. His grandmother was right, all of that belonged to the distant past.

I was here with Alex in the present, and that’s all that mattered.

Lazily, I stretched out my arm and nudged the globe standing on the nightstand. Its warm light wandered over the walls and bathed our faces in a sea-blue and ochre-yellow glow. Our little world . . . I turned the globe again and let my fingers glide across the continents.

“Where would you most like to go, Alex?” I asked. I loved to laze around talking with him about curious and silly things. “Come on, what’s your dream destination?”

Alex grumbled, “Anywhere there’s no muck that needs to be hauled out of the basement! My dream destination is where you are.” He blew in my ear and whispered, “I love you, Mia. And I want to sleep with you.” Playfully, he tugged at the strap of my bra.

It was as if someone had poured a bucket of ice-cold water over me. How was it possible that those few words could simultaneously plunge me into a state of rapture and panic?
Heart-pounding, stomach-wrenching, limb-freezing panic.

For in that moment it became clear to me how close, how dangerously close, Alex had gotten to me. How ridiculous my halfhearted attempts to keep him at a distance had been. Just like my refusal to play the cello for him, even though all my inner soundscapes leaned toward him . . .

For a heartbeat, I longed to just give in to that gravity, to let myself fall. To tell Alex everything.

But that would mean throwing my painstakingly repaired glass heart at him and trusting that he would catch it. No, I couldn’t take the risk! If I did, I’d be defenseless, utterly exposed.

And I already felt so naked! There was only my thin skin as a protective wall. And when Alex touched me, like now, it was as if his fingers could sink deep into my innermost self. I was like hot wax under those hands. Pliable, without a shape, with no will of my own.

How could I have let things get so far again? Hadn’t I learned anything from the disaster with Nicolas? How could I ever get out of this situation unharmed? I was caught in a trap. Chaos reigned in my head, everything swayed. But maybe that was just me.

Driftwood.

“What is it, Mia? Are you okay?” Alex asked anxiously.

I sat up straight. I had sworn to myself that I’d never be driftwood again.
Never again!

And suddenly those mean words came to me. Honed to a sharp edge, they lay on the tip of my tongue. All I had to do was open my mouth, and they shot out: “I kissed Jay, out on the island.”

I saw how the words slowly sank into his consciousness, like stones thrown into deep water. “What?” Alex asked, as if he hadn’t quite understood. As if he wanted to give me a chance to say “Just kidding!” or “Oh, nothing. You must have misunderstood.”

But I didn’t do him the favor. Mercilessly, I repeated the sentence, hammered the words into his very being: “
I kissed your brother!
” This time he got the message. I could see it. Something broke.

“You did what? Why . . . why did you do that?” he stammered. His face was white as chalk. I had just thrown his world out of alignment. Our world.

Continents drifted apart, were abandoned. Islands were swallowed up by cold ocean waters.

And it was me that had caused it! ME! With just a few words. It was strange that I seemed to possess such power over another person. He was the one who loved more. His weakness gave me strength. His falling apart gave me form.

For just a brief moment, a feeling of triumph I had never known before coursed through me. It was as if I had done it for Katarina, too. As if I had shown everyone who thought they could treat their women like driftwood, all the idiots like Nicolas and Eric.

But then I realized with painful clarity that it was Alex who sat there next to me on the bed. My boyfriend, who had trusted me. Who had just told me that he loved me.

He wrapped his arms around himself as if he had just realized that he was naked. As if he wanted to cover his bareness. Then I had to turn my gaze away. I jumped up from the bed and turned on the normal light. The magical glow of our globe was extinguished in the relentless brightness of the overhead light, which burned my eyes. Hectically, I started to gather my strewn-about clothes.

“What’s going on between you and Jay?” Alex asked very quietly behind me. Then louder. “Talk to me, Mia! Please!”

That was the first time he had asked me for something. But I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

With one leg in my jeans, I hopped to the door. Get away, I just had to get away from here! I couldn’t bear it one second longer!

I left. I left him. I had betrayed him.

Alex didn’t stop me.

Even on my way home, I didn’t cry. I looked up into the sad, lifeless branches of my cherry tree. It was hard to believe that we had sat there together just last summer, between the swaying fruits. Exchanging kisses. That must have been a thousand years ago.

My heart isn’t a stone,
I had warned Alex back then. But now it felt just like one, as if I had nothing but a dry cherry pit in my chest that was so hard it hurt to breathe.

I’m not alone in the hole in the ice anymore. Right next to me the water is bubbling as if something is rising, slowly surfacing, out of the depths of the river.

It’s a woman. Her long, light hair floats on the water. Her skin is whiter than the ice. The eyes are like dark holes in her pale face.

Where did she come from? Did she come to help me? I feel like I should know her somehow . . .

What’s a dream, and what’s real?

I blink woozily. It’s getting harder and harder to think clearly. But one thing I still know: something is wrong here.
The woman can’t possibly be here!
I don’t understand what’s going on, but you can’t see her breath in the icy air—there’s no breath to be seen!

I want to pull away, but then she’s touching my cheek. Her hand is as cold as death . . . no . . . all the cold softens. It’s warm . . . as warm as summer! I feel safe and laugh with joy because now I finally recognize her again!

“You . . . you!” I whisper.

“Yes, me. I came to get you.”

To get me . . .

Braids of hair wind themselves toward me like pale tentacles, coiling themselves around my arms. But I only have eyes for her smile. Ice crystals glitter on her eyelids. How terribly I’ve missed her!

“Come. Come with me! We’ll live deep in the river and reign over the fish. We’ll be the lords of the kingfishers! Come where there’s no sadness and no pain. No lonesomeness, never again. I promise you,” she whispered. “We’ll be together forever.”

I . . . I’m not sure. It’s like when you’ve dived so deep that you don’t know which way is up and which way is down. I hesitate . . . look at my numb hands, which are still grasping the edge of the ice.

“Let go! What’s still holding you here in this sad place? Come with me into the river.”

Yes, you’re right. Nothing and no one keep me here . . . want to follow you, your smile . . . anywhere.

But wait. What’s that? My name . . . is someone calling my name?

I couldn’t understand it. I just didn’t get it! I had just told Mia that I love her, that I want her. And POW!

It was as if I had jumped off the high dive, but instead of being enveloped in warm water, I had crashed into concrete.

I kissed your brother
. . . . Her words echoed endlessly in my brain. And my fantasy provided the fitting images for the scene—Mia and Jay, kissing each other passionately, and not only that. She had probably only played the prude with me, while with him . . . damn it!

My thoughts were tied in knots, none of it made any sense. Why had Mia even told me this in the first place?

I kissed your brother
. . .
kissed your brother
. . . pounded through my brain painfully, again and again, until it felt like my head had swollen to the size of a watermelon. What I really wanted to do was ram my head against a wall so it would finally stop.

That night, I barely closed my eyes, tossing and turning in my knotted sheets.

When I woke up from my restless slumber the next day, for a fleeting moment I thought I had only dreamed the whole mess. My girlfriend couldn’t possibly have cheated on me with my little brother! That couldn’t really have happened.

But apparently, it could. After all, Mia herself had confessed to me! With an angry cry, I hurled my pillow against the wall. I felt the rage pumping through my veins—red and hot and powerful. The confusion and pain of yesterday evening, everything was carried away by a tremendous surge of rage. It felt good not to feel anything else.

I gritted my teeth. How dare the two of them—right in front of my eyes, and yet behind my back! Scenes from the previous months came to mind. Now, suddenly, I saw through everything with crystal clear, razor-sharp clarity. How could I have been so blind not to notice what was going on between them?

Jay’s blushing when Mia came to visit us. The stolen glances they exchanged, as if they shared a secret, as if there was something special between them. Yes, I had been a trusting idiot, but the two of them were . . .

“Traitors!” I whispered.

At that moment, my grandmother came through the door. “What are you still doing here, Alexander?” she scolded, without noticing my dark expression. “Did you oversleep? It’s almost nine o’clock already! Come on, rise and shine. School started a long time ago!”

There was no point in arguing with Grandma. Besides, I didn’t want those two traitors to think I would crawl away from them to lick my wounds like a dog that’s been kicked. I got up to get dressed.

I arrived at school with my head held high. The break must have just started. My friends stood in their usual corner of the schoolyard.