Lucca (4 page)

He decided on blackcurrant yoghurt and put the carton down in the trolley with the New Zealand leg of lamb, Moroccan potatoes and Chilean red wine. When he looked up again Andreas Bark stood in front of him holding Lauritz by the hand. They had seen him, he said, as if that was sufficient reason for accosting him. Andreas Bark smiled a bit sheepishly and looked as if he regretted stopping. Robert didn't know what to say. He felt unprotected faced with the other man's appealing gaze, now he was out of uniform and they stood there each with their trolley, outside his domain, on an equal footing. The silence embarrassed both of them, but then Andreas Bark clutched at a possibility. Robert had not yet been introduced to Lauritz. The boy stretched out his hand politely.

The feel of the small soft hand caught him by surprise. It awoke an unexpected and vivid memory of Lea's hand, when
she was the same age. He had forgotten its weightless frailty and doll-like proportions. The recollection suddenly crossed his mind of how he had walked through streets and parks holding her slightly sticky little hand, alone or with Monica, when they were still a family. As Lea gradually grew bigger he had forgotten the various stages of her early childhood, until he had only snapshots to remind him, shiny and inconsequential, their colours already indistinct.

Robert resorted to the excuse of having to meet his daughter at the station, and at once regretted opening a door onto his private life. A white lie would almost have been better. Andreas Bark asked how old she was. The innocent question seemed like a far too intimate touch. Robert replied and smiled a goodbye, pushing his trolley off through the crowd with relief. Methodically and without looking from side to side he worked through his shopping list, past the cold counters with red meat and the shelves of brightly coloured packages, the displays of barbecues and flowered, folding garden furniture. All the time he had the feeling that Andreas Bark was watching his every movement.

Throughout the day the cloud cover had thickened. It hung low over the town and a cold wind tugged and tore at everything it could get hold of, making you think it was February instead of April. As Robert pushed his trolley through the check-out the car park was veiled in a shining mist of rain behind the fogged-up automatic glass doors, and each time they opened he felt cold air on his neck and around his ankles. He paid and pushed the trolley out under the porch roof where people stood waiting, hoping it was only a shower. A few plucked up courage, bent over and ran, the wheels of their piled-up trolleys rotating, sending them lurching over the asphalt, the men in shorts or jogging trousers, the women with bare legs under their summer dresses. Inveterate optimists, thought Robert.

A scarf of trickling water fell from the roof gutter and landed with small explosions at his feet. The wind turned the rain into a carpet rolling across the car park, and the dim light imparted a dull shine to the swells of rain-carpet. He glimpsed Andreas
Bark in the group waiting there. He stood leaning against an old-fashioned lady's bicycle looking out at the rain. The boy was seated on a child's seat on the luggage rack with his helmet askew. The bulging shopping bags hung heavily from the handle-bars. Robert thought of the picture of the totally wrecked car, which a local paper had printed on the front page, without naming the victim of the tragedy. A thirty-two-year-old woman. It might have been anyone, struck down by one of the countless accidents recorded daily in the press worldwide.

It looked like turning into an all-night show . . . Andreas Bark smiled gratefully as if he did not deserve Robert's taking pity on him, even speaking to him. His subdued, timorous expression seemed at odds with his pronounced features. That face seemed to characterise Andreas Bark as a man normally sure of himself. Now he was broken, and to add insult to injury he would have to cycle home in the rain like a Vietnamese rice-peasant, weighed down by his burdens. His gratitude had no end and several times he asked if Robert would be in time for his daughter's train, as they unloaded their bags side by side into the boot.

They left the bicycle where it stood. Robert adjusted the safety belt on the back seat to fit Lauritz's small body. As they set off Andreas Bark asked if Robert minded him smoking. Of course not . . . He opened the window a crack and lit one of his poisonous cigarettes, and Robert almost regretted his humanitarian impulse. He had no idea what they could talk about, but the rain on the roof made it easier to sit in silence. Andreas Bark's leather jacket creaked a bit, and the indicators ticked when Robert prepared to turn. Otherwise there was no sound except the drumming of the raindrops and the wipers' monotonous swishing on the windscreen. They drove over the railway line and on through the industrial district, Andreas Bark giving directions.

Suddenly he announced, out of the blue, Robert thought, that he had just had a première in Malmö. He was a playwright. Aha . . . Did he write in other genres as well? You had to ask about something. He had once written poetry. But that was long ago, he went on with a pawky grin. What was it
about, his play? Oh, God, that was always hard to describe. The playwright smiled, and the smile seemed both shy and coy. That was why you wrote, wasn't it? To find out why. If Robert understood. He didn't, but he kept that to himself.

The tarmac shone as it ribboned through the black fields, and the ploughed furrows followed the gradual rise of the road towards the ridge ahead, where a brown-painted transformer station was outlined against the grey watercolour shades of the clouds. But now it was finished, anyway. So he must have some ideas about it, at least. Andreas paid no heed to Robert's teasing tone, or he had not caught on to it. It was a psychological play. That is, not psychological in the traditional, psychoanalytical sense. It was rather, what should he say . . . existential. A sharp smell of liquid manure wafted into the car. Andreas closed his window and stubbed out his cigarette.

You could say it was about evil, he went on. Now there was no stopping him. On the cannibalism of emotions, on the repressed darkness, what was mute and unadjusted in us, beyond the social and linguistic order. When all was said and done, like all stories, it was probably about death. He fell silent, almost exhausted, thought Robert. Like someone bidding at an auction who at length realises he isn't in a position to bid any higher. Then there was nothing but the sound of the screen wipers and the rain on the roof, while the farms and fields streamed past surrounded by trees, like islands in a black sea of earth with their grain silos and white-washed barns.

They turned off down a narrow gravel road leading towards the woods. A horse raised its head and watched them through the rain, its wet mane sticking to its neck. Robert glanced at the clock beside the speedometer. He had to be at the station in half an hour. It was tea-time. The nurse would give her a straw, and when she had gone away the playwright's wife would lie motionless in her darkness, listening to the rain on the aluminium blinds at the window. The same rain that was falling on her home.

It was an old farm labourer's house in red brick. Its thatched roof had been replaced with asbestos roofing. A clutter of toys
was scattered around the courtyard and a tricycle lay on its side near a cement mixer and a pile of sacks covered with plastic. The woods lay close to the other side of the house, the wind rampaged in the sodden beech leaves. He helped Andreas in with his shopping. The kitchen and living room were painted white and could just as well have been part of a fashionable town apartment, with Italian furniture, art posters on the walls and rows of cast-iron pans.

On the kitchen wall hung a sheet of brushed steel with magnets from which hung shopping lists, recipes from magazines and a few photographs. It must be her, the auburn-haired woman with high cheekbones, pictured in several of them. Would he like a glass of red wine? He looked at his watch. Yes, please, just a quick one. Andreas sat down facing him under the notice-board and poured two glasses. They had finished furnishing the house a month ago. Andreas stopped talking and looked at the boy, he lay on the floor playing with Lego. Then he met Robert's eyes and smiled tentatively. A vase of dead tulips stood on the windowsill gaping at the pane, several dry withered petals had dropped.

The house had been a ruin when they moved in. They had done most of the work themselves, they had really slogged at it. And now . . . He didn't know. It was all so new. Robert said something about rehabilitation, where and how, shifting his gaze from Andreas to the notice-board behind him. Most of the photos had been taken around the house, which appeared at various stages of refurbishment. A sun-tanned Andreas mixing cement, in a mason's cap with a bare torso. Lucca painting window frames, in overalls, her hair tied carelessly at her neck and splotches of paint on her cheeks. In another picture she was in a light summer dress with the low sun behind her, giving Lauritz a swing, the boy hung horizontally in the air and her skirt flew out like a pale flower of folds around her long legs.

He kept on asking himself if she did it intentionally . . . Andreas observed him in the pause that followed, wondering if he had gone too far. There was a picture of Paris as well. Robert recognised the red awning above the café table and the
peeling trunks of the plane trees in the background. He said he had asked himself the same thing. She was pale and dressed in a tailored grey jacket, with a petrol-blue silk scarf round her neck. Her hair was tied in a pony tail and she wore lipstick. Had she threatened to do it? The colour film enhanced the red that framed the narrow dark slit of her mouth, as if she was about to say something. No, not exactly threatened. She was looking into the camera with her green eyes. Robert told him she had been offered psychiatric help several times. Had she . . . Andreas hesitated. Had she said anything about . . . them?

No, he replied. She had not confided in him, as he had said. The boy came over to Andreas, who lifted him onto his lap and kissed his hair. He sat there with his nose buried in the boy's hair before looking up again. The terrible thing, he said, the terrible thing was that that very evening . . . He looked down into his glass before taking a mouthful. Robert looked at the picture of Lucca Montale in a Parisian café again. For a moment it seemed as if he met her gaze. He could not decide whether she looked surprised because she was unprepared for being photographed, or she had suddenly become aware of some connection he could know nothing about.

There was a large clock on the wall beside the notice-board. Lea's train would arrive in ten minutes. The boy let himself slide down on the floor and ran into the living room. That very evening . . . Andreas went on and turned away his face. Robert stood up. The other man looked at him in confusion.

L
ea stood on the platform beside her large bag, shivering in the cold and looking down at the shining tracks. He thought she had grown although it was only a fortnight since they had been together. Monica had bought her some new clothes. She wore a thin jacket, white jeans, white socks and white trainers. She did not see him until he was almost in front of her, then she smiled with relief and hugged him, but he could feel her disappointment at his arriving late. He carried her bag through the vestibule, feeling ashamed at the excuse he had fabricated on the spot about a queue in the supermarket. Two down-and-outs stood near the exit drinking beer. Their washed-out denim jackets were spotted with rain, one of them had the usual dog on a lead. The owner of the dog raised his glass in a friendly toast to Robert as they passed. Lea wrinkled her nose, assailed by the reek of beer and wet fur. On the way to the car she told him a friend had invited her to stay with her parents in the country during the summer holidays. He turned in his seat as he reversed out of the parking place. Lea struggled with the safety belt before getting it out to click in place. She could come and stay with him during the holidays too, he said, changing gear. But Monica had plans for them to go to Lanzarote. Wasn't it too hot there in the summer? We'll hit on something, she said, smiling at him in the mirror. It was a very adult remark. It sounded like something Monica might say. Lea did not really resemble either of them, apart from having his hair colour, chestnut brown. She had been utterly herself from the start, a totally complete person who had merely used them as assistants in her advent. She asked him what was for dinner. Leg of lamb, he told her and asked after Monica and Jan. They used first names, had done so since their divorce. She was to give him their regards.

He had a meal with them sometimes when he was in town, it meant something to Lea. It was surprisingly easy, all three were very civilised, but he usually left after kissing Lea goodnight. Sometimes they referred to the divorce, but always in abstract terms and without mention of the little mishap that had brought about the change, when he arrived home too early one winter Sunday. Robert wondered occasionally whether he and Monica might still have been together if he had not caught her out. If he had just left a message on the answering machine when he called home from Oslo. Then his colleague might have had time to take himself off and everything would have seemed different. Perhaps she would have grown tired of her lover, tired of all the emotional turmoil, secrecy and practical lies. To exchange one doctor for another wasn't exactly revolutionary, anyway.

They did not seem passionately in love, she and Jan, but of course that might just be tactfulness, to make it look as if their relationship was already as much a matter of routine as his and Monica's marriage had become. They did not even refrain from kissing each other heartily when he was there, the way married people kiss, like siblings. Perhaps it was really some kind of sophisticated consideration, thought Robert, a blind to conceal their erotic hurricanes. Unless that was how you ended up in any case, like siblings, because in the end establishing a family was like returning to the family you thought you had left.

Lea sat on the sofa watching television while he unpacked the shopping in the kitchen. As usual he had bought too many things for lunch and too many biscuits, as if the larder had to overflow with abundance when Lea was coming. He could not find the leg of lamb. He went outside again and opened the boot, but there was nothing in it except the first aid box, the jack and the spanner for changing wheels. Andreas Bark must have taken the bag with the leg of lamb when they carried his things in. He could not face driving out to the house in the woods a second time that day, and he certainly could not face the other man's drama again.

He had forgotten to close the gate in the garden fence. Behind the wide panorama window onto the terrace he saw Lea's turned
away figure and the television screen trembling like a drop of quicksilver, floating in the semi-darkness of the living room behind the grey hatching of the rain. She was watching
Flipper
. As a child he had also loved the plucky dolphin's adventures, and now the series was being repeated it was his growing daughter sitting there dreaming of Florida's blue lagoons. It had become a classic. What a cultural inheritance! He had cautiously tried to introduce her to such varied offerings as Vivaldi's
Seasons
and Debussy's
Children's Corner
, but they could not compete with the Spice Girls and Michael Jackson.

He stood there in the rain for a few moments reminiscing over the graceful dolphin and the sun-tanned, well-organised family it had rescued from so many criminal plots against their sun-warmed happiness. The bright technicolour of the films had faded with the years, and the whole thing seemed pretty naïve, but he clearly remembered how he had meditated over the wise playful dolphin Saturday after Saturday. Its feats of grace when it reared and turned somersaults over the coral-blue water expressed pure unsullied joy. Neither more nor less exhilarating and jubilant than Vivaldi's trilling, violin-shimmering springtime.

He cooked the burgers they were to have had the next day. They would have to go and get a pizza when that time came. Lea was still watching television. He would really have liked to have her help in the kitchen. She did that sometimes, it was a pleasant way of spending time together, but there was something about her motionless and almost melancholy concentration that made him leave her alone. Perhaps she was tired.

She did not have much to say over dinner. If it stayed fine, he said, they could make a start on the kitchen garden, and he reeled off the list of seeds he had bought, but she didn't seem particularly keen on going out to dig. Last time she had been enthusiastic, it had actually been her idea. He asked her about school and what she had been doing since last time and she responded, slightly dutifully, he felt, but she did not volunteer anything herself. She had begun to go riding and almost made a little story out of her account of how a young horse had
thrown off one of her friends, but the girl had not been hurt, and since then her horse had behaved perfectly. She ate nicely, that was something Monica considered important. Yes, she loved the roller skates, they were
ace
.

He couldn't help smiling at the word. It was like seeing her in nylon stockings for the first time when six months ago she had played the princess in the school play, with mascara on her eyes, dark red lips and a beauty spot on her cheek, when he didn't quite know what to think. And the trip to Lanzarote? Monica had said something about the beginning of July and when she came home, there was her friend with the summer cottage. He did not want to dig away at the subject too much, but he felt a stab of sadness at the prospect of not seeing her during the holidays. Or was it just as much the thought that Monica and Jan would have a monopoly on her? He asked if she would like some dessert, he had bought ice-cream and made a fruit salad. She chose the fruit salad. He wondered whether it was out of politeness, because he had taken the trouble.

She seemed sad, but perhaps he was merely over-interpreting her recurring silence and withdrawn expression. He was always afraid of being inattentive. After a while, as she sat pushing the last slice of banana around her plate with her spoon, he asked if anything was worrying her. She avoided his eye. No, nothing. He gently stroked the back of her hand with his index finger. Anything at school? At home?

She left his hand there, stroking cautiously. She looked away, into the twilight of the garden. Then she said it had stopped raining. She was right, the swishing of the rain had ceased and the evening sky brightened behind the silhouetted birches, a soft yellow under the hurrying frayed blue clouds. She helped him clear away and fill the dishwasher. He asked if she would like a game of table tennis. She looked at him for a moment. Okay, she said, smiling, and the smile seemed genuine. They played for twenty minutes, she was tough, he started sweating, out of breath. It was silly to play straight after dinner, but she seemed to enjoy it and he liked to watch her quick, lithe movements.

Afterwards he made himself some coffee. They sat down to
watch television. She leaned against him on the sofa as usual, covered with the rug. Neither said anything much, again her gaze was distant and abstracted. Now and then he raised some subject or other in an attempt to get a proper conversation going, but she just responded with brief comments as if to get it over with, apparently absorbed in what was happening on the screen. After she had gone to bed he poured himself a whisky and listened to one of Bach's cello suites in an old recording by Pablo Casals. He regretted being so direct in his questions over dinner. The old music wove its logical web around him and he followed every one of the crisp trembling threads in anticipation of their nodal point until he felt he was the spider.

When he went into the bathroom in the morning she had carefully hung her wet bath towel to dry on the bar above the heater. She was nowhere to be seen. She had made her bed as neatly as a housemaid would do. When they lived together she had always left towels crumpled up in a corner of the tiled floor, and her room looked as if it had suffered an earthquake, but of course she was older now. She was out in the garden with her fingers dug into the front pockets of her tight jeans, her face lifted to the trees. He couldn't see what she had caught sight of. A bird, maybe, or a cloud. He went into the kitchen to make coffee. When she came in by the scullery door soon afterwards she wiped her feet on the door mat as thoroughly as a guest.

It had cleared up during the night, the sun was drying the grass, and if not for the wind, it would almost have been warm. She spent the morning in the kitchen at her homework. He asked if there was anything he could help with. She looked up and smiled, there was nothing. After breakfast he took the new tools and the basket of seeds out to the small corner of the garden he had pegged off in a rectangle. To begin with she sat beside him watching him dig, absently plucking small handfuls of grass and dropping them again. He grew red in the face from slaving away bent over, and began to feel foolish. He certainly wasn't a gardener.

Then she got bored with just sitting there and soon she was
digging beside him until the sweat trickled down her forehead. She enjoyed it and made a mock grimace of disgust when she cut a worm in half and saw the two pink pieces wriggle off in different directions. He found an animal's skull, and they squatted down with their heads together as he brushed earth from the domed periosteum. They could not agree on the kind of animal it belonged to. A weasel, she said. He thought it might be a badger. She gave his shoulder a friendly shove. How stupid he was! He carried the skull carefully indoors on his outstretched palm, and they found a little box which she filled with cotton wool, so she could take it to school. And get the matter settled, as she said with a pedantic air which made him smile.

When they went into the garden again they found Andreas and Lauritz on the lawn. Andreas held out a supermarket bag and smiled apologetically, either because he had called unannounced or because he had taken Robert's leg of lamb. He had looked up the address in the directory, he explained, as if to account for his unexpected appearance. Lea looked expectantly from one to the other, Lauritz hid behind his father's legs.

Robert felt obliged to show some hospitality. He suggested a beer. Andreas didn't need a glass, thanks. The children had orange juice. They sat in the sun on the terrace, conversation hung fire. When Andreas leaned his head back to drink from the bottle Robert imagined he was taking in the whole property and the surrounding hedges and fence dividing it from the other houses and gardens. He who lived a free life in the woods, in his leather jacket, riding a rusty lady's bicycle, dramatist and pioneer in one and the same person. It must be good to live in a house like this, where everything worked. Yes, it was actually. Robert picked up the signal behind the smooth reply. The other man persisted. Did it have a sauna as well? No, replied Robert, looking down at his tennis shirt with the crocodile. There was in fact neither sauna nor jacuzzi, and he didn't have a parabolic reflector, either. Lea giggled and Andreas smiled fatuously. Robert loved her for that giggle.

Lea took the boy's hand to show him round the garden, and he went along with her trustfully. She seemed very grown-up
as she entertained the child and encouraged him to work the newly dug soil with a hoe, taking care he did not hurt himself. She talked to the boy in a cheerful friendly voice, kneeled beside him to be at eye level, watching him and sometimes smiling as he made faces and clumsy movements. She had pulled her hair off her face and tied it in a pony tail. Now and again she brushed aside a lock from her cheek and pushed it behind her ear with a feminine gesture.

What a pretty daughter he had. Yes, said Robert. Andreas picked at the label of his beer bottle. Robert must excuse him for being a nuisance the day before, but he had no-one to talk to, not here, and it was all . . . he sighed. Robert waited. Lea made the boy chuckle down at the end of the garden. The whole thing was such a mess . . . how could he put it? That was what he had been about to tell Robert yesterday, when Robert had to go. The night Lucca crashed he had told her he wanted a divorce.

The shadows were lengthening. Lauritz came running over the grass. Andreas rose to his feet, lifted him up and swung him round in the air, as Robert had seen Lucca doing in the photograph in their kitchen. Lea went over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. How about asking them to stay for dinner? She smiled at him, her head on one side, as if she were his little wife. It would be nice, wouldn't it? She would help with the cooking. They could go on with the digging tomorrow. Andreas sounded surprised at Robert's suggestion. Now they had cycled all this way! But they didn't have to urge him, and he insisted on taking over the cooking. Inside he looked around at the design furniture and the prints on the walls and said admiringly what a lovely house it was. It was very Scandinavian and timeless, and the projectile-shaped Italian furniture in the farm labourer's house in the woods crossed Robert's mind. In the other's eyes he was obviously a true suburbanite.