Stella (6 page)

As if reluctantly, her father suddenly called, “Stella!” and then again, like a request, “Stella!” She put the cigarette she had been about to light down on an ashtray and left me alone. Evidently the old radio operator was feeling chilly even at his workbench; he asked for his warm indoor jacket, then they whispered together and I knew it was about my visit. My exercise book with the essay wasn’t on top of the pile, but even if it had been I wouldn’t have picked it up. For behind the pile of exercise books on her desk stood a framed photograph of a blond, athletic man looking challengingly at the camera, threatening whoever was taking the picture with a rolled-up journal. On the margin of the photograph I read the words, in English: “Stella, with love. Colin.”

Not right away. I didn’t want to ask her right away who this Colin was and how they were linked. I was trying to guess his age. He couldn’t be so much older than me. I picked up the cigarette lying on the ashtray
and lit it. I looked at the poster of
A Queen Surveys Her Country
, by some English painter, I think his name was Attenborough. The queen’s country was in twilight, no paths, no roads, you could just make out houses beside a stretch of water, low buildings out of reach.

Oh, your smile, Stella, when you came in and immediately saw that I was smoking your cigarette. With a movement of your hand, you told me to stay sitting where I was. This is different territory, you implied. It’s not the classroom, you don’t have to stand up here when I come in.

“He’s feeling better,” she said. “Today my father’s feeling better.”

She took a few steps, stopped in front of her desk, and placed one hand on the pile of exercise books. I still dared not ask her opinion of my essay. She herself, I thought, must choose the moment. The longer her pause lasted, the surer I was I couldn’t expect praise. She never withheld praise, she began with it every time she gave exercise books back, discussed our work, and told us her reasons for our grades. I was waiting for her to sit down beside me, but she didn’t, she went to the window and looked out. It was as if you were searching for something, Stella, something
to say, an idea. After a while I saw the expression on her face changing, and with a touch of slight sorrow in her tone, not forbearance this time, she said, “What I’m doing now, Christian, is something I’ve never done before, you could call it subversive. Yes, when I think of what links us, the school would see it as subversion. What I have to say to you really should be said in class.” As she spoke I remembered that room in the Seaview Hotel, the pillow we had shared, and I felt a vague fear and a vague pain, but only briefly, because after she had lit herself another cigarette she went back to pacing the room.

What you said, Stella, didn’t seem to be addressed to me personally at first. It was as if you wanted to express something as a matter of principle to anyone who might be concerned.
“Animal Farm
is a fable, an allegory, the story says one thing and also tells us another. Behind what we see going on in the foreground there’s a wider truth; you could describe it as the story of the miseries of revolution.” She stopped in front of the bookshelves and went on speaking as she looked at them. “The animals aren’t so much thinking of the classic demands of revolutionaries—more bread, more freedom. Their aim is to end the domination of human beings, a limited
and concrete aim, and they achieve it. But then, with the founding of a new civilization, misery begins. It begins with the formation of social classes and certain individuals’ aspirations to wield power.”

Now Stella turned back to me. “And as we’re on the subject, Christian, you gave an adequate account of the early chapters, the commandments, the slogans that you compared to the Tablets of the Law, all correct, perfectly accurate, and you quoted that terrible basic principle: ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ But you didn’t mention the outcome of the revolution, or maybe you overlooked it, the outcome typical of so many revolutions. You didn’t spot the power struggles in the ruling class, you missed the dreadful terror that set in after the conquest, and finally, Christian, you didn’t notice that the whole thing is a portrayal of human behavior. There’s a book title—no reason why you should know it, but it says a great deal:
Revolution Eats Its Children
. In short, you named the causes of the revolution, but you hardly mentioned any of the reasons why it failed.”

I didn’t try to defend myself, I didn’t do anything like that because I could see you knew more than I
did, and everything you held against me was true. But there was one thing I thought I ought to know: what grade you had given me, or were going to give me. When I asked, “If I didn’t write a good essay I suppose I can’t expect a very good grade,” you shrugged your shoulders and said, in a tone with a touch of reproof in it, “I don’t think this is the place to talk about that.”

Stella was letting me see that we should keep things separate, and for all her affection for me and all her understanding of what we had done, she wasn’t ready to give up authority in her own field. We were not to talk about grades, she had said, so firmly that I made no attempt to persuade her to change her mind, nor did I venture to put my hands on her hips and pull her down on my lap.

When the telephone rang you didn’t want me to leave your study, you looked at me as you spoke, you were amused, and relieved, this was the call you had been waiting for. It seemed that Stella’s friends, who had been going to take her aboard their yacht ages ago, were ringing again to say they were on their way. As far as I could make out, they didn’t yet know what day they would arrive; the wind was against them. But
when I suggested going out to show her the underwater stone fields again, she said no.

“Later,” she said. “When I come back.”

And when we parted she said it had been a very surprising visit, certainly intending to suggest that she would rather do without such surprises in the future. In her front garden, I turned to look back, and they were both waving to me, Stella and the old radio operator.

Alone now, alone in my classroom, I sat in front of the open drawer and looked at Stella’s picture. I decided to tell her everything she didn’t yet know about me, including the near accident by the breakwater that happened when I was checking the stones and saw a huge boulder coming down at me; it would have hit me but for the pressure wave that flung me out of its way.

The door opened, so quietly that I didn’t even hear it. “There you are,” said Heiner Thomsen, quickly coming over to me. He had a message from Principal Block; the principal wanted to speak to me at once.

“Do you know what it’s about?”

“No idea.”

“Where is he?”

“Same place as usual.”

I closed the drawer and slowly went downstairs to Block’s office on the ground floor. He did not come forward to meet me; sitting at his desk, he signaled for me to approach. The way he was looking at me—that penetrating, questioning look—told me at once that he expected something special of me. I felt it was humiliating to be left standing there so long in silence. His narrow lips moved, he seemed to be tasting something; finally he said, “You obviously wanted to conclude our hour of remembrance in your own way.”

“Me?”

“You took Ms. Petersen’s photograph away.”

“Who says so?”

“A number of people saw you. They were watching when you picked it up, put it under your sweater, and took it away.”

“They must be wrong.”

“No, Christian, they are not wrong, and now please will you tell me why you did it? Ms. Petersen was your English teacher.”

I was prepared to admit that I’d taken Stella’s picture, but standing there in front of his desk I couldn’t think of any reason to offer him, least of all the only
reason why I did it. After a moment I said, “All right, I’ll admit I took the photograph. I didn’t want it to get lost. Maybe I wanted to keep it as a memento of my teacher. We all liked her in my class.”

“But, Christian, you wanted to keep the photograph for yourself, didn’t you?”

“It ought to be in our classroom,” I said.

He listened to me with an ironic smile, and then repeated, “In your classroom. I see. Why not in the school hall, on the board with pictures of several other former members of our staff? Why not there?”

“I can put it there if you like,” I said. “I’ll do that right away.”

Now Block was looking at me gravely, and I was inclined to think he knew more than I’d assumed, although I couldn’t guess how far his knowledge went. Nothing annoys me so much as being suspected of something and not knowing what. To put a stop to this conversation, I suggested doing what he wanted here and now. “If it’s all right, then, Dr. Block, I’ll go and put the photograph where you want it to be.”

He nodded. I was dismissed. I was already at the door when he called me back again. He did not meet my eyes as he said, “What we do not say, Christian,
sometimes has more consequences than what we do say. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes, I understand,” I said, and I made haste to put Stella’s photo where he wanted it.

Once again, Stella, I carried your photo under my sweater. On my way to the hall I didn’t speak to anyone I passed, I avoided bumping into anyone. The board wasn’t quite full; six photos of former teachers were up there, all of them old men. There was only one who looked as if he might have a sense of humor, a teacher in naval uniform with two crossed flags in front of his chest. He was said to have taught biology, long before my time. I put Stella’s photo between him and a man with a craggy face. I didn’t bother to assess the company she’d keep. You had your place, Stella, and that was enough for me just then.

Looking at you brought me back something I needed, or thought I needed: the sudden happiness of a touch, the joy that demanded a repeat performance. I was sure, at that moment, I had needed that photograph of you all for myself. The brightness on the beach, the dazzling brightness that Sunday when I was waiting for Stella in the Volkswagen Beetle that Claus Bultjohan had lent me. It was a cabriolet and belonged
to his father, who was away in Scandinavia on a TV assignment, making a film about the culture of the Samis who, as nomads, astonishingly had the right to cross the Russian border.

After my visit to her home, I hadn’t even tried to make a date to meet Stella. Knowing that in this spell of fair weather she would come to the beach on her own to read or sunbathe, I decided to wait for her at a suitable distance from her house. I listened to Benny Goodman in the car. I drove very slowly after her as she walked along, wearing her brightly colored blue-and-yellow beach dress, with her beach bag hanging from a strap over her shoulder. She walked fast and confidently; I stopped suddenly beside her just before she reached the kiosk where she bought smoked fish and magazines. I saw the displeasure in her face, but that expression immediately gave way to surprise and amazement. “Oh, Christian,” was all she said. I opened the car door, and after a moment’s hesitation she got in.

She promptly sat down on my camera, which I had put on the passenger seat, “Good heavens, what’s that?”

“Won it in a competition,” I said. “I came in fifth.”

“Where are you taking it?” she asked, to which I replied, “Anywhere there’s something worth seeing.”

We stopped at the place where the navigation marks had been brought in for their new coat of paint, though they still had to be cleaned of rust first. How cheerfully you agreed to my idea of taking some photographs here, sitting on the navigation marks, riding on them, clutching them, you played along in almost exuberant spirits, and seemed to be caressing them. Only when I asked you be a car model did you dismiss the idea. I thought of you sitting on the hood, just like those pretty girls in car showrooms, when the breeze lifted your beach dress, and your pale blue panties showed. You quickly waved to me to stop and said, “Not that, Christian, let’s not go as far as that,” and then you asked where I was going to have the film developed. I promised to keep the photos to myself and not show them to anyone.

Stella photographed me just once that Sunday. We were sitting in the fish restaurant beside the casino; almost all the places on the terrace in the sun were taken. Stella read the menu several times, and her way of coming to a decision amused me: no sooner had she closed the leather-bound menu than she reached for it
again, read it, shook her head, and changed her mind. It didn’t escape her that all this amused me, because before she ordered she said, “I sometimes like not being sure, I like to be able to choose.” We ordered plaice wrapped in bacon and fried, with potato salad on the side.

She admired my skill in cutting the fish, particularly the long incision with which I separated the back fillet from the underside, and tried to copy me, but she failed, and I pulled her plate toward me and did it for her. Stella watched, interested, as I then picked up the skeleton of the fish, carefully licked it clean, with relish, and held it up in front of my face. Stella laughed out loud, turned away, looked back at me, smiling, and said, “Wonderful, Christian, stay just like that, we have to put this on record.” Asking me to open my mouth and put the bones against my lips, she took a photo, and then took another shot. When I suggested that we could take a picture of both of us together she hesitated for a moment, as I had expected. Finally she agreed, and after lunch we went down to the beach and found a place among abandoned sand castles. There we photographed ourselves with the timer. Neither Stella nor I thought that what the photo showed, or
rather would show, was anything to worry about. We were sitting on the beach in summer clothes, close together, we were taking care to look happy, or at least pleased with ourselves. I didn’t say so, but I was thinking: I love Stella. And I was also thinking: I’d like to know more about her. You can never know enough when you realize you love someone.

When you took Faulkner’s
Light in August
out of your beach bag, stretched out, and told me, as if by way of apology, that you really had to read this, I asked, “Why? Why do you have to read it? It’s not going to be one of our class books, is it?”