When he got home he made an omelette and ate it in the kitchen as usual. Afterwards he stretched out on the sofa and listened to the famous recording of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphoses by Karajan and the Berliners. He closed his eyes and let the wide, vast expanses of the strings overwhelm him as they displaced each other in soft avalanches, brooding and impenetrable like layers of earth and darkness. He felt something hard against his back and felt for it with his hand. It was the table tennis ball Lauritz had been squeezing when he fell asleep there the night before. He went over and switched off the music, then opened the sliding door to the terrace. He sat down on the doorstep with a cigarette. It was chilly, but he stayed there.
They had slept late, he and Lea. In the afternoon they drove out to the beach as usual. She gathered seagull feathers, a whole bunch, and he pulled out his pen-knife and showed her how to cut the ends, on a slant, with a vertical slit from the point, so she could use them as quill pens. She was more talkative than the previous day, the unexpected guests had obviously cheered her up. She spoke of being an actor, and he encouraged her. She had done well as the princess. The sun shone, and although it was still windy the sand was warm to sit on. Lea collected bundles of dried seaweed and snapped the bubbles between her fingers. There was an offshore wind, and the calm surface of the sea sparkled where the little waves swelled up, at first as long lines that slowly grew bigger until they broke into a small comb of foam which made trickling tracks through the pebbles on the shoreline.
How long had he been friends with Andreas? She liked him, and Lauritz was sweet. Robert smiled and watched a gull swooping past. Suddenly it started to flap its wings and the movement was reflected as a white flicker on the water. Not very long . . . Were they separated, Andreas and the woman with the strange name? She asked the question lightly, casually. The parents of half her friends were divorced, that was how it was, and the children adapted themselves. Yes, he said.
They had told her one morning, he and Monica, while they were still in the kitchen over breakfast and the sheaves of Sunday papers. She had merely looked at them, first at one, then the other, before going into her room and closing the door. When he went in she was sitting on her bed drawing on the back of her hand with a felt pen. Sometimes she and her friends drew on each other’s arms, but she was not drawing a flower, it was nothing, a growing, ever more complicated morass of turbulent lines crossing each other on her narrow hand. He sat down beside her and put his arm around her. She leaned away from him, looking down at the colourful duvet cover with an African pattern. He put his arm around her and sat there for a little while, trying to talk to her. Of course they both loved her. He looked at her, turned towards the stuffed animals leaning affectionately against each other. Both of them were still there. They just wouldn’t be together. She asked him to go.
Suddenly they had stopped quarrelling or just snarling at each other, he and Monica. By catching her in the act he had unintentionally and at one blow made every quarrel superfluous. After her new man had sent him the nod of a colleague as he passed the kitchen door and gently closed the front door with a cautious little click, everything between them had been fittingly businesslike. She had slept on the sofa in the living room until she moved. She even took charge of all the paperwork. There was clearly not a lot to discuss, and they both showed goodwill in getting it over as painlessly as possible. For Lea’s sake, as they said, almost conspiratorially, as if they suddenly had something in common.
He had had no suspicions, having assumed ups and downs were normal after ten years of marriage. He had not noticed that the downs had grown longer and longer, until everyday life was a treacherously calm sea in which shark fins shot up when you least expected them. An innocent exchange about cooking the dinner could suddenly end up in hair-raising accusations, and small oversights or chance errors mounted up like evidence in a long drawn-out trial before an imaginary judge. But who should condemn one and acquit the other? Crestfallen, they went back for a while to the everyday rhythm of trivialities until one of them again succumbed to accumulated boredom or despair and struck sparks at the slightest touch.
Afterwards he realised that her hypochondria and irritable outbursts had been a cover for her battered conscience, and he felt sorry for her with a backlash of sympathy. It must have been a nightmare, what for him was merely the numbed monotony of an extinguished cohabitation. When everything had fallen into place and they had adapted to their new reality, he was on the verge of telling her she had not needed to almost tear herself apart with tortures of conscience. He had had a secret as well, but that was an old story, and as he had never told her about it why do so now, when it could not possibly do anything to change things?
They went further along the beach towards the point. The wind sent fugitive cat’s paws over the water. Lea took his hand as they walked, chatting at random. He felt wistful to think they had only now become close, a few hours before she would have to take the train home. For that had become home, the house Jan and Monica had bought, a bit flashy, Robert thought, out in one of the northern suburbs. With him she was only visiting. She said they should do more about that kitchen garden next time, they might plant an apple tree too, looking at him with a smile as if she could read his thoughts.
At the end, where the beach melted into an isthmus and lakes, he saw two figures approaching. A swarm of birds rose from the rushes and turned in the air, the flock spread out. When they came closer he recognised the librarian. She was with a man who looked younger, wearing a baseball cap. She had an old sweater on, and carried her shoes, walking with bare feet at the edge of the sea. She had nice legs. He recalled them beside him on the sofa, in black stockings. It had been completely up to him. He looked at Lea when they passed each other with a brief, formal smile and conventional nods on both parts. Lea asked who she was. Someone from the town, he replied.
When Robert arrived at work on Monday morning, the sister told him that Lucca Montale had suffered another breakdown during Saturday night. They had given her the same sedative as the first time. Robert recalled how Andreas had sat on his sofa interspersing one Calvados after another into the tale of his unfaithfulness. On Sunday she had complained of pain and asked for more Ketogan, but the doctor on duty had refused to increase the dose. She lay in the same position as usual when he visited her, legs raised in the air, shrouded in plaster and bandages. The lower part of her face was still disfigured by swelling and effusions of dark blood. He asked if she was in pain. Yes, she replied dully. He heard she had been distressed during the weekend. Distressed . . . that was some understatement. He didn’t understand shit, was her scornful response.
As he lingered at the foot of the bed studying her battered face, he felt a twinge of guilt over the scraps of knowledge about her life he had unwillingly been made privy to. She was even more distressed than he’d thought, but he had no way of helping her. He sat down cautiously on the edge of the bed and asked if she was sure she did not need to talk to someone. She would have to accept her situation, he said, before she could make any headway. The words sounded meaningless. Make headway. He increased her daily dose of Ketogan as much as he felt was safe. The nurse sent him a brief sceptical glance as she noted it down. As he walked towards the door Lucca turned her face towards him. Thank you, she said. He hurried out.
Later in the day he was surprised not to see Andreas sitting in the foyer smoking his strong cigarettes as he usually did every day when Lauritz was visiting his mother. He asked the sister if she had seen anything of them. She had not, and the patient had asked for her son several times. When Robert was leaving later that afternoon they had still not turned up. He had an hour to spare before his tennis appointment with Jacob and didn’t know what to do with himself. He drove out of town past the industrial district until he reached the gravel road where he had turned off the last time. The horse was grazing in the same place, the sunlight shone on its flank as it raised its head to look at him. He went on to the edge of the woods and parked in front of the house.
There were no toys in the yard and the cement mixer had gone, but the old bicycle with the child’s seat was leaning against the house wall. He knocked several times. While he waited he caught sight of the electricity meter fixed into the wall beside the front door. The hand on the dial was not moving. He went over to the window and shaded it with his hand