The next evening he and Sonia went into town together. Monica drove them to the station. He had brought the Sunday papers, but she didn’t feel like reading. He sat wondering whether the golfing consultant in psychiatry was her biological father. As if that would matter to anyone except the barrister, who had been egoistic and self-pitying enough to initiate him into his small private hell. He tried to imagine her reaction if he were to tell her. Would she break down? Would she be relieved? She, who had accustomed herself to the role of the family’s unwanted rebel. His secret knowledge increased the distance between them and strengthened his impression of sitting opposite a lonely neglected child.
They exchanged casual remarks interspersed with long pauses, looking out at the lit windows of residential suburbs, the trees bordering the paths beside the railway and the blue strip of the Sound disappearing and reappearing. The lamplight gleamed violet in the dusk and shone through the leaves of the trees. They did not know each other although she was his sister-in-law. The word seemed quite wrong, like a silly hat. She told him to feel free to read the paper if he didn’t feel like talking. He unfolded a section and read haphazardly. He couldn’t concentrate, and at one point when he looked up he found her watching him. She didn’t look away, just smiled. He looked out at the station where the train happened to have stopped and stretched to read the sign above the platform as if he just wanted to see how far they had come.
He was annoyed with himself to have thought of her when he was in bed with Monica. It had only been an image, like one of the slides that sometimes gets into the wrong order in the projector so the series of glimpses of a summer day are suddenly broken by Lea in a yellow raincoat standing with her hand stretched out as if she is pushing at the leaning tower of Pisa. You don’t know how it has got there and hurriedly switch to the next slide. Moreover, she wasn’t in the least attractive, Sonia, sitting opposite him in loose denim trousers and a sweatshirt with a hood. Again he noticed her coltish features, her habit of pulling her sleeves down over her hands and childish way of pronunciation, as if the consonants were choking her. Besides, they had nothing to talk about.
The next day it started to rain. He left the windows open and breathed in the scent of fresh leaves and wet asphalt that blended into the smell of paint, with La Traviata echoing through the empty rooms of the apartment. When he thought about Monica it was not their routine intercourse in the creaking bed he visualised, but her profile in the afternoon sun, the remoteness in her grey eyes as she stood in his bath robe looking out over the Sound, as if contemplating her whole life. Their whole life. There was no difference, her life and theirs, they were one. Suddenly he missed her. He felt like getting up and going to her, untying the robe she had tied so tightly, pulling her to him and putting his hands on her hips. Even though it was merely an image.
He had to turn the music down, he wasn’t sure whether he had really heard the doorbell. He stood motionless in the sudden stillness. The bell rang again. He went out and picked up the door telephone, it was Sonia. Shortly afterwards she was on the landing with wet hair and an uncertain testing smile. She was wearing high-heeled shoes, her thin silk skirt clung to her legs and her damp cardigan was a little too tight so her midriff was visible between the buttons. She carried a bottle of white wine. She had been close by and got caught in the rain, she thought he might be thirsty . . . The explanations poured out and fell over each other. He found her a towel and she rubbed her hair so it stood on end all over.
He took the bottle into the kitchen but then remembered the corkscrew was at the bottom of one of the boxes. There was a screwdriver on the kitchen table, he pushed down the cork. There weren’t any glasses either, they would have to use mugs. When he went back to the corner room she was over by the window, clad only in bra and skirt. Her cardigan had been hung to dry over a floor sanding machine. She turned, he offered her a sweater. No need, it was quite warm. The black bra pushed up her breasts into two soft semi-domes so they looked larger than they were. He sat on the window sill, she on the top rung of the stepladder. They raised their mugs, slightly ceremonially, and both broke into a smile. The trees along the avenue threw their reflections on the shining asphalt. He had no idea what to say.
She said it was a lovely apartment. He described a few of their plans for it. She nodded, looking at him with a teasing smile, and again he suspected her of not listening. She put down her mug on one of the steps and took a walk around the room. Her high heels made her taller and her muscular legs seem more elegant. She turned round and walked slowly towards him, arms swinging, as she bent her head forward and fixed him with a cunning scowl under the curling threads of her damp, towelled hair.
The night nurse was still talking to her son in Arizona. He went for a stroll along the corridor, imagining a country highway in flickering sunlight, endlessly winging among the rocks. Made-up beds were ranged along the wall of the corridor, separated by windows overlooking the patches of light from the rows of street lamps nearing each other towards the city centre. The door to a sluice room stood ajar, a tap was dripping in there with a hollow, drumming pulse into the steel sink. He turned it off and went on.
He passed the room where Lucca lay. He hesitated before cautiously opening the door. She was crying softly, he went across to the bed. She asked who was there. Her voice was faint and worn out with weeping, and her nose was blocked, so she gasped after each sentence. She asked what time it was, he told her. He wasn’t usually on duty at night, was he? Just occasionally, he said. He fetched a tissue from the shelf above the wash basin to help her blow her nose. Thank you, she said, moaning hoarsely. She couldn’t get to sleep. He sat down on a chair beside the bed.
She asked why Lauritz hadn’t come that afternoon as usual. She missed him. The last words trembled and dissolved into a pent-up whimper, her mouth twisted. The muscles of her neck protruded beneath the skin, trembling with tautness, and her shoulders shook as she alternately gasped for air and expelled it in cramped sighs until she gave in to tears. He placed a hand on her shoulder and stroked it cautiously as if he could stop the cramp. She wept for a long time, he kept hold of her. Sometimes the weeping seemed to quieten down, then it broke out from her throat again.
When she had stopped crying he told her Andreas and Lauritz had gone away. Where? He didn’t know. He told her he had been out to their house. She said they must have gone into Copenhagen to stay with some of his friends. Suddenly she was very composed and clear. He got a fresh tissue and again helped her blow her nose. That made her smile at herself a bit. Why had he gone to the house? He told her how he had met Andreas and Lauritz at the supermarket, about the rain and the mistake over the leg of lamb, about their evening with Lea and how surprised he had been when Andreas did not come to the hospital in the afternoon as usual. But he didn’t mention what Andreas had told him about Malmö and Stockholm.
You have a nice voice, she said as he was talking. He thanked her. Then they both fell silent. He had not put on the light when he went in. The room was lit only by the dim light from the corridor falling through the half-open door. He could hear when she breathed through her nose, her breathing was calmer now. She asked him to put his hand on her shoulder again. Why hadn’t he told her they had visited him? It had not been planned, he said, and he had been a bit surprised himself. Normally he didn’t get involved in patients’ lives, they were not his business. No, she said after a pause, of course they weren’t.
He asked her why she didn’t want Andreas to visit her. At first she made no reply. It was a long story, she said finally. But perhaps he already knew something of it? A little . . . he said. Again there was silence with neither speaking, before he finally managed to ask a question. Had she decided, that night of the accident . . . did she want to die? She did not reply at once, as if trying to remember. No, she hadn’t wanted to die. She had mistaken the direction when she reached the bridge over the motorway. She wanted to drive into Copenhagen, to go there. She stopped. He went on sitting there with a hand on her shoulder, even though it forced him to hold his arm up in an awkward, tiring position. He asked if she was thirsty. She didn’t answer, she had fallen asleep.
The sister in charge smiled at him when he arrived