When Jacob once asked, Robert told him about his divorce and how he had discovered Monica was being unfaithful to him. It was a summer evening the previous year. They were in the garden, the children had been put to bed and Jacob’s wife lay on the sofa in the living room watching television. Jacob listened with a solemn expression quite unsuitable to his boyish face. He was obviously showing his sympathy and respect for the confidence his discreet friend was placing in him, but Robert felt he could detect a touch of inquisitive curiosity in the other’s attentive gaze. As he told his story he observed Jacob sitting under the garden umbrella in his trainers, his Bermuda shorts and the T-shirt from a Greek holiday island, as the glow from the barbecue died out. In the twilight, voices sounded from the gardens around them, and behind the hedges you could see the fleeting shadows of neighbours as they passed in and out through the lit terrace doorways.
While telling the story he felt it sounded like an episode from a Brazilian soap opera. He had been to a conference in Oslo, but when the last lecture was cancelled because of illness he decided to go home half a day earlier than planned. He did not know what to do with himself in Oslo on a raw Sunday in January. He called home from the hotel early in the morning before going to the airport. The answering machine was on. He asked himself later why he had not given a message instead of ringing off when he heard his own voice and the following long tone. When he let himself into the flat a few hours later Monica came out of the bedroom. She was naked, which surprised him, she always wore a nightgown in bed.
He asked where Lea was. She was staying over with a friend. He was going to go and kiss her but stopped when she looked at him with a stiff, almost hostile expression. It would be best if he went out again, just for fifteen minutes. At this stage of the story Robert made a point of describing in detail how he had stood in his own home in his overcoat, with snow in his hair, as his naked wife asked him to take a walk round the block, but Jacob held his serious expression. Monica remained standing there, fixing him with her unfamiliar gaze, and although it had begun to dawn on him that he had arrived at an inopportune moment, nevertheless he asked, almost as if to provoke her, why it was essential for him to go. For his own sake, she replied, and at that moment he heard through the door of the bedroom, which was slightly ajar, the jingling sound of a belt buckle.
What then? Robert smiled. Yes, what then? Jacob was becoming impatient. Did he go? No, he had gone into the kitchen and sat down at the table when Monica went back into the bedroom. He could hear their lowered voices in there. Shortly afterwards, steps sounded in the living room, they came nearer and he saw his hospital colleague pass the open door to the kitchen. And now came the wonderful moment in the story. Jacob leaned forward expectantly in his chair and quite forgot to look sorry for Robert, who paused before continuing.
It only lasted a moment, perhaps no more than a second, but his colleague, who had suddenly been in such a hurry to get away, still could not resist taking a look. Maybe he had imagined Robert would sit with his back to the door, broken by grief, or he wanted to make sure he was not ready to lunge at him with a bread knife. Anyway, the man did not lower his eyes, as you might have expected, when he passed the doorway and, when he met Robert’s gaze, he was so disconcerted that he nodded politely. As he would have done if they had passed each other, both in their white coats, in one of the hospital corridors. Jacob sat back in his chair, crestfallen. Robert laughed. In fact it had been a relief. Jacob looked at him wonderingly. How? That was hard to explain.
Lea was to arrive late on Friday afternoon. As usual they had arranged that he would fetch her from the station. He left the hospital some hours before and drove to a supermarket on the edge of town for the weekend shopping. He was tired, he was always tired on a Friday, as if the whole week’s fatigue had built up in him and weighed him down. As he pushed his trolley in and out among the others along the freezer counters he caught sight of Andreas Bark and his little son. They hadn’t seen him. He pushed his trolley behind the shelf of bread and cakes and went over to the big freezers with dairy products, trying to remember whether he usually bought blackcurrant or strawberry yoghurt for Lea.
Again Lucca Montale came to mind, lying as she had done for almost a week, with arms and legs in plaster and head wrapped in bandages. One of the nurses had several times offered to bring her some headphones so she could listen to the radio, but she had refused every time. She just wanted to lie quietly, she said. She could not do anything else, blind and cut off from moving as much as a centimetre, reduced to being fed by a nurse and otherwise left to herself, as she had wanted. Robert had prescribed plentiful painkillers for her, presumably she spent most of the day dozing.
With each day that passed she seemed more puzzling, not only because of her drastic action, but also her silence and self-chosen isolation. She seemed remarkably hardened, considering her condition. He could scarcely believe this was the same patient who, according to the nurse, had spent a night weeping heartrendingly and inconsolably until the calming injection started to work.
When he visited her on his round he asked if she would like to talk to a psychologist. She waited a while before replying. What about? He couldn’t help smiling. About her situation. Now she was the one who smiled or at least tried to with the twitch at the corner of her mouth he had learned to interpret as an expression of her hard-boiled sarcasm. Could a psychologist make her see again? He was about to reply with a pertinent affirmation, but stopped himself. It struck him that he didn’t even know what she looked like. The only thing he had to help him was the recollection of the glimpse he’d had of the little picture on her driving licence. A narrow face framed by reddish-blonde hair, smiling confidently at the photographer as if nothing bad could touch her.
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