steps and entered the hall.
Nothing was locked except for the front door. All the keys hung on the board next to the light switch for the cellar steps. There was a key in the lock of the door to the workshop. One after the other, I unscrewed all the light bulbs from the electric lights: in the living room, the floor lamps; in the kitchen, the wall lights over the stove; in the workshop; and finally in the room under the eaves. Then I went back into the cellar and screwed the fuses back in. When I pressed the light switch in the cellar, the light came on.
I shaded my eyes with my hand and sat down on the cellar steps. My feet burned. I pulled my shoes off, stripped the wet socks from my feet, and, after I had dried them off with a rag which I found under the steps, pulled on dry socks. Unwillingly, I stuck my feet back into the wet shoes.
I found the electric heater in the workshop under the tool bench. My morale rose. I took it up to the room under the eaves and plugged the extension cord into the wall outlet. The smell of burning dust reminded me of my cigarettes. The package was flattened, but it had stayed dry. I sat down with my back against the wall and pulled the heater over toward my feet. Only now, with the first drag from the cigarette, did I feel the tension which had already started to slacken.
Up to now, everything had gone smoothly, exactly as planned. I was in the house, and once here, I had lost that vague feeling of uneasiness, of doing something forbidden. At this point, I had clearly committed the crime of breaking and entering. If I were discovered, no one would believe that all I wanted was to find out what had happened to him. But I believed that he would have understood me.
The reflection of the glowing overhead heater shimmered in the varnish of the wooden floor, and as the room slowly warmed up I glanced around the familiar surroundings. On the windowsill I found an empty tin box to use as an ashtray. Water was running down the dirty windowpane. I could hear the muffled, steady sound of the falling drops on the thick thatched roof.
I felt secure and sheltered. There was still enough daylight to begin a search.
But really, what was I looking for?
I wanted to find some clue to his disappearance. Although I was much less interested in where he went when he left unnoticed than in the reasons and circumstances surrounding his departure, I suppose that they were closely connected. I didn’t know why I had excluded an accident or a crime. They simply didn’t fit in the picture my imagination had created. It had to have been something else, and I was convinced that his departure from the island was the final link in a chain of events.
Since I had known him, I found any excuse justified coming to the island, even if just for a long weekend. But I had never been here later than the beginning of October nor earlier than the end of May. Several times he had invited me to come during the winter. I had seen color slides showing dunes of snow and ice-encrusted granite boulders which glistened in the sun like crystal, with blackish green water standing between them and with fringes of prickly hoarfrost on their edges. I found it splendid, but I wanted to lie in the sand in the summer when the sun was high in the sky and I could listen to the rolling and rumbling of the stones which the surf moved about on the narrow stretch of shore under the steep cliffs.
Perhaps I would have learned more about him if I had come for a visit then, but each year I had thought that I would be able to return to the island.
It was clear to me that I knew little about him. But when I thought about it, it seemed easy enough to understand. He had never spoken of his past because for him it was over and done with. He was no longer concerned with it. I remembered a handful of unopened letters on the shelf next to the drafting table. He shrugged his shoulders when I asked him about them. The next day, their ashes lay in the fireplace, and I was convinced that he had burned them unread.
The warmth from the heater finally penetrated the soles of my shoes. I stood up and went to the low window in the arched niche of the dormer. It had begun to get dark again on the other side of the flat arched panes, although the rain had slackened.
I looked at my watch; it showed a few minutes before four, and I hesitated as to what to do next. Behind the curtain of the built-in shelves, I found a quilt, two wool blankets and the blue velvet cushion. The collapsed folding bed on which I had slept for two summers was leaning in the niche behind the square chimney which ran up through the roof in the middle of the room. At that moment, I came to a decision. It was five after four when I turned off the heater, pulled the plug out of the outlet and went downstairs to the workshop. I opened the door to the living room and edged up to the panes of the large terrace windows to take a careful look outside.
The caution was unnecessary. I had to look twice to understand. He had removed the stone flags right in front of the window and planted mallows along the entire width of the windows. They had grown into thick bushes higher than a man’s head, and now a tangle of bare stems blocked any view through the window.
As so often in previous years, I opened the left window and stepped over the low sill between the dripping mallow bushes. There was no one in sight. I stuck a strip of cardboard between the jamb and the window frame and pulled the window closed behind me as tight as it would go. The wind was from the north-west, but even when a gust pushed against the window, you could hardly see that it wasn’t latched. I could only hope that it would hold, I didn’t have the time to do anything more.
I stepped onto the terrace and crossed the flagstones to the path. At the last minute I remembered my coat. I went back across the yard where black puddles had now formed, opened the door to the shed, and took my coat from the nail. I snapped the lock shut and put the key back in its place above the rafter. I put on my coat at the same time, and the wind flattened it against my legs.
It had grown darker. From the west, heavy rain clouds were pushing over the woods, and I ran down the path to the village. At the inn, I paid my bill, got my suitcase, and then went down to the harbor.
Two people whom I didn’t know sat in the ship’s passenger cabin. The harbormaster showed up to cast off the mooring lines, and I shouted a few words about the weather to him. He growled something incomprehensible and went back to his office as the ship pulled out and took up its course after making a wide turn. I paid and put my ticket in the pocket of my coat. I left the ship when it docked at the next village on the island after a half-hour voyage. It was now quite dark.
A horse with its head hanging down stood in front of a wagon filled with empty fish crates next to the store. In the store I bought a loaf of bread, two packages of sliced cheese, and a hard sausage off the shelves. I found a tin of sweetened condensed milk and, just in case, added a package of tea.
I paid at the only open cashier next to the exit, and put everything into my large traveling bag. Then I crossed the street and went past the old mill toward the beach.
The wind drove the rain in my face in sharp bursts as I walked back on the wet hard sand. I followed the curved shoreline until the wooded cliffs rose before me as shadows, while on my left the white foam rushed over the granite blocks of the sea wall.
I continued on to the narrow stairs which led to the top of the sea cliff. The rainwater ran down to the beach in deeply eroded channels next to the half cross ties which made up the steps. The path through the woods, which I only knew from the summer as a green tunnel through thickly growing underbrush, now appeared strange and long to me.
Then once again, I saw the silhouette of the house on the hill. I wanted a cigarette, but I went on across the basin, and then along the path up behind the house. I had had enough of rain, cold, and wind.
I pushed
