you ought to see a doctor.’
‘Yes. I don’t know how I’m supposed to find the time, but I think I’ll have to, it’s driving me crazy.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Thanks. And sorry. Nice work, by the way. That colour is … ’ He thinks about it as he knots his tie. ‘Calming. Thanks for that too. And once again, my apologies. I urgently have to leave now.’ In his haste he bangs his hip on the corner of the marble tabletop. He manages to stifle the pain until he’s out of the room.
By the time Sieglinde rings, work has absorbed Alphonse for several hours. He takes the call.
‘Ronny’s left, hasn’t he?’ is the first thing she asks.
He reassures her.
‘I had a strange dream. I was about to give birth—something that in spite of everything I’ve never dreamed about before—and it wasn’t too bad, all told, even though I had to do it inside some kind of crude timber structure; my husband decided to lodge a complaint against the doctor. I got my child, a son. It was different from last time. I felt confused, but there was no extra gravity, no crushing. I held him in my arms and the next moment Dieter was at my side.’
‘The neighbour?’
‘Yes. We slowly walked down a wide staircase to the main foyer of the hospital. Halfway down, the sunlight fell through a skylight onto the child’s face. It was intense and unreal. I watched dust dancing in the sunbeam. “Look,” Dieter said. “He’s got a moustache.” I could see it now too: golden-brown hairs on the baby’s upper lip, smooth and full, like the curved little eyelashes of a doll, a vertical block of them. We laughed about it. “We’ll call him Führer,” said Dieter, “our little Führer.” We looked again, and this time the child undeniably had the face of Adolf Hitler, elderly-looking the way newborns can sometimes be, and it had a moustache with that telltale shape.’ Sieglinde pauses. ‘What could a dream like that mean?’
‘What were you feeling?’
‘Dieter and I slowed down and shared our worries. Yes, my son did look very much like Adolf Hitler. Then I felt a sadness coming, a kind of despair, but I was resolutely determined to bring the child up as well as I could, to love it unconditionally.’
He erupts with laughter, finding it impossible to suppress. ‘That’s a funny dream, isn’t it?’
‘I had to laugh about it myself, at first. Although it moved me, too. It moves me enormously, to be honest.’
‘Well if you feel you’re prepared to be a loving mother to Hitler, then it’s bound to work out this time.’
‘Yes, that’s what I mean,’ she says, happy.
He’s finished before they get home. Not wanting to leave without saying goodbye, he writes ‘Done! Have a good evening’ on a Post-it, with his name underneath.
At the wheel he rings Cat, who is back earlier than planned. She asks him to pick her up, so that they can do some shopping together in what she calls ‘the real supermarket’. She’s explained to him more than once why she’s willing to drive so far to get to this particular shop but he keeps forgetting.
Cat jerks the door open just as he’s about to put the key in the lock. She’s not too thin, she’s beautifully slim, and she looks healthy. Everything’s going to be all right.
‘Pussywuss,’ he says.
‘Don’t call me that.’ She presses a smile to his lips and they embrace.
He quickly showers and puts on different clothes, a hat on his head.
On the way out, Cat’s arms struggle with her leather jacket, the one he likes, as she’s well aware. ‘Can we go in mine?’
They walk over to her car and he opens the passenger door for her.
‘How was yoga week?’ He starts the engine.
‘Oh yes. Yoga.’
‘Too much of a good thing?’
‘No, no. It’s just that most yogi aren’t terribly Zen. Every time I start to think: this is where I belong, it turns out that it’s not after all. My fault, probably. I’m not a group person.’
‘Fortunately I’m not a group.’ He puts on his sweetest face and strokes her right breast like a toddler caressing a small mammal.
She glances down. ‘You’ve finished early?’
‘Yes, and I’ve kept tomorrow morning free. I’ll go with you.’
‘No, I’m going on my own.’
‘But why?’
Her eyes remain fixed on the road. ‘It’s my check-up.’ His strange woman.
It could have crushed them, getting those first test results. Ovarian cancer—cunt cancer; he didn’t like her calling it that. Since the diagnosis she’s been as brave as she was angry. The radiation and the surgery had the intended effect and recovery was gruelling but steady, although later tests showed that another, relatively minor operation was needed. Secondaries are almost out of the question, children not. Her hair grew back in valiant waves. A routine check-up, tomorrow. With good news. Good news. Good news.
They continue their journey wordlessly and park in silence.
He’s always found commercials for the supermarket on supermarket radio perplexing: enticing people to where they already are. In this case it’s a conversation between two highly charged ladies, Marlies and Suzanne. Marlies is giving a cheese and wine evening but has forgotten to buy the cheese and Suzanne plans to surprise her husband Bert with mussels and chips but she’s forgotten the chips. When they’ve finished laughing, good fortune is all that remains: the supermarket is still open.
Cat puts it down to the drink. He chuckles.
She’s in the act of feeling a mango when ‘Águas de Março’ drowns out the voices of Marlies and Suzanne. Elis Regina and Tom Jobim take over from them, their sticks, their stones, the end of the road—she loves this song too, he knows she does, and now she’s feeling the mango rhythmically, picking up another one in her other hand, shaking them discreetly back and forth, her feet following. It’s glass, it’s sun, it’s night and it’s death, a snare and a hook, a small piece of bread. He stands behind her. She puts the mangos down. ‘Matita-pereira … mistério profundo.’ He doesn’t speak Portuguese but he’s often listened. Her hand seeks his, her back in his arm, steps across the floor that they share with a furtive audience. It’s the wind and it’s blowing, it’s pride at a fall, it’s the rain and it’s raining, it’s riverbank talk. He sings the final lines of the refrain, his mouth to her ear. ‘ … É a promessa de vida no teu coração.’ Good news, tomorrow. A thorn, a fish, the house’s design, a body in bed, a little alone. She’s becoming conscious of her surroundings, wants to turn to see who’s looking. ‘Just another moment,’ he begs, which softens her. Continual fever, a light and a scratch, it’s a bird in the sky, and one in the hedge. When Elis and Tom’s whistling turns into a zazaziza of laughter he slowly lets her go.
An elderly lady, staring at them, enthralled,
