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 small explosions at his feet. The wind turned the rain into a carpet rolling across the car park, and the dim light imparted a dull shine to the swells of rain-carpet. He glimpsed Andreas Bark in the group waiting there. He stood leaning against an old-fashioned lady’s bicycle looking out at the rain. The boy was seated on a child’s seat on the luggage rack with his helmet askew. The bulging shopping bags hung heavily from the handle-bars. Robert thought of the picture of the totally wrecked car, which a local paper had printed on the front page, without naming the victim of the tragedy. A thirty-two-year-old woman. It might have been anyone, struck down by one of the countless accidents recorded daily in the press worldwide.
It looked like turning into an all-night show . . . Andreas Bark smiled gratefully as if he did not deserve Robert’s taking pity on him, even speaking to him. His subdued, timorous expression seemed at odds with his pronounced features. That face seemed to characterise Andreas Bark as a man normally sure of himself. Now he was broken, and to add insult to injury he would have to cycle home in the rain like a Vietnamese rice-peasant, weighed down by his burdens. His gratitude had no end and several times he asked if Robert would be in time for his daughter’s train, as they unloaded their bags side by side into the boot.
They left the bicycle where it stood. Robert adjusted the safety belt on the back seat to fit Lauritz’s small body. As they set off Andreas Bark asked if Robert minded him smoking. Of course not . . . He opened the window a crack and lit one of his poisonous cigarettes, and Robert almost regretted his humanitarian impulse. He had no idea what they could talk about, but the rain on the roof made it easier to sit in silence. Andreas Bark’s leather jacket creaked a bit, and the indicators ticked when Robert prepared to turn. Otherwise there was no sound except the drumming of the raindrops and the wipers’ monotonous swishing on the windscreen. They drove over the railway line and on through the industrial district, Andreas Bark giving directions.
Suddenly he announced, out of the blue, Robert thought, that he had just had a première in Malmö. He was a playwright. Aha . . . Did he write in other genres as well? You had to ask about something. He had once written poetry. But that was long ago, he went on with a pawky grin. What was it about, his play? Oh, God, that was always hard to describe. The playwright smiled, and the smile seemed both shy and coy. That was why you wrote, wasn’t it? To find out why. If Robert understood. He didn’t, but he kept that to himself.
The tarmac shone as it ribboned through the black fields, and the ploughed furrows followed the gradual rise of the road towards the ridge ahead, where a brown-painted transformer station was outlined against the grey watercolour shades of the clouds. But now it was finished, anyway. So he must have some ideas about it, at least. Andreas paid no heed to Robert’s teasing tone, or he had not caught on to it. It was a psychological play. That is, not psychological in the traditional, psychoanalytical sense. It was rather, what should he say . . . existential. A sharp smell of liquid manure wafted into the car. Andreas closed his window and stubbed out his cigarette.
You could say it was about evil, he went on. Now there was no stopping him. On the cannibalism of emotions, on the repressed darkness, what was mute and unadjusted in us, beyond the social and linguistic order. When all was said and done, like all stories, it was probably about death. He fell silent, almost exhausted, thought Robert. Like someone bidding at an auction who at length realises he isn’t in a position to bid any higher. Then there was nothing but the sound of the screen wipers and the rain on the roof, while the farms and fields streamed past surrounded by trees, like islands in a black sea of earth with their grain silos and white-washed barns.
They turned off down a narrow gravel road leading towards the woods. A horse raised its head and watched them through the rain, its wet mane sticking to its neck. Robert glanced at the clock beside the speedometer. He had to be at the station in half an hour. It was tea-time. The nurse would give her a straw, and when she had gone away the playwright’s wife would lie motionless in her darkness, listening to the rain on the aluminium blinds at the window. The same rain that was falling on her home.
It was an old farm labourer’s house in red brick. Its thatched roof had been replaced with asbestos roofing. A clutter of toys was scattered around the courtyard and a tricycle lay on its side near a cement mixer and a pile of sacks covered with plastic. The woods lay close to the other side of the house, the wind rampaged in the sodden beech leaves. He helped Andreas in with his shopping. The kitchen and living room were painted white and could just as well have been part of a fashionable town apartment, with Italian furniture, art posters on the walls and rows of cast-iron pans.
On the kitchen wall hung a sheet of brushed steel with magnets from which hung shopping lists, recipes from magazines and a few photographs. It must be her, the auburn-haired woman with high cheekbones, pictured in several of them. Would he like a glass of red wine? He looked at his watch. Yes, please, just a quick one. Andreas sat down facing him under the notice-board and poured two glasses. They had finished furnishing the house a month ago. Andreas stopped talking and looked at the boy, he lay on the floor playing with Lego. Then he met Robert’s eyes and smiled tentatively. A vase of dead tulips stood on the windowsill gaping at the pane, several dry withered petals had dropped.
The house had been a ruin when they moved in. They had done most of the work themselves, they had really slogged at it. And now . . . He didn’t know. It was all so new. Robert said something about rehabilitation, where and how, shifting his gaze from Andreas to the notice-board behind him. Most of the photos had been taken around the house, which appeared at various stages of refurbishment.
