Winter's End

Evening was falling in the garden. Helen breathed in the honeyed scent of the clematis with pleasure. She slowly finished taking the washing off the line. It was going to be a mild night, and the young woman was in no hurry to go in.

“Mama, it’s for you!” a little girl suddenly called to her from the open sitting room window.

Leaving her laundry basket under the line, Helen went in. The child held out the receiver, forming the silent syllables with her lips: “A gentleman.”

“Thanks. Go and put your nightie on. I’ll come in a minute.”

She didn’t know the deep male voice. “Is that Helen Dormann?”

“Yes,” said Helen, although she had changed her surname some years ago.

“Hello, Helen! This is Octavo. I’m so pleased to have found you — I had difficulty finding your number.”

“Octavo?”

“That’s right, Paula’s Octavo. You remember?”

Slowly, she sat down. She hadn’t seen Paula for ages. A hundred times she’d told herself she would go and visit her, and a hundred times she had put it off until later. The bookshop, her children, the distance . . . As for Octavo, she had lost track of him entirely.

“Good heavens, Octavo!” she cried. “How are you? It feels so odd to hear you with a grown-up voice.”

“I’m calling from the village,” he said. “Paula has just died. I thought you’d want to know.”

She caught the bus next morning. All the way, memories were overwhelming her, and she couldn’t manage to read the novel she had brought. Octavo welcomed her to the little brick house in the consolers’ village, Number 47. She would never have recognized him. He was tall and strong; his chin and cheeks prickled her when they kissed.

“Come upstairs. She’s on her bed there. As you’ll see, she’s at peace.”

Paula lay there with her hands crossed over her breast. The perfect calm of her face was as reassuring as ever and seemed to be telling those who came to pay her a last visit, You see, it’s not too bad, nothing to make a song and dance about! Helen, who had shed all her tears during the journey, was beyond grieving now. She kissed the forehead of the woman who had been like a mother to her and sat at her bedside for a long time.

She helped Octavo with the funeral arrangements. He had a car, and she was to go back to the capital with him when it was all over.

On the morning of their departure, she asked him to wait for another hour. She went down the hill and easily found the exact place where she and Milena had met Milos and Bart fifteen years ago. It seemed like yesterday. She followed Donkey Road and crossed the bridge, marveling at the infinite patience of the four stone equestrian statues. The sun was hot. She slung her sweater around her shoulders and walked on with her arms bare. The water of the river shone.

She found the barred gates of the boarding school open and walked in. The Skeleton’s old-fashioned lodge was still there. As she passed it, Helen felt goosebumps, almost expecting to hear the woman’s acid voice all of a sudden: “And where do you think you’re going, young lady?” But there was no sound apart from the twittering of sparrows in the trees in the yard.

Following the wall of the building, she found the refectory door unlocked and went in.

“It’s closed. Are you looking for something?”

The place was unrecognizable without its tables and chairs. Reels of electric cable lay around on the floor.

“Can I help you?” the electrician asked, screwing a switch into place.

“Yes . . . no. That is, I was a student here long ago . . . at the boarding school. I just wanted to look.”

“Ah, yes, but it’s closed. The holidays, see?”

“Of course. I’m so sorry. I don’t want to bother you. Do you happen to know if it’s possible to get through that little door at the back there?”

“The door to the cellar? I don’t know. But there’s a bunch of keys hanging from the nail there. If you want to try it. . . . Here, you can borrow my flashlight. It’s in the toolbox there.”

The third key she tried opened the lock. Helen turned the beam of the flashlight on the darkness and went down the stairs. Once at the bottom, she went along the tunnel. Its ceiling was covered with dusty cobwebs. The door of the detention cell, torn down and smashed to pieces, barred her way. She stepped over it. A smell of mold met her nostrils. The bunk was broken too, lying flat on the floor. A rusty bucket with holes in it lay in a corner.

There was no picture left, no Sky, nothing.

The birds had flown away. All of them.

The hardest moment, and Helen hadn’t expected it, was when Octavo had to turn the key and lock up Paula’s little house behind him. Neither of them could hold back their tears on the steps outside.

But they talked cheerfully on the drive back, telling each other about their lives and recalling the past. “Do you remember about going to Random?” asked Helen. “And a fox — a foxess?” Octavo, who had forgotten, roared with laughter. He was an amusing man, very vivacious.

He dropped Helen at her home in the middle of the night. They parted, promising to see each other again from time to time and talk about Paula. Helen slipped quietly into her sleeping house, but as she opened her bedroom door, another opened at the end of the corridor, and her daughter came out.

“Can’t you sleep, darling?”

The little girl shook her head. She was twisting the front of her nightdress and wasn’t far from tears. “I had a bad dream, Mama, and then you weren’t there.”

Helen took her in her arms, put her back to bed, and sat beside her to reassure her. She stroked her daughter’s hair and talked to her quietly.

And it seemed to her that the love she had received from Paula flowed into her caressing hands and her voice, and she in turn was passing it on, a love as powerful as the river.

“I’m back now, ” she said. “Go to sleep, my beauty, go to sleep. Everything’s all right.”