Butterflies in November

FIFTY-SIX

Low-pressure belts are lining up above the island, piling up, one on top of the other. It’s been almost six weeks now, the drainpipes can take no more water and in many places basements have started to flood; water leaks into boots and down necklines, and children need dry socks and trousers several times a day. The weather clears for short intervals to allow people to run down to the video store to change DVDs and buy a snack, although many stay in, without noticing the brief dry spell that would have enabled them to see December’s half-moon.

Dawn is slow to break; it’s not before noon that a glimmer begins to form over the harbour, a streak of daylight through the muddy darkness. Huddled up in bed, we linger there solving crosswords. He’s helping me to find a feminine noun beginning with b.

After that, he fixes the pyramid in the bowl of mandarins; he wants it to be tall and impressive and is constantly adjusting the fruit.

The tiger kitten scuttles several times diagonally across the floor. He no longer zigzags, has stopped galloping sideways and has recently developed the ability to walk along a straight imaginary line — on four legs. He eagerly observes the small birds on the deck outside; he is slowly but surely turning into a shrewd hunter. One morning there’s a dead snow bunting lying on the floor; the kitten pleads innocent and makes itself scarce. The boy picks up the bird and holds it tight to his chest. I tell him we’ll bury it later in the day. A short while later I find the bird under his bed, beside his treasure chest.

By the time we’ve finally climbed into our rain gear and are ready to go out on an exploratory mission just after noon, the end of this very short day is already approaching. Our first and final destination is the playground. I lead him with my good hand. He’s wearing a new green cable sweater under his overalls.

Tumi weighs thirteen kilos and I weigh fifty-three, so in order to get some kind of balance I have to shift closer to the middle of the see-saw. He’s not interested in trying to tackle the climbing frame. When he walks up or down steps he always moves forward with the same foot; three steps are like a steep cliff to him. Afterwards, we sit on the white plastic chairs by the shop and have an ice cream with chocolate sauce.

He has finished decorating my cast and drawn a bulldozer on it, but also fish and marine vegetation. We are not likely to be going to the swimming pool for at least a week. My friend offers to take him along with him. That would be the first time in six weeks that I would be separated from him for more than an hour.

“I’ll keep a good eye on him,” he says, “don’t worry.”

The boy seems pleased.

While the two boys are at the pool, I lie on the deck with a trashy novel and a scarf coiled around my neck. How many women in the world can allow themselves such a luxury at this precise moment in time? Could a newly liberated woman ask for any greater bliss than this?

“See what I’ve got for you?” says my father in the middle of a pile of books. We are visiting a second-hand bookshop.

“There you go, that’s for you”, he says, blowing the dust off a book in front of me. “There’s so much music in the words, if you don’t hear the music, you won’t get the story,” says the man whose favourite composer is Bach. “There are a few pages missing from it so it ends in mid-sentence. You can decide how the story ends, invent your own ending, aren’t you lucky?”

I read it many years ago and remember only being moderately happy about the ending. I expected something more decisive to happen between them. A woman doesn’t brush fluff off the shoulder of a man’s jacket at a dinner party unless there’s something intimate going on between them, or does she? “Your ending will be better,” he says, smiling, and then pats me on the cheek.