The Cruel Stars of the Night

Eleven

An apple fell, and then another. Muted, slightly squishy thuds as they hit the moss-infested lawn. The inside of the apple appeared green-yellow through places where the peel had split open. The consistency was mealy and the fruit was falling apart. Laura poked one with her foot. The apple broke entirely, revealing a mushy interior and the sharp smell of incipient decomposition made her pull back.

Laura walked surrounded by lilacs that grew in thickets with straggling branches whose bark had started to peel off and hung like dried strips of skin. Here, inside the bushes she was safe but felt the threat that lurked along the surrounding hawthorn hedge and through the somber treetops. The world around her made its presence known through sounds from the street, a car that slowly drove by, maybe a truck with a delivery to one of the neighbors. They seemed to be constantly renovating their houses, reinventing their gardens, and buying new furniture.

The professor’s flagpole could be seen above the trees. It rose like a reminder that there were holidays, something to celebrate. Sometimes a yellow cross on a blue background fluttered over the neighborhood, smacked in the wind, got tangled up, or hung limp like a rag.

For some reason her father had hated the flagpole and had toyed with the idea of cutting it down, taking advantage of an opportunity when the professor was away. Laura knew it was all talk. He would never have dared to do anything like that and anyway, she had trouble visualizing him with a saw.

Now he was gone. The initial feeling of freedom was more and more turning into a sense of approaching danger. It was not simply the mean, rough wind but also the fact that time seemed to devour her. The days went by. Her father’s existence started to blur around the edges, he sank more deeply into the corners of the innermost recesses of the house, transformed into dust around dissertations and loose papers. She herself went around half alive, half dead, through archways built up of repressed memories and suppressed pain.

She pulled some fruit from a spindle tree. The orange-yellow fruit capsules glowed like embers. When she was a child she used to gather them in the little cups of the doll china and pretend to serve her mother a colorful lunch. They could sit for hours at the dining room table, her mother watchful with an eye on the garden. Sometimes she glanced at Laura, or said something, but most often she was absorbed in herself, as if she was passively waiting for something, although it was not clear what it was. Laura bustled with her china. Her mother sighed occasionally, producing a soft sound.

Sometimes her father came home very late, from working at the department. Dinner was put in front of him. The stew meat had congealed and looked like dark animals captured in a gooey sauce, the potatoes had hardened and become unappetizingly chewy. The pats of butter softened, overcome with heat and strange smells, they gave up and sank into a heap.

Laura lived in a shadow world where the old radio’s green front gave off a soft light while her mother listened to classical music. Laura read the names of the radio stations over and over, sitting like a little ball by her mother’s feet, waiting for the light to come back.

Her whole childhood was about waiting. Laura waited for the light, her father for his professors’ title, her mother for the man who would one day come into the house and save her. The light never came, the title was not forthcoming, but the man appeared.

Laura shivered. It was getting colder. It felt as if it was going to snow again. She looked down at her clay-covered sneakers.

Suddenly there was life in the house, in the form of a man. He was going to help with the garden, dig new flower beds, dig holes for trees, and patch the soil and put in stone landscaping.

His thoughtful voice, not at all like her father’s virulent harangues, partly dissolved in the dark. She listened, at first up close, but later hidden behind drapes and half-closed doors. Her mother laughed and it sounded as if a stranger had taken possession of her body. The man spoke quietly. Laura rarely heard what he said, but it sounded friendly, wise in some way.

They discussed things, Laura learnt that word that fall. They presented things to each other, like small packages. Here you go. Thank you, this is for you. Thanks, that’s a good idea. They went on in this way. Conversing endlessly.

He came back the next day with new packages and windows were flung open, dust was cleared away. He was given food, and he ate, chuckling a little, it seemed. She heard her mother say that the stranger ate like a real man.

A flurry of activity, and thundering noise. Laura had to eat alone at the dining room table. She set the table with her tiny china and cleared it away, invited imaginary friends to lunch and discussed things with them. She tried to laugh like the man did.

After fourteen days he disappeared, but her mother said he would be back in the spring. Laura waited. It would be a long winter.

Then one day at the beginning of April he returned. Now he spent most of his time in the garden, spreading a white powder on the lawn. Laura was allowed to help. He pruned bushes and piled the branches into large piles. The apple trees were trimmed. Laura picked up twigs and was praised.

The professor, who had recently moved in, would come over and talk across the hawthorn hedge. They discussed different kinds of apple. Laura stood nearby. She thought the man smelled like apple. His green pants, stuffed into red boots, had marks from paint and had holes that were roughly patched with black rubber.

The professor went on about the apples. The man rested a foot on a shovel. It looked so comfortable, as if they were close friends, him and the shovel.

The rain increased. She drew closer to the French window that faced the garden, but shut it with her foot and remained standing out on the crumbling flagstone, partly shielded from the rain.

She feared the approaching afternoon. Her body was completely limp and she didn’t see how she would be able to pull herself together and call Stig.