The Weeping Girl

19

‘I must,’ said Sigrid Lijphart.

Helmut folded up the newspaper.

‘I’ve no alternative to doing what I’m going to do, and I can’t give you any more details. You must trust me.’

He took off his glasses, and made quite a play of putting them into the case.

‘I’ll explain everything for you afterwards. If anybody rings, tell them I’m just visiting a friend. And that I’ll get back to them.’

‘Who?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Which of your lady friends will be honoured by your fake visit?’

The ill-humoured irony in his voice was unmistakable. She noticed that his neck was red and blotchy, which is how it looked when his favourite football team was losing an important match. Or when Soerensen in the butcher’s had made some unusually preposterous remark.

No wonder, she thought. No wonder that he was angry. She had excluded him from this whole business: perhaps that had been a mistake from the start, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Much too late.

And without doubt the wrong time to stand here feeling sorry for him. They would have to put right whatever was still capable of being put right when the time came. Afterwards. If he really was a rock, now was the time for him to live up to it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m treating you unfairly, but I have no choice. Try to understand, if you can. Trust me.’

He looked at her with eyes of stone. Hard, but not malicious. Unswervingly rock-like. But also vacant, in some strange way, so that one might be justified in wondering if they expressed anything at all. .

‘Trust me,’ she said again. ‘I’m off now. I’ll phone.’

He didn’t answer, but she hesitated for another moment.

‘Is there anything you want to say?’

He put the newspaper down. Put his elbows on the table and rested his head on his hands. His eyes were still rock-like.

‘Find her,’ he said. ‘What I want is for you to bring her home.’

She stroked his cheek, and left him.

The first hour in the car was almost like a nightmare. Dusk was falling and it was raining, the traffic was dense and spasmodic. She was a poor driver in normal circumstances, she was the first to admit that, but on an evening like this everything was seven times as bad.

I mustn’t have a crash, she thought, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white. That would be too much. Nothing must happen, I really must bring this off.

Then everything fell to pieces. Tears came welling up as if from a hot geyser, and she was forced to drive onto the verge and stop. That was a risky manoeuvre, of course, but it would have been even more risky to continue. She switched on the hazard warning lights, and started sobbing. Might as well let it all come out, she thought.

It took a long time, and when she set off again she wasn’t at all sure that she felt any better than she had done to start with.

For the second time in just a few days, she prayed to God, and for the second time she doubted very much if there was anybody listening. When she finally joined the motorway at Loewingen, she made a deal instead.

If we come out of this unscathed, I’ll thank You on my bare knees.

Did you hear that, God? It’s a promise.

He was standing waiting at the crossroads, as agreed. When she caught sight of him in the combined light of the streetlamp and her headlights, she felt dizzy for a moment.

What’s happening? she thought.

Am I dreaming?

Why does it feel as if I’m falling down through space?

Then she gritted her teeth, slowed down and signalled to him with her headlights.

For the first half-hour he didn’t say a word.

Neither did she. They sat next to each other in the front seats like two strangers who know from the start that they have nothing to say to one another. Not even a common language in which they can exchange politeness phrases.

Perhaps it was just as well. She hadn’t thought about whether they would have anything to talk about, but now that she began to think about it, it soon felt like an impossibility. After all those years there was nothing to add.

Time passed had made no difference. That’s the way it was, full stop.

Just as it had been that night in July sixteen years ago. Immovable and fixed, once and for all.

We hardly ever made love after our daughter was born, she suddenly thought. I didn’t want to. I don’t think I ever wanted him. Strange.

But then, life was strange. Sometimes like a wind blowing through a birch wood in the spring, sometimes like a hurricane. Sometimes like a sick, emaciated animal that wanted nothing more than to hide away and die in peace. . Strange thoughts, she didn’t recognize them. As if they were somehow being generated by him, by the man who was sitting beside her again, the man she had excluded from her life so long ago, and who had no possibility of finding a way back again.

No way. And when she glanced at the thin, shrunken figure on the passenger seat beside her she regretted not having told him to sit in the back instead. It struck her that his wretchedness had become a part of him. Oozed out from inside him, and now it was obvious to everybody what kind of a man he was. She wished it had been as obvious as this many years ago.

In that case perhaps things wouldn’t have developed as they had done.

But then, if she had realized from the start what kind of a man he was, she would never have become involved with him. And if she hadn’t become involved with him, Mikaela would never have been born. That was a fact of life she could do nothing about, she was well aware of that. Mikaela had his blood inside her, and when all was said and done, that was something she had to acknowledge. Without him her daughter wouldn’t have existed and the image of the wind and the sick animal came into her mind once again. . Only to be replaced by something he had said once.

I like the silence between us.

Those were his exact words. The silence between them? It had been good, he maintained. She was the first girl he had ever been able to be silent with.

Good Lord, she thought. Surely he isn’t sitting here imagining that there is something good about this bloody failure to communicate?

But she didn’t ask. Just increased her speed somewhat: the rain had eased off and would soon stop.

Shortly after Saaren she pulled into a petrol station to fill up, and just as she was getting behind the wheel again and fastening her seat belt, he spoke for the first time.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

His voice was reminiscent of an autumn leaf falling to the ground. She didn’t answer.