The third discovery she made that autumn, about which she hadn’t had the slightest premonition, even though she’d heard it from others, was how weak he was. She’d looked into his eyes and seen someone who knew who he was and what he wanted, and it was on this basis that she’d interpreted what was said of him. If he was always good humored, talkative, and amusing, it was in the way her uncle Obal was. If he was sensitive, with a tendency to daydream, without the ability to get on, it was like her brother Noah. That was the way she’d thought, and maybe it wasn’t entirely wrong as far as it went, but before they’d moved out to the fjord she’d never seen him together with other people. It had always been just the two of them, all their meetings had taken place secretly, and with her he was everything she wanted him to be. It was the thought of the way he was with other people that she found difficult to live with.
On their very first day people had turned up at the house. Javan knew everyone out there, and when the visits continued over the next few days, she’d thought folk were coming because they wanted to welcome them, and because they were inquisitive and wanted to see what she was like, perhaps also how things stood with them, but when the procession showed no signs of stopping, it dawned on her after several weeks that this was just what things were like. Javan’s home was a place people simply dropped in to. All sorts of people. Relations, neighbors, friends from the old days, fishermen he’d once been in a boat with, ancient, bent old men who might have known one of Javan’s aunts way back when, youths who happened to feel bored one evening, all of them came to sit in their living room. Javan refused no one, and he did everything he could to make them like him. Sometimes Anna would feel thoroughly ashamed after she’d witnessed the way he could drop every vestige of dignity just to get some inconsequential character to laugh at him. She knew who he was, he knew who he was, so why did he fawn like a dog as soon as anyone else came near them?
If she spoke her mind, the only answer she got was that she was being “hoitytoity.” As if that had anything to do with it. He had no pride, and wanted to please everybody. That was the problem.
He behaved in a particularly servile manner toward one of their neighbors, David, without her ever being able to divine what it was in him that was deserving of such respect. Powerful, fair-haired, straightforward: that was David.
Around midwinter Javan wanted to go to a party a little way down the fjord. Anna didn’t really want to go, she was tired these days, and couldn’t take all the strange faces, all the strange desires that would accost her out there, but when the day came, and the rain poured drearily down outside, she changed her mind, as she thought that the loneliness would be worse if she stayed at home alone than if she accompanied Javan to the party. He wasn’t pleased, she could see that, but he wasn’t the man to deny her anything, so when early that evening David drew up outside with a trap, Javan helped her up, sat down beside her, and off they drove.
Anna and Javan sat with their backs to David and saw the road they’d just traveled disappearing into the darkness. They sensed the mountains above them and the fjord below, but they couldn’t see them. Sometimes a light from a house would appear, and then become smaller and smaller until a hillock or ridge suddenly caused it to vanish. The sounds of the hooves drumming on the road, the wheels rolling, mixed tonelessly with that of the rain that splattered down unceasingly on their hats.
They were driving fast. Now and again they heard David crack his whip in the air. When, after a while, the road got worse, with potholes and small protruding stones, he barely checked his speed at all. He continued to drive hard. The cart bounced violently up and down, sometimes making small lurches to the side, and Anna began to be frightened. Not for herself, but for the baby. She’d already had some bleeding, and she knew enough to know that sudden, rough movements could cause a miscarriage.
She put her hand on Javan’s shoulder.
“Could you ask him to drive a bit more carefully?” she said.
“David likes to drive fast,” Javan said.
He wasn’t thinking of the child.
“I’m scared of losing the baby,” she said. “Please.”
He looked at her. Then he put his arm around her.
“I’ll hold you,” he said.
“Don’t you understand anything,” she said. “We could lose the baby!”
The trap was still jolting just as much.
He looked at her again. Then he stood and looked at David, with his broad back hunched forward with the reins in one hand and the whip in the other.
When he sat down again and met her gaze, there was something almost anguished in his eyes.
“It’ll be all right,” he said, patting her on the knee. “We’ll soon be there. I’ll ask him to drive a bit slower on the way back, instead.”
She sat there for perhaps ten seconds more. Then she felt as if her rage and fear exploded inside her. She turned, tried to tug at David’s coat to make him turn, but the material was too slippery, her hand merely slid off, instead, she leaned forward and slapped him on the cheek.
He turned his head instantly, at the same time pulling at the reins.
“Are you mad, woman!” he shouted. “What is this?”
“Let me down!” she shouted back. “I want to get down! Now!”
The horse trotted a few yards farther, then stopped. Anna got down and began to walk off as fast as she could, without looking back.
If he doesn’t come now, she thought. If he doesn’t come now, I’m leaving him.
She heard voices behind her. Then the cart moved off and shortly afterward she heard his footsteps.
He said nothing. She said nothing, either. They walked through the rain, and everything was totally black inside her. No thoughts. No images. Just this bottomless blackness.
Occasionally a great wave of fury would rise up in it. She hated him then. She hated him for his spinelessness, she hated him for his submissiveness. She hated him for his kindliness, she hated him for his consideration.
When they got home, and he lit the lamp in the living room, she began to hit herself. Sitting in the sofa she struck herself with clenched fists in the face and the head.
He shouted her name, she hardly heard him. Long after he’d caught up her hands and held them fast, she still tried to beat herself.
He held her close, and then once again things gave way within her. This time it was tears that came.
And her first clear thought.
How can he comfort me, he who’s the cause of everything?
After that evening something in his behavior altered. The concern he lavished on her changed character; it seemed to expect other things from her now than it had done, and she thought that at last he’d understood that her feelings were true feelings, not just the products of her age or background. When she awoke the next day, and for the first time managed to think through what had happened, she came to the decision that she’d no longer acquiesce in everything he wanted. It was her home too. He had to choose between them and her. She never again wanted to see the tortured look he’d worn in the cart, not so much for her own sake but for his. The sake of his own dignity.