When we had just met, it kept crossing my mind that he was going to disappear. That one day he would sit in a train, or perhaps on an airplane, and find another place far away from me, from us.
He would leave a note, a letter. I would open it and read what he had written. It would not explain anything.
Later he told me he had thought the same about me.
I have come to realize how the voice, the words, are the way into him. But also to us. It feels as though he has withdrawn, he has closed himself off. In the same way that traffic is blocked off in the old street where we used to live when we were newlyweds, the traffic was diverted and the street deserted. It feels as though he is in a different house, a place I cannot enter, I see that he walks around in there, something he smiles at, he is busy with various things, I notice all of it, and he looks out at me through the windows, he stands in the doorway. At a distance.
A FEW YEARS before the episode occurred, when we had just moved to this part of the city, and Greta, our eldest daughter was a baby, I used to go for walks. On these walks I began to notice a boy in the neighborhood. He did not live close by, but on the other side of the field, not far from the church. He always walked on his own to and from school, without any friends. I was often out with the baby carriage at the time school finished for the day, and then I saw him walk along by the lake. He took his time. Stopping and peering at whatever there was to look at, there were several older boys there at that time, who were constantly flying kites. He kept an eye on them down by the water’s edge. I think that he was the same age as my son, the boy I gave away. It is like a game, in which you know all the time that you are creating the idea as you go along, you realize it is not real, but that has nothing to say for the illusion. I liked the notion that he could have been my son. It gave me a kind of reassurance. It was a comfortable thought, that he had done so well for himself, I must of course assume what I saw of him now meant that he must have done well for himself. I could envisage an upbringing for him, just nearby. A family of three, I saw the house where he lived, a house with a garden, in winter he probably skated on the lake, and in summer they went on visits to their cottage.
I went alone for walks in the evening and saw a light on the second floor in the room where he stayed. I spotted him at the window. He was sticking something to the upper part of the window frame, a little figure hanging by a fine thread, it began to spin around, perhaps in the heat from a radiator directly below. We both stood watching how the movement, the figure, went one way and then back the other way. Him behind the window and me outside, at a short distance. I had a feeling, or I was sure that, he was aware of me. At least once some time had passed. My restless wandering to and fro with the baby carriage. The all-too-accidental encounters. On one occasion, he was with his parents. I glimpsed him a couple of times in the schoolyard too, when I was walking past the school. Saw him with his buddies, and on his own. Another time I noticed that some boys crossed the street in front of him on the way to school, pushed him or tripped him. The group had dispersed by the time I came on the scene. He was on his knees, his heavy schoolbag preventing him from getting up.
Are you all right, I asked. He just nodded. I helped him to his feet, and when he looked me in the eye, there was no gratitude there. He hurried down along the sidewalk, and I remained standing watching him, Greta in the baby carriage started to cry, as though she sensed that I had forgotten her for a while, she continued crying until I picked her up.
Later I walked past him on the sidewalk.
I persuaded myself that we had a conversation.
He looked at me. I looked at him.
Are you all right now, I said. I would have liked to talk to you.
I don’t know who you are.
No. But I would like to explain.
He stopped making eye contact, I noticed that he was walking the same way as before, but more frequently he walked down along the lakeshore. When we bumped into each other, he always hurried by.
•
WALKING PAST SOMEONE on the street, looking at his face, seeing where he lives, knowing the route he takes every day, for example going to school. Looking at him going over, watching him cross at the same place every day. Noticing his features, such as that his face is young and unformed, that he is perhaps ten years old, perhaps twelve. He is only a boy in the neighborhood. There is the house where he lives, there is the school he attends. Here is the road he takes, sometimes he walks along by the lake.
I have often thought about him, I try to find his face, hold it fast in my thoughts, the face of that boy. He has nothing to do with the episode, in the same way that he has nothing to do with the boy in the grave, but all the same it has taken on an association in my thoughts, as though their shapes are superimposed on one another, and again I think about a photograph, a photograph that is overexposed and shows two subjects, melding together in an accidental combination. As your memories always do in your consciousness.
I WAS UP in the churchyard one day, and there was another woman there, a woman of my own age. I noticed that she paused for a moment beside the grave. I felt curiosity about who she was, whether she could tell me anything, I wanted to talk to her and rushed to approach her, but when I reached the spot, she had already started to move away, and the more I think about it, the less certain I feel that she actually stopped beside the grave. That she stopped there longer than beside any of the others. She was probably searching for another grave, perhaps she was simply a person who went about reading the names on the gravestones.
Why does that unsettle me so, that absence of love, of care. The loneliness of the name and the little pile of earth. That no one comes, that there is never anybody there. I remember when I was a child and accompanied an older relative to the churchyard on Sundays, a little graveyard hidden away behind an old church, I used to play there as if it were a little park while my grandmother tended the graves. She took care of the dead. She seldom told stories about them or described their lives, there were few details available except for the ones who were placed in clear view on the walls of her house, framed portraits from which those who had passed away stared back with hazy eyes, but there was care in the way she picked stones from the earth and carefully planted fresh flowers among those already growing there. It seemed as though she tucked them in with the dark, heavy soil between her hands, in winter she removed the snow, and around Christmastime she lit a tapered lamp that she left sitting there when we went home. As though the dead also needed light.
I HAVE THE application in front of me, I have let it lie on the coffee table, I think I creased the edge of the paper when I removed it from the envelope. He is old, it is best for both of us that I give him away. Helena thinks that we have talked about it. Don’t you remember, Mom? That I ought to give him away. Have I talked about it. I can’t remember that. Her sisters probably agree. It’s likely they are behind it, pushing her forward on the makeshift stage in the living room. She began to cry, it often happened that she started to cry. She tried to do what they wanted. She should dance, it was a part of the performance. Or sing, tell a joke, perform a conjuring trick.
Make him disappear. They have decided. His stay at the day care center is not enough, he needs a better facility. A home for the elderly. I must appreciate that. Our solidarity has something suspect about it now, something presumptuous.