I AWOKE ONE night after the unfortunate wedding anniversary, it was about seven or eight weeks later, and he was not there. He had left the bed and gone into the living room.
When I came in he was sitting in the semidarkness.
Simon, I said, I could hear the uncertainty in my own voice, I am anxious. I do not like him sitting up during the night.
It is two months ago now, he said. He meant Marija. Her dismissal. Two months since she had left us. Yes, I answered.
It will be that.
I believe it was.
He stopped, waited.
I think it was impossible to know.
Yes, I said.
He just sat. He had a glass of cognac in front of him. He seldom drank late in the evening.
We could have loaned her money, he said.
Why should we have done that, I had an urge to say.
Yes, I said. Paid our way out of it, I thought without saying it aloud. As though we had actually done something wrong. As though it had been us.
But it’s not too late, he said. We could perhaps get in touch with her. Tomorrow. Perhaps give her a small loan all the same.
I hesitated with my reply, he nursed his glass carefully.
Yes, we could do that right enough, I said.
He stood up, his movement showed signs of him having sat there for a long time, stiffness in his back. He stepped over to the window, looking out at the garden. I knew he dreamed often, that he still had nightmares.
I too went over to the window. I was thinking about my brother, he said. It’s a long time since I have thought of him.
I nodded. Outside, a bird flew low over the lawn in the darkness. He peered after it too. I saw that he was old, it was quite obvious now, I noticed it in the same way you might notice that someone has become soaked in the rain or has forgotten to fasten some buttons on a shirt. It feels of similarly transitory importance when I note it in him. Although it’s not like that. And I thought: I must appreciate that it isn’t transitory. He is not going to be able to shrug off old age.
We could invite some old colleagues, he said.
Yes, I replied.
It would be nice to meet someone. We ought to go to bed soon, I said. He finished his cognac, placing the empty glass on the windowsill.
What were you thinking about your brother, I said.
He looked at me, said that it was hazy, everything had happened while he was half asleep.
I have forgotten to switch off the light, he added. The light is still on in the garage.
He released his breath, waited, and in the ensuing silence that drew all attention toward itself, he remained standing there with his hand halfway over his mouth. Let’s go to bed, he said.
HE HAS NEVER made any attempt to find his brother in recent years. If he knew where his brother was, I don’t know whether he would look him up. I even mentioned it once, that he hadn’t really taken care of his brother. His brother existed somewhere, in an apartment, in a town, even though a long time had passed. His brother who walked about and remembered and knew, and could have talked about it. In contrast to those who were gone.
He came here once. The brother. One single time, while the girls were so small that they don’t remember him. A slightly built, serious man, he did not look like Simon, he smoked a great deal, drank rather excessively, they conversed in the language that Simon never used at other times, something that made Greta laugh, she was only a few years old, but she laughed whenever that man opened his mouth. At first I believe it confused him, but then he permitted her to approach him, allowed her to take his hand and sit on his knee. Greta continued to laugh every time someone spoke in this foreign language. She touched his mouth, made him open it wide, he was patient, she touched his lips, his teeth, as though she wanted to look and see if the strange words were inside there, if that was where they came from or if they were somewhere else altogether.
He was a nervous, slightly drunken man. He stayed with us for a few days, he was to stay for a whole week, but I believe they ran out of things to talk about, he and Simon. And he had to return home. There was something he had to go home for, something vague. I saw that they sat in their own chairs without talking to each other. They could perhaps cope with their own silence, but not the other’s, and they never sat or stood close to each other. I thought that they could no longer be close, that the physical closeness that was forced upon them during the war meant that they could not bear to be too close to each other, just the smell, the voice, the body and the feeling of the other person there must be enough to remind them, perhaps even give them the feeling of being back, shut inside. They sat in their individual chairs, their separation by mutual agreement, I thought, as if they both agreed to keep their distance, now that they had finally acquired the personal space they must have dreamed of when they shared a bed and kept themselves occupied in the hiding place, now that they were at last set free from closeness, that closed in, desperate symbiosis.
Not until the airport. After Simon’s brother had taken out his ticket for the journey home, after we had said bon voyage and he was about to board, they both took a step forward, suddenly hugged each other, embracing with a tight grip, and not unlike the beginning of a fight, held each other fiercely as I imagined two wrestlers might perhaps do, only closer, really inseparable, they merged into one, two wrestlers checking out each other’s strength before throwing themselves onto the ground and one of them gains the upper hand. They let go again. Neither of them wept, neither of them looked as upset or moved as that moment of intimacy would suggest. The brother walked toward the airplane, and Simon was left behind. Only Greta took a few steps after him, as though she wanted to accompany the uncle she had come to know slightly, unwilling to give him up just like that. She looked questioningly at us and at the exit to the runway. But Simon simply said: Now we’ll go home.
HIS BROTHER TOLD us something while he was here. It seemed as though he was putting down a heavy burden and then journeyed on. He had heard their parents talk about it, he said. Before they left their apartment during the war, they said nothing to their neighbors on that stairway. Nothing about where they were going or why. There was no one who could be trusted, or else it was impossible to know whom you might be able to trust. Every day the neighbors walked past the locked door, and there was little cause for curiosity. The family had left, the door was locked, the windows in darkness. One of the neighbors had a dog, what was it called, oh yes, Kaiser. And that dog usually stopped outside the door, barking, sat down and barked as if it were waiting for something. Waiting for someone to open up, a stupid dog. The owner of course tried to drag it off with him, it protested loudly, as was stated later. The neighbor scolded, threatened. But the dog was insistent. It would not desist. As though it had caught the scent of something inside.
The same performance was repeated every day. The dog sat down. Barked. Pawed as though it were possible to burrow underneath the doormat, under the threshold, the doorframe. But the apartment is definitely empty, people said. The occupants left ages ago, the boy who knew the dog and took it for walks has left with his family. He won’t be coming out no matter how much the dog barks. The neighbor speaks sternly to the animal, he almost has to deliver a kick, to the dog, in order to get it to come with him. The next day the same procedure. The day after. Until the dog owner and another neighbor have a chat. It is the other one who has become suspicious. Has someone broken in, entered the empty rooms, inside the apartment? It is possible of course. It is dark, it is silent there, but it is possible all the same. He notifies the police.