Who is it that took the children away with him? The Pied Piper of Hamelin, he played his pipe and lured all the rats to follow him in a long line down to the river where they drowned. When he returned to Hamelin, they did not think they needed to keep their promise to him. They would not pay him.
She read everything on the page, did not skip over anything. She conjured it up, and the girl tensed her jaw.
When he began to play again, it was not the rats that followed the Pied Piper through the town’s narrow streets, but all the boys and girls, all the children of Hamelin. They came out from the schools, from the houses.
I observed Marija and her granddaughter as Marija read the distressing story to the little girl who sat there with her eyes full of terror. While I listened, I suddenly felt unwell, perhaps it was something to do with the ghastly story. Simon had already gone to bed. He was lying in bed with the light on, I put my arm around him, and he put his arm around me. I think we both lay listening to the voices, the foreign language. People we barely knew, who were occupying our living room.
The Pied Piper has a pipe, and the children follow him. They follow him in a long line, he leads them out of Hamelin, toward a mountain. He plays his pipe louder, an opening appears. Right into the mountainside, into a cavern, he leads them inside. And there they vanish.
AFTER THEY HAD left, she was brokenhearted. She spoke to her daughter on her phone again, the daughter’s unpleasant boyfriend had returned. Marija said there was nothing she could do for her, for the young girl. She was discouraged about being so far away, but she felt that it would not have been any different if she had visited them. She would not listen, she said about her daughter. We talked about our daughters, how it was impossible to control other people’s lives, but instead we had to sit and watch things happen.
That was when I suggested that she continue to live here with us for a while, in the meantime at least. She had problems where she was living, an increase in rent that meant she had to look for another place all the same. You can stay with us, we told her, while you are looking.
Marija stayed with us for several weeks, occupying one room. Several weeks, was it not longer? They were peaceful weeks. So surprising. As though she had always stayed there, eating, sleeping, getting up there, being together with us. In the afternoons we ate dinner in the dining room, we seldom do that otherwise, we set the table with enthusiasm and took ages discussing places we had visited and foodstuffs we preferred, vacation destinations we would like to revisit. Marija said we must come to Latvia. We must visit her hometown someday, she would show us around. I think we envisioned at that particular time, we would travel with Marija, eat local food, meet the uncle, daughter, grandchild again. The rest of the family.
Both Simon and I participated in these conversations with unusual eagerness.
In the evenings we formed a little group distributed among the settee and our three chairs, never facing the television, but each with a book or bent over the chessboard. Simon showed her his books, the history books with detailed descriptions of areas where important battles have been fought, he had marked all of them on various maps, look at the mountain ranges, these long river courses, I will show you what happened, if you see that line there, what it indicates, he talked as though he himself had seen armies fall on the battlefield. She seemed like a friend, he said later. A true friend, did she not?
She was indeed, I said. That was after she had left, after her dismissal.
They were lovely, those days she stayed here. We have never had many friends.
~ ~ ~
The new cleaner arrives around ten. Once a week, mostly on Wednesdays. This one works in several other places, before holidays she brings a friend with her, they work together and clean the entire house. I hear the key in the door, and sometimes, if I am not particularly observant or have forgotten that she is coming, I think for a moment that it is Marija out in the hallway. She always calls out her name. It is Ana, she says, or is it pronounced Anna. Then she places the key on the bureau with a little bang. But she doesn’t come into the living room to chat, only if there is something in particular. As a rule she gives me instructions before she leaves. She fetches the vacuum cleaner that Marija was in the habit of using. She has pointed out that it needs a new nozzle, really we need a whole new machine, it does not work the way it should, she says.
But she does not insist.
She lets herself out.
And then it is silent again.
IT BECAME SILENT after Marija. She might just as well have let the house remain empty. Removed the furniture in every single room and just left the marks behind, shadows and pale spaces.
It was on my birthday that it began. What I still don’t completely understand, and have spent a great deal of time considering. Immediately after that evening I could still blame it on hidden misunderstandings, other interpretations. But now that is of course no longer any consolation, Marija herself helped me to clarify it. For a time it upset me that I could not replay our conversation like a recording in my memory, what was said that evening. All I remember is some disconnected fragments of a conversation. Simon had booked tickets for a concert, a concert by a well-known philharmonic orchestra, several weeks in advance he came and said: What about inviting her to come with us.
Marija? I said, I was taken aback, even though this was actually something we had briefly discussed, that she should celebrate with us.
Why not, he said.
No, I responded, happy, why not indeed. We were in such agreement, he was fulfilling something I myself had mulled over in my mind. It was his idea. But it could have been mine, if he hadn’t managed to come up with it first. She had also talked about the concert in the Grieg Hall, part of the music festival. I wouldn’t believe for a moment that she had any ulterior motives about it, she was not trying to persuade me to invite her along, she was not the kind of person who had ulterior motives, I am sure of that. She simply liked to talk about the event, the actual concert, that particular orchestra, I know she also said that we ought to attend, Simon and I, that it was something we shouldn’t miss.
I phoned the box office and made reservations. When I first received the tickets, it was as though this had been the intention all along. We always agreed about her, about Marija. That was perhaps why it felt shameful later. Shame that we had been so mistaken about her? In a way it felt like our responsibility. And simultaneously: shame about what we had not spoken about and that had turned into a lie, nothing that could be explained. We participated in it as though it were our own downfall. That was how we saw it.
AT FIRST SHE would not accept the ticket, no, it was impossible. She couldn’t. And I recall that birthday, from the morning onward: Outside there is fog, but Simon says that it is going to be fine, that they have said it is going to be a fine day. I hear him out in the kitchen. He is making coffee, he is placing slices of cake neatly on a plate with a napkin.
Happy birthday, he says as he sits down on the edge of the bed.
How old am I, I say.
He just smiles. Kisses me.
The phone rings, once, then once more. I talk to the children. I put down the receiver and look in the mirror. Marija knocks on the door.