It’s your birthday, she says. You are going to a concert. Now you’ll both have a nice day.
Then you must come too, Simon says.
SHE JUST LAUGHED. But he insisted. When it dawned on her that he was serious, that we really had bought her a ticket, she became solemn and concerned. It was too much, she said, far too much.
Not until we were in the taxi that evening did she become animated again. She had dressed so beautifully, had borrowed a dress from a friend, a short black jacket, with a lilac coat. Stockings with threads like a fine net. She talked to the taxi driver and told him we were going to a concert, as though everybody had to know about this special occasion, she laughed at something he said, her dress, her hairstyle and the stockings obviously made her extra outgoing. I believe the same applied to our silence, her sociability made us slightly self-conscious, and I think she noticed that, because afterward she said something about just being so happy about this, that we were able to go together.
The taxi drew to a halt outside the Grieg Hall. Marija chattered all the way in. When we sat down she talked about what good seats we had, and for the next few minutes she spoke about how long it would be until the concert started. When the conductor made his entrance, she took my hand and squeezed it.
During the first movement, I was aware that we were leaning back, both of us. I breathed in time to the music, she kept hold of my hand. Simon on the other side of me, it was so long since we had been to a concert.
At the intermission she was enthusiastic, we were all enthusiastic.
She was absorbed by the musicians, the conductor, we had bought the program, and Marija peeked inside it on the way out to the lobby. While we were standing there, a couple of Simon’s old colleagues walked by, they stopped and expressed surprise at seeing us, and I introduced them to Marija. My friend, I said. They said hello to her.
When we returned to our seats, there were still a few minutes left of the intermission.
She was reading the program, it said something about the conductor.
He is Jewish, she said. She said something further. Something I did not catch, just a single sentence as she turned her head away. No, he isn’t, or: Really he can’t be. It was trivial. It was a triviality. I thought it over, and let it go.
For the remainder of the concert I forgot everything except the music. It is one of the best concerts I’ve ever attended, Simon commented afterward. All three of us agreed.
On the way home in the taxi she tried to persuade us that we should hear them again on another occasion. She took my hand again in the backseat, squeezing it tight. I remember that. Thanks, she said. Thanks again.
I PEER OVER at the neighboring garden, the curtains are closed in what I believe has been turned into a utility room. The neighbor has allowed a hedge to grow, he seems preoccupied by his garden. The hedge is not so tall yet, but tall enough, he bought large bushes that he planted and so changed the landscape overnight. Why does that upset me? I must have become fond of continuity, but what does that mean. When there is something you cannot do without, there is a need, it is often called love. I wonder whether he ever invites the girl for a coffee or a mineral water, the young girl who cleans for him, whether they converse.
I have a photograph of Marija. In the photo she is on an outing with us. She is so cheerful, we are having a picnic on a sloping bank in the forest, we are laughing at the picture being taken. It strikes me when I look at it now. Marija in the photograph: She has not said anything yet. She is as she was, before. The picture seems so innocent, she is sitting there. Cheerful, waving, with a lunch box and a thermos flask on her lap.
It feels as though I could have stopped her, intervened on this day that looks so flawless and simple in the picture, held her there, said something or made a move to ward off the action that causes her to leave, to be gone. That she is soon out of our lives.
As though that would have helped anything.
THE PERSON I have been closest to, apart from my children, is Simon. I miss a voice, that is what I miss. Sometimes I miss the time Marija was here so strongly that I cannot comprehend that she has left. I wake and Simon is still by my side. Simon’s body, the same long fingers, the same familiar movements when he turns around, sits up in the bed. But he has traveled into himself. The territory we shared is closed off, locked in the same way that I am shut off from Marija. I tell myself that they both exist somewhere. I just have to accept the distance. As it applies to her we are talking about tens of miles, about hours, a day’s journey. Perhaps I could have done that someday, journeyed.
I am not going to do it. There is something paradoxical about it, if she had been silent, she would still have been here. But he is the one who is silent, who has gone, without words he becomes almost invisible.
At the beginning, a few letters arrived. Her handwriting, postmarked Latvia on a pale stamp. A pretty little bundle of three or four letters, I don’t know what they contain, and I don’t know whether more will come, I won’t open them anyway. It is done now, I cannot undo it. I saw on television that there was a news report about Latvia, I tried to turn up the volume on the TV. The remote control is faulty and before I managed to do anything, they had changed the topic.
Her words, her voice that day, how she comes into sight, most of the time I am able to shut it out, there is something about the clock, that harsh ticking. When I first hear it, it is more strident than anything else. That is all I hear.
IT WAS SEVERAL months after the concert. We were sitting in the kitchen. Marija was looking through the mail. That morning our neighbor had begun to tidy the lawn with edging shears, the neighbor who sometimes irritates me, the guy who employs the young women. Now he was standing beside the fence busy with this machine, as though he were testing the motor. What is he up to, Marija said, she started to talk about this neighbor. She had mentioned him several times before, or perhaps we had talked together about him. Maybe I was the origin of her displeasure, she may have adopted my antipathy.
We watched him through the kitchen window. Walking along the outer edge of the lawn, holding the machine, stopping it, bending over and clearing something away before starting it up again.
She said it in Latvian. And nevertheless I understood what she said. The tone of voice. The word.
He must be a Jew.
What did you say? I asked.
And she repeated it. So that I should understand.
She stood in the middle of the kitchen, between the table and the window, she was still clutching the bundle of mail, and repeated what she had said. Repeated it calmly in my own language, that he was probably one of them. She said that. Them. To be sure that I caught her meaning, she probably wanted to explain.
And then it started. She went on and on, talked and talked. I kept my eyes on the water faucet, the sink, the floor, the window ledge. In the background was the noise of those snarling shears, on and off, on and off. What she said was so banal, like a child retelling a fairy story and rattling off the words of others, stylized and concise, it became an overstated soliloquy in which each word leads on to the next, everything has to be memorized in the right order, because that order is the only logic to be found in the story. It is found only within its own compulsory neurotic framework, its own tautology. Spiteful and simple. The simplicity of the cliché, overused words, the language of tired phrases. About them.
I thought she would never finish. When she stopped, it was because of a detail. She had discovered something when she looked at the stack of mail and lifted the letter sitting on top, she asked if this wasn’t a letter I had been waiting for. Simon had also come in, I did not know how much of the tirade he had caught, but I could see on his face, the astonishment, that he had heard enough to understand.