This bulb is dirty and flickers badly. It must already be old. The treads are narrow. I put out my right foot and take a cautious step onto the top one, pause for a moment to collect myself, and then go slowly down.
There it is again. A dull thump, a dragging noise, a sort of squeal, of the kind made by the pistons of a large machine. But I cannot turn around. Succumb to your anxieties too often and you become small and pathetic. This is my house. Perhaps this is the critical test, perhaps now everything will change.
Silence falls.
I reach the bottom without a sound to be heard, except for my own breathing and the beating of my heart. It’s cold. How deep is it down here? Another door, which I open; another light switch.
I hear it again. This room is surprisingly large, at least fifteen by thirty meters. Stone walls, the floor hard earth, two bulbs in the ceiling, only one of which is working. I see a crumpled cloth, and next to it a curved metal rod, one end rounded like the head of a walking stick, the other filed to a sharp point. Two doors: I try one, it’s locked. I rattle it, but it doesn’t budge. But the other one opens and on the other side is yet another set of steps. No light switch.
I stare down into the darkness, and try to count the treads. I can’t make out more than nine.
Enough! I’m not going any farther!
I go farther, one step after the other, my left hand flat against the wall, my right hand clutching the phone with its feeble glow. When did the noise stop? I haven’t even noticed. Another two steps. And another. And yet another. Now I’ve reached the floor.
In front of me is a door, which I try to open, but it’s locked tight. I can feel the relief. There’s nothing more here, I can go back. I try it once again, and it opens without the slightest resistance.
I grope my way forward. Under me is a step made of steel, and the wall next to me is curved. After a moment I get it: a spiral staircase. The shaft goes straight down vertically. I search my pockets and find a ballpoint pen made of plastic. I hold it out with my arm and let it drop.
I wait. No sound of an impact. Probably the pen was too small and too light. I search my pockets again and find a wallet, a metal lighter, a key ring, and coins. I only have the lighter so as to be able to offer it to smokers. I snap it open. The flame, much brighter than the phone, lets me see the steps better. I hold it out over the shaft and it flickers. So air is streaming up from down there. I hesitate, then let it fall. The flame dwindles and is swallowed up in the darkness. No sound of an impact.
But I hear something else. I listen, wait, listen, the vibrations are getting stronger: something is hitting the steps. It takes me a few seconds to realize that someone is coming up the stairs. Toward me.
Then it goes dark.
And slowly the light returns. We’re sitting at dinner: Laura, Marie, Laura’s father, Laura’s mother, Laura’s sister and brother-in-law, and two children, all around the table, which has been set.
“It’s supposed to stay this hot all week,” says Laura.
“Every summer worse than the one before,” says her sister. “Nobody knows where you can even take the children.”
“A house in Scandinavia,” says my father-in-law. “Or on the North Sea.” He looks at me. “Like your brother’s. Everyone could use one.”
“We could visit him,” I am obliged to say. I would like to eat, because I’m really hungry, but my hands are shaking too badly.
Now my father-in-law is talking about politics. I nod at regular intervals, as does everyone else. He’s an architect, and in the seventies he built one of the ugliest concrete buildings in the country, which earned him the National Medal. He gestures deliberately and makes long pauses before he says anything he thinks is important. That’s how you have to do it, that’s how you have to be, that’s how you have to present yourself, and then you’ll be respected. I admire him, I always wanted to be like him; and who knows, maybe in reality he’s a little like me.
The trembling has eased up. Very carefully I push food into my mouth. Luckily nobody’s watching me.
Or? Now everyone’s looking at me. What is it, what did I get wrong, what did I mess up? Apparently Laura has said something about a trip to Sicily. They’re all smiling and being pleased and saying how wonderful.
“Do please excuse me,” I say. “Urgent call. Be right back.”
“You work too much,” says Laura.
“Everyone has to indulge themselves a little,” says my father-in-law. He pauses for thought, and then goes on in a tone that suggests he’s imparting hidden wisdom to us: “A man must know how to live.”
I ask myself if he’s ever in his entire life uttered one single phrase that isn’t a thousand times well-worn cliché. I envy him greatly.
On my way to my study I pass the open door to the salon. Ligurna, our Lithuanian maid, greets me looking tragic. I nod to her and hurry on past. A year ago in a moment of weakness I slept with her. Unfortunately it happened not in the kitchen or on my desk but in the master bedroom in our marriage bed. Afterward Ligurna searched carpet and bedside table like a skilled detective for hairs, eyelashes, any other traces: nonetheless I was afraid for weeks that she could have overlooked something. Since then I’ve only spoken to her when it’s unavoidable. I can’t throw her out, she could blackmail me.
I sit behind the desk, swallow two tranquilizers without water, look at the Paul Klee, look at the Eulenboeck on the opposite walclass="underline" a canvas covered with a collage of newspaper cuttings, with a crushed Coca-Cola can and a teddy bear glued in the middle. You have to go right up close to realize that it’s all trompe l’oeil. The bear and the can aren’t real, nor are the bits of newspaper; it’s all painted in oils. If you examine the cuttings with a magnifying glass, you see they’re all art criticism about collages.
The painting is from Eulenboeck’s later period, his most valuable. I got to know the old poseur, he was very condescending, very white-haired, and never stopped making really stupid jokes about Ivan and me and how uncannily alike we were. Obviously he thought he knew me well, because he knew Ivan well. It cost one hundred and seventy thousand, supposedly a discounted price for a friend. But all the same it’s got that teddy bear. He gives me joy. I know it’s all a parody of something and nothing in it means what it’s supposed to mean, but I don’t care. On the short list of things that aren’t horrible in my life, that bear is right up there.
What luck that these days you can order every medication on the Internet. How would someone like me have coped fifteen years ago? I cross my arms and lean back. I would like to work in order to relax a bit, but I have nothing to do. Without hope, there’s leisure.
There’s a knock. Laura looks in. “Do you have a moment?”
“Unfortunately not.”
She sits down, crosses her legs, and looks first at the Paul Klee, then at me.
“Is it about Marie?”
“It’s about me.”
“You?”
“Imagine, Eric. It’s about me.”
This I needed. Is she going to tell me another dream? Or has someone offered her a role? That would be truly bad news.
“I’ve had an offer. A role.”
“But that’s wonderful!”
“Nothing big, but at least it’s a start. It’s not easy going back again after fifteen years.”
“You’re even more beautiful than you were then!”
Not bad. It didn’t take me half a second to come up with that, the sentence is all prepared and always at hand. Of course she isn’t more beautiful than she used to be, why should she be, but she’s slimmer and the exercise has paid off, and fine mature lines around her eyes look good on her. She could certainly have a career in movies. I have to stop it.