He could have shielded her from the sight, but he did not. Without seeing it he had confirmed to her that she was alone. By reminding her that she was not the one she dreamed of being, he had simultaneously come to reveal that he himself had only dreamed about her. You dream the dreams you need to, he thought later. He had been too young to understand why she dreamed as she did. On the other hand, she had immediately realised that he still only needed his dreams. Where she had adorned herself in her Jews, he had adorned himself with his love instead of letting it elicit a scrap of mercy.
She did not speak to him for almost a week, and he dared not approach when he caught a glimpse of her in the corridors or on the way up or down the staircase, past the plaster Greek. He was in despair, he couldn’t concentrate in class, and he felt assaulted by scornful eyes, while his stomach clenched in fear and hope at the thought that they might pass each other in break. One afternoon he rang her doorbell, with shaking knees. Her father opened the door, she was not at home. He invited Robert in. He didn’t like to say no when the clarinettist asked if he would like a cup of tea. Ana might well turn up, he said, smiling in a way that made Robert feel he was made of glass. She was a sensitive girl, but he must have discovered that. No more was said on the subject.
It had snowed all day and Robert’s shoes were soaked. The clarinettist asked if he didn’t want to take them off to get dry. He kept on even though Robert said politely it wasn’t important. Surely he didn’t want to get pneumonia? Ana’s father was about to take off his shoes by force when Robert gave in and shyly watched the bald man crushing up newspaper and stuffing the wet shoes with it. He leaned the shoes against the radiator and stood there looking at Robert for a while before sitting down again. They had not been alone together before. Now he was caught, without shoes and without Ana. Her father put sugar in his cup and stirred it thoroughly. How was the world revolution going, then? Robert’s face flamed. It would take a bit of time… The other looked at him over the edge of his horn-rimmed spectacles and smiled, but not maliciously, almost kindly. It must be nice, he said, to have something to look forward to.
He questioned him about his mother, and Robert said more than he meant to. The clarinettist regarded him attentively. He kept his eyes on him even when he lifted his cup to his mouth, which was a mere slit in his short-sighted face. To his astonishment Robert discovered that he no longer felt shy, and before he could stop himself he was recounting how he had found his father’s telephone number, how strange it had been to call up the gentlemen’s hairdresser in a provincial Jutland town and present himself as his son, and how at the last moment he had changed his mind and left the train on the way to their arranged meeting. He stopped and to avoid the other’s eyes looked around the room. He caught sight of the black suit hanging on the door. You can hear me play this evening, said Ana’s father. Robert looked at him, the clarinettist smiled again. They would be playing Brahms.
They heard the sound of a key in the front door. When Ana came into the room she stopped abruptly before coming over and sitting down with them, then taking a gulp of her father’s tea. They sat in the kitchen eating sandwiches after her father had gone. They didn’t talk about what had happened the last time he came to visit. Nor did they talk about Jews. He told her about his English teacher, who had been furious because hardly anyone had handed in their essays. I have turned a blind eye to a lot, the teacher had said, but now I’ve seen enough of you! Ana laughed. He asked if she skated. She did. Perhaps they could go skating one day. If the cold spell lasted the ice on the lake would soon be thick enough. It had grown dark outside and snow was falling again. He asked when the concert would begin. She looked at him in surprise. Now… Would he like to hear it? They rose and went into the living room. She pulled up her legs in the armchair and he thought she probably always did that when she was alone. She bent over the radio so her hair fell over one eye, and lazily stretched out a hand.
A clattering of flapping wings broke the silence a little way off. A flock of birds rose in concert from the reeds and fell into a triangular formation with an equal distance between each. The triangle of beating wings made a turn in the air, dwindling into the perspective towards the axis where swollen clouds were reflected in the quiet water. Robert rose from his crumbling post and saw the flock and its flapping reflection approach each other. He threw a last glance at the silhouette of the dancing gypsy woman on the cigarette packet’s blue square, no longer twilight blue but pale blue like the sky and the folded surface of the water behind the reed-bed.
He began to walk back, again visualising Ana one winter evening in their early youth, beside the darkly varnished radio where her father was playing among the other musicians, the instruments flowing together in one great movement. He sat in the armchair opposite her, right on the edge, while the waves of music struck the densely woven panel of the wireless set. Ana sat looking out at the falling snowflakes outside. Cautiously he rose and went over to her, squatted down and laid a hand on one of her ankles in the flesh-coloured stockings. She slowly turned her face towards him, not surprised, almost in a kind of dawning recognition, and with a strangely soft, lithe movement slipped down to him on the carpet. Afterwards he couldn’t work out how she had disengaged herself from her folded mermaid position and down into his embrace.
He had not forgotten her face in the warm, slanting light of the lamp, surrounded by her fan of hair on the wine-red and withered green vine leaves. It stayed with him even after it ceased to make him heavy at heart. Her face was still clearer than a photograph after he had grown up and other women had succeeded her. It kept on breathing. He remembered not only her broad cheekbones and the distance between her dark eyes, but also the feeling of being wide open, the second before he bent down and his own shadow covered what he had seen. It was the same feeling many years later when Monica pulled a woollen blanket over her head to guard their first kiss against the cold and the raw winter light and the ugliness of the holiday flat. And perhaps he had just been waiting, it occurred to him that afternoon in the French Alps, for a face with the same almost painful gentleness to sink down over him and wipe out the image of Ana.
But he had been mistaken, his last love had not eclipsed the first one. Instead, his relationship with Monica had made him doubt his capacity to love. If there was a hidden connection between Ana and Monica it seemed more likely that his first delusion had been pregnant with all the succeeding ones. But he did not think like that in the Alps, and later when he was with Sonia in his and Monica’s newly painted home, he sometimes pictured Ana afresh, her expectant face framed in flowing hair, and he felt she signified a promise that had never been fulfilled.
They lay rolling about among the threadbare arabesques of the carpet, their hands under each other’s clothes, tongues enmeshed, until she tore herself free. He looked at her, crestfallen, thinking she did not want it after all. She wiped saliva from her mouth and started to unbutton her blouse. Take off your clothes, she said quietly. He obeyed. Everything suddenly took on a very practical tone. He kissed her neck as her fingers searched for the hooks of her bra. How skinny you are, she said and made him feel like a skeleton. Her breasts were smaller than he had imagined and her hips broader, thighs stronger. This is what I look like, she said, as if she had read a slight hesitation in his eyes, and he kissed her passionately and frenetically like a drunkard afraid of getting sober. She fell backwards and started to laugh. His hands went roving all over her. He didn’t like her laughter. Not so fast, she whispered and showed him how, with a light hold of his wrist. She seemed a little too expert.