He had a condom in his pocket. It had been there a long time. He took it out, bashful, and broke the seal. She didn’t say anything but he could see what she was thinking. He was prepared all right. Licentiously considerate. She watched him roll it on, curious. This was it, then. The smell of rubber made him feel coarse and still more undressed. She guided him and after a couple of attempts he made his way in. She smiled and squeezed up her eyes, her hair stuck to her damp forehead, she groaned. He ejaculated almost at once. He could see that was a disappointment, but she was sweet. They lay close to each other, listening to Brahms. She gave him a far away look and stroked from his forehead down over his nose with one finger. He said he loved her. She made no reply.
For a week or two he really thought they were a couple. He thought of it with ecstasy when he waited for her outside the school. They strolled together in the snow-white parks and went skating when the ice on the lake grew thick enough. He took her home and introduced her to his mother. He wondered nervously what Ana would see in her, and on the way upstairs in the modest block he puffed up his mother’s love of Tolstoy and Dostoievski. Afterwards he felt foolish for having been over-enthusiastic in crediting his mannish mother and her red, cracked hands with a love of the arts. When they were alone in his room Ana said that his mother seemed a fine person. It sounded far too studied. They lay on his bed, he kissed her and pressed a hand between her nylon thighs. She pushed it away.
She seemed to have got over her rapture for Jewishness, and he never saw the star of David again. All that was left was poetry, but she did not talk about it as enthusiastically as before, and he soon grew bored when they adjudicated between what was pop and what was art. He wanted to talk about them. They often just lay on his bed or hers, when they were alone at home, without saying anything as they caressed each other, she slightly absentminded, he insistent and expectant. After they had made love she always covered herself with the duvet. She didn’t like him looking at her body. Sometimes she fell asleep. When he realised they were not sweethearts any longer and maybe never had been, it was not her broad hips and small breasts he visualised when he lay sleepless at night cultivating his broken heart. It was always her face beneath him on the carpet the moment the whole thing began.
It did not end, it ebbed out, until with one blow it became clear to him that it had been over for some time already. She started to have things to do in the afternoon, and when he arrived at her home unexpectedly it was quite often her father who opened the door. He had tea with the clarinettist as the thawing snow slid off the roofs outside. They listened to records and talked about music. Robert learned a lot about music that winter, and in the midst of his unease he discovered that he liked sitting in the gloomy apartment talking to the bald man.
The clarinettist never seemed surprised when Robert rang the doorbell. Nor when he turned up one afternoon even though Ana had said she would not be home until late that night. There was a music stand by the living room window, the clarinet lay on a chair beside it. Robert asked if he was interrupting. Not at all, but now he was there he might as well make himself useful and get them a pot of tea. He went into the kitchen and put the kettle on, and as he waited for it to boil he listened to the cool, melancholy notes from the living room. Ana’s father went on playing when Robert carefully put the tray on the sofa table and sat down in his usual place. The man by the window seemed not to notice him. He played as if he was alone, lightly rocking to and fro in time to the melody with his small, short-sighted eyes glued to the score and his mouth locked in a downward curving, somehow regretful grimace around the mouthpiece of the clarinet.
He continued to play when the front door banged. Robert turned round, and through the half open door he saw Ana in the passage with a man. They had their backs to him and didn’t see him. They hung up their coats on the row of hooks and disappeared out of sight along the corridor to her room. Robert sat on until the clarinettist put his instrument down on his lap and looked at him over his horn-rimmed spectacles. Bartók, he smiled and took off his glasses. He held them up to the window, lowered them again and polished the lenses on his shirt. His eyes were brown like Ana’s and bigger than usual. He put on his glasses and looked out of the window. There was a rubber plant on the window-sill. He stretched out a hand and picked at the outside, withered edge of one of the leathery leaves. Brown dust fell on the sill. Bartók, Béla, he said slowly, looking out at the wintry light.
17
Robert was at the kitchen sink when he heard a car in the drive. The engine stopped, a car door slammed, and soon afterwards the doorbell rang. He hesitated for a moment before going out to open the door. No one was there, but he recognised Jacob’s car behind his own. The telephone rang in the living room. He stopped on the threshold. Jacob was out on the lawn looking in at the panorama window. It was dim in the room, presumably he could only see his reflection and the clouds and trees by the fence at the end of the garden. Robert had forgotten to switch off the answering machine when he came in. The telephone was beside the window. If Robert answered it Jacob would see him. If he ignored it, it would still look as if he had just gone for a walk.
He heard his own voice saying he was not in and asking the caller to leave a message after the tone. The volume was turned up so high that Jacob must be able to hear it. He stayed on the grass. Robert was almost certain he had not seen him, but still it seemed as if their eyes met through the wide window. After the tone there was silence, and in the silence he heard someone breathing. When he recognised Lucca’s voice he could not decide whether he felt a bad conscience or annoyance at the idea of not talking to her. He went over and picked up the receiver, turning his back on the window. When he looked out into the garden a few moments later, Jacob had vanished. He heard the car start and drive away.
Her voice was muted, almost confidential, but maybe she only lowered it because there were other people in the room she was calling from. She had learned to dial for herself. Wasn’t she clever? He apologised for not having been to see her yet, and asked how she was doing. It sounded tame. She replied with a question. Had he spoken to Andreas? Robert thought of Stockholm. No, Andreas had not contacted him. Why didn’t she just call him? Surely she must have an idea where he was. She said nothing. Robert asked if he should try to call Andreas for her and at once felt cross with himself for voluntarily allowing himself to get entangled in their private complications. He had only asked to break her silence. She hesitated. Would he do it? He said yes. She wanted to see Lauritz. Maybe, if it was not asking too much, could he take the boy to see her? On a Saturday or Sunday, when he was not working? He must promise to say no if it didn’t suit him. He smiled at the small hypocrisy.
She gave him the name and address of some friends Andreas used to stay with when he was in Copenhagen. He would have to find out their number, she couldn’t remember it. He got the number from directory enquiries and called. It was engaged. He pushed open the sliding door and went outside. The sun shone through the busy clouds and made the white plastic chairs on the terrace shine so he had to narrow his eyes. He went to stand in the middle of the lawn where Jacob had been. The shining reflections of the chairs swam in the panorama window in front of the dimness of the room and the more distant, indistinct picture of his lone figure on the grass. How had he ended up here? Even if he strained his memory to the utmost, and really succeeded in tracing the order of events down to their smallest links, he had a suspicion that it would not bring him closer to an answer.