He waited for a long time on the terrace where she had sat with Lauritz, until he heard the slight tick from the point of her thin white stick. It made him think of the sound of Lauritz’s pine cones rolling over the tiles the previous day, the prickly sound of the hard seeds. A nurse led her by the arm. She had been surprised when they told her he had come, not expecting him to visit her again so soon. Actually she had not been sure he would come at all.
She was wearing a long black dress with many little buttons, one of the dresses he had brought her from the empty house. Her hair was combed back and held in a pony tail just as in the picture from Paris, and she had put on lipstick. Someone had helped her. The nurse left them alone. Lucca put a hand on the parapet. Maybe they could go for a walk on the beach, if he felt like it. He took her hand and laid it on his arm, and thus they walked, in an old-fashioned way, he thought. She said it. Now we’re walking like two old people…
The shadows had grown long and gathered in small, bluish puddles on the trodden sand. The foam of the waves shone in the low sunlight. Only a few holiday-makers remained on the beach. Up in one of the dunes he saw a white-haired man putting on his bathing robe. He resembled the barrister, but Robert could not decide whether it was really him. They walked at the edge of the beach where the sand was damp and firm. They walked slowly but he could see she was regaining the use of her limbs. It was the first time she had been down on the beach. Her white stick left little holes in the sand, a wavering track. She breathed in through her nose. Seaweed, she said. It was true. A salty, slightly rotten odour hung over the intertwined belts of dried kelp between the edge of the sea and the dunes. It was better than the smell of cleaning materials… She paused. Her hand slipped from his arm when she stopped. She couldn’t bear being in hospital. She said it quietly, like a statement. No, he said.
They sat down on the sand, close to the sea. She bent her knees and pulled her dress down around her legs. The waves were small, and there was a silence after one had fallen before the next arched itself and collapsed. Fans of water and foam reached right up to the shadows of their heads and shoulders. He told her Andreas was back at the house, and what he had said that afternoon. That he was sorry. That he wanted to try again. He said nothing about what had happened in Stockholm. She picked up a handful of sand, closed her fist and let the sand filter down again in a fine stream like the sand in an hourglass. Was that why he had come? To tell her this? Robert was silent for a moment. Yes, he said.
The last grains sifted out of her hand, and she laid it flat on the sand. He looked at her, waiting for her to say something. She sat with her face directed at the breaking waves. She was no longer the person who could return. Her tone was hard and clear. She was no longer the one who could decide for that, she went on. She said no more. They fell silent. He took his cigarettes from his breast pocket, there were two left. Would she like to smoke? No, thanks. He lit a cigarette and looked across at Kullen. She didn’t know… Now her voice was so low that half the sentence was lost when a wave broke. He asked her to repeat it. She cleared her throat. She didn’t know anything any more. She drew a deep breath and put her head back, and he saw the tears running down under her big sunglasses. She wiped them away with her fingertips so the knuckles pushed up the edge of the sunglasses and he caught a glimpse of her glass eyes. She sniffed and breathed out through her mouth. It was like living in a waiting room, she said. Without knowing what she was waiting for.
He invited her to come and stay. That would make it easier to be with Lauritz while she thought over what to do next. She turned her face to him, and he looked out at the waves to avoid his reflection in her dark glasses. He had not thought of it before, but as soon as he had said it, it seemed the obvious thing. She could have his room, he could sleep in Lea’s. After a week or two she might change her mind. When she had spoken to Andreas. At some point they would need to talk.
She did not reply. Neither of them said anything as they walked back. She stopped in the foyer and let go of his arm. Had he meant it? He sounded more offended than he meant to when he replied. What did she think? She smiled apologetically and reached out for his arm again. It was just… unexpected. They went on across the foyer. Why should he care about all her problems? She directed the dark glasses towards him as if regarding him with an expectant look. Let’s say I am someone with too much room, he went on at last. Too much room? Yes, he said. Too much room, too much time. She stopped again and tapped her stick on the floor, raising it and letting it go. And how did he intend to get her out of here?
He asked her to wait on a sofa in the foyer and went into the office to ask for the doctor on duty. He had gone home. Robert told the secretary he was taking Lucca with him. She looked at him incredulously over her reading glasses. They couldn’t discharge a patient just like that. I am her doctor, said Robert. He took full responsibility. It sounded rash. The secretary pushed her glasses up her nose. It was against the rules. Don’t you worry about that, replied Robert and promised her she could rely on him to witness that she had protested.
He went back to the foyer and took Lucca up to her room. She sat on the bed while he packed her bag. You must be crazy, she said. Not exactly, he replied. The secretary and a nurse came in sight at the door. Was he next of kin? Not really, he said. Lucca turned away, picked up the pillow and lowered her face. The secretary pulled the corners of her mouth down in an offended grimace and handed him a ball pen and a document. Would he kindly sign this? He did so without reading it through. When they had gone, Lucca collapsed over the pillow. It was the first time he had heard her laugh.
The sun had set and the sky was pink and lilac when they came out onto the motorway. He put on a tape, they sat listening to the music. After they had passed Copenhagen she felt hungry. He drove into a lay-by with a McDonalds. They ate in the car. She got ketchup on her chin and one cheek, but he didn’t say anything. In the end she discovered it herself. You must tell me when I mess myself up, for God’s sake, she said, wiping her face with the serviette. There was still some ketchup on her cheek. He took her serviette and removed the red streak, started the car again and glided in to join the column of red rear lights between the pale yellow fields in the twilight.
Part Four
19
It was snowing again. They had thought winter was finally over. It was late March and there had been cloudless days with bright sunshine when they could sit outside in their coats. Lucca stretched out a hand and switched off the alarm clock. She pressed herself close to Andreas’s back, he was still asleep, and snoring. As a rule that did not bother her, and when it did she just held his nose between two fingers. She snored too now and then, he said, and she barely stirred when he gently turned her onto her side. They knew each other, they were not shy about anything any more. They had even stopped locking the bathroom door. She had never thought she would be so much at ease with anyone that she could leave all the doors open. Only the door of his study was always closed. When he came out at the end of the afternoon the air in there was thick with cigarette smoke. She and Lauritz had grown used to him being in the house and yet miles away behind the closed door, inaccessible until he emerged late in the afternoon, pale and distrait.
He never spoke of what he was writing when he was engaged in it. He couldn’t, he said. He was afraid of losing the scent of what he was trying to pursue with his words. What could not really be said at all. But when he finished a new play he couldn’t wait for her to read it. He felt actually wounded, although he tried to conceal his disappointment, if she did not read it quickly enough and say something about it at once. She had plenty to do with Lauritz and the house, but he would gladly look after everything if she would only sit down and read his script. She dropped everything and took the sheaf of pages to bed. It irritated him, she could feel, but she had always preferred to read in bed, sitting cross-legged, with the duvet around her like a lined nest.