She heard Harry’s hoarse voice behind the door when he came in from the terrace, saying something to Andreas. He walked downstairs, but the sound of his moccasins stilled halfway down. He had taken off his shoes, he must have thought she was asleep. She heard the dry skin under his bare feet rubbing against the tiles, his thoughtfulness made her smile. A gecko sat on the wall beside the door. Its white, rubbery, almost transparent body made her think of the foetuses she had seen in biology class at school, preserved in spirit. Anonymous abortions that would have been twice as old as she was if they had been allowed to live. She turned on her side and bent her knees. The mosquito net in front of the small window filtered the sun’s afterglow, and the dim light was reflected in the smooth skin on her thigh and knee, surrounded by the soft swaddling of shadows.
She thought of Harry’s gentleness in bed, his calm, confident hands and the vulnerable nakedness in his eyes when he let her do to him what she knew he was waiting for. Even when he was entirely defenceless, delivered over to her young, provocative body and his own desire for it, without his well-considered, civilised words, even then he was himself. Not someone different according to the situation, but wholly and completely himself. In contrast to Andreas Bark, who had been boyish, almost skittish, in the car and the wild west village, but who became precocious and anxious to please when he was in the presence of his master. She almost wished he was not there. She almost wished Harry would come to her as he did sometimes in the afternoons, when she lay in half darkness. He would stretch out beside her with closed eyes as if asleep. It was a game, when she caressed him slowly and his body began to admit what his unmoving face would not yet acknowledge.
She stretched out a hand and closed the window shutter so the room was totally dark. Only the hands and the circle of figures on the alarm clock shone green, far away. It was so dark that she saw no difference when she closed or opened her eyes. She remembered the first time she woke up in his bed. He was not there. She rose and pulled the curtains aside, at first slightly confused to be standing without a stitch on, looking out over the town from Harry Wiener’s rooftop apartment. It was snowing, with big, woolly flakes. When she turned round he stood in the doorway holding a tray. He had made tea, he did not yet know she preferred coffee in the morning.
She sat cross-legged with the hot cup in her hands, looking out at the snow over the harbour. When she turned towards him, he was leaning against the wall regarding her sorrowfully with his narrow eyes. She began to think of his wife. She did not know what to say and asked if he would like her to leave. He smiled tiredly and sent a finger sliding down her spine. If you’d like to, do stay, he said. You will leave me one day anyway. She put the cup down on the tray and lay down with her head on his lap. Not willingly, she mumbled. We’ll see, he replied, slowly stroking her coal-black hair.
23
Lucca was nervous as the plane came in to land at Charles de Gaulle airport. She was afraid Andreas would not be there as arranged on the telephone. She imagined he might have forgotten, preoccupied as he was when working. Maybe he had forgotten to look at his watch, maybe he had overslept because he had sat up writing all night. But she was also nervous at the thought of seeing him again. It was silly, they had only been apart for a fortnight and had talked on the phone several times. She was in the toilet when she heard the stewardess over the intercom asking the passengers to go back to their seats and fasten their seatbelts. She was putting on lipstick. There had been quite a lot of turbulence during the last part of the flight, it had spilt the coffee on her small folding table and almost made it drip on her clothes several times. Perhaps that was what made her nervous. The plane jolted again as she held the lipstick and pressed her lips down over her teeth, looking like a turtle. Her hand slipped and the lipstick left a long line on one cheek.
She was wearing a short beige dress she knew he liked. It was tight-fitting and fairly low-necked, and the skirt ended quite high up her thighs. He always had to touch her when she wore that dress. She had been in quite a state at the thought of getting coffee on it during the daft turbulence. Over the dress she wore a grey tailored jacket and a petrol-blue silk scarf he had bought for her when they lived in Rome. She had not looked so elegant for months, and it was equally long since she had put on any make-up.
As she was waiting to be checked in at Kastrup Airport she had felt like the typical provincial wife who had decked herself out just because she was travelling by air, but she wanted to look beautiful and sexy when he met her. She knew he had a weakness for girdles and high-heeled shoes with ankle straps. Besides, it was seldom now that she had the chance of making something of herself. At home she mostly dressed in dungarees and wellies.
She had finished painting the bookcase and all the books were in place, even down to alphabetical order. The living room had been the last job. While the bookcase was drying she had managed to fill in the hole around the stove pipe with mortar and then paint it over. It was an old cast-iron stove they had found at a scrap merchant’s and hammered the rust off. She and Else sat by the stove drinking red wine after Lauritz had been put to bed. Else said all her doubts had been put to shame. She looked affectionately at Lucca and stroked her cheek. The glow from the open stove door softened her lined features. So she had got herself a home at last… Did Else realise the implications of what she had just said? It seemed unlikely. There was not a shadow of heart-searching in her tender expression. Lucca got up to open another bottle of wine. She wasn’t used to her mother getting sentimental.
She thought of Else’s remark again as she watched Copenhagen grow smaller and vanish in the clouds. She leaned back in her seat and observed the massed clouds, dazzling white above, making her screw up her eyes. So she had got herself a home… at last. Else had said it in a loving tone and she would have liked to give herself up to the affection in her glance and the hand that brushed her cheek. Instead she had moved her face away and gone into the kitchen for more wine. She believed she had long since put her bitterness behind her. Bitterness at Else and Giorgio making such a mess of their lives and her childhood. She could see Else was hurt when she took her hand away and looked into the flames in the stove.
As she pulled the cork from the bottle she reproached herself for behaving like a rejected child. But she had felt that her mother was pawing at the life she had herself created. The home she had in fact made, at last, with Andreas. As if Else was invading her happiness in order to warm herself the way she sat and warmed herself by the stove that Lucca and Andreas had had to hammer and scrape away at for days before getting rid of all the rust. Suddenly she was irritated because she was dependent on her mother to look after Lauritz while she was in Paris. She snapped at Else when she poured their wine and her mother asked how Andreas’s new play was coming on. Else could not get over having a son-in-law who was an author and even starting to be famous.
Why couldn’t she just share her happiness with Else in the home she had managed to get at last after all the wrong turnings and blind alleys? Why was she so touchy, now that she was supposed to have found peace in herself? She looked out of the small window at the wing. Suddenly she thought it looked like a diving board, a ten-metre diving board above a very large swimming pool filled with whipped cream. Surely the stewardess would soon bring her a plastic-wrapped swimsuit. The telephone had rung as she sat drinking red wine with Else. It was Miriam. They had chatted on the phone every day. Most of the time Lucca had just listened to her friend, who alternately wept, then furiously recited her jazz beloved’s human failings, his egoism, his cowardice, his unfeeling and spoilt attitude to life. Miriam asked if she could come and see Lucca. A mutual friend had offered to drive her. Lucca explained she was on her way to Paris to visit Andreas.