He was standing in the background in his shabby old leather jacket, which hung on him summer and winter. He waved and smiled, he looked like himself. Who else should he look like? She laughed at him and at herself. She could see he found her lovely and was glad she had taken pains with herself. He walked to meet her and tears came into her eyes as she put down her case and nestled into his embrace.
24
Wouldn’t she take their young guest down to the beach so he could take a dip? He must need one… Harry had obviously forgotten she was a few years younger than their guest. It was the day after his arrival. Andreas seemed almost terrified at the idea. He muttered something about forgetting his swimming trunks. He and Harry were still seated in the shade on the roof terrace when she went up there after her siesta. Harry would not be deterred, Andreas could just borrow a pair of his. Now there was no way out. The young guest seemed quite disconcerted at the idea of putting on Harry Wiener’s very own swimming trunks. What about you? he asked Harry. He made a deprecating gesture with his hands, he would stay here. Young Bark had drained him of energy, he was going to take forty winks.
Come on, then, she said, smiling encouragingly at Andreas, as if he was a shy child. They went down to the car. The village houses glowed white in the low sun and the shadows on the reddish rock slopes were long and distorted. On the way down Andreas pricked himself on an agave that stretched its tough leaves across the path. His arm was bleeding, but he said not a word, merely smiled although she could see it hurt. She was irritated because he would not even allow himself to say Ow! They drove down the mountainside. Is he tough on you? she asked. Tough and tough… he replied. As long as it brought improvement he was glad of criticism. A play script wasn’t a finished work, after all, just as a score was not in itself music. It only came to life when the conductor, or in this case, the director, got hold of it and gave it his interpretation… It sounded like something he had taught himself to say.
She had sunbathed as usual that morning, in her bikini. It annoyed her, she was used to lying naked and getting brown all over. How modest… said Harry when he and Andreas came out on the terrace each with his coffee cup and each with his script under an arm. They went to sit in the shade. His teasing tone made her contrary and she took off her top before lying down again on the sun-bed. She caught sight of Andreas averting his eyes as her breasts came in sight, and she was sure Harry had seen it too. He smiled his foxy little smile. Could that really amuse him? She closed her eyes and listened to the cicadas, some close at hand, others further off, each chinking its rhythm, fast or lazy. She lay unmoving and enjoying the sunshine beating into her skin, making her sweat and feel heavy.
Harry treated Andreas in a different way from that he used with his actors. She felt he was being hard. He did not comment on anything he found good in the play, whereas he laid down in detail what did not work with no polite beating about the bush. For instance, how could it be that all the characters not only spoke alike but also just like their author? Andreas attempted to explain that he had tried to stylise the language in such a way that the characters, instead of expressing themselves in realistic language, used a poetic or grotesque form that flowed through them and at the same time defined their personalities. Harry cut him short. Perhaps they were meant to speak in tongues? Every character must have a reason for speaking and saying what he or she said. Besides, it was an advantage for the actors to understand their own lines. Not to mention the audience. After all, this was a play, not a poetry reading!
Andreas defended himself mildly by saying that the demand for simple, clear and unambiguous dialogue risked draining the play of finer nuances and tones… everything which in his opinion made the difference between art and message drama, he dared to add. Harry laughed hoarsely. Might he have one of his Gitanes? But of course! Lucca heard him fish a cigarette out of the pack and the little click of the lid of his silver lighter. Shortly afterwards she smelled the spicy scent of tobacco smoke wafting across the terrace.
Now listen… Harry’s tone was friendlier now, almost fatherly. First of all he must never, never be afraid of being simple. Clarity, he said, clarity is all. On the stage nothing could be too clear. Where that was concerned there was no difference between Sophocles and a well-turned musical comedy. Tones, he said, he could very well leave those to poets, and as for nuances, they were something the impressionist painters had taken care of… wimps with full beards! When it came to the crunch the most archaic myths and the flattest pub jokes were constructed in the same way. And furthermore… he paused to inhale… he should not be afraid of losing his personal characteristics, his precious voice. Style, he went on, enunciating the word curtly and sharply, style began where you renounced yourself in favour of your story. If you had anything at all to tell. And he obviously had… otherwise they would not be sitting here, would they?
This was meant to be disarming, but she could see in Andreas that he was not at all sure Harry was right, and instead was picturing to himself how in a little while his master would slam the script shut and send him home. She had got up and was sitting on the sun-bed, dizzy with the heat. This time Andreas looked stiffly into her eyes to avoid having to look at her breasts. Harry looked at her too and smiled, but it was a smile she could not recall having seen before. A boyish smile like the one Andreas had given her when she fetched him from the airport and he was surprised to find her and not his guru waiting for him. Maybe it was the heat that confused her, but for a moment she thought the smile of the young man had nipped across onto the older man’s face, while the boyish smile’s rightful owner stared vacantly at her, afraid of moving his gaze as much as a millimetre downwards and humiliated at the thought that she had heard everything Harry said.
Everything went black when she got up. She turned her back on them and stood with head bent for a second or two before going down the stairs and into the bedroom. She put on one of Harry’s shirts and went on down to the kitchen to make lunch. She ran the tap until it grew cold and held her wrists beneath the running water. It was a big dark room, the coolest in the house, with an arched ceiling and an open fireplace. A door gave way to a steep passage leading up to the village. The crack under the door was so big that the reflected sunlight from the alleyway fanned out over the uneven tiles on the floor. The light was reflected in the stream of cold water with a restless, silvery flickering. A bluebottle cruised lazily around the sticky ribbon hanging from the ceiling, thick with dead flies, but did not alight. She drank a glass of water. One of the sun rays struck an apron hanging on a hook, washed out pink, with printed yellow tulips.
According to Harry his wife had not been there for years, but her apron was still hanging up. There was a brown stain on it, where she must once have used it to hold something hot. Lucca had often felt like putting it on. She took smoked ham and olives out of the fridge and started to wash lettuce. The bluebottle kept on circling around the ham. She had found other traces of his wife around the house, a pair of old bathing slippers in the wardrobe and a small bottle of dried nail varnish on a shelf in the bathroom, and some faded women’s magazines on the shelf beneath the bedside table, the newest ones four years old. Harry had told Lucca very little about her, and she had not asked. In the apartment in Copenhagen she had seen a photograph of an attractive, dark-haired woman with a triangular face, but the picture must have been taken at least fifteen years before, to judge from the dress. The bluebottle alighted on her upper lip, she spat and hit out with her hand. In the end she cut a small piece of fat from a slice of ham, put it on the chopping board and stood in wait with the fly swatter. She got it.