She had decided not to say anything. The decision had almost made itself when she heard him come in. She would wait and see what happened. She could not get down a single mouthful of the steak he served up for her. She managed a little salad, but drank up quickly when he refilled her glass. The red wine had a calming effect and soothed the clutching feeling in her stomach. She was impressed at his cold-bloodedness. He said he wanted to go up to Belleville next day and take photographs of the Arab district. If she felt better, he added kindly. She nodded. That would be good, she felt fine now. It had helped to empty out her stomach. He even stroked her hand, which lay beside her plate of cold steak.
They watched a film on television, she went upstairs before it ended. She undressed and lay down on the bed naked. She heard him pull the cord in the bathroom and water running in the wash basin, and shortly afterwards his step on the stair. She closed her eyes. The sound of steps stopped in the doorway. She told him to cover her face with the blue scarf. He hesitated before complying. The light from the lamp on the desk penetrated the closely woven silk threads and took on their colour. She heard the sirens of an ambulance on the Rue de Rennes and someone shouting in the street. She lay like that, without a face, delivered to his gaze, with empty eye sockets and a dark slit between her lips where the silk was sucked in each time she drew breath.
When she woke up next morning Andreas was working at the dining table in what had once been a studio and was now furnished as a living room. She made coffee and placed a cup beside his computer. He caressed her thigh vaguely without looking up from the screen. She took her own coffee up on the balcony. She leaned over the railing, looking at the occasional pedestrians. It was a long way down. Would you pass out before you hit the ground? The sun was shining and if she pulled her coat round her shoulders it was warm enough to sit outside. She leaned back with closed eyes.
It probably did not occur to him that she would go through his pockets. Actually it was her own fault that everything between them was suddenly changed. But to him it might be just a harmless affair, otherwise he would mention it. She was not sure though. In the letter at least it did not sound like a digression, a single bonk to freshen things up a bit. How passionate they were, the words written in neat, architectural block letters. They were even garnished with graceful little drawings as proof of the sender’s feminine charm, here a bird, there a star and a naked lady, rather à la Matisse. She wrote that the colours around her had grown brighter since she had met him. She couldn’t sleep at night, she was afraid of going off her head. She had been living in a daze for too long, in a relationship that made her feel she was invisible. Just as he had, if she had understood him rightly. When she stood in front of the mirror it felt as if the mirror was looking at her with his gaze. As if she was seeing herself for the first time.
Lucca had sat for a long time studying her while Andreas was out shopping. She could well understand when she saw the polaroid picture that fell out of the envelope. His correspondent was pale and had blue eyes and curly, jet-black hair. A gypsy with blue eyes, of course that had been irresistible. After all, he did have a weakness for black hair. She sat on a double bed, her hair glittered in the morning sun which reached exactly to her breasts. Andreas had hardly been the one who had taken the photo, if so he would have kept it. She must have sent him a picture taken by someone else. But who had snapped her naked in an unmade bed? Andreas must have wondered about that too.
Even though the letter lacked any prosaic details as to who or what the woman was in real life, Lucca could work out that they must have met in Malmö during the rehearsals for Andreas’s play, which had been so important for him to attend several times a week. Perhaps she was an actor. A Swedish colleague! Lucca remembered his impatience in the morning, when he was leaving and had promised to drive Lauritz to nursery school first. How irritated he had been when the boy sat over his porridge half asleep. There were several references in the letter to something Andreas had said or written to her. In one place she actually quoted him. He was right, she wrote. Sometimes you did have to believe your own eyes. Otherwise you risked everything around you becoming as fleeting and unreal as a film. She too would like to meet him again. Unfortunately she could not get to Paris for the week after Easter.
Lucca shaded her eyes with a hand and gazed at the Tour de Montparnasse, rising from among the slanting zinc roofs and thronging chimney pots like a big, dumb prick of smoke-coloured glass. Did she feel shattered? She put the question in the same way as if she had leaned over the balcony rail and seen herself lying in the street in a pool of blood. She was beside herself. The expression had never seemed more apt, but it did not only cover the sorrow that kept on trickling out inside her from a gash so agonising she could hardly breathe. She was beside herself because she was observing herself like an outsider.
She recalled Andreas’s words about believing your own eyes. He had said almost the identical thing in Harry’s apartment in Copenhagen when he had gone rushing up from Rome, and later in Trastevere when she had told him she was pregnant. So those were the words he used for celebrations. But then again, why invent the wheel each time? They worked, those words. His own home-made version of love’s magic formula, which apparently created what the words suggested, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Had not the same words brought them all the way to Paris, she on the balcony, he in the studio bent over his play, while their little son might be making a snowman out of the Easter snow at home, with his grandmother?
Of course there had been more to it than words. Ambiguous feelings and mysterious glances, a peculiar restlessness, an unexpected ease and the alluring powers of physical attraction. But the words had made the difference, encouraging her to dare give herself once more. His words about believing what you saw, instead of being sceptical and cautious because you were no longer a spring chicken and had tried all this before. And yet the words had no more weight or meaning than those glances and feeling jittery, intoxicating carnal dizziness. The words were the same, just as the glances and feelings had been, from time to time. Only the faces had changed on the way. The faith in what you saw, that Andreas had spoken of, was itself faithless. You could believe in so much and so many. He had probably been sincere when he said it.
She thought of what the dark curly-haired charmer had written in her letter, despite her romantic rapture. She could not come to Paris after Easter, unfortunately. Something was apparently more important than looking into Andreas’s wonderful eyes again. Had that made him stop for a moment and think about the one at home wielding her paint brush and mortar trowel? Did he give a thought to the fact that they had a child? She had hoped the years would gain the weight the words lacked. Lauritz was living proof that there was more than words and sensations between them. Or was he? Their child and their home had not prevented Andreas from saying those same words the years had made so precious, to someone he had known for a mere few weeks.
The weather was mild and spring-like as they walked around the Arab quarter in the afternoon. The scents of spices, the shrill music of tape recorders and the hoarse Arabian voices almost made them forget they were in Paris. They talked about it. That it was like walking through a North African town. Colourful fabrics, videos and cheap kitchen equipment were on sale. Andreas took pictures of people, all portraits. The women giggled or turned away, the men posed with hands to their sides and stomachs pushed out. She kept a little distance between them, without losing sight of him. Everywhere people were doing business, and notes were exchanged between brown or black hands. The women’s palms were painted with henna and their silver jewellery glinted palely in the misty sunlight. They wore long garments and some had tattoos on their faces. Most of the men wore European clothes. They looked at her, some of them out of the corners of their eyes, others directly, with an impudent air that made her feel she was being pawed at. She regretted putting on her short skirt. The voices, the glances, the music and crowds brought her out in a sweat, and she told Andreas she would go back to the boulevard and wait for him at a café they had passed.