More accurately, she had been accosted by him, on what was to have been her last afternoon in Antwerp. Her father had paid for the trip; he was always happy to pay, she noticed, when it meant she would leave the country. She had come to look for Vander's past, following his trail along the shelves of public archives, libraries, university records; the farther she travelled the fainter the traces of him became, as if a broom had brushed away his tracks. There was an old man, a journalist of high reputation, and also, some said, a one-time collaborator, who she was told had known Axel Vander when they were both young, before the war. When she went to call on him, however, she learned that he had suffered a stroke and was in hospital and was not expected to live. Nevertheless she was taken to visit him. Everything was white, his hair, his long, sharp, suffering face, the robe he wore, the bed linen, the wall behind his trembling hawk's head. Nothing moved except his eyes, which fixed themselves upon her in what seemed a kind of anguished asking. It struck her that he was another ghost, his own. She sat with him for an hour, not speaking, and all the time he watched her, with angry impatience, so it seemed; far from having anything to tell her, he appeared to be waiting to hear from her something that he must know. Perhaps he was confusing her with someone else. When she saw Vander in the hotel lobby that first morning, she felt this other old man's presence behind him, saw it, almost, a shimmering shape there for an instant, a shadow made not of darkness but of cold, white light.
Now on this last day she was in one of those fake old-fashioned pubs near the cathedral, all wood and brass and pewter beer-mugs, while she waited for it to be time to take the train. It was a late afternoon in March, sombre and wet, more like midwinter than early spring. She was sitting at a table in a cramped corner by the window, huddled in her coat, watching the trees in the square outside that now and then shook themselves in a gust of wind, shedding big silver drops of rain that shone like money as they fell. It was out there that she saw him first, the red-headed man. She did not know why she should have noticed him particularly. He was standing under the money-trees. His clothes were shabby: cracked shoes, shapeless trousers too long in the leg, and an old coat fastened so tightly with a single button at his midriff that it seemed his skinny frame must be dependent solely on this support to stay upright. He wore no hat, and seemed not to notice the rain. She watched him for a while. His hands were in his pockets, and he held his elbows pressed close into his sides, as if to aid the coat in its task of general suspension. Was he looking in her direction? An ambulance went past, with its siren howling and its blue light spinning, and she turned away, for she did not like the sight of ambulances, or their sound, and when she looked again he was gone from under the trees. A moment later, though, here he was, in the bar. He appeared from behind her, and sat down at the table next to her. He took a plastic pouch of tobacco out of his coat pocket and rolled a cigarette. She noticed the faint tremor in his hand; it was not a sign of infirmity, but rather, so she thought, the result of long hours, years, of concentration on some tiny, intricate, antique task; he might be a watchmaker, or a scribe, even; she saw him bent over his work table with gimlet or quill.
He was feigning an elaborately vague, preoccupied air, brow distractedly wrinkled and eyes fixed on nothing, and she knew that he was going to speak to her. He patted himself rapidly at hips flanks breast, frowned more deeply, pursed his lips, then with a jerky movement turned about, pretending that he had just noticed her, and mimed entreatingly the striking of a match. She said she was sorry, she had no match. "Ah, you speak English!" he cried, as if hailing a rare accomplishment. "So do I." She wondered what age he might be. Fifty? Seventy? It was impossible to tell. His face was pale as whey and so sharp it seemed it must thin to a fine straight line were he to turn it full toward her. His hair was of an almost orange shade, obviously dyed; scintillas of rain were sprinkled through it, an incongruous jewelling. He put away the cigarette, unlit. She thought she should get up now and go; she looked out at the weeping sky, the street where the daylight lingered; her train was not due to leave for hours yet. He had been eyeing Vander's book where it lay on the table before her, and now with a contortionist's rubbery agility he leaned forward and twisted his head almost upside down to read the title. "Ah," he said. "Do you know him?" She shook her head. "I do," he said. "Or I should say, I did." With long, very white fingers, like the witch's fingers in a fairytale, he turned over the book and looked at Vander's photograph on the back cover and smiled. "But he was not Axel Vander, then." The waitress came, a brawny, blonde girl got up in a flounced blouse and a wide black skirt with a bodice, in what must be, Cass Cleave supposed, a parody of the national costume; she carried a gilt tray that she held lightly by one edge, like a weapon. The redheaded man spoke to the waitress in a language that must be Flemish, or Dutch, perhaps, and when she had nodded and gone he glanced shyly at Cass Cleave, licking a thin lower lip. She wondered unworriedly who he was or why he was speaking to her. She examined him closely, the narrow face, those white hands. He was smiling still, and nodding to himself, as at a rueful though treasured memory. Yes, he said, he had known Axel Vander. "Oh, a long time ago, a long time. In those days he was a writer for the newspapers, like" – he tapped a long, amber fingernail on the photograph – "his friend." He nodded, and his voice sank to a whisper. "Very strong opinions," he breathed, and gave a little soundless whistle. "Very extreme." She was frowning; she could not follow him. "His friend?" she said, looking at the photograph. "Is that not him?" He glanced at her sidelong and his smile became a grin of happy malice. She did not like the way he kept licking that bottom lip, the sharp, grey tip of his tongue flicking out and as quickly withdrawing. "What was his name, if he was not Axel Vander?" she asked, but he only grinned the harder, and lifted a finger and wagged it roguishly, closing his eyes and pressing his lips tight together. The bodiced Amazon reappeared, on her tray a tiny, tapered glass containing an inch of carnelian liquor, viscous, glinting. He paid from a little leather purse, counting out the coins with finical care. Cass Cleave watched him lift the glass, his bloodless lips already pursed to meet it, and drink with dainty relish. He sighed appreciatively and set down the glass and pulled his chair closer and began to tell her the story of AxelVander, who had died, and of this other one, who lived.
High above their heads a tinny bell banged, once, twice, three times, then a quavering fourth, startling her. The gunmetal sky was turning ash-blue all up one side. She was cold now, in her thin blouse. Vander had been silent for so long she had almost forgotten he was there. She watched him stop to poke at an object on the ground with his stick. It was a white plastic bag with something soft in it, and tied at the neck with string. "A man in a bar," he said. "I see. And you happened to be reading my book. What a coincidence." He was not looking at her. "Tell me," he said, "what was the name of this mysterious man?" Max somebody, she said. "Scheindiene, Schaundeine, something like that, I cannot remember." He said he had never known anyone of that name. He was still poking at the bag, turning it this way and that. It was plump and vaguely heart-shaped, and wobbled and flopped under his proddings; the string at the neck had been knotted in a neat bow, with awful thoroughness. "He must have been speaking of someone else," he said. "He must have been mistaken." She had not told him all that the man had told her; she had kept back the most important part. Vander was frowning intently, as if the thing in the plastic bag, whatever it was, were taking all his attention. "But he knew you," she said. "He knew the dates the articles appeared. Five weeks, five issues." At last he looked at her, holding his head at a tilt, thinking, calculating. He had got the bag partly open; something dark was oozing out, a thick, dark liquid. She felt her stomach heave and settle again. "Come," he said, folding a hard hand on the tender underside of her arm above the elbow and turning her about, in the direction of the hotel, "let us go back, you are shivering." Dawn was strengthening rapidly. High cloudlets, tinged with pink. The starlings.