When she told him that the baby girl was going to be christened Nina, after his own mother, he turned away from her, his eyes watering, a man whose life had been empty of consideration for so long that he could now be moved by it. Of course he knew she wasn’t happy, but he chose to ignore it. He understood about forgetting; he’d done it himself half a century before. In the evenings they sat together on the porch, the sun setting behind the trees, bats flickering in the dark air of the yard. I don’t know what they talked about, or even if they talked at all, but they seemed to find solace in each other’s company. She wanted to distance herself from what had happened — her baby was reminder enough; she didn’t need any more reminding than that — and staying in the woods outside the village was distance of a sort, though Mazey would still appear from time to time. The house had been his home for most of his life, and was embedded in his memory. When he went walking, it was a station on his way, just as Miss Poppel’s garden used to be. So Karin lived in an almost permanent state of dread. If a twig snapped, for example, or the leaves rustled, or if there were footsteps on the track, she’d call her grandfather, or else she’d snatch her baby up and run back into the house. In her dreams the man with orange hair would come and take her away in his fast car. But the man with orange hair did not come. Jan Salenko came instead. Jan Salenko, the mechanic’s son.
Something I noticed early on was Mazey’s quiet obsession with the child. He had never showed much interest in Karin when she was born; he’d been too busy with his wind-chimes and his pen-knife. With Nina it was different. Whenever he found himself in the same room, which wasn’t often, his eyes didn’t stray from her, not for a moment. He didn’t try and touch her. If anything, he kept away, standing against the wall or over by the window. He seemed content just so long as he could watch. I wondered if there might be a part of him that understood he’d fathered her.
Once, while Karin was visiting the doctor, she left Nina in my care and I let Mazey pick her up. Perhaps it was a mistake, but somehow I couldn’t refuse him. He took the baby in his hands as if she was made of glass and held her in a shaft of sunlight. When Nina blinked, he touched her eyelashes gently with his fingers, and he had a way of clicking his tongue that seemed to fascinate her. Later, though, she started crying, and that frightened him. I didn’t see it in his eyes, but it was there, I felt it, his panic bent the air between us, and then I saw him put his hand over her face. If I hadn’t taken Nina away from him, he would’ve smothered her. I didn’t mention it to Karin when she came home.
There was another time. I was driving back towards the village one evening in April when I saw a girl running along the road ahead of me. She was wearing a nightdress and she had nothing on her feet. Only as I passed the girl did I realise she was my daughter. I stopped the car. Karin clung to the open window, panting.
‘Nina’s gone. He’s taken her.’
I reached across and pushed the door open. ‘Come on, get in. We can’t have people seeing you like this.’
She sat beside me in the car. Her face was orange in the light of the setting sun. Black, too, where she had tried to wipe away the tears. ‘If he does anything to her —’
‘He won’t do anything,’ I said. ‘He loves her.’ Though I remembered that huge hand of his descending, and all of a sudden I wasn’t sure.
‘Love? What does someone like him know about love?’
‘Haven’t you noticed the way he looks at her?’
Karin turned to me. ‘You never did care about me, did you? You always cared about him more.’ When I didn’t answer her, she said, ‘I think you wanted this to happen.’
I wasn’t certain what she meant by that. We crossed the narrow bridge into the village.
‘I think maybe you even planned it,’ she said.
I shook my head. ‘You’re all worked up about nothing.’
When we reached the hotel, Karin opened the door and ran into the house. There was no sign of Mazey in any of the rooms. Then, through the kitchen window, I heard a child’s laughter.
‘Did you hear that?’ I said.
Karin was already disappearing through the back door. I followed her across the car-park and down the steps to the pool. At first I couldn’t see anything. It was a cool evening, and steam rose off the water in white, swirling clouds. Then the shape of a man emerged: Mazey. He was holding Nina over the water. Dipping her feet in it, lifting her clear, then dipping her feet again. She was laughing.
I watched as Karin ran round the edge of the pool. Mazey was watching her as well, with Nina still suspended in mid-air. I thought for a moment that he might drop her in alarm. But then Karin snatched her from him and turned away, muttering into her hair. Mazey had surrendered the baby with such calmness, such a lack of comprehension that Karin appeared to be the one who was in the wrong. Her violence seemed exaggerated. Her relief, too. Suddenly, she annoyed me.
‘You see?’ I said. ‘I told you there was nothing to worry about.’
Mazey straightened up and stepped away from the pool. From his trouser pocket he brought out the old blunt pen-knife my father had given him. He felt in the other pocket, found a piece of dowel. Then he sat down on the terrace, his long legs sticking out in front of him, his big shoes pointing at the sky, and, bending his head, began to whittle. He didn’t expect anything in particular from life; he’d be happy with whatever he was given. I wanted to take his head and hold it close against me, but I knew this would only have infuriated Karin, who thought he was guilty and who was standing at the bottom of the steps, staring at him, her mouth drawn tight, her eyes accusing.
Not long afterwards — in May or June, it would have been — she went south with the Salenko boy. I never knew exactly where.
There was nothing memorable about Jan Salenko — nothing, that is, except his memory: he won a village competition when he was eight, and all the children used to tease him about it. I’d noticed him watching Karin for years, his eyes full of her as we crossed the street or drove by in the car, but he wasn’t the only one, and he was shy, too, so I didn’t think it would come to anything. I suppose she must have become aware of how he felt and then realised he could be of use to her — especially when she found out that he wasn’t frightened off by the mysterious arrival of a child. There’s not much a man won’t do when he’s besotted. Nobody suspected an elopement, though, not even me.
Strangely, it was Mazey who felt the loss most keenly. In fact, he seemed to be expressing it for all of us. Like a lightning conductor, he drew all the bad feelings down upon himself. He wouldn’t eat. He wouldn’t sleep. He wouldn’t even listen to his wind-chimes any more. There were nights when he walked through the hotel opening every door to every room, every cupboard, every drawer. In the morning it always looked as if we’d been broken into. I asked him what was wrong, but he wouldn’t speak to me at all. Not one word.
My father came to visit me one evening. It was rare to see him in the village, even rarer to see him upset. He stood in front of me with his face lowered and the muscles shifting in his jaw. He told me that he’d been working in the barn as usual, building a linen chest for the Minkels family, when he heard sounds coming from the house. Thinking it might be someone who was up to no good, he took his gun off the wall and went to have a look. The whole place had been turned upside-down. Cupboards had been opened, drawers pulled out and tipped on to the floor, curtains torn off their rails. It looked as though a hurricane had just passed through. A movement in the window caught his eye. Something outside, in the yard.