And so, as her mind wandered in Now and Back Then, Here and Back There, she suddenly saw herself with utter precision sitting at home in the corner, surrounded by books and notebooks. She had in fact been doing exactly that: on Wednesday evening, full of cheer, Armanda had finished her paper on Plot in Shakespeare’s Early Plays. Somewhere around midnight she had rubbed her eyes, listened to the wind for a moment, and gone into the bathroom. The water from both taps began to fill the bath rapidly. She had undressed.
Sjoerd stood up. She watched him, trying to work out what he wanted.
“Okay,” she said sweetly as he held up the bottle questioningly.
He filled her glass right up, then turned a little farther away from her as he sat down than he had been before.
“Yes?” she said.
A confusing muddle of images. Dream images, but they were real. Trying to find a support, she fixed her eyes on his mouth, which was still talking about their common theme, Lidy; she wanted to know what there was to know. Impressed by the gravity of things, but happy that Sjoerd was talking to her so gently and seriously, she tried to picture Lidy out in the flooded provinces. She could barely manage it. What had to happen, happened, but the evening hour meant that what took absolute priority was her perception of someone else, i.e., herself, Armanda. She, who at midnight last Wednesday had slid into the warm water without so much as a thought for her lost sister, leaving the taps still running, till the bath was full right up to her chin. So as not to veil the sight of her own body with blobs of foam, she didn’t lather herself with soap. I think it’s really good now, she said to herself. Appreciatively, still caught up in the spell of her own cleverness in finishing her work, she had contemplated her white body as it floated almost weightlessly under the surface of the water in the deep enameled bath.
Sjoerd looked sideways. He was eyeing her in a way that indicated that he was expecting a reaction from her to what he had just reported. Still absorbed in her memories, which were engendering the feeling in her that he must be sharing them, she leaned toward him, radiating warmth.
“Next day I went to a Red Cross station, right behind the streetcar stop. There was a woman there behind a table buried in paper, to talk and answer questions; she was dog tired and her patience was such as to kill all hope.”
“And?” said Armanda, while what she was thinking was: Please why don’t you move a little closer? Everything imaginable has happened, everything imaginable has gone wrong. Why don’t we just embrace each other?
“Yes,” he said. And after a little pause that produced a small shift in the mood: “She asked me for Lidy’s personal details.”
“Lidy’s personal details …” Armanda began, and stopped, suddenly overwhelmed by the significance of everything around her, pictures lined up together like pictures in a rebus puzzle of which the solution wasn’t a word but something far worse. The sofa, the lamp, Sjoerd’s body, fragments of dikes, wisps of water, ink-black sky, her own body, absolutely flat, if she was to be honest about it, and — mixed in with it all — Lidy’s body, whose details the Red Cross Information lady had noted down precisely on a form.
She sat up and listened now, frowning in concentration.
Sjoerd described how the woman at the table had first entered Lidy’s date of birth and similar details, and had then asked about her hair color.
“Deep chestnut brown,” Armanda answered promptly. “Long.” She thought for a moment. “Probably in a ponytail.”
Sjoerd nodded. “Eyes.”
“Emerald green.”
“Height.”
“Five foot ten.”
“Yeah, and then she wanted to know the state of her teeth. I couldn’t help her there.”
“Well, better than mine. A few fillings, nothing more. But we can check with the dentist.”
“She wanted to know if she’d ever broken a leg or anything like that.”
“No, never.”
“Scars, birthmarks.”
“Umm, that little patch on her stomach, you know the one, just below her navel.”
“Her clothes. That ash-gray winter coat, as far as I know.”
“Yes, the one with the glass buttons.”
“Shoes.”
“Size nine.”
“She was probably wearing that pale blue sweater, I thought. And dark blue trousers with cuffs.”
“The sweater belongs to me. Turquoise, angora. It needs to be hand-washed and dried flat on a towel.”
“She asked about underwear. Cotton? Silk?”
“Could be either.”
“And the make of her bra. I never paid any attention.”
“Maidenform.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Really?”
“We … we once bought an expensive one, by Triumph.”
“Would you like a drink? A little water?”
“I think I’m going to go now.”
II. This Is What They Call Sleep
9. Against a Background of Moonlight, Icy Cold, Night
Squalls of snow battered the windshield, which the wipers could barely keep clear. They had left the town behind them. Izak Hocke had just taken over the driver’s seat; Lidy was beside him and Simon Cau in the back. Lidy looked with interest but absolute ignorance out at the pitch-dark road and the overflowing black drainage ditches to either side, which had nothing to do with her.
They were driving northeast.
She had reached her decision without hesitation. When she had been inspired within a couple of seconds to say, “Hang on, I’m coming with you,” it was only a confirmation of her previous decision to embark on this little excursion, which had at first simply attracted her and now had become an essential condition of her life.
She had thrown on her clothes in the blink of an eye. Trousers, the angora sweater that had originally been Armanda’s and that she’d worn all day on the way here. Izak Hocke and Simon Cau had waited for her downstairs in the entrance hall by the reception desk. With their heavy coats and headgear — Hocke was wearing a woolen cap — they looked quite different from the way they’d looked at the family gathering, during which she had immediately and quite naturally addressed both Hocke and Jacomina using the familiar form, whereas she had spoken to the charming landowner who was her dinner partner using the more formal turn of phrase. Now both men were standing waiting at reception, their faces expressionless. But she didn’t feel awkward in any way.
Why had she wanted to go along too? Why hadn’t she just handed over the car keys instead of getting into her winter coat, dark rings under her eyes, and marching after them as if it were the only thing to do?
They had needed a means of transport. The two men, friends and neighbors, had come to the party in Hocke’s car, but Hocke had then lent it instead of holding on to it. What Jacomina had told Lidy in a rush at the bedroom door was that Simon had had an urgent call and needed to get to a dike on the other side of the island and Izak Hocke should have been back home with his old mother long since in this terrible weather. Whereupon she had offered them the Citroën. With the greatest pleasure, of course. And when she said — just like that, because it seemed self-evident to her — that she would drive, the two men accepted with distant politeness. Only Jacomina still asked, “Do you really want to do this?”