And that is what happened. Their meetings grew less frequent and then ceased. He tried to reconcile himself to the situation. Now they were just friends.
“Are you back together again?” he asked her one day.
She nodded yes. He was sustained by the hope that she would go through another crisis which he, to his shame, could turn to his benefit.
Somewhat more relaxed, yet with the bitterness that this new situation brought him, he turned the conversation to the news reports about Albanian gangsters. There had been more of them recently. Rovena shrugged her shoulders dismissively.
Much later, on the terrace of a cafe, she mentioned Besfort, and the Slovak suddenly asked why he was scared of The Hague.
She had laughed. “Scared of The Hague? I don’t think he is.”
“I meant to say, scared of a journey to The Hague.”
She shook her head. “I would say the opposite. We were going to go there together for pleasure. To visit Holland and see the tulip fields…”
“But The Hague isn’t just a flower garden. More than anything else, it’s a court. It preys on the mind of anyone with an uneasy conscience,” he said.
“Oh, I see what you mean,” she said, frankly showing her irritation. “But I told you, we were going there for pleasure, for the tulips.”
“No, you listen to me,” he said. “He saw a court summons in that dream, not tulip adverts.”
They stared angrily at each other, speechless.
“What do you know about it?” she said icily.
Instead of answering, he held his head in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said amid sobs. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
When he took his hands away, she saw that he had really been crying. “I’m disgusting,” he went on in a broken voice. “I’m mad with jealousy. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
She waited for him to calm down and took his hand in hers, asking gently, “How do you know what he saw in his dream?”
After he had wiped away his tears, his eyes looked larger, defenceless.
“You told me yourself… when you wanted to show me how complicated he…”
She remained silent, biting her lower lip, while to herself she said, oh God.
Several years later Janek B.’s notes enabled Rovena’s friend in Switzerland to recall in a new light the short phone conversation she had had with her during her northward journey. A detail that had seemed a slip of the tongue had unlocked the whole mystery of The Hague.
“Hallo, darling. Is that you? So pleased you called. Where are you calling from?”
“Can you imagine? From Denmark, from a train.”
“Really?”
“I’m going to see Besfort.”
“Wonderful!”
“I can see windmills, tulip fields.”
“Tulip fields?”
“I mean… some flowers a bit like tulips… I don’t know their names.”
“Never mind. So it means you’re back together again…
Hello? I can’t hear very well. Bye for now, darling.”
“Bye.”
What an idiot I am, Rovena thought, putting down the phone. I can’t even keep a simple promise. “Don’t tell anybody about this trip to The Hague,” Besfort had said. Lightly, she had asked why not, and he had answered just as airily: “No reason, let’s just make it a secret trip. Everybody should make a secret journey at least once in their lives.” And she had cheerfully agreed.
In a second phone call, he explained that in such little subterfuges the best way not to get caught out when people ask you where you’re going is to substitute another destination, for example, Denmark instead of Holland. “Let’s say a trip to Denmark to see the places where the story of
What an idiot, thought Rovena again. She tried to forget her blunder. She had prepared herself so carefully for this journey that it was silly to worry about something so trivial. She had a surprise ready, besides her new lingerie: two little tattoos, one between her navel and her breasts and the other on her rear. So they would be visible in whatever position they made love. She also had a stock of sweet nothings to whisper, although she couldn’t be sure if she was still entitled to use them or not.
The monotonous sound of the train lulled her to sleep. You’ve exhausted me, she thought, thinking of Besfort waiting for her.
The words of a song, probably one she had never heard but had dreamt up in her imagination, kept coming back to her:
If I could live my life anew
I’d give myself again to you.
A second life, she thought. Easy to say, but so far nobody had ever been given a second life, still less the chance to go on loving someone in this other life. Yet people would never give up the hope of it, and neither would she and Besfort. They had a kind of faint, extremely faint, conception of this forbidden life. In their fear of it, the fear especially of reaching too far and thus bringing down the wrath of heaven, they were pretending they did not love each other at all.
She woke up smiling after her short sleep. As a small girl she had enjoyed this kind of self-deception, arranging facts to suit herself.
Such secrecy, she thought. Janek’s imagination would run riot. Any one of Besfort’s instructions would chill the blood of a woman going to meet her lover… “Not a word to a soul about this trip. Destroy the train tickets and every shred of evidence. I’ll tell you the reason later.”
Words came over the loudspeaker in Dutch, then in English. They were arriving at The Hague. She phoned his mobile a third time, but still there was no reply.
She found a taxi easily, and then the hotel. A Dutch name, with no crown.
There was no message for her at reception, apart from an instruction to show her to Besfort Y.’s room. He himself was not there.
She looked round the spacious room. His two suitcases were there. His razor and his familiar aftershave were in the bathroom. On a small table was a bouquet of flowers and a card of welcome in English from the hotel manager. No message from him.
She sank into an armchair and sat there for a moment, totally drained. Saxo Grammaticus. Jutland… He might have left some sort of sign. I will be there at such and such a time. Or simply, wait for me in the room.
Her gaze wandered involuntarily to the telephone. She stood up to call again, and one of the suitcases suddenly struck her as unfamiliar. The second one too. With a cold stab, the idea struck her that she had been given the wrong room. She rushed into the bathroom to settle her doubts, and all her sense of security evaporated. Didn’t lots of men use that aftershave?
She opened the wardrobe doors. He had the habit of hanging up his shirts as soon as he checked in, but none of them were there. She looked at the two suitcases again, and automatically opened the catch of one. Before she saw any of the contents, a large envelope slipped out and fell on the bed. She was about to put it back when a bundle of photographs slid out of it. With trembling hands she bent down to collect them, and screamed. One photo showed a blood-spattered child. So did the others. What should she do? Was this the room of a serial killer? Should she shout for help, run outside to call the police?
Nobody must know that you are coming to The Hague… She bent down to look at the envelope again. It was addressed to “Besfort Y. Council of Europe. Crisis Department. Strasbourg.”
It was for him.
Oh God. But alongside her horror there was a kind of relief. At least he really was at the Council of Europe. The
