Nobody to be responsible for. No pressing social considerations. No obligations.
I’m a woman who can do whatever she wants.
Right now. Here. Today and tomorrow.
They had talked about this as well. This very thing. Both this evening, and earlier as well. How had he put it?
If you love your freedom too much, you’ll end up hugging a cold stone for the rest of your life. Tighter and tighter, colder and colder.
She thought about that for a while.
Bullshit, she concluded. He’s read that on the label of a video film, or on a carton of milk. Too many words. Tomorrow it’s time for that scumbag Lampe-Leermann.
But she knew — before the sun had risen to greet a new day, and before she’d managed to fall asleep again for the second time that night — she knew that she would have to make up her mind.
Presumably she had four weeks in which to think things over. Two together with him. Two on her own. She didn’t think he was prepared to give her any longer than that.
She stroked her hand gently over his handsome back, and wondered if she knew the answer already.
Then she fell asleep.
9
The youth hostel was completely full. After some desperate negotiations, however, she was allowed to share a room with two young Danish Inter-railing girls and a middle-aged nurse who had been unable to find a double room to share with her husband.
She met the nurse — thoroughly roasted after a long day on the beach — in the shower; the Danish girls were lying on their beds, writing picture postcards. They were both listening to music on their Walkman cassette players, and both nodded to her without removing their earphones.
She suppressed an urge to burst into tears. Packed her belongings into the locker, made up the rickety extra bed, and went to the canteen for something to eat. When she had eaten three sandwiches, drunk a large Coca- Cola and munched an apple, she felt a bit better. She took out her little blue notebook and read through what she had written. She thought for a while about where it would be best to begin, and having made up her mind went to reception to ask for a little help. It was only a quarter to six, and she thought that with a bit of luck she might be able to make one of her intended visits that same evening.
Things went even better than she had hoped. The two girls behind the counter spent quite a lot of time helping her, and when she got to the bus stop she found that the bus had just arrived, and was waiting for her.
She flopped down on the seat immediately behind the driver and continued to think over how best to approach the meeting. She took out her notebook, then put it away again once she had memorized the main points. The bus set off, and she started to think back over her walk through the care-home grounds instead. And the letters she had been given by her father, and read with ever-increasing surprise. The feeling of unreality took hold of her like a sudden nightmare.
Arnold Maager. Her dad.
His somewhat hunched figure. That heavy, oblong-shaped head on its narrow neck. His similarity to a bird. His hands thrust deep down into his trouser pockets, and his shoulders hunched as if he were feeling cold as he trundled along through the heat of summer. And the distance. . The distance between himself and his daughter he was keen to maintain all the time, as if bodily contact were something dangerous and forbidden.
They had wandered back and forth through the grounds in this fashion for over an hour — side by side, half a metre apart. At least half a metre. Walked and walked and walked. It was quite a while before it dawned on her that she had no need to keep nagging at him.
She didn’t need to question him and press him to explain things. He had already made up his mind to talk to her.
To talk to her and explain in his own good time. In his own words. With pauses and repetitions and names she didn’t recognize. He had become more and more tense the further they had progressed — but of course, that wasn’t so surprising.
Because the story he had to put into words for his daughter was not a pleasant one.
Not pleasant at all.
But he told her it all the same.
The bells in the low whitewashed church struck a quarter to seven just as she was getting off the bus in the square in Lejnice. Three muffled chimes that made a flock of pigeons in front of her feet take off, then land again.
She walked round the dried-out fountain, and asked for directions at the newspaper kiosk. She had found the address in the telephone directory at the youth hostel: it turned out to be a mere stone’s throw away, according to the lady behind the counter, glowing with summery sweat as she pointed down towards the harbour. Dead easy to find.
She thanked her, and set off in the direction indicated. Down Denckerstraat towards the sea — a narrow street lined with old wooden houses leaning inwards and making the street seem even narrower. Then left into Goopsweg for about fifty metres. The house before the pharmacy.
Two things happened as she walked those fifty metres.
The first was that a black cat emerged from behind a fence and strolled across the street directly in front of her.
The second was that for some unknown reason a tile fell off one of the roofs and crashed to the ground three metres behind her. It happened only a couple of seconds after the cat had disappeared behind another fence; a woman she had just passed was even closer to the spot where the tile landed, and gave a scream that frightened her even more than the tile had done. At first, at least.
She remained standing for quite a while outside number 26, wondering what to do next. She smelled a whiff of the sea drifting up on the slight breeze blowing in from the shore. And the scent of cooking oil and oregano from the pizzeria on the corner. The house — the house in question — was a small block of flats, three storeys high with only two entrance doors. Typical 1970s style with tiny built-in balconies facing the street, and perhaps also on the other side, facing the courtyard.
I’m not superstitious, she thought. Never have been, never will be. I don’t believe in that sort of silly thinking that’s a remnant from a less enlightened age. . Those were words she must have borrowed from Kim Wenderbout, she realized, her gigantic social studies teacher with whom at least half the girls in her class were secretly in love. So was she.
Silly remnants? A less enlightened age? Rubbish, she thought.
But she remained standing there nevertheless. The bells in the square started to strike seven.
The cat and the tile, she thought. Perfectly natural. She counted the chimes. And made it eight.
She turned on her heel and returned the same way that she had come.
Odd, she thought when she was sitting in the bus again on the Sunday morning. Why did I do that?
A cat runs across the street and a roof tile falls down onto the road. What’s so special about that?
She had slept like a log for nearly twelve hours. She’d gone to bed the moment she had returned to the youth hostel, and only woke up when one of the Danish girls dropped a dish on the floor at half past nine.
She had a shower, then checked out and just caught the bus that left at twenty past ten. Breakfast: a pear and a pear soda. Plenty of variation there. .
But it had been odd, her behaviour the previous evening. Very odd. Not like her at all, that was even more obvious now in the cold light of day. Not like Mikaela Lijphart, the sensible, clear-thinking Mikaela Lijphart. Quite a
