The Weeping Girl

they met. They were going to become an entity, they’d known that for a long time. There was no doubt about it. They didn’t need to hurry things.

But what they certainly did need was money.

Money for food. For cigarettes and clothes and somewhere to live, perhaps. Especially in the longer term: they’d need lots of money then — after all, that’s why they’d done what they’d done. .

Thoughts had started wandering around inside her head, and she realized now that it was difficult to keep track of everything. There was so much to take into account when you started thinking along these lines, and in the end you didn’t know if you were coming or going. That’s the way it nearly always turned out — it would be nice if somebody else could make the decisions, she used to think. Make decisions about difficult matters, so that she could think about what she liked to think about instead.

Perhaps that’s why she was so much in love with him, of all people? Him. He liked to make decisions about things that were a bit complicated and major. Such as this plan they’d thought up. Yes, no doubt that was why she loved him, and wanted to be his. Yes indeed. Even if this last project had gone off the rails a bit, and she’d been forced to change her mind. As already said.

She came to the pier, and looked around in the gathering gloom. He hadn’t arrived yet, she was a few minutes early. She could have continued walking along the beach — he lived out at Klimmerstoft and would be coming from the opposite direction; but she didn’t bother. Sat down instead on one of the low stone walls that ran all the way along each side of the pier. Lit another cigarette, despite the fact that she didn’t really want another one, and tried to think about something pleasant.

He turned up after another fifteen minutes or so. A bit late, but not all that much. She saw his white shirt approaching through the twilight long before he reached her, but she remained sitting there until he came up to her. Then she stood up, put her arms round his neck and pressed the whole of her body against him. Kissed him.

She could taste that he’d taken a drop of the strong stuff, but only a little.

‘So you’re back.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you have a good time?’

‘Great.’

There was a moment’s silence. He was grasping her arms tightly.

‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ she said eventually.

‘Go on.’

He loosened his grip slightly.

‘I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Changed your mind?’

‘Yes.’

‘What the hell do you mean?’ he said. ‘Explain.’

She explained. She had trouble in finding the right words, but in the end he seemed to understand what she was saying. He didn’t respond at first, and she couldn’t see his face clearly in the darkness. He’d let go of her altogether now. Half a minute passed, perhaps a whole one, and they just stood there. Stood there, breathing in time with the sea and the waves, as it were, and there was something vaguely disturbing about it.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said, putting his arm round her shoulders. ‘And have a little chat. I have an idea.’

2

July 1999

Helmut had been against it all from the very start.

Looking back, she had to give him that much. ‘Daft,’ he’d said. ‘Bloody silly.’

He’d lowered the newspaper and glowered at her for a few seconds with those pale eyes of his, slowly grinding his teeth and shaking his head.

‘I can’t see the point of it. It’s unnecessary.’

That was all. Helmut wasn’t one to waste words. As far as he was concerned, all in all, it wasn’t a case of from dust thou art — stone more like.

From stone thou art, and unto stone thou shalt return. It was a thought she’d had before.

There are two sides to every coin, of course. She knew when she decided on him that she was not choosing storm and fire — not love and passion — but solid rock. Grey, primary rock on which she could stand safely, without any risk of sinking down into the mire of despair once again.

Something like that.

That’s more or less what she’d thought fifteen years ago when he knocked on her door and explained that he had a bottle of Burgundy he’d bought while on holiday and wouldn’t be able to drink it all himself.

And if she hadn’t thought that as he stood there on the doorstep, she’d have done so shortly afterwards in any case. Once they’d started bumping into each other.

In the laundry room. In the street. In the shops.

Or when she was sitting on her balcony on warm summer evenings, trying to rock Mikaela to sleep, with him standing on his own balcony, leaning on the rail that separated them, smoking his pipe and gazing out into what remained of the sunset in the vast western sky over the polders.

Next-door neighbours. The thought came into her mind.

A godlike figure, solid and secure, holding out a hand of stone towards where she was drifting around in a floundering boat on a turbulent sea of emotions.

To her and Mikaela. Yes, that is in fact what the situation had been like: looking back, she could sometimes smile at the thought, sometimes not.

Anyway, that was fifteen years ago. Mikaela was three. Now she was eighteen. She celebrated her eighteenth birthday this summer.

Mark my words, he had declared from behind his newspaper. As I told you, this won’t make her any happier.

Why hadn’t she listened to him? She asked herself that over and over again. During these days of worry and despair. When she tried to get a grip on herself and look back over the links in the chain. To think back and try to find reasons for doing what she had done. . Or simply to let her thoughts wander freely; she didn’t have much strength to speak of just now. These hellish summer days.

But she’d done the right thing, as she saw it. All I’ve done is what is right and proper. I haven’t betrayed the decision I made all those years ago, then let it lie. In a way that’s another stone — a murky boulder sunk down at the muddy bottom of the well of memory, but one that she’d promised herself she would fish up again when the time was right.

Carefully and respectfully, of course, but bring it up into the light of day even so. So that Mikaela could see it. No matter how you looked at it, that was necessary. Something that had remained in abeyance for many years, but now needed to happen to put things into perspective.

Her eighteenth birthday. Even if they hadn’t discussed it, Helmut had known about it as well. Been aware of the situation all the time, but had preferred not to confront it. . The day would have to dawn when Mikaela was told the truth, one had no right to deny a child knowledge of its origins. One couldn’t hide away her roots under mundane everyday happenings and the detritus of time. One couldn’t send her out into life on false pretences.

Right? Life? Truth? Afterwards, she couldn’t understand how she had been able to fit such grandiose concepts into her thoughts. Wasn’t it this very pretentiousness that was hitting back and turning upon her? Wasn’t that what was happening?

Who was she to go on about right and wrong? Who was she to make such hasty judgements and shake off