and today. Just as incomprehensible as her mother’s actions were now and then. And to be honest, she was less surprised than she ought to have been. Less surprised than other eighteen-year-olds would have been in her situation.
I’m used to living on a knife-edge, she’d thought. For better or worse. I’m prepared for almost anything.
Perhaps that was why she’d chosen to tell the woman on the train not quite everything? Because she was ashamed of her crackpot family, just as she’d said!
She came to the bridge. Crossed over and turned right. The overgrown ditch was dried out more or less completely: only a narrow, sticky string of mud down at the very bottom betrayed the fact that this was normally where the waters of the River Muur flowed. When the climate was rather different from what it was now. A large sign on a pole imparted this information, and also that the Sidonis Foundation was a mere couple of hundred metres further on.
Two hundred metres, Mikaela thought, and took a drink of water. After eighteen years — or sixteen, to be precise — I’m a mere two hundred metres away from my father.
The buildings were pale yellow in colour and surrounded by park-like grounds inside a low stone wall and a strip of deciduous trees. Elms or maples, she wasn’t sure which. Perhaps both, some seemed to be a bit different. Three buildings in fact: quite a large four-storey one, and two smaller ones two storeys high, forming two wings. A small asphalted car park with about ten vehicles. A black dog tethered outside an outbuilding, barking. No trace of any people. She followed the signs up the stairs in the main building, and stopped at an information desk. Two elderly women were deep in conversation with their backs towards her, and it was some time before she managed to attract their attention.
She explained why she was there, and was invited to take a seat.
After a few minutes a young man with a beard and wearing glasses appeared from out of a corridor, and asked if she was Mikaela Lijphart. She said that she was. He shook hands, and bade her welcome. Said his name was Erich, and that it was lovely weather. Then he beckoned her to follow him. He led her along two green corridors and up two blue staircases; she stayed a couple of paces behind him, and felt that she needed to go to the toilet. The water, of course. She had drunk the whole bottle while walking to the home.
They came to some kind of sitting room with a few sofa groups and a television set. There was still no sign of any people, and she wondered whether everybody had gone for a walk in view of the weather. For there must surely be other patients as well as her dad? Other psychiatric cases. She noticed a toilet door and asked Eric to wait for a moment.
Good Lord, she thought when she had finished and was washing away the worst of the summer heat. I want to go home. If he’s gone when I come out of here, I’ll do a runner.
But he was standing there, waiting.
‘Arnold Maager is your father, is that right?’
She nodded, and tried to swallow.
‘You’ve never met him before?’
‘No. Unless. . No. This will be the first time.’
He smiled, and she assumed he was trying to look benevolent. He couldn’t be more than two or three years older than she was, she thought. Twenty-one, twenty-two perhaps. She took a deep breath, and realized that she was shaking slightly.
‘Nervous?’
She sighed.
‘It’s a bit nerve-racking.’
He scratched at his beard and seemed to be thinking.
‘He’s not all that talkative, your dad. Not normally, at least. But you don’t need to worry. Do you want to be alone with him?’
‘Of course. Why?. . Is there something. .?
He shrugged.
‘No, not at all. I’ll take you to his room. If you want to sit there, that’s no problem. Or you could go for a walk in the grounds — he likes to wander about. . There’s tea and coffee in the kitchen as well.’
‘Thank you.’
He pointed the way to a new, short corridor. Let her go first.
‘Here we are. Number 16. I’ll be down in the office if there’s anything you want.’
He knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a response. She closed her eyes and counted to five. Then she stepped inside.
7
The man sitting in the armchair by the open window reminded her of a bird.
That was her first thought, and somehow it stayed with her.
My dad’s a bird.
He was small and thin. Dressed in worn and shabby corduroy trousers far too big for him, and a blue shirt hanging loose over his hunched shoulders. The head on his skinny neck was long and narrow, his eyes dark and sunken, and his nose sharp and slightly curved. Thick hair, cut short. Mousy in colour. And stubble a few days old that was a shade darker.
He put down the book he was reading and looked at her for two seconds, then looked away.
She remained in the doorway, holding her breath. She suddenly felt convinced that she was in the wrong place. That she — or rather, the young carer — had come to the wrong room. Could this really be her father? Could this tiny creature be-
‘Are you Arnold Maager?’ she said, cutting short her thoughts. Felt surprised that her voice sounded so steady, despite everything.
He looked up at her again. Licked his lips with the tip of his tongue.
‘Who are you?’
The words sounded as insubstantial as the creature who had uttered them. She put her rucksack on the floor and sat down in the other armchair. Waited for a few moments while continuing to look him in the eye, and decided that he didn’t actually look all that old. About forty-five, she thought. Her mother was forty-three, so that could be about right.
‘My name’s Mikaela. You’re my dad.’
He made no reply. Didn’t react at all.
‘I’m your daughter,’ she added.
‘My daughter? Mikaela?’
He seemed to shrivel up even more, and the words were so faint that she could hardly make them out. The book fell to the floor, but he made no attempt to pick it up. His hands were shaking slightly.
Don’t start crying, she thought. Please, Dad, don’t start crying.
Looking back, she found it hard to say how long they had sat there in silence, opposite each other. Perhaps it was only half a minute, perhaps it was ten. It was all so odd, every second seemed both static and gigantic, and when quite a few of them had passed she slowly began to realize something she hadn’t grasped before — nor even thought about. . Something about language and silence. And perceptions.
It wasn’t at all clear, but for the first time in her life she suddenly noticed that it was possible to experience things without talking about them. Experience things together with somebody else, without putting anything into words, not even for herself. Neither while things were actually happening, nor later. . That words, those unwieldy words, could never be one hundred per cent accurate, and that it was sometimes necessary to desist from using them. Not to let them trample all over experiences, and distort them.
