Swim.
All at once the lake begins to intrude on his thoughts. The vision recurs of Anita, Laura, and Adèle on the jetty and he still remembers the colors of their coats. From where he stood, cowering among the trees, they made him think of brushstrokes—red, black, pink. Oh, for heaven’s sake, was he so self-obsessed, did everything always come down to painting, to his accursed painting? The images from that terrifying day crowd in on him like famished and thirsty beings of flesh and blood. He steps back and finds himself once more on the square of yellowed grass. Then he thinks of his gray-and-white cell, the clusters of light on the wall in the morning, the impeccable order of things inside the prison, the sofa bed, the table, the chair, the books all lined up, the right angles, the colored pencils in a jam jar, the drawing books stowed away in a portfolio. He has been learning to breathe slowly, through the nose and the abdomen. Sometimes this deep breathing has been putting him into such a profound state of meditation that he had the sensation of being back home in the forest. He should do this now, it will calm him.
Suddenly there is a noise like a great blow struck against the gate behind him. And Adam is running. It is the last lap of the marathon. Twenty-six miles or four and a half years, what’s the difference?
The asphalt turns into a carpet of mud, the cars disappear, it is a pine forest, the gray building is no longer there, it is a holiday, with smells of caramelized sugar, rain, sausages, and another two hundred yards to the finish. Anita is waiting there behind the yellow ribbon that will enwrap the winner. She is carrying Laura, barely two years old, on her shoulders. Anita is beautiful, it is there for all to see, that bewitching beauty, that voluptuous figure (in reality those eight pounds she has been unable to shed since Laura was born). As everyone waits for the marathon runners to arrive, amid this cheerful, impatient crowd, all eyes are on her, her smile, her blue summer dress, her fine fingers clasping the ankles of the child she carries, straight back, head held aloft. It is Laura, perched up there, who sees her father emerging in front as they come around the bend and who yells PAPA!
Adam is coming, yes it is definitely him, those smooth strides can only be his, that towering body, made for basketball but fine for running (and for so many other things). He hears that PAPA and some people claimed that at that moment his stride took on a new life, as if he had found a little bit more energy to increase his speed. Adam flings his arms wide open to meet the yellow ribbon, Anita runs up to him, leans toward her husband, and in a movement of perfect grace, Laura tumbles into her father’s arms. The onlookers feel as if they have witnessed something flawless, timeless, and invincible.
Today in the prison parking lot there is only Anita waiting for him. Laura has remained at home, being looked after by a health care assistant. Adam buries his face in his wife’s hair, now dappled with gray. This gray touches him and suddenly there is the scent of vanilla, there, behind her ear and he is amazed at the butterflies coming to life in his stomach. He closes his eyes, remembers a goddess in a blue dress, and their daughter gently tumbling, light as a bird, into his arms and this thing that blazed up in his body, cauterizing his pain, sharpening his joy in victory, this thing that made him feel what it was to be a man loved, a man envied, a god.
Tomorrow
ON WEEKDAYS DURING THE SPRING, they can sometimes be seen on the beach where the wartime blockhouses are. They come halfway through the morning, settle down on beach towels, open a great blue sunshade. They never swim. Occasionally they take a walk near the concrete blocks. At such times the man carries the girl on his back. Sometimes they dip their child’s feet into the clear rivulets that wind around the concrete blocks and take her hand so that she can stroke the velvety moss on the walls of the pillboxes.
People around here know them and even if it was a long time ago there is always someone who can tell their story. But mostly when people see them like that with their daughter, they prefer to look away and think about other things.
The girl is very tall, she has long, smooth hair, she is too thin. Because she uses a wheelchair, and because she sometimes starts yelling, nobody apart from her parents notices the exceptional beauty of her face nor the way her eyes reach down into your soul.
They still live in that big house on the edge of the forest and, since returning from prison, the man spends his days repairing, consolidating, and making things. Some people remember that he had been an architect and a painter and the same people have the notion that while he was in prison his wife sold some of his paintings to pay for their daughter’s medical treatment. He has converted his former painter’s studio into a cabinetmaker’s workshop where he makes, repairs, and transforms furniture. He is a much-sought-after craftsman who receives visitors by appointment only. It is said that the floor in his workshop is
