Italian Shoes (9 page)

But this time my nose wasn't broken.

I stuffed rolled-up toilet paper into my nostrils, wrapped a handkerchief soaked in cold water round the back of my neck and, after a while, the nosebleed petered out. Harriet knocked on the bathroom door and asked if she could be of assistance. I wanted to be left in peace, so I told her ‘no'. When I eventually came out of the bathroom with two wads of paper in my nose, she had gone back to bed. She had taken off her nightdress and hung it over the bedstead. She looked me in the eye.

‘I didn't mean to hit you.'

‘Of course you didn't. You were dreaming.'

I sat down on one of the chairs by the big window looking out over the lake. It was still dark outside. I could hear a dog barking in the distance. Individual barks, like broken-off sentences. Or like the way you speak when nobody's listening.

I watched her as she continued to recount her dream, and it seemed to me that she was just the same as when I had known and loved her. I wondered what exactly it was that made me think so. I eventually realised that
it was her voice, which hadn't changed at all over the years. I recalled telling her many times that she would always be able to get a job as a telephone operator. She had the most beautiful telephone voice I had ever heard.

‘An enemy cavalry company was hiding in the forest,' she said. ‘They suddenly burst into the open and attacked before I had chance to defend myself. But it's all over now. Besides, I know that certain nightmares never return. They lose all their strength and don't exist any more.'

‘I know that you're seriously ill,' I said.

I hadn't planned to say that at all. The words simply tumbled out of my mouth. Harriet looked at me in surprise.

‘There was a letter in your handbag,' I said. ‘I was looking for some explanation for why you had fallen down on the ice. I found the letter, and read it.'

‘Why didn't you say you knew?'

‘I was ashamed of having rooted around in your handbag. I would be furious if somebody did that to me.'

‘You've always been an interfering nosy parker. You were always like that.'

‘That's not true.'

‘Oh yes it is. Neither of us have the strength to lie any more. It's a fact, isn't it?'

I blushed. I've always rummaged around other people's property. I've even been known to steam open letters, and reseal them afterwards. My mother had a collection of letters from her younger days in which she opened her heart to a friend of hers. Shortly before she died she had
tied a ribbon round them and asked for them to be burned. I did so – but read them first. I used to read my girlfriends' diaries and raid their drawers; I've been known to ransack fellow doctors' desks. And there have been patients whose wallets I have comprehensively investigated. I never stole any money. I was after something different. Secrets. People's weakness. Knowledge of things nobody knew that I knew about.

The only person who ever found me out was Harriet.

It happened at her mother's house. I had been left alone for a few minutes, and had started to work my way through their bureau when Harriet entered the room silently and wondered what on earth I was doing. She had already noticed that I used to go through her handbag. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I can no longer remember what I said. We never spoke about it again. I never touched her belongings after that. But I continued digging into the lives of other friends and colleagues. Now she had reminded me of the kind of person I am.

She smoothed down the covers and beckoned me to sit next to her. The thought that she was naked underneath the sheets suddenly excited me. I sat down and put my hand on her arm. She had a pattern formed by birthmarks near her shoulder. I recognised them all. Everything's the same, I thought. Such a long time has passed, but we are still the same as we were at the beginning.

‘I didn't want to tell you,' she said. ‘You might think that was why I tracked you down. Looking for help where there is no help possible.'

‘Nothing is ever hopeless.'

‘Neither you nor I believe in miracles. If they happen, they happen. But believing in them, expecting them – that's nothing more than wasting the time allotted to you.

‘I might live for another year, or it might only be six months. In any case, I think I can survive for a few more months with the aid of this walker and all the painkillers. But don't try telling me that nothing is ever hopeless.'

‘Advances are being made all the time. Sometimes things happen amazingly quickly.'

She sat up a little more erect against the pillows.

‘Do you really believe what you're saying?'

I didn't answer. I remembered her once saying that life was like your shoes. You couldn't simply expect or imagine that your shoes would fit perfectly. Shoes that pinched your feet were a fact of life.

‘I want to ask you to do something,' she said, and burst out laughing. ‘Can't you take those bits of paper out of your nostrils?'

‘Was that all?'

‘No.'

I went to the bathroom and removed the blood-soaked pieces of toilet paper. The bleeding had stopped. My nose was tender; there would be a bruise and some swelling. I could still hear the solitary dog barking mournfully somewhere outside.

I went back and sat on the side of the bed once more.

‘I want you to lie down beside me. Nothing more than that.'

I did as she asked. Her perfume was strong. I could feel the contours of her body through the sheet. I lay down on her left side. That's what I had always done in the past. She reached out and switched off the bedside light. It was between four and five in the morning. The faint light from a solitary lamp post by a fountain in the courtyard seeped in through the curtains.

‘I really do want to see that forest pool,' she said. ‘I never had a ring from you. I don't think I ever wanted one. But I'll settle for the pool. I want to see it before I die.'

‘You're not going to die.'

‘Of course I'm going to die. We all reach a point where we no longer have the strength to deny what's going to happen. Death is the only constant companion a human being can have in this life. Even a lunatic usually knows when it's time to go.'

She fell silent. Her pains came and went.

‘I've often wondered why you never said anything,' she said after a while. ‘I can understand that you had met somebody else, or that you simply didn't want to carry on any more. But why didn't you say anything?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Of course you know. You always knew what you were doing, even when you claimed that you didn't. Why did you hide away? Where were you when I stood at the airport, waiting to see you off? I stood there for hours. Even when the only flight that hadn't left was a delayed charter to Tenerife, I still stood there. Afterwards, I wondered if you'd been hiding behind a column somewhere, watching me. And laughing.'

‘Why should I laugh? I'd already left.'

She thought for a moment before speaking.

‘You'd already left?'

‘The same time, the same flight, the previous day.'

‘So you'd planned it?'

‘I didn't know if I was going to get on the flight. I simply went to the airport to see what would happen. A passenger didn't turn up, and I was able to rebook.'

‘I don't believe you.'

‘It's the truth.'

‘I know it's not. You weren't like that. You never did anything without having planned it in advance. You used to say that a surgeon could never leave anything to chance. You said you were a surgeon through and through. I know you had planned it. How can you expect me to believe something that can only be a lie? You're just the same now as you were then. You lie your way through life. I caught on too late.'

Her voice was shrill. She was starting to shout. I tried to calm her down, to make her think about the people sleeping in the neighbouring rooms.

‘I don't care about them. Explain to me how somebody can behave like you did towards me.'

‘I've said that I don't know.'

‘Have you done something similar to others? Let them get caught in your net, then left them to survive as best they can?'

‘I don't understand what you're talking about.'

‘Is that all you can say?'

‘I'm trying to be honest.'

‘You're lying. There's not a word of truth in what you say. How can you live with yourself?'

‘I've nothing else to say.'

‘I wonder what you're thinking.'

She suddenly tapped me on the forehead with her finger.

‘What's inside there? Nothing? Only darkness?'

She lay down and turned her back on me. I hoped it was over.

‘Have you really nothing to say? Not even “sorry”?'

‘Sorry.'

‘If I weren't so ill I'd hit you. I'd never leave you in peace again. You succeeded in almost destroying my life. All I want is for you to say something that I can understand.'

I didn't respond. Perhaps I felt a little bit relieved: lies always weigh you down, even if they seem to be weightless at first. Harriet pulled the covers up to her chin.

‘Are you cold?' I asked tentatively.

She sounded perfectly calm when she replied.

‘I've felt cold all my life. I've gone looking for warmth in deserts and tropical countries. But all the time I've had a little icicle hanging inside me. People always have baggage. For some it's sorrow, for others it's worry. For me, it's always been an icicle. For you it's an anthill in a living room in an old fisherman's cottage.'

‘I never use that room. It's not heated during the winter and in the summer I just air it. Both my grandfather and my grandmother died in that room. As soon as I enter it, I can hear their breathing and detect their smell.
One day I noticed that there were ants inside the room. When I opened the door several months later, they had started to build a nest. I left them to it.'

Harriet turned over.

‘What happened? I'm not going to give up. I don't know what happened in your life. Why did you move out to the island? I gathered from the man who took me out there that you'd been living on the skerry for nearly twenty years.'

‘Jansson is a rogue. He exaggerates everything. I've been living there for twelve years.'

‘A doctor who retires at the age of fifty-four?'

‘I don't want to talk about it. Something happened.'

‘You can tell me.'

‘I don't want to.'

‘I shall soon be dead.'

I turned my back on her, and thought that I should never have given way. It wasn't the forest pool she wanted, it was me.

That's as far as I managed to think.

She moved to snuggle up against me. The warmth from her body enveloped me, and filled what had long seemed to be nothing but a pointless shell. That was how we had always lain when we slept together. I used to carry her into slumber on my back. Just for a brief moment, I could imagine that we had always been lying together like this. For nearly forty years. A remarkable sleep that we were only now beginning to wake up from.

‘What happened to you? You can tell me now,' said Harriet.

‘I made a catastrophic mistake during an operation. Afterwards, I argued that it wasn't my fault. I was found guilty. Not in court, but by the National Board of Health and Welfare. I was admonished, and couldn't cope with it. That's as much as I can bring myself to say just now. Don't ask any more questions.'

‘Tell me about the forest pool instead,' she whispered.

‘It's black, they say it's bottomless, and there's no shore. It's a small poor relation to all those lovely lakes with inviting waters. It's hard to imagine that it exists at all, and isn't just a drop of nature's ink that has been spilled. I've told you that I watched my father swimming there. But what I didn't say was that the experience made me realise what life was all about. People are close to each other so that they can be parted. That's all there is to it.'

‘Are there any fish in that pool?'

‘I don't know. But if there are, they must be completely black. Or invisible, because you can't see anything in that dark water. Black fish, black frogs, black water spiders. And down at the bottom – if there is a bottom – a solitary black eel slowly wriggling its way through the mud.'

She pressed herself up against me even harder. I thought about how she was dying, how the warmth she radiated would soon be an in sidious chill. What had she said? An icicle inside her? So as far as she was concerned, death was ice, nothing more. Everybody perceived death differently, the shadow hovering behind us always takes on a different form. I wanted to turn round and hug her as tightly as I could. But something prevented me. Perhaps I was still afraid of whatever it was that had made me
leave her? A feeling of being too close, something I couldn't cope with?

I didn't know. But perhaps I now wanted to know, despite everything.

I must have dozed off briefly. I was woken up by Harriet sitting on the edge of the bed. To my horror, I watched her sink down on to her knees and start crawling towards the bathroom door. She was completely naked, her breasts heavy, her body older than I had imagined. I didn't know if she was crawling to the bathroom because she was too exhausted to walk, or so as not to wake me up with the squeaking wheels of her walker. Tears welled up in my eyes, she was blurred as she closed the door. When she came back, she had managed to stand up and walk. But her legs were trembling. She snuggled up close to me again.

‘I'm not asleep,' I said. ‘I don't know what's happening any more.'

‘You had an unexpected visitor on to your island. An old woman from your past came walking over the ice. Now you're on your way to fulfil an old promise.'

I could smell spirits. Did she have a bottle hidden among her toilet things?