Maybe This Time (7 page)

I turned off the light and looked out towards the island. I heard someone calling, but I could not see that far in the darkness. After a while, lights flashed in the reeds, and I could finally make out the man whose voice I had been hearing for hours. From his boat, he shone a light into the reeds, where I now saw something white floating back and forth across the water. It always returned to the circle of light, like a person trying to get to shore. In fact, it was just a piece of cloth, perhaps a vest belonging to one of the children I had seen on the island that afternoon. The man kept shining his light on it, but didn’t pull it out of the water.

I remembered how they rushed back from the island in their boat, and the minute they set foot on land, they disappeared into their houses without the usual hue and cry that spread through the area whenever they returned.

They made their way from a spit of land through the reeds and out to the island. It always took a while before they could be seen again in the undergrowth, since they had become so adept at disappearing into the landscape. Whether any sound from the island reached me depended on the direction of the wind.

They were a gang of children from the area, not many and not always the same ones. It was hard to say why they were so drawn to the island. They went there often, almost daily, even though access to the island was prohibited, because of the few protected species that nested there.

They took sticks and poles with them in the boat, and apples, which would end up floating, a few days later, in the water near the reeds.

They played at being hunters in the reeds. With their sticks and poles, they waded in the mud along the shore, and frightened animals shot out of their holes and escaped out over the lake. Then they rowed to the island, and, depending on the wind, either a slapping beat of oars could be heard, or silence. This silence drew me to the window more often than any of their yelling.

When they headed back or were on their way over, they made sure they were safe from prying eyes, and if they realized they were being watched, they waved cheerfully and headed off in another direction. There was no use in taking it personally, since everyone here had sneaked onto the island at one time or another.

The light was still shining in the reeds and the man poked at the water with a hook.

I drew the curtains, knowing perfectly well what there was to see. The man himself had made sure of that. I thought of him often and in dreams I climbed into his boat and he rowed me out to the island. Now he was at it again. A vest floating in the water, a piece of cloth that had got caught in the reeds or an empty boat trapped in the branches by the shore meant that for days, even weeks, it would be impossible to calm him. For years things had been quiet at the lake, even if the quiet was always only temporary, since there were plenty of opportunities to find things in the water. He had spent those years, growing old, in his boat. He went around the lake for his work, but seemed to be constantly searching in the water, along the shore, in the reeds, on the island. Everyone here thought they knew the real reason for his agitation. And yet, because of his consideration towards the children, many felt he was best left alone.

He supplied the local inns with fish and sold the rest of his catch in the town nearby. During the day he sat in his boat, and in the evenings he slipped along the shore. At night you could find him in the bars near the harbour or, again, in his boat. He was considerate and polite, but still often rowed past without saying hello, only to draw attention to himself at the next opportunity with an enthusiastic wave. This would be followed by an invitation to join him in his boat. He was so friendly that I, especially as a child, could not refuse and we took many
excursions
, as he called them. While we were together he would tell me all about his work and what he had caught that day and all that he had seen and done day in, day out, throughout the year and in all the years he had spent fishing on this lake. He talked to me, but seemed absent-minded. Then he would suddenly look at me intently and searchingly, but without ever asking about anything in particular. As we approached the island, he always grew
nervous
and jumpy. He broke out in a sweat, his shirt sodden, his entire body trembling, his eyes fixed on me. Only the oars kept him steady. His trembling gradually subsided and once again his expression became open, relaxed, even friendly. As if he had noticed my shock, he smiled in embarrassment and ruffled my hair. We turned and rowed back to shore, and yet, as relaxed and open as he appeared to be, he never once took his eyes off me. He seemed to be using me as a means of following his boy’s trail, even finding him. I didn’t want this and tried to avoid him, but couldn’t. Next time he had changed and asked me about school, about my classmates and friends, their likes and dislikes. He wanted to know everything. Occasionally, he managed to convince one or the other of my friends to row out to the island with him, and he would stare at them just as intently, searching for something or maybe just remembering his son, thinking of what he might have looked like now. Whatever the reason, it was as if he had identified and understood something in each of us, so we were glad when our parents forbade us to go near him again.

He almost always had in his boat one of the
children
who even now and so many years later still made this area feel less safe. He taught them how to fish, something they willingly took up, and in winter he taught them to ice skate. That way he could spend time with them throughout the year. They weren’t shy with him, and they trusted him. At least they appeared to. They sat in his boat with their fishing rods and let him help them up when they slipped on the ice. Yet I got the impression they tolerated rather than liked him, because more than once I saw them duck into the reeds and hide when he rowed past. He was, in any case, the inevitable witness of their secret expeditions to the island, or at the very least an accessory, since it is inconceivable that they could have slipped past him unnoticed. So they obviously agreed to sit with him in his boat every now and then to keep him from telling on them.

He would never have kept quiet about us, though. On the way out to the island we already had water in the boat, more than usual. The boat didn’t belong to any of us, so no one bothered to take care of it. It had been abandoned years before, tied to a tree trunk that rose from the water. On that day the boat rode lower in the water than usual. We rowed out anyway, probably because we had the new kid with us. He had come to our school a few weeks earlier, and we took him with us to the spot where we always landed, an opening in the reeds, a clearing where we tied up. That is where I always picture him, standing there in the reeds, looking at us, wondering what we had planned for him.

All summer long they searched for the boy. They found his bicycle not far from where we had set off.

I have not set foot on the island since then, and since then the boy’s father has not left the lake, and I have watched him all the years since.

We never said a word about the incident. Life went on and we still met up, but we no longer went out to the island.

I turned on the light and sat on the bed. The next morning, there were children creeping around the house. The light’s on in his room, I heard one say. A moment later they were standing in the doorway and in my room, looking straight at me, bright-eyed and happy. One of them held out a box with a kitten. It had adopted them, they said. They asked for milk for the cat, and when I came back into the room, they were standing at the window. They were
looking
across the lake over to the island in the reeds.

The wall in front of the house had been replastered and the moss had not yet regrown to cover it like the other walls in the area. The railings were freshly painted and the hedge behind them was sparse. On top of the wall stood some candles. Streams of wax trickled down the new cement and pooled on the pavement in little puddles. Children jumped over the puddles as if they were obstacles.

Old limes and oaks lined the street. Women and children walked in their shade. Dogs roamed
between
the trunks followed by their owners, who stopped and waited, examining the trees’ craggy bark. Then they continued on their way. Sometimes a car would brake and stop at the junction before driving on. The sound of its engine faded into the surrounding noise.

A small boy walked along the pavement holding a woman’s hand. He steered his toy car along the garden wall. After a while he broke away from the woman and ran ahead, still steering his car along the wall. Whenever there was something in the car’s way, he lifted it over the obstacle and set it back on the wall. Then he dragged it along the metal railings. He imitated the noise it made, humming and singing to himself, his voice rising and falling as if he were changing gears. The woman kept calling after him, but the further he went the faster he ran, until he finally rounded a corner and was gone.

An old woman had reached the junction. She stopped in front of the house and walked up and down, in a world of her own, with her arms crossed. She kept turning the corner and heading a few steps down the street. Then she stopped and stood still and turned and retraced her steps, only to return once again to the spot where she had doubled back. She straightened twigs here and there in the hedge and strayed into the garden. She was lost in thought, distracted, and whenever anyone approached her she recoiled and abruptly changed direction. Then she backed several steps away from the wall and, after a moment, stroked it with a finger.

As she did so, she began looking across the street at me. I had been watching that spot and the woman from my vantage point for a long time, and I could sense how much my presence irritated her. I didn’t want to annoy her further. I crossed the street
towards
her, went right past her and strolled down the road.

The moss on the garden wall was dried out and yellowed and the paint was flaking off the railings. Behind it, the hedge stopped people peering into the partially overgrown garden. There were old villas, chestnut trees, beeches and willows, and sunbathing bodies on folding and reclining chairs under the trees. There were birds chirping and a smell of
barbecue
. Everything needs water, said a woman behind the hedge. From a verandah came the sound of a flute. One song, played over and over again, always breaking off at the same point with the same
mistake
repeated each time. A man’s voice took up the melody and hummed and sang from that point on, correcting the mistake and falling silent. Then it all started again from the beginning.

A tram turned into the street, and a dog that had been lying before an open garden gate and
barking
at the passers-by sprang up and ran towards it, whimpering. There were children on the tram and a girl, who had evidently been waiting for the dog, called out a name. She beckoned him over and threw something out of the window, a soft toy. The dog raced after it and sniffed and gnawed at it. Then he took off with his trophy.

On the street, right where the soft toy had landed, skid marks ran across the tarmac. A few metres away, arrows and numbers were drawn on the road and on the pavement.

I went to him just once, and even then only
because
my regular GP was not available that day.

Bells from a nearby church mingled with the sound of the flute. A few gardens further on, both were drowned out by shouts from a school football pitch and the roar of the crowd when a goal was scored or missed. Flags were waved. They could just be seen over the hedge. Every now and then a ball came flying out into the road. It was quickly chased down by a child and taken back or thrown over the hedge from the pavement onto the pitch, where it was greeted with cheers.

A minor ailment had brought me to him, a scratchy throat that had bothered me for some time, nothing serious, but he took more care to examine me than any other GP I had seen.

Occasionally a child sneaked out of the
playground
into the road and climbed the garden wall. He pulled himself up on the railings and then, if he managed to reach the top of the wall, eased himself down the other side. An anxious mother always followed. She scolded the child and took him back to the park.

I stopped at the roundabout past the school and crossed to the other side to walk back from there. A removals van stood in front of a house where people were moving in and out at the same time. The van was emptied and then immediately filled again. Furniture and objects were carried out of the house and back in. A window on the top floor stood wide open. In a mirror leaning against the window, I could see the tops of the trees and the junction to which I now returned. Below the window a crow was busy picking twigs out of the gutter. Now and then it pecked at its reflection in the mirror as if trying to feed on its image, only to eventually drop every twig into the garden with a caw each time.

It’s not angina, he said after probing my throat with his hands and his stethoscope. He stood up and went to a glass cabinet, unlocked it and took out a packet of pills.

Behind the fences and shrubbery, the barred ground-floor windows were half opened, their
curtains
swaying in the breeze. In the rooms were lamps and walls covered with books, mirrors and paintings. On the façades, sunlight and the shadows of trees. Gravel and the sound of footsteps on the gravel path approaching or moving away. There were the ferns, the bushes and the poppies. The smell of herbs and clean laundry wafted over the road on the wind.

A few streets away a roof was being stripped. A crane hovered over the rooftops, and from that
direction
came the sound of knocking and hammering and banging, which mingled with the yelling of the children in the park and on the football pitch. There were cars, the flute and the music from other gardens and houses. There was a whistle and a yapping dog, at which the whistle was probably directed. The school bell pealed. Screaming children answered. They poured out into the road. Some of them held hands and wandered off quickly. A girl suddenly ran out from the crowd and across the road towards me. A woman supervising the children hurried after her and grabbed her out of the road. The girl had run in front of a car. The woman now smiled apologetically at the driver who returned the smile before setting off again. The woman held the girl with both hands, shook her, hugged her, ruffled her hair and led her back to the others, who had missed the drama.