Travelling Light (16 page)

Nicole turned slowly red. “There was talk of some sort of exam,” she said. “Is it possible they actually take exams? Ordinary gym teachers? And then he failed it and was so upset he… my God. What was the exam?”

Henri said very abruptly, “Climbing a rope. To qualify for the permanent staff.”

“And he couldn’t do it?”

“No. He tried year after year.”

“So he went and hanged himself. With the rope? Was he too old? Or too fat?”

Flo got up from the table. “He was the only person I’ve ever met who took what he wanted to do and was trying to do so seriously that he was ready to die for it! And no one helped him!”

Nicole, now really cross, spat out, “For goodness’ sake, he had to climb it by himself!”

“Nicole,” said Henri in warning.

There was a moment of silence; all they could hear was traffic hissing past outside the wall. Flo sat down again.

“Florence,” said Nicole. “I know you’ve had a bad experience. I understand that, believe me. But would it have been such a comfort to him if you had signed his petition? Think about it.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m the one who needed comforting… But I didn’t listen to him. He said something about us being unhappy and not even knowing it, so nothing could be done… He said it all could have been so simple. Henri? What was it that was so simple? Was it something about nature?”

“Flo, don’t you think we ought to be getting home?”

“That green wave was over and done with ages ago,” Nicole began, but Flo interrupted her vehemently.

“Green, you say? What do you know about green? There isn’t a colour in this house that I’d call green. Even the grass isn’t a proper green; it’s all just horrible decorator colours that are tasteful! No, don’t say it, I know I’m behaving badly. Where are my glasses? No, the other ones, the ones I was wearing when we came.”

Henri handed her her glasses and said, “Nicole, I really think we’ll be on our way.”

“Must you really? I thought maybe a little snack before you go…”

“Another time. And we’ve the boys to think of.”

“Of course, naturally. How are they doing anyway?”

“Fine. Just fine.”

“Nicole,” said Flo. “I’ve been awful, I know I have. Unforgivable. But perhaps you’d understand if you’d met him. He was somehow so innocent. So wide awake. Fully awake to everything, and brave enough to dare. And now I wonder – how can any of us ever accomplish anything if not even someone like him…”

“Florence darling, of course you’re upset. I mean, it’s easy getting people all worried and anxious, playing Tarzan out in the woods and saying how terribly simple and happy the world could be and then hanging yourself just because you can’t climb a rope! He was deceiving himself and everyone else, it seems to me. And this thing about being unhappy and not knowing it – what a thing to say! You can’t be unhappy and not know it!”

“Of course you can!” Flo shouted. “And he didn’t deceive anybody. It was us who let him down!” She reached for the cognac and filled her glass; I wish something mattered to me so much that I was ready to die for it!” She walked out through the glass doors.

The phone rang. Henri waited; he was very tired. Nicole came back. “This time it was Michel. He said hello and he’ll be here as soon as he can. Surely you can stay a bit longer? Just a little late evening snack? He’ll be so disappointed…”

“I’m sorry, Nicole, but we really must go.”

They both looked out into the garden. Flo was nowhere to be seen.

Henri said, “Well, maybe we can wait a little.”

“I don’t think it did rain,” Nicole said. “We’re planning a small piece of sculpture out there. A faun or a boy holding a fish.”

“I think the fish.”

“Do you? It goes in the middle. We cleared away the bushes because they looked so untidy. I mean, you can’t live in a jungle, now, can you?”

“No,” said Henri.

“There was a tree just outside the wall that put the whole coffee area in the shade.”

“Of course,” said Henri. “Shall we go out and get a little air?”

Flo wasn’t feeling well. There was something wrong with her glasses and the walls that surrounded the square of lawn seemed totally unreal – as if they were closing in on her from all sides. They were topped with shards of glass all the way round. She dropped her glass on the brick floor near the barbecue.

“Nicole! Here’s some more broken glass for your wall. What an ugly, ugly wall.” She walked right up to Nicole and went on. “What would you say if someone, just some person, sailed over your wall in one great leap, just soared over it, someone a hundred times wiser and warmer than us, someone who just came from nowhere, as free and light as a feather, and stood right here, and saw right through everything, and knew?”

Nicole answered in a low, merciless voice, “On a liana, I suppose. Or maybe on a rope? It’s a little hard to grasp exactly what you’re getting at, dear little Florence, it’s all so ethereal, but is it Tarzan you’re referring to, or some kind of Jesus, or could it possibly be your wonderful PE teacher?”

“Yes!” cried Flo. “All of the above! But if he did come, you’d not know him or take him in. I know that.” She threw herself headlong onto the grass with her face on her arms.

Henri said, “Nicole, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I forget so easily. Couldn’t you stay over in the guestroom? It would be no trouble at all.”

“Thanks very much, but we really have to get home.”

“She can’t just lie there on the ground like that; the grass is all wet…”

“Let her sleep.” He cautiously put his hands on Nicole’s shoulders and said, “Nicole, you’re the best wife Michel could ever have had. You’re good for each other. Flo and I are good for each other, too. Let’s just sit here a moment and not say a word. No, don’t say anything. In silence.”

They sat on the chairs near the barbecue. It was an uncommonly warm night for early spring. All they could hear were the cars going by. Nicole leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. “You know, Henri, I think it’s kind of horrible when it’s completely quiet at night.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Kind of awful. Menacing. We have people here all the time, Michel knows so many people, but when they’ve gone home and he’s gone to sleep, all I can hear, almost all night, are the cars driving by. There are several hours when there aren’t even any cars. You know, total silence.”

Henri lit one of Michel’s cigars.

She went on, “That tree outside the wall, the one that blocked the sun.”

“Yes, the tree.”

“A boy climbed it one day. Our neighbours had sent him to ask us if our drains were also backing up. And, instead of ringing the bell, he used a rope to get over the wall.”

Henri said, “Playing Tarzan, I suppose…” then cut himself short. “Did he go back the same way?”

“I didn’t see.”

Flo sat up on the lawn and asked, “And were your drains backing up? No? Nicole, it’s been a lovely evening. I forgive us. I forgive you. We’re all forgiven.” She got up and went into the house.

“Nicole…,” Henri said. He was searching for words, and she immediately came to his aid. “Don’t thank me! Such fun having you here. Come again sometime when Michel is home. Have you got everything? Not leaving anything behind?” Her great blue eyes were as beautiful as ever, showing no trace of displeasure. She added, “You know, Henri dear, it’s so easy to forget.”

In the car Flo fell asleep. After an hour, she woke up and said, “Should I write her a letter?”

“No, I don’t think so. It’s a bad idea to bother people who easily forget.”

“You’re not angry? You’ll never be able to take me there again.”

“Of course I will. And the sooner, the better.”

She looked at him for a while, then went back to staring straight ahead. It was beginning to rain. The asphalt was gleaming, and the scent of wet grass came to them through the half-open car window.

After a while Henri told her about a tree he’d climbed when he was little, and how, unable to get down again, he’d stayed up there all day.

“I was terrified,” he said. “Mostly I was afraid of being laughed at.”

“And they came and rescued you?”

“No. I climbed down by myself. In tears, I was so scared. And then climbed right back up again.”

“Yes,” said Flo. “I understand.”

There were not many cars on the road now at night. Henri imagined Nicole lying listening to them pass one by one, feeling more and more isolated. A magnificent woman, he thought to himself. Probably easy to live with. I have a difficult woman. It’s all fine.

As they approached the city where they had their home, he said, almost in passing, “That thing about being unhappy and not knowing it?”

“Maybe it’s not so bad,” Flo said. “I don’t think it’s so bad if you do know it.”

The boys had gone to bed. Henri set the alarm clock and collected the papers he needed for the next day’s work. Flo’s dress was stained with earth and grass, so she put it to soak in the bathtub.

N
OW HE HAD RIPPED
all the luggage open again, for the third time.

“But Arne, darling,” said Elsa. “We’ll never get going if you don’t start trusting the lists. We’ve been making them for weeks.”

“I know, I know, stop going on about it. I just have to check one or two little things.” His thin face was clenched with anxiety, and his hands had started shaking again.

He’s going to get better.

“He’s going to be fine,” the doctor had said. “A month’s peace and quiet is all he needs. He’s overworked; it’s the school’s fault.”

“What time is it, Elsa? Do you think it’s too late to call the headmaster? Just to make sure he
understands
clearly, really clearly. I mean, so I can explain in detail.”

“No. Don’t phone again; it’s not necessary. Don’t even think about it.”

But of course he does think about it, all the time. The school understood a long time ago that his resignation wasn’t to be taken seriously. They understood that, and they want him back as soon as he’s well again.

Arne turned to his wife with the weary intensity of repetition. “Bloody school. Bloody kids.”

She said, “You ought to be working with much older students. They’re too young, they don’t know any better. You just have to understand…”

“Oh really? Understand them? All you need to understand is that they’re hellish little wild beasts who will stop at nothing, nothing, I tell you, to destroy my work and make my life a living hell.”

“Stop it, Arne! Calm down!”

“Right. Calm down. Wonderful. Nothing makes me feel less like calming down than someone telling me to calm down!”

Elsa started laughing. Her tension simply dissolved in a huge laugh, a laugh that suddenly made her beautiful.

“You idiot!” he shouted. “You stupid woman!” In a rage, he emptied his bag out onto the floor, turned his back on it and covered his face with his hands.

Elsa said very quietly, “I’m sorry. Come here.”

He went to where she was sitting and, with his head in her arms, he said, “Tell me again how it’s going to be.”

“We come closer and closer. Papa’s boat is small but very sturdy. We’re on our honeymoon. You’re sitting in the bow and you’ve never been in the islands before. With every new skerry, you think we’re there, but no, we’re going all the way out, right out to an island that’s hardly a shadow on the horizon. And when we land, it won’t be Papa’s island any more, it’ll be ours, for weeks and weeks, and the city and everyone in it will fade away, till in the end they won’t even exist or have any hold on us at all. Just pure peace and quiet. And now in the spring the days and nights can be windless, soundless, somehow transparent… No boats will go by for days at a time.”

She stopped. He said, “And then?”

“We won’t need to work. No translating. No post, no telephone. No demands. We’ll hardly even open our books. We won’t fish or plant anything. We’ll just wait till we find something we want to do, and if we don’t find anything we want to do, well, that won’t matter, either.”

“But what if we do want to do something?”

He always asked that question and she always answered, “Then we’ll play. We’ll play at something totally silly.”

“Like what? What do you play on the island?”

She laughed and said, “With the birds.”

He sat up and looked at her.

“Yes, with the birds, the seabirds. I collect dry bread for them all winter. And when I come out in the spring, all I have to do is whistle and they know me. There are white wings everywhere; they take the bread right out of my hands in full flight! The loveliest game you can imagine.”

They both stood up. Elsa raised her arms to show how the big gull came to her, and then she told him how it felt when its wing softly brushed her cheek and when its cold, flat, gull feet trustingly landed on her hand. She was no longer talking to him but to herself, talking about her own gull, the one who came back each spring and tapped at her window with its beak; the gull she called Casimir.

“What a name,” said Arne.

“Yes, isn’t it?” Elsa threw her arms round him and looked up into his face. “What do you think? Shall we go to bed?”

“Yes, but you know what a restless sleeper I am these days. I don’t want to keep you awake. Fruit juice or water?”

“Water,” said Elsa.

* * *

It was evening when they finally set out. A warm sunset still lingered over sea and sky. It was dead calm and
indescribably
beautiful. The large islands were soon behind them, and only very low skerries marked an invisible
horizon
. Arne was sitting in the bow. From time to time he’d turn and they’d smile at each other. She drew his
attention
to a long flight of migratory birds going past on their way north, and she pointed out several long-tailed ducks, their wings beating at lightning speed close above their reflections in the water. “The welcoming committee!” she shouted, but he couldn’t hear her over the motor.

When they arrived, a screaming cloud of hundreds of seabirds rose chalk-white against the evening sky. Arne stood looking up at the circling birds, the painter in his hand.