Walking Into the Night (10 page)

29

“We used to spend the summers with our uncle, the Count. He had a long white beard and pale blue eyes. He collected music boxes and maps. His wife was dead. When it rained we’d read and gaze at the waterlilies on the pond outside. The horses would stand under the great oaks in the rain, but at night I sometimes saw them cantering in the marsh down by the lake. One of them, the white horse that belonged to my sister Lena, seemed to vanish when the moon shone on him.

“We used to sleep late in the mornings. There were flowers in a vase on our dressing table when we woke up, and the maid would open the window and let in the light. ‘What time is it?’ I’d ask, without opening my eyes. There was a mirror on a little table over by the window; I could see the sky in it when I sat up in bed.

“We drank our morning coffee out on the veranda and read our horoscopes. ‘Things may go wrong today but you must persevere. Concentrate on what’s important . . .’ Lena would be on guard all day, waiting for the unexpected, and I would tease her and say: ‘Do you really think you should come out with us in the boat? Something might go wrong.’

“ ‘Klara, stop it,’ she’d say. ‘You know how superstitious I am.’

“When she drowned I blamed myself, even though it was long afterwards. Her head floated among the lilies as if she had become one of them.”

“Kristjan?”

“Yes?”

“Are you listening?”

“I’m listening.”

“No, you’re not, you’re thinking about something else.”

“I’m thinking about you.”

“You’re not bored by these stories?”

“No, I’m not bored by them.”

“Because I want you to know something about me.”

“Keep talking.”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes, I want to hear.”

“We’re at a house down by the sea. It’s white. The beach is white. The cliffs leading down to the beach are white. Out at sea a boat is slowly sailing. Its sails are white. I have a mouth organ, but my fingers are so numb with cold that I can’t hold it. Yet the sun is shining. There’s a white tower on the cliffs. All is quiet until I hear my name called. ‘Klara, Klara . . . I’m here . . .’ I look back and see Lena’s face in the top window of the tower. Then I wake up gasping. Always at the same point in the dream. Always when I see her face.

“What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think I dream this because her face was so drained of color when we found her?”

“It’s just a dream.”

“I know, but I’m so frightened when I wake up. I can never get back to sleep. Sometimes I’m afraid for half the next day . . . Do you know what of?”

“No. What?”

“I’m so afraid that I’ll go to her next time she calls.”

30

He had been in the city for two months. Yesterday Jones returned from the West Coast. And Klara disappeared. Her scent lingered in the bedclothes and there was a dent in the pillow, where her head had lain, that he had not smoothed away. The chair where she had dropped her clothes was empty, her voice only an echo. It was a cool day. The forecast for the next couple of days was colder.

He thought of nothing but her. He couldn’t help himself, no matter how hard he tried. The
Gullfoss
was leaving after the weekend. His business was completed, the paper loaded on board ship, the timber due there tomorrow. Nothing to hold him. He knew he should leave. The next ship would not depart for six weeks.

He opened and closed his hands repeatedly as he waited for the waiter to bring his drink. Across the street the afternoon sun painted a blue shadow on the red brick buildings. Manhattan Diner, he thought it said over the door, but the white letters had faded in many places, and anyway he had been preoccupied when he walked in off the street. Next door were a tobacconist and barber, further down the street a cobbler, news vendor, and tailor. He’d never been here before; he’d left the hotel just after three, without knowing where he was headed, first walking down to the East River and watching the boats sailing by and the young people sitting on benches, not waiting for anything, holding hands, whispering to each other and smiling as if sharing secrets. Over the park further down the river, a kite flapped in the wind like a flag on its pole; whoever held its string was hidden among the trees.

He walked along the river, past a fish market where men were busy sluicing down the sidewalk and lining up barrels along the walls, then into the middle of the island and down Lexington Avenue. The sun kindled the tops of the buildings, but down on the street it was cool. The shadow of a bird accompanied him for a while. At Twenty-fifth Street he began to look around for a coffeehouse.

It was good to be alone in this city with its background rumble: hoofbeats, cartwheels, languages he didn’t understand. The crowds were a pleasant distraction; he found it hard being alone with his thoughts. He watched the waiter lay knife and fork, napkins and glasses on the table; the waiter wore a white apron and wiped the glasses with a napkin after holding them up to the light. He ordered coffee and whiskey, and drank slowly as dusk climbed the walls of the buildings across the street.

The show began at seven. He should get up, go back to the hotel, confirm his booking to Iceland and prepare for his departure. He knew it would do no one any good for him to see her. Yet he sat while the sun set and the dusk gathered, his gaze fixed on children throwing a ball on the sidewalk across the street.

This morning he had convinced himself that their parting two days ago had been desirable. He even used that word when talking to himself. Desirable. As if he were negotiating terms and conditions, extracting himself from an old debt, writing off a bad loan. He stroked his cheek absentmindedly where she had struck him.

“He’s coming back tomorrow,” she had said.

They had never talked about him before and he was shocked now that she mentioned him for the first time.

“I know.”

“Do you want me to go to him?”

He stood up. Removed her arm from his neck, went over to the window and opened it.

“What else can you do?”

They had been at a cabaret until the early hours with people he didn’t know; singing, dancing—celebrating their freedom. It was like when he had been in Copenhagen: free, uncommitted. The sky was beginning to turn gray as they walked towards the hotel; pigeons fluttered between the buildings and lined the eaves. They broke into a run because they couldn’t wait to be alone together.

Now the midday sun was shining.

“Let’s get dressed and go get something to eat.”

“Shouldn’t I tell him about us?”

He flinched.

“Of course not.”

She was sitting on the edge of the bed. He turned his back to her and stared out of the window.

“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend nothing’s happening. Put my arms round him. Kiss him. Make love to him. Let him . . .”

He turned sharply.

“Stop it.”

“I won’t . . .”

“Stop it!”

“I can’t . . .”

“You’ve been able up till now.”

She lunged at him and struck him in the face. He stood still. She struck him again.

Proctor’s Theatre was on Twenty-third Street. High Class Continuous Performances, it said on the sign outside. Stay as Long as You Like. Admission 5¢ Balcony, 10¢ Orchestra. Safety and Comfort. Courtesy and Refinement.

He sat in the back, under the balcony, where it was darkest. There was a sour odor in the air. The floor was dirty. The man sitting next to him had food and a bottle. First a young woman played an African harp. She was scantily clad. Next, a man with a wide-brimmed hat made the biggest frog in the world jump along the stage and into a basin of water.

The master of ceremonies retreated as he announced her name. “Klara,” he called with a flourish, “Klara, the Swedish Princess, dance to me.” The lights dimmed, a red spotlight appeared in the middle of the stage, an old man scattered blue petals and bright-green paper grass under the light, then exited. As they settled on the stage, a thin note sounded in the distance, weak and tentative, then there was silence.

She emerged from the shadows. All was quiet until the note sounded again. Then she began to dance. Kristjan stood up. Her arms opened.

He knew he was trapped.

31

Somewhere behind the dignified expression in the photograph, the light suit and spotted tie, the gold-rimmed spectacles and brows arched in quiet concentration above them, somewhere behind the speech he was listening to about duties, laws, and veneration for the achievements of the human spirit (“which always prevails, always overcomes evil . . .”), somewhere further down, near the core, far deeper than logic and observation, speculation and deliberation could penetrate, somewhere in the maelstrom of the soul lurked a flaw that could ruin everything.

I put the picture down. It was taken when I accompanied Jon Sivertsen, Iceland’s commercial attaché in New York, to a lecture at the University Club in late May of 1918. I remember that we grabbed a quick meal of steak and a beer beforehand and then took our seats towards the back of the hall, near the aisle. It was packed, and I stood up when a young woman came in and couldn’t find a seat, but sat down again when her friend waved to her from the front and beckoned her to join her. She thanked me and I nodded. “With our attack on Cantigny, the Germans have now discovered that our offensive is not, as they had hoped, a rabble of amateurs approaching,” I remember the speaker saying, though much of the rest failed to register. But it’s not obvious from my expression in the picture. It gives nothing away. It doesn’t reveal that I was thinking about Klara throughout the lecture and earlier while we were eating steak and drinking beer, discussing business and the boom in the city, the war, and the summer, which had awakened us with a heat wave that morning.

I’m not writing about the man in the picture as if he had nothing to do with me in order to absolve myself from blame. You mustn’t think that. I have no one but myself to blame for what took place. But I can’t help trying to understand what happened, and though I’m a simple man—I say that without hesitation because we both know it—somehow I have to try to get to the bottom of it.

Don’t pity me, Elisabet. Hate me. Please, for my sake— hate me.

The day the
Gullfoss
sailed without me I went alone to church. It was around noon and there was no one there except a man sweeping up and a woman scrubbing the floor. Christ, as before, leaning against a pillar. Klara and I had patched it up the evening I went to watch her dance. Everything was back where it had been before. We had agreed that it would do no one any good to tell her fiancé about us at this point, and anyway I knew he was going to be away on business a great deal over the next few weeks. Of course, it would be more honest to say that I managed to convince her not to say anything. I got down on my knees before her in her dressing room after the show and begged her to forgive me; it was all too easy; I should have understood then how vulnerable she was. It didn’t occur to me until long afterwards how hard this game of deceit must have been for her. But by then it was too late. Perhaps I had ignored the signs so as not to spoil our pleasure.

I had made up my mind to go home with the next ship. The
Gullfoss
was due to return to New York from Iceland in six weeks. That seemed like a long time to me and so I never got round to telling Klara. Didn’t have the nerve. But that time I stuck to my decision to go home, as you know.

It was early in August. Do you remember when you came to meet me? “Einar’s gotten so tall,” I said to myself when I saw him on the dock. The twins were unrecognizable—they’d only been three months old when I left. Maria was hiding behind Katrin. You hadn’t changed; you behaved towards me as if I’d only been away a few days. Warm yet above me. I don’t know how else to put it, Elisabet dear, you were always above me, though you tried not to let me feel it. But that just made it more apparent.

I began to shrink as soon as the ship sailed into port, as soon as I saw the buildings, the roof of my office by the docks, the warehouses, the cathedral tower; shrank until I had become a shadow of myself by the time I went ashore.

Then you took me by surprise. I still don’t know what you meant by it—if anything.

“Einar, dear, aren’t you going to kiss your father? You remember him, don’t you?”

I wasn’t sure whether this was intended as a dig at me. You smiled and there was nothing in your manner to suggest that there was anything behind your question. I remember staring at you, trying to work out what was going on. I was none the wiser.

The man with the broom left the nave briefly. When he reappeared he began to polish a candlestick on the altar. His movements were methodical; he had done it before a thousand times. I knew it was childish of me to think that I’d feel better if I sat in a church while the
Gullfoss
set sail for Iceland, but even so I picked up a copy of the Bible, crossed myself, and sat down in the pew nearest the organ. The stained-glass windows trapped the light outside, leaving nothing within but gray shadows.

On the other side of the ocean you were waiting for me. I had sent clothes for the children with the ship. Books and sheet music for you. “I’ll come with the next ship,” I wrote. “Let Stefan know if you need anything . . .”

It wasn’t until I reached the Gospel of John that my hands began to shake. It had always been a favorite of yours and you used to read it before we sat down to dinner on Christmas Eve. I had listened, the children on my right, Katrin between them, the embers glowing in the hearth behind me.

“He that cometh after me, is preferred before me . . .”

I couldn’t control the thought which gripped me when I read those words. Andrew B. Jones. Again and again I tried in vain to fend it off. The words echoed in my brain and the picture they evoked left me witless with rage, then utterly powerless a moment later. “He that cometh after me, is preferred before me . . .”

She was with him. In my mind’s eye I saw him holding her, her eyes closed, her lips parted with pleasure, the taste of salt on her tongue from his sweat. I began to shake. My palms grew wet and clammy, my hands clenched on the Holy Book. Was this what I had entered God’s house to think about? Was this my business here?

I was ashamed of myself, but most of all paralyzed with fear. What kind of man am I? What drives me to this?

Without warning I began to shiver uncontrollably in the pew beneath the windows; beneath the pictures of flocks and stars, a hand caressing a cheek, a cross on a hill. Who am I? What drives me?

The Bible slipped from my hands and landed on the floor with a thud. The old man stopped polishing the candlestick and looked up. No doubt he threw me a look of sympathy, but I felt he was accusing me, as if he could read my thoughts. I looked away.

Outside the sun was shining. I knew she had gone to him. And somehow I had convinced myself that he was enjoying her at that very moment.