Walking Into the Night (12 page)

35

I left during the night. I left while you were all asleep; there was a smile on your lips as you navigated your dreams. I left while a round moon shone in the dark sky; when I opened the door to Einar’s room I met it outside his window. The light fell on his face, his mouth half-open. One of the twins was sleeping with Maria; I paused by the bed and my shadow fell on the white blanket.

I didn’t take much with me; a few photographs, a bird’s feather that I used as a bookmark, the fountain pen you gave me on my thirtieth birthday. I took some clothes, as much as would fit into one suitcase, a pebble from my childhood home in the northwest which I carry in my pocket from habit, polished by years of contact with my thumb, and a bird which my father carved out of fish bone when I was a boy.

The day before, I had flung my “graduation certificate” into the trash. You probably wondered where it had gone. I didn’t want our children one day trying to find out about my studies in Copenhagen. I couldn’t bear the thought.

“Would it ever have crossed their minds?” I ask myself now. Probably not, yet I had begun to worry about it. I even pictured the moment when they found out that my entire education had been a sham. They stood, adults now, by a round table (what crazy things you think up), their backs to me; strange how my imagination made Einar look so much like me. “I don’t believe it,” I heard them say. “It can’t be true.”

My suitcase was waiting down in the hall. I’d packed it after you had all gone to bed. I got into bed and stared out into the darkness. You were all asleep. The darkness enfolded us like a blanket and your breathing was slow and regular.

The third step down creaked as usual as I descended the stairs. I moved my weight from one leg to the other to make sure the squeak was the same as ever, then continued downstairs. I remember marveling at how Einar had grown; I could see it so clearly when I stood by his bedside and watched him sleeping. He had kicked off his quilt, and before I tucked it back over him I took a good, long look at him. “He’s growing up fast,” I remember saying to myself as I went downstairs. “He really is growing up fast.”

The case was light; I noticed this as I carried it out into the street. In actual fact, I stopped on the steps outside after discovering that I’d laid down my hat on the hall table and forgotten to put it on before leaving the house. I was about to reach into my pocket for the keys when I realized that I’d forgetten them on the hall table as well. Which is why you found both hat and keys when you awoke, the hat nearer the front door, if I remember right, the keys next to that yellow vase, the one we bought in Copenhagen in a moment of extravagance the day when we first made love.

The ship sailed at dawn for Copenhagen. A Danish cargo vessel that had arrived a few days earlier loaded with timber and coal. The captain was amenable when I went to see him; I got a bunk with the deckhands for a small fee. I couldn’t wait for the next ship to New York because it wouldn’t arrive for another month and I felt I was hanging in midair, had jumped but still hadn’t landed. The sky above, the abyss below. My thoughts at war. The day after we docked in Copenhagen I boarded another ship for New York.

I couldn’t say goodbye to you. I couldn’t bring myself to. Still less did it occur to me to lie to you about my intentions. I left during the night while you were all asleep. Walked out into the darkness before dawn, stepped into it, vanished.

The sound of my footsteps followed me down the street and for some reason I felt as if they were out of step with me. Then they, too, faded and all of a sudden it was as if I had never existed.

36

The money. I can’t avoid mentioning it.

I’m sure your relatives enjoyed gossiping about my departure, and I can well imagine their remarks on the subject. I could never be bothered to try to correct their slander, but as appearances are misleading in this case, I feel I have to say a few words about it. This time you won’t be able to avoid paying attention, though you’ve always been good at letting worldly matters pass you by.

Before going any further I should explain what state your father’s affairs were in when I took over. I’ve hinted at the fact once or twice in these letters, but never wanted to state it baldly because I know how fond you were of the old man and I didn’t like to speak ill of him or his actions in your hearing; didn’t want to blacken his memory. So I must insist, in the strongest terms, that you are not to blame him for anything; he was never guilty of any dishonesty, though he squandered his assets and neglected the business, at least in his later years. But to be fair, there were also a number of factors that he had no control over.

The company was in ruins. His business contacts had been allowed to slide; when I got in touch with buyers in England and Spain who’d previously imported fish from him I was told that as he hadn’t replied to their correspondence for over a decade, they’d assumed he was dead. It turned out that he owed money to many of those from whom he’d purchased goods for import, and I’d have been better off not to have introduced myself to some of them, as they’d written off his debts. But he had kept up his payments to those he still had dealings with, and they had nothing but good to say of him. That was about half of his trading partners; he seems to have handpicked them as his most important clients.

He’d let a subsidiary company, registered in Sweden, go bankrupt. It wasn’t actually registered in his name, but I won’t go into that.

I remember often wondering how he’d gotten into this mess; to look at him you’d never have known anything was wrong. To be fair, he did let me know in his own way from the very beginning how things stood, but when I tried to discuss it with him later he would abruptly change the subject. What was behind his habitual mask? Perhaps I never knew him. Yet somehow I suspect that you did. Perhaps none of this will come as a surprise to you.

So that was the state of the business when I got involved in this company that your relatives envied me for. I wasn’t remotely prepared. You remember how I worked those first years, you know how I never let up; indeed you often said to me: “Smile, dear. What can be weighing on you so?”

Your and the children’s future. That’s what was weighing on me. And also—I freely admit—the fear that all those who were critical of me would blame me if things went wrong. To tell the truth, I sometimes suspected that your father had done a thorough job of introducing me to all your relatives the week before the wedding in order to toughen my resolve. “Look,” I felt he was saying to me, “what do you think these people will say if you don’t manage to save the business? Do you think they’ll blame
me
for what happens? Oh no, no one will listen to your excuses. You’ll have to bear the blame. You alone. But I’m sure you’ll prove yourself, my boy.”

He himself had long since given up. But he saw that I was proud enough to risk everything. And I took the bait. Swallowed it whole.

It’s not surprising that he resigned himself to your marrying beneath you. The sons of rich families would have run a mile the moment they saw the books, and made sure that everybody knew. And that would have been the end of your father’s empire.

We were the only ones who knew, he and I. Apart, maybe, from his friend Halldor, the bank manager, though I think he was never fully informed. Your relatives knew nothing; they thought everything was as good as it could be. But I’m sure they had plenty of theories when they found out what had been in the safe before I left. How that must have pleased them.

I’m not going to get down on my knees and grovel for forgiveness. No, the money I took was mine, and I left behind more than I took, much more. It wasn’t more than a quarter of our capital, a third at most. I don’t need to justify myself to anyone for not having gone to the States empty-handed. Not to anyone.

I’d better slow down here. Put down my pen, get up, look out the window. I mustn’t get worked up, that’ll only make things worse.

They must have told you that the money proved I never meant to come back. That’s wrong. I didn’t know what I intended. I had no plans, was in no state to make any arrangements, it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. When I finally came to my senses it was too late. I won’t try to justify that. But I had every right to the money.

It was pure coincidence that I had all that cash in the safe the evening that Stefan and I went down to the harbor to meet the ship from New York. It so happened that a few weeks earlier I had received a letter from an attorney in Sweden addressed to your father, who had been in his grave for almost a decade by then. The letter demanded that he pay off his debts to the lawyer’s clients, three companies which I assumed had long ago written off these debts from their books. He probably didn’t expect an answer, was just writing on the off chance, a debt-collecting lawyer turning over some rocks. Nevertheless, I panicked. I had changed the ownership of the company and done my best to ensure that your father’s sins would not catch up with me, yet somehow I was never sure; something had lurked in the back of my mind all those years—the fear that I could lose everything I had worked for.

So I always kept a large sum of cash in the safe, money that no one could touch if anything went wrong. When I got the letter from Sweden I withdrew even more money from the bank and stashed it away. I also sold off some assets, that’s true; no doubt your uncle told you about that. But this was the reason, pure and simple. Anything else is the invention of those who you know have always had it in for me.

I hesitated. I admit it. I hesitated before taking the money. But I had no choice. There was more than enough left.

Sometimes I’m woken in the middle of the night by voices from my dreams. Your relatives are talking. Although I can’t see you, I know it’s you they’re talking to. They say: “As if it’s not enough that he walked out on you and the children, he stole from you, too. Imagine, from his own children!” And I jump out of bed, unable to control my anger. “No!” I want to scream. “No, it’s not true!” When I begin to shake, I collapse, defeated, back on the bed.

Because I know how it must look to you.

37

The quiet before the storm.

Silent afternoon light in the vines on the slopes, no movement down on the plain. Then the sky darkens and a storm breaks out. The keepers tie a hunk of meat to a large oak to attract the wild animals that have been causing problems on the hill; the clouds race overhead and the air is filled with thunder. I am uneasy. Somewhere out in the blackness I think I hear a wail, perhaps it is nothing but the storm. I stand by the window in Casa del Monte, looking out; a moment ago I sensed Klara was here. It happens increasingly often these days. The memories I thought I could control by writing them down . . .

I didn’t know whether she was still living with Jones. There was no mention of him in her letter, no return address. She was fully capable of telling him that he was the father of the baby she was carrying, but somehow I didn’t think she had. Why, I have no idea. I also thought about the possibility of her returning to Sweden to be with her family, but that didn’t seem right either. I had a hard time picturing her in my mind.

The evening I arrived in New York, I went to the theater and sat at the back, waiting for her to appear. But she didn’t and it finally dawned on me that a pregnant woman, seven months gone, would hardly appear on that stage. What a fool I am, I remember saying to myself.

I was gripped by a sudden despair, the suspicion that I had lost her forever. I hadn’t had any contact with her fiancé while I was in Iceland, as our dealings had tailed off since the war ended and Europe opened up again. Stefan had taken care of the correspondence with him, put in orders and sorted out payments. I avoided doing so. But now I had no choice but to let him know I was back.

“Are you in town?” he exclaimed. “Where are you staying? At the Waldorf? Always first class. I’ll meet you there for breakfast tomorrow morning.”

Had his voice changed? Was there an edge to it that hadn’t been there before, or were my suspicions nothing but the product of an overactive imagination? He smiled broadly and took my hand in his firm grasp.

“Good to see you. I wasn’t expecting you. Hardly get an order from you these days.”

A different tone, more careless—no longer the obliging salesman. I fumbled for words, spent too long explaining how much more expensive it was to import goods to Iceland from the States than from Europe, and was about to start quoting figures to support my excuses when he interrupted.

“I’m joking!” he said. “I can’t believe you’d take me seriously. Is everything all right?”

I relaxed. Yet I still wasn’t sure where we stood. Could it be that she had told him about us? He didn’t mention her, not a word. Could she have gone back to Sweden? I asked myself again.

“What brings you here, if I may ask? You turn up out of the blue with no warning. You haven’t started doing business with someone else?”

I had prepared an explanation for my arrival, but somehow I found it difficult to put it into words. It had been on short notice, I said. The commercial attaché had asked me to come and attend a series of meetings over the next few weeks, a cooperative agreement with the government in Washington, I said, a gesture of friendship between our two nations . . . I meant to use the opportunity to look around for new business . . . cars . . . electrical goods . . . “You should be able to help me out—naturally it wouldn’t cross my mind to go to anyone else.”

“Good,” he said. “Good. I’d begun to worry.”

He smiled and raised his coffee cup as if to drink a toast.

“Business is booming,” he said. “I’m sure you can feel it. Everybody is optimistic after the war. Everybody wants to get rich yesterday. And I’m no exception, my friend. Don’t pretend to be!”

He burst out laughing. I’d never seen him happier, he must have been making a lot of money. You could always tell with Jones. He was not a complicated man. Just as I was about to ask after his fiancée, the waiter came to our table and told him there was a phone call for him in reception.

“Excuse me a second. Always something.”

I discovered I was sweating under my jacket and buttoned it so he wouldn’t notice the wet patches on my blue shirt.

“Well, old chap,” he said when he returned, “I’m afraid I have to get going. It was good to see you. Let’s be in touch. I’m going to Chicago after the weekend, but let’s definitely have dinner when I get back.”

I stood up to say goodbye.

“It must be getting close to your wedding,” I commented as I took his hand.

The answer seemed a long time coming, but that was probably my imagination.

“August,” he said eventually. “Saturday August sixteenth. You’ll get an invitation.”

I was about to ask after Klara’s health when I realized he had said nothing about her being pregnant.

“I have to go. Let’s meet up when I get back from Chicago.”

“When are you off?”

“On Monday.”