Walking Into the Night (15 page)

45

I drifted out of control. The days, nights, weeks merged into one; I did my best to waste time, as if I knew that bad luck awaited us, no matter what I did. The money I had brought with me from Iceland was running out, but I didn’t care. It never occurred to me that I should make provision for the future; I let the debts pile up and the money run through my hands. Could I have meant for it to end the way it did, I sometimes ask myself. The question horrifies me.

Why am I telling you this, Elisabet? Why don’t I write to you about something else, the birds in the trees outside my window, the sea, the sun, something amusing or entertaining that you could even read to the children? I know this is what I should do, but I can’t.

It was a long summer. I couldn’t make the time pass quickly enough. My body was damp with sweat in the August heat and my thoughts ambushed me when I jerked awake after the partying and drinking. The fan on the ceiling turned ring after ring, whirling its shadow over us as we lay in bed. The clock struck and the pendulum swung but time stood still. I slept through the dawn chorus. She shifted restlessly. The window was open. And a bump, a tiny bump, was beginning to form on her stomach.

I’ve never been a heavy drinker but that summer not a day passed when I didn’t indulge. We woke late, usually in bad shape after the night’s debauch, she no less than I. It was difficult to swallow the first mouthful of food, the egg and bacon, which I washed down with a cold beer. She drank coffee. Lit a cigarette. We sat in silence at the café, waiting for our hangovers to subside.

We never spoke of Jones and stopped visiting restaurants and other places where there was any danger of running into him. He kept his promise to destroy my reputation, and I didn’t blame him. The people I used to mix with avoided me; now it was mainly girls from the variety show and their lovers who joined us on our journey through the night.

She took a nap in the afternoons, while most days I would go to the library on Forty-second Street to kill time. At five I’d come home and take a bath. Pour myself a glass of whiskey—the first sip was like medicine for the soul. At seven we’d go out to a bar either further down the street or on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twentieth Street. I’d drink a glass of water to quench my thirst before ordering a dry martini, very cold, with olives on a stick. Then night would fall.

Another morning. Another day.

46

They returned to the hotel in the middle of the night. She bumped into a table by the door, he grabbed her, kept her from falling. She laughed, sang. He laid his finger on her lips: “Shhh,” he whispered. “People are sleeping.” She wouldn’t let him go, moved to the bed, lay on her back.

“Come here,” she said. “Take me.”

He took off his jacket and loosened his tie. She laughed, holding his eyes with hers as she dragged her dress up to her hips. He sank down on top of her. When he lifted her dress higher to get at her breasts, the bump came into view. It was as if he noticed it for the first time.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Why have you stopped?”

“I’ve had too much to drink.”

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong. Nothing.”

Yet he couldn’t stop staring at the bump, which had touched his belly when he lay on top of her, a little mound like the curve of the new moon in the spring sky.

“You don’t want me.”

“Don’t start that.”

“Because I’m pregnant. You stopped as soon as you touched it.”

He rose to his feet.

“Don’t start this again,” he said. “We’re both tired. Let’s go to sleep.”

She pushed him away from her.

“Please, don’t be like this,” he said.

“I don’t want this child,” she said.

“Please, not again.”

“I know you’ll leave us, as well. Like you left your wife and your four children.”

He lay awake during the night. He knew she wasn’t asleep either. Yet he said nothing and lay with his eyes closed.

For breakfast he had bacon and eggs. She drank coffee. It was hot and muggy outside and had begun to rain. The café was open onto the sidewalk and they sat under the awning; it was green, and the white table top turned green, too, when the sun shone through it. But now it began to rain and a gust tore at the tablecloth and the leaves started to murmur. They were the only ones there; everyone else had finished breakfast and left. At first the awning kept them dry, then the canvas gave way and they were soaked. But they remained where they sat, without moving. She stared at nothing; the coffee was cold and he noticed her absentmindedly putting her hands over her stomach, trying to press it in. She had begun to do this more often, laying both hands over the swelling and pressing it gently inwards. Turning away from him as she did so.

He felt bad luck settling on them. It was as if he were standing to one side, detached from his body, watching it fly toward them on a gust of wind. He tried to banish it but didn’t have the power.

Eventually he reached out for her hand. It was cold and limp. He said something to comfort her. Something about the weather. But it didn’t work, nothing worked anymore, it was all over.

47

The day we went to the doctor it brightened up in the afternoon. It had rained during the morning, but then cleared up and a gentle breeze stroked her cheek when we emerged into the open air. Her hair was pinned in a bun on her neck but a strand loosened and blew into her face. She let go my hand while she paused to fasten it behind her ear, but it loosened again afterwards. She smiled as if to get up courage. I smiled back. She was pale and tired about the eyes; around her neck she had tied a blue scarf that I’d given her for her birthday. The doctor had told her not to eat anything in the morning, which was easy for her as she had no appetite. The white wine she drank before we set off worked fast on her empty stomach, and she said she already felt much better.

She was about four months gone. Two of her friends from the theater had recommended the doctor and accompanied her the first time she visited him. He was expensive but worth it. No quack, he had a diploma from a medical school in Boston on the wall and pictures of himself in a white coat from when he worked at the New York Hospital. He was retired now.

A middle-aged woman received us at the doctor’s house. Small and thin, beginning to go gray. She was kind and put a hand under Klara’s arm, helping her out of her coat. I paid. Klara still had the scarf around her neck. In the front room there was a picture of a vase of flowers with apples beside it, a Persian rug on the floor. Somewhere in the house a radio was playing, and the low notes carried to us in the quietness. Mozart, I thought, and flinched.

The floorboards creaked as we descended to the basement. They went ahead of me. Klara glanced back twice on her way down the stairs as if to ensure that I hadn’t vanished into thin air. It was then that it dawned on me how young she was. It was the first time I had noticed. I was startled. Fear had wiped her face clean of all the masks she had assumed and her eyes stared at me, huge and brown in her white face. I smiled at her but doubted, as I did so, whether the smile would be anything but a grimace.

Could I have persuaded her to change her mind?

“I don’t want this child,” she had said. “I can’t go through with it.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. Or perhaps I said: “You mustn’t do this on my account.” Did I say that? Did I tell her that she should have the child and that we would make a good home for it and cosset it like the apple of our eye? What did I say? What exactly did I say to her?

However hard I try, I can’t remember. Yet I feel it matters. As if my words could give me a clue. My words and my tone of voice. What I said and what I left unsaid.

Am I trying to buy peace when I start up in the middle of the night, trying to recall our conversations? Am I looking for an escape route? I’m none the wiser. Yet still I lie awake, listening for the nuances of a voice from long ago, trying to conjure up a picture in the mirror of my mind.

The woman led her into the surgery and gestured to me to take a seat outside. Klara had packed a change of clothes in a bag before we set off and I put it down on the floor beside me. It occurred to me that perhaps they would need the clothes in the surgery, and I stood up and was about to knock on the door when the woman poked out her head and asked for them.

“How long will it take?” I asked.

“Not long.”

“Is she . . .?”

“She’s all right. Take a seat.”

She went back in. I sat down, then stood up again and began to pace. I noticed that the radio upstairs had been turned off.

During the last few weeks she had asked me the same question every morning on waking. I began to wonder what lay behind it. “Kristjan,” she would say, “did I walk in my sleep last night?” And when I answered no, she’d say: “Good, good. Then Lena hasn’t been calling me.”

Light flooded down the stairs from the floor above and I remember longing to be out in the sunshine again. I could hear nothing from the surgery, all was quiet.

Finally the woman came out.

“She’s recovering.”

“How did it go?”

“Well. She’s recovering.”

She fell silent, then added:

“This is the second in a short time. You should think about what you’re doing.”

“Should I go in to her?”

“She wants you to wait here. She’ll be along in a minute.”

“And it went well?”

“It went fine.”

The doctor must have left by another door. At least, I guessed it was he who had switched on the radio again somewhere upstairs. The tune was lost on the way down, so all I could hear was a faint echo. I was relieved.

I meant to say something comforting to her when she appeared, but couldn’t bring myself to. The woman was supporting her. She was unsteady on her feet and her hands shook. I was about to put my arms around her, then hesitated because I was afraid of hurting her. Instead I touched her shoulder lightly and let my hand rest there for a moment, then followed them upstairs.

The street was empty. We got into a taxi and drove to the hotel and did not speak.

48

The doctor had told her to rest for a few days. When we arrived at the hotel I helped her out of the taxi, carried her up the steps, and put her to bed as soon as we got to our room. It was like going from bright sunshine into a cave. I drew the curtains back and opened the window, then moved to the wall where a shaft of sunlight fell and stroked it with my fingers. Her breathing was labored. She slept. The floor by the window was in daylight but over by the bed it was dim. I was standing on a chessboard, a pawn between squares.

By evening she had developed a fever. She sweated and I wiped her forehead with a damp cloth and undressed her. She had lain down fully dressed, intending to go out once she woke up.

“We’ll go for a walk later on,” she had said. “To the park. Sit on a bench and watch the world go by. I have a feeling that now everything will be back to how it was.”

I undressed her. Her body was damp and hot, yet she shivered. Her belly was still rounded, but the mound was smaller than before. I felt sick when I looked at her.

She was silent. I helped her up into a half-sitting position and fetched water for her to drink. She asked me to pour the water into my palm and let her drink from it. The curtains flapped in the evening breeze and wafted the violet dusk towards us. She finished drinking and stared at the dwindling light for a while. Her face was pale, as if impervious to the blue shadows of evening.

“Stay with me,” she said. “I’m frightened.”

“I’ll stay with you.”

“Always?”

“I’ll always be with you.”

“I’m so frightened. I feel so bad.”

“It’ll pass. Rest yourself. Think about something beautiful.”

She lay back and closed her eyes.

“What shall I think about?”

“Something that makes you happy.”

I stroked her brow. She lay still.

“Do you know what I’m thinking about?”

“No.”

“I’m thinking about you. I’m thinking about you when you’re thinking about me. Isn’t that beautiful?”

“Yes, that’s beautiful. Go to sleep now. It’ll be all right.”

I worried that she would sense the fear flowing from my palm when I touched her. I withdrew my hand. She dozed.

When I was sure she had dropped off, I went out. I hadn’t eaten since morning and it was now nine o’clock. The night was bright. The moon cast a gleam on the buildings beyond the park at the end of the street, but the light was lost amidst the sea of leaves in the park itself. People moved slowly in the warm dusk, some strolling hand in hand into the park, taking a seat beside some little-used path and putting their heads together. Cigarette smoke curled up in the glow of the street lamps.

Before, when it was too hot to sleep, we would sometimes open the window and lie on the floor on our covers. It felt good making love there in the warm breeze. Afterwards we’d lie still, listening to our slowing heartbeats. Once we woke up to find a pigeon perched on the windowsill. I was startled when I opened my eyes and twitched. But the bird didn’t move; a white pigeon with a dark splotch on its head. It looked at me, and when Klara awoke she whispered to me that it was a lucky sign. We lay motionless until the bird flew away. It had been so close that I felt the rush of air from its wings on my chest and stomach when it took off. I continued to feel it long after it had gone. It left a feather on the floor by the window. Klara kept it as a keepsake.

I ate soup and bread at the place on the corner and drank red wine. I wasn’t away long, half an hour at most. I brought back some food to the hotel in a bag, in case Klara had recovered her appetite.

She lay on the floor between the bed and the door when I came in. She was weeping.

“Where were you?”

I stooped to help her up. Her body was a dead weight. I carried her to the bed. She wouldn’t let me go, her arms clasped round my neck.

“I thought you’d left me.”

“How could you think such a thing? I just went out to get something to eat. I brought you some food.”

“I thought you’d gone.”

“I’ll never leave you.”

“Never?”

“Never ever.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

I tried to get her to eat something but she couldn’t. Her lips were dry and pale and I ran a wet finger across them because she said she didn’t want anything to drink. I whispered to her that I was going downstairs to call the doctor.

“Don’t leave me.”

“I’ll be right back.”

She was too weak to speak, but her eyes followed me to the door.

He came an hour later. Carrying a black bag, bald, but younger than I had expected.

I stood aside while he examined her. He seemed nervous. She whimpered; he asked me what she was saying but I couldn’t hear the words.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

He beckoned me to go out into the corridor with him. There was no one around. I pulled the door to behind us. The carpet was green, worn through in patches.

“She’s got an infection,” he said. “She’s very sick.”

“What can be done?”

He hesitated.

“She’ll have to be admitted.”

“Where?”

He named a colleague he could turn to for help. He was already thinking about how to save his own skin. I could see it in his eyes, which were small and shifty. I knew this was his main concern and I suddenly lost my temper.

I grabbed him by the collar. He hadn’t expected this. Grabbed him and shook him but didn’t hit him, although I wanted to. I managed to keep my voice down.

“Now,” I said. “Do something now.”

“It won’t be cheap.”

“I’ll pay,” I said, louder than I’d intended. “I’ll pay.”

“I’ll go down and call,” he said.

I let go of him. My hands were shaking. He vanished into the elevator. I hesitated, then went back in and shut the door behind me. I stood still beside it, watching her in bed and listening to my own breathing. It was fast and irregular, but I couldn’t control it. The night was getting cooler, so I went to the window and pulled it to. It had been open all evening, yet the air in the room still seemed stuffy. Her clothes lay on a chair. I picked up her dress automatically and folded it before putting it down.

Finally, I sat down beside her. The sweat on her forehead was cold, her eyelids were swollen and heavier than before. I was suddenly overcome with fear that behind them was nothing but darkness. It was then that she opened her eyes. I remember how relieved I was when I saw first the whites, then the pupils. I think I must have smiled involuntarily. Yes, I’m sure I smiled, and I’m glad that’s how she saw me the last time she opened her eyes.

“Are you thirsty?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, looked around her.

“He went down to make a phone call,” I said. “The doctor. You’ll be taken to the hospital soon.”

“No,” she whispered.

I stroked her brow and cheek in turn. It was as if the skin had already begun to loosen from the flesh and I withdrew my hand, then raised it again to push back a lock of hair from her forehead. It was the same lock that had loosened that morning and I suddenly realized how utterly everything had changed in such a short time.

“He’ll be here any minute.”

She lay still. Perhaps it was my imagination but it seemed to me that she had stopped blinking.

“I’m dying,” she said.

“Don’t say that.”

“We had our good times, Kristjan, didn’t we? It was good sometimes?”

“It was always good. And it always will be good. You’ll be better in a couple of days.”

“It was always good. Even when it was bad. It was beautiful then, too.”

“It was always good.”

I meant to tell her to rest and close her eyes, but I didn’t dare because I was so afraid that the darkness would settle behind her lids.

“Kristjan?”

“Yes?”

“Hold me . . . Lie down beside me and hold me.”

I held her as gently as I could.

“Tell me a story about when I was little.”

Silence.

“Kristjan?”

I began to talk. I don’t remember what I said. At first she corrected me, whispering the odd word, then she stopped. She closed her eyes and I watched the shadow settling in the hollow of her throat. It was like a little dip where the darkness had crept to hide from the evening light. When the breath rattled in her throat and her heart stopped beating, I noticed that the shadow in the hollow quivered.