Where Love Begins (8 page)

*

That evening Stella sits by Ava's bed until Ava falls asleep. Ava's breaths changing from sighs, questioning sounds, into a slow rhythm that Stella listens to for a long time. Breathing as if there were nothing to fear in this world. Ava's tight grip on Stella's hand relaxes; then she lets go, turns onto her side and straightens her legs. Stella pushes up the window, switches on the night-light in the globe, and leaves the room on tiptoe. In the kitchen the radio is humming, the tap dripping, the remnants of their supper still on the table. For a while Stella leans against the door to the already dim living room with her arms crossed, then she goes into the kitchen, back to the living room, into the hall, and finally into Jason's room; she sits down at Jason's desk and turns on the computer. Sits there and watches as the screen lights up; then she enters the word
stalking
into the search field, one letter at a time.

To stalk – to hound, chase, walk stiffly, strut Obsessive and abnormally long pattern of menacing by means of harassment directed towards a particular individual

A manner of behaviour in which one person repeatedly forces unwanted communication and contact on the other person; the behaviour must occur several times and be perceived as undesirable and invasive, and it may cause fear and anxiety

To be categorised as the victim of stalking, at least two separate behavioural patterns that violated the private sphere of a person must have been reported, and whereas these must have continued for at least eight weeks and must be causing fear

It's almost funny. What is she supposed to do with such phrases. Delusion of love, reflection, psychological intimidation. Person. Strutting person. Boundary. Recognition of a boundary. Violation of a boundary. Stella's fingertips feel numb. She'd like to have a cold beer. Smoke a cigarette. Open a book. Go to sleep.

Did Jason read the same thing she did?

I read about it, Stella can hear Jason's voice. She turns off the computer, leans back, and remains sitting in Jason's environment that has now suddenly become disquieting; his mail, his glasses, his pencils, 6B pencils sharpened with the blade of his cutter and equipped with a protective silver cover. Photos above his desk and on the wall, Stella in the morning, an old model Lada Niva car, Ava lying on her tummy, her little head raised, a drop of saliva on her chin, and a photo of a suburban town on a river taken on the only trip Stella and Jason took together, a trip before Ava was born. What does the choice of photos imply. And what does it mean that Stella is looking at them, not Jason. What does Jason's absence signify.

Stella tilts her head and looks for a long time at the photo of the suburban town. Innumerable balconies above and next to one another; the meadows along the river's edge, muddy; the water, glittering. Jason had said, This is where I'd like to live with you. The day had been rainy, they had walked hand in hand; Stella was pregnant and hadn't known. They didn't move to the development by the river. They moved into another housing development, into this one, and at some point they'll move elsewhere. Mister Pfister will stay here. He is going to stay here; he won't move elsewhere; that's how it will be.

Mentally, Stella counts off the days. Twenty-five – not even half of the eight weeks have passed. She gets up from the desk. Then she leaves the room.

Twelve

Jason comes back along with the cold. Steady rain and gusty wind; he's standing in the hall, already thoroughly soaked from the short walk through the garden from the car, and pushing his bag and backpack into the house with his foot.

You're here, Ava says.

She goes on sitting at the kitchen table, drawing her picture: a house in the woods surrounded by giant butterflies; she draws an endlessly long butterfly antenna, and Jason takes hold of her and lifts her up. He says, You're just like a cat, you're only pretending you're not glad to see me, and Stella sees Ava's chin quivering with joy.

Jason has brought a perch he caught himself. He's brought a sceptre carved from birchwood for Ava and a lake pebble for Stella. He is tanned and looks unkempt, unshaved. You're so scratchy, Ava says, and for one selfish moment Stella wishes she could be all alone with Jason.

You got very tall, Jason says. You've grown like crazy, both of you.

Like crazy.

Ava stands with her back against the door frame in the kitchen, and Jason draws a new line above her little head, one metre and three centimetres. Ava has grown two centimetres since the last line, a line drawn in the winter, in long-ago January. She continues to stand in the door frame and looks at the new line, proud and doubting.

How long will you be staying, Stella says. When do you have to leave again; she turns away before Jason can answer her.

*

They eat the fish that evening. Daylight fades away; rain falls outside the kitchen window like a wall. The barrel at the corner of the house fills up and overflows, the rain drums onto the outside metal windowsills and against the windowpane. Jason takes a bath. Ava sits down near him. Stella dries the dishes. Listening to their voices. Jason's stories about perch, sunken boats, about trips, and about the summer, Ava's questions.

It was very hot here when you were gone. So hot. In kindergarten we all played only in the shade, nobody wanted to go into the sun.

You have to do what the chickens do when it gets so hot.

What do the chickens do?

A chicken just lies down flat on the ground. As flat as possible, with its wings spread out. It lies down in the dust with outspread wings.

Ava says nothing. Then she says, we're not allowed to do that. In kindergarten. I'm sure we're not allowed to lie down in the dust, and Stella hears Jason's absent-minded laughter. She clamps Ava's picture under the magnet on the refrigerator. She unpacks Jason's bag, putting the book he's pretending to read on the bottom step of the staircase – he'll take it up with him later; the book on the night table will be like a sign of his presence – and she finds her joy at that puzzling and complicated. She opens the front door and looks out into the now-whispering rain for a while. Jason's car is in the driveway, a sign of his presence to the outside world; it's all much too simple. Mister Pfister won't ring the bell tonight. Whenever that car is parked in front of the house he'll busy himself with something else, and he'll collect all the things that are intended for Stella and put them all together. He'll save them up for Stella.

*

On the third evening she fetches the box from the shed. The garden, overwhelmed by the rain, is a fertile, lush wilderness. Honeysuckle, broom in bloom. The feeling of actually wanting to do something else and not knowing what and instead fetching this box out of the dirty darkness under the workbench is like a symptom. Stella carries the box across the lawn into the house. She is about to put it on the kitchen table and then changes her mind after all; she puts it on the floor, in front of Jason's feet, leaves it to Jason to lift off the cover.

She says, Careful.

Jason says, Good heavens.

He sits there bent over the box. Takes things out and lets them drop back in again. The lighter, the roll of packing twine. He opens the red envelope that Stella didn't open, takes out a piece of paper with dense writing on it, leans back and reads.

What does it say, Stella says.

Can you just wait a minute, Jason says. He says, Please.

Then he says, Nothing bad. It doesn't say anything bad. But something … sick, incomprehensible. Drivel, Jason says it as if the entire world were held together by drivel, as if drivel were a principle of life.

He says, Here, take it; it's all right; you can read it.

He holds the piece of paper out to Stella, a little too close. Stella pushes it away.

I don't want to read it.

She looks at Jason and suddenly wonders whether it might be possible to understand Mister Pfister after all. Impossible for Jason maybe, but possible for her? She understands Dermot; she understands Julia's final, decisive silence; she understands Esther's irritability and Walter's indistinct speech; after all, she understands quite a few things; maybe she should just find out more about Mister Pfister's way of thinking. About the hints, the chorus of voices that seem to vibrate from the box. Also for strategic reasons. To know what makes Mister Pfister tick, how he functions.

But she says, I don't want to read any of that. None of it. I only want to know that there's nothing in there about Ava. Nothing that might signal something, do you understand? A threat, an intrusion, something that would go beyond this here.

This here. Gesturing at the box.

There's nothing about Ava in this, Jason says. He's reading as he says it; he's reading the page with the ant-like writing, shaking his head as he reads; he says, Disgusting, there's something disgusting about it. It's probably good that you don't want to read it. There's nothing in here about Ava and nothing about you. Nothing really about you.

What would a sentence about me be, Stella wonders. A sentence about me that would mean something to you, and the impossibility of finding an answer to this question is clear and stark. She thinks, I'm actually a mythical figure for Jason. A mythical figure. There's nothing that he could say about me really, no description that could apply to me.

Stella gets up. Now Jason is holding the photo and looking at it with a critical expression. He says, My goodness. This is the last straw, isn't it.

He holds up the photo; shows it to Stella as if assuming that she hadn't seen it yet. He looks at Stella, he sees that she is pale, but she doesn't seem pale enough for him to reach out to her, to touch her.

He says, I'll go by there. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll go over there.

He says, You were there already, weren't you. Passed by his place, didn't you.

No, of course not, Stella says. I haven't gone by his place.

As far as she can remember, this is the first time she has ever lied to Jason.

Thirteen

Jason takes Ava to her kindergarten on Stella's bicycle. He comes back, spends an hour at his desk with the door closed, looking through his mail and telephoning. Then, taking a garden chair to the edge of the meadow, he sits down there with his back to the house.

He brushes his hand from the back of his neck over his head, a gesture Stella loves – not that she would ever have told him that. She assumes that if she told him he would no longer do it.

*

She's sitting at her desk upstairs in her room, writing a letter to Clara –
the entire garden smells like a greenhouse, and in the evening the rabbits venture out of the field; Jason is back; I live like a war bride; you know, don't you, what I feel like? What is your life like, and how far removed is that life from the life we imagined ten years ago, and does it even matter
– She can hear Jason downstairs in the kitchen; the refrigerator door opening and closing again; he moves the chairs closer to the table and puts the dishes into the dishwasher that Stella never uses, and turns it on; then he sweeps the sunroom. He takes the bottled water crates out and sets them next to the car; goes back into the hall, closes the front door behind him, stands in the hall doing nothing; maybe he's looking through the little window at the garden. He goes back through the living room into the kitchen and seems to stop and hesitate next to Stella's armchair with all the books around it; if he were observant, he'd be able to see that Stella hasn't sat in that armchair for the last two weeks, not really read anything in it for two weeks; the pile of books is completely neglected; how observant is Jason actually, and which book is Stella trying to read just now in spite of everything;
I'm trying to read a book by an author in which there actually are sentences like: A man in love walks through the world like an anarchist, carrying a time bomb.
There's nothing more to do in the kitchen. Jason clears his throat; there's a note of warning in it. Then at last he comes up the stairs, stops at Stella's door, and says, Am I bothering you.

No, Stella says.

She puts the pen down on the paper and turns to face him.

*

Jason is sitting on the guest bed, his back leaning against the wall, his legs crossed, a rare visitor. Stella stays at her desk; suddenly she finds it odd to see Jason in her room surrounded by things that belong to her: on the same bed – under the shelf attached to the wall on which there sat a porcelain cardinal bird next to a snow globe, a golden Buddha, and a row of pebbles from the Black Sea – the bed on which, day after day, she had fallen into restless sleep at noon in the apartment she shared with Clara ten years ago. Stella's bookshelf, Stella's desk, her pens and candles, to Jason some surely foolish-seeming incense sticks, the pearl necklaces around the chair leg, the bird feather on the wall, and the orange cloth clamped for the last two weeks into the window frame and tied around the window handle, an orange cloth with white peacocks on it. Stella suspects that at some point Jason made contact with all this, made contact with Stella's world. As if he'd been on an expedition, maybe it was arduous, painfully slow. Has he, leaning back on her bed, arms crossed over his chest, and eyes almost closed, arrived now? Would he like to stay, or would he like to travel onward, or go back again, or somewhere else. Stella sees Jason's – to her beautiful and unapproachable – face. She feels that she can't change anything in his movements, wherever they will lead, forward or back, and surprisingly, this is bearable.

I'll just walk over there, Jason says.

He sits up, rubs his eyes.

He looks at Stella, he looks past her; he says, Is that all right with you? I'd just walk over there again.

Yes, Stella says. She smiles in a way that feels strange even to herself. She'd like to say, I'm sorry, but she feels that this sentence can't encompass the extent of what it is that she's sorry about; actually she doesn't even know what exactly she's sorry about. Is it an imposition for Jason to go over there? To deal with Mister Pfister because she has to deal with him?

It would be better if he stayed here. Stayed with her.

Well, see you then, Jason says.

See you soon, Stella says.

*

She waits in the garden. On the chair where Jason had been sitting. Noontime is very quiet. It's getting hot. In one of the other gardens a lawn mower starts up, and far away a child calls. Butterflies startle up from the lawn, the sky is grey. Someone rides past the house on a bike. Stella yawns.

After a while Jason comes back. He says, He wasn't there. Or he didn't open the door; that could be it too, but I think he wasn't there. What a neglected hovel.

Jason looks around, looks at his own house as if he were comparing it. From the outside, the effect of a window with broken shells lying on its sill. Empty bottles by the terrace door, Ava's jacket hanging over a spade handle.

Stella says nothing.

Nor does she say, I knew he wouldn't be there. It was obvious that he wouldn't be there.

Mister Pfister will never be there when Jason goes over there. He isn't answerable to Jason; he'll never be at home, never open his door to Jason.

*

But she runs into him when she goes shopping the following day. Early in the evening, at the shopping centre, at the checkout in the supermarket. She went there by bicycle, intending to buy milk, eggs, alphabet noodles, butter, nothing else; she decides to take a shopping basket instead of a cart, is walking to the turnstile through which you go to get inside the shop, when she sees Mister Pfister standing at the last cash register.

Hard to believe that he goes shopping. Gets hungry, wants to buy himself something to eat. Says please and thank you, good day, goodbye.

It's the first time Stella has seen him outside. In everyday life, there he stands, waiting in the queue at the checkout counter next to a cigarette machine under a monitor on which a weather forecast alternates with advertisements for car-body paint shops; in the background, the labyrinth of grocery shelves, pyramids of water melons, references to products, and over it all, hellish music. He's got the things he wants to buy assembled in a cardboard box; he holds the box to his chest, moves one mechanical step forward in the queue, a man like all the others, Mister Pfister exists.

Stella stops, stands there almost devoutly. She thinks, astonished, I didn't consider it possible that he existed. But he exists. He does exist after all. Here he is, he is here.

She recognises him from his posture, his expression; she is certain, yet she is surprised at how young he is, how good-looking and how tired. He's wearing a black hoodie sweater. No jacket any more, in spite of the early evening, early summer cold. She can't see what's inside his cardboard box, what he's buying. He takes another step forward and puts the box on the conveyor belt; then he looks up, maybe because he senses that someone is looking at him. His eyes move searchingly over the people. Meet Stella's gaze.

Mister Pfister looks at her.

Stella looks at Mister Pfister; she thinks, Can you feel that the entire way one person can take to approach another is encompassed in this look. The way there, and the way back too.

Anger, courtesy, plus something else.

Stella almost wants to smile. With a great effort she manages to control the childish impulse to smile that threatens to burst through. She almost wants to say hello; the moment of recognition is so powerful that it seems the gracious thing to do, Oh, we know each other, hello. But there's no need to greet Mister Pfister; he knows that she has recognised him, that she knows him. And he doesn't smile, not even a little bit. To be precise, he doesn't smile at all. Instead, he will wait. He will wait for her outside by the door, to begin what's been demanded all along here: a conversation.

Perhaps it will be easy; in spite of everything it might be easy in a way. Stella might say, Don't do it any more, you hear me. Do you understand, stop ringing the doorbell, all that mail; just stop coming by our house; give it up. Give up; that's how she could say it.

Stella breaks eye contact with Mister Pfister. It's possible he already broke eye contact with her earlier. How long were they looking at each other? No window, no garden gate, no fence separating them from each other.

Stella enters the supermarket through the turnstile; she doesn't turn around again. She buys milk, eggs, alphabet noodles, butter, the things she wanted to buy, nothing more, nothing less, but she is in more of a hurry than usual; she is rushing. She dashes through the aisles, feeling utterly tense, and by the time she turns around the last rack of shelves before the checkout counter, those for lemonade powder, chocolate and candy, in front of which Ava always wants to stand forever, Mister Pfister is already gone. He has paid for his stuff – which Stella would have liked to see, knowing that Jason would find this curiosity of hers distasteful – and is already outside, he has already gone off. What is it that Stella actually wants to know, and how far can she stretch this question.

She puts her things down on the conveyor belt at the checkout. Her heart is beating more calmly now; even as she's counting her change she has an inkling of an impending disappointment.

Have a good evening.

You too.

The car park outside the supermarket is deserted. Stella's face is hot. Mister Pfister is nowhere in sight. Mister Pfister has lost his need, his fervent desire to speak to Stella. That's both hurtful and a relief. But why? Why doesn't he want to speak to Stella any more; what has changed, been lost. The long look between her and him becomes at first questionable and then humiliating. Stella puts her purchases into the basket on her bicycle. She thinks, Maybe I got even older these past weeks, and she has to laugh a little at that. She pushes her bike across the car park and Main Street, along Forest Lane, past the first houses of the development; she walks on the left side of the street and, as her house comes into view, the jasmine hedge, the fence, Jason's car in the driveway, the open dormer window, she sees Mister Pfister standing at her garden gate. She's still quite a distance away from the house, but she sees him clearly; he rings the bell, doesn't wait, turns away and calmly walks off at a measured pace, down the street towards his house.

Stella stands still, hands tightly gripping the handlebars of her bike. She can't believe it. Mister Pfister has rung the bell at her gate even though he knows that she isn't home. Apparently he also knows that Jason and Ava aren't home. Jason and Ava are at the children's party in the Community Centre. Stella baked a lemon cake for it and standing outside her house had waved after them until they were out of sight. Mister Pfister couldn't wait outside the shopping centre for Stella, but he has to stop outside her house; she can understand that as a tic, a compulsion; it's simply impossible for Mister Pfister to walk by her house without ringing the bell. No matter whether Stella is there or not. Doesn't give a damn. But she can also interpret it this way – There is no Stella. The Stella Mister Pfister has in mind doesn't exist; in any case,
she
has nothing to do with that Stella. Mister Pfister recognised her, but that's not who he's interested in – this Stella who goes shopping after work in flat-heeled sandals and with a tired face without make-up, tense, harried, and obviously needy, this Stella doesn't interest him. Mister Pfister is interested in Stella in her locked house. In her face behind the small windowpane next to the door, her distant figure in the chair at the edge of the lawn far back in the garden, in the Stella waiting at her desk upstairs in her room. That Stella is the one Mister Pfister is interested in. An imagined Stella.
His
Stella.

*

Stella realises that there's nothing she can do against this. She can't take this other Stella away from Mister Pfister.

She watches him walking away, his boyish figure; he's pulled the black hood over his head, it looks like a suit of armour. She rolls her bike slowly forward until he arrives at his own house, having passed all the houses she's now familiar with. She waits until he's disappeared into his garden, and she knows that he knows that she is watching him.