Lucca Read online

  He fell asleep on the sofa when he got home, and did not wake again before the sun had disappeared behind the birch trees and the fence. He was hungry, but had not managed to do any shopping. It was half dark in the room already. On the terrace the garden chairs stood about casually just as he, Andreas and Lea had left them on Saturday. It seemed like several weeks ago. The chairs were white in the twilight, fatuous and mysterious at the same time. He considered going to get a pizza, but couldn’t be bothered. He thought of Lucca. Would she lie awake again tonight, alone with her tears and her thoughts? She didn’t even want to listen to radio. But she might like to hear music. She could borrow his walkman, he could make a tape for her. He decided on piano music and went to look out some records. He chose to start the tape with a couple of Glenn Gould’s Bach recordings and to follow that with a programme of pieces by Debussy, Ravel and Satie. He enjoyed doing it and quite forgot to get something to eat. On the other side of the tape he recorded Chopin nocturnes, as many as it would take. The telephone rang in the middle of Chopin.

  He hadn’t spoken to Monica for several weeks. Lea was their only link now, and she had long ago learned for herself to pack her bag and catch a train out and back every other weekend. As usual Monica was matter-of-fact on the phone. She sounded friendly enough but there was not the least hint in her voice of their once having been together, neither bitterness nor placatory nostalgia. She was as practical and direct as ever, she had called to talk about the summer holidays. She and Jan had thought of taking Lea with them to Lanzarote, but perhaps Lea had already mentioned it? He asked when. The dates came promptly. It was at the same time he was on holiday himself. He tried to hide his disappointment, but she could hear it, after all she knew him. He could have Lea for the autumn holiday.

  He made no protest, he had never done that. Ever since that winter morning when his successor nodded at him in confusion as he made his way out, in the most literal sense caught with his trousers down, Robert had been determined to avoid rows. Sometimes he suspected Monica had found his acquiescence frustrating. A spot of aggression on his part would probably have relieved her uneasy conscience. She had been allowed to keep all the furniture. On the whole she had everything she wanted, with Lea and everything else, and in her astonishment she chose to persist with her demands, always ready with some uncompromising argument or other. Nevertheless he went on giving way each time she trampled all over him, for Lea’s sake as he would say to himself, but also, he had to admit, for his own. It eased his smouldering feeling of guilt and he could feel almost chagrined when she realised she had gone too far. As if she prevented him from paying off a debt she knew nothing about.

  He was sure she had never discovered anything about his affair with Sonia, neither while it was going on nor later when it was over. He was convinced she would have asked, fearlessly direct as she was. It was of no consequence now, but through the years his secret had lain rotting in a corner of his consciousness along with the knowledge that had been forced upon him that she was only Monica’s half-sister. No one seemed to notice anything when he went up to her parents’ holiday cottage the weekend after he and Sonia had spent their first night together in the empty, newly painted apartment. So it was that easy, he had thought, visualising Sonia on Lea’s mattress, naked in the glow from the candle he had thrust into the wine bottle.

  When the barrister looked at him over his unframed spectacles he felt they had not one but two secrets between them. Otherwise all was as usual, the herrings were too sweet, and what had happened faded and grew transparent in his memory like something he had simply dreamed. He even succeeded in being sufficiently passionate at night so that the intimate tenderness in Monica’s eyes the next day made her blind to his evasive, restless mood. He was amazed at how hard-boiled Sonia was when she lay on the beach chatting to Monica or played tag with Lea. Even if they happened to be alone together, she made no sign. She made small talk and replied indolently to what he said. Apparently she had forgotten everything, or else considered it of no importance.

  It went on for a couple of weeks. Sometimes she spent the night with him, at other times she came in the afternoon and left late in the evening. When she stayed the night he always woke up lying half on the floor because the narrow mattress was too small. Once or twice they went for a walk together. They lay sunning themselves among the stripped-off people in the King’s Garden, and sometimes she suddenly rolled over on him and kissed him just like the other lovers did. He was afraid of their meeting someone he and Monica knew, and pushed off her arm in embarrassment if she affectionately put it around him. She teased him about it and more than once he asked himself if she actually hoped someone would recognise them. It was odd to walk beside her as if they were a couple, and he was alternately delighted and irritated at her giddy impulses, such as balancing on a fence in the park or pouncing on a puppy and raving over it with the flattered owner looking on.

  He went to the airport with her when she left to go back to New York. He was relieved when she went, but he grew quite intense in the departure lounge, even if it was mere politeness. He had not been in love with her for a second, but that had made his desire all the wilder, as if he was punishing her because he wanted her. When he watched her doing her self-important tai chi in her parents’ country garden he couldn’t understand how he could be having an affair with her, and when he waited for her in the empty apartment, he sometimes hoped she would not come. But every time he stood in the doorway watching her come up the stairs with her sly expression, he allowed himself to be overwhelmed by her body again, by its uncoordinated mixture of strength and frailty.

  Maybe it was not her body in itself which fascinated him so much. Perhaps it was simply its tangible and yet unlikely presence. The provocative and dizzy fact that it was possible, that he only needed to take the few steps over to Lea’s mattress, where she lay naked waiting for him. Later, when he sat among the toy animals reading Lea her bedtime story, he sometimes recalled it was on that same mattress in that same room he and Sonia had lain together, sweating and groaning. It might just as well have been a dream.

  They never had serious discussions, they talked nonsense and fantasised and he mumbled sweet nothings in her ear about how amazing and unique she was. He was aware that he lied. She was neither amazing nor unique, she was just there, and he could almost have been her father. He thought about it when he sat on the window-sill feeling the rain outside the open window like a cool breath on his back, while she came towards him, carelessly swinging her arms dressed only in skirt, bra and high-heeled shoes. He felt old when she stood between his knees and let him coax her young, slightly immature breasts out of the black, feminine garment. On the other hand he felt just as timid and impatient as he had been in his youth when, a little later, he lay between her thighs and she guided him inside her with an experienced hand. As if he didn’t know the way himself.

  His dammed-up passion changed into anger, and as he worked like an over-heated piston he felt strangely alone, dumped between his lost youth and his laid back self-assured maturity. Afterwards she sat cross-legged looking earnestly at him, hollow-backed with her decorative hair hanging over one breast. She asked if he loved Monica. He didn’t know what to reply. She talked in a worldly-wise way about listening to your feelings and the other things you utter into the blue when you are young. He tried to smile like an adult, but the smile didn’t really work, now he had given in so willingly to her seductive arts.

  And maybe she was right. Maybe he had grown short-sighted and a bit deafened by easy-going mundane daily life. Had he come to live permanently under a local anaesthetic? Suddenly colours seemed faded, and he caught sight of the worn shiny spots, the insidious wear and tear and the battered, peeling corners of his relationship with Monica. He felt disheartened and inert at the thought of everything that had previously been so attractive about her, and he dreamed vague dreams of major changes.

  But the dreams faded again just as fast, everything in him was
just temporary and changeable. Like the weather, he thought, unsure of how he would feel in an hour or a week. It worried him. If he could fuck his wife’s half-sister in his new home, and feel it meant so little, how much did it mean when he was together with Monica? But what was it he was questioning? After all, life was more than sex! Sonia must have infected him with her youthful fad for life philosophy, there was no need to make such a song and dance. He made light of it and the question stayed unanswered. Before long he thought no more about it. He quickly forgot her after she left, and when he did remember her he was amazed at how wild he had been about her. He recalled her childish way of talking and her school-girlish way of pulling her top down over her knees when she sat on the floor while he painted.

  He was irritated with himself for having listened so devoutly, still sweaty after their amorous rigours, as she pretentiously analysed his emotional life. Not until afterwards did it strike him that he must have merely played the available supporting role in a domestic drama that had nothing to do with him. He felt ashamed on Monica’s account, she who did not know why her little sister had become so affectionate when they sat on the beach and Sonia dreamily put her curly head on Monica’s shoulder as they looked across at the blue strip of coast on the other side of the Sound.

  He took his walkman with him when he visited Lucca on his round next morning. He put it on the duvet and placed the earphones outside the bandages on her head. She smiled expectantly. He carefully lifted the fingers sticking out from the plaster on her arms and showed her how to start and switch off the tape and move it forward or back. She was a quick learner. Thank you, she said, and again he noticed how she could accentuate the little words so they sounded either light or heavy. The nurse watched him, but he could not work out whether she was touched or merely surprised at his idea.

  He saw her again in the afternoon before going home, as he had done the day before. She still had the earphones in place on her gauze turban. He could distinguish the faint, trembling sound of piano. He sat on the chair beside the bed, opened the window and lit a cigarette. Yes, please, she said. He placed the cigarette between her lips and she sucked at it greedily. Half past four, she said, and let the smoke trickle out between her lips. Half past four? Yes, it must be that time. How did she know? The sun, she said.

  One of the strips of sunlight shining through the gaps in the blind sent a warm trail over the lower part of her face. Just like the previous day. She asked what she was listening to. He bent down to her face and put one ear to the earphone. Ravel, he said, Tombeau de Couperin. She smiled again. Paco Rabanne, she said. Is that right? Yes, he said, wondering if she was as knowledgeable about after-shave as she was ignorant of music. He felt his chin. The little tuft had fallen off during the day. There was only a rough spot of dried blood where he had cut himself shaving.

  She switched off the tape and pushed out her lips. He gave her another drag at the cigarette and took one himself. She blew out the smoke with a long sigh. He put the hand holding the cigarette out of the window and tapped off the ash. The flakes of ash floated upwards and spread out. Her voice was little more than a whisper. Perhaps I did really love him, she said. He looked at her again. She turned her face towards him. Now she did not feel anything. Now it was merely a word. As if she had used up the words. He stubbed out the cigarette and threw it out the window. Used up, how? It was not just Andreas, she went on. Perhaps they had begun to run out long before she met him. Her fingers slid over the buttons on his walkman. They were the same old words, always the same. And every time she had thought that at last she understood what they meant.

  When he rose to leave, the sun had disappeared behind the opposite wing of the hospital. He said he would come again tomorrow afternoon. She asked if he was wearing his white coat. He looked down at himself as if uncertain. Yes, he said, slightly surprised. Would he mind taking it off before he came? He didn’t come before he had finished work, did he? She smiled apologetically. He still stood at the foot of her bed. She didn’t know what he looked like, she went on. She only knew he wore a white coat, but she’d rather not know anything at all. Okay, he said. No white coat. She smiled again. Half past four? Yes, half past four.

  For once he didn’t listen to music when he got home. He left the door to the terrace open and lay down on the sofa. He closed his eyes and recalled the picture of Lucca sitting at a pavement café in Paris looking into the camera with a surprised expression as if she wasn’t expecting to be photographed or had a sudden flash of realisation.

  He thought of what she had said and what Andreas had told him. He tried to envisage the story they had been involved in, from the scattered sentences he could call to mind. They were still as fleeting and disconnected as the sounds that reached him from outside and left their marks and traces in the silence, the blackbirds and the leaves of the trees, a passing car, children’s shouts, a ball striking the asphalt. He lay like that for a long time, eyes closed. A bluebottle flew around the room hitting the panes with soft thuds until it finally found its way out through the open door and was gone. The second hand on his watch ticked faintly under its glass, close to his ear.

  Part Two

  Lucca hovered over the ribbed sand for a moment. She felt pressure in her ear drums and her head was buzzing. She let herself rise upwards and shot through the unresisting silver mirror gasping for breath. The sunlight flashed in the drops caught in her eyelashes and the little waves glittered as she swam towards the light. On shore, against the white sky, she could see the towers and high-rise blocks of the city, the slim chimneys of the heating station and the harbour gantries, all of them black and in miniature. She started to swim back. It was a Thursday afternoon at the beginning of June and there were only a few people on the swimming jetty. Otto sat leaning against the green wooden wall with his legs stretched out in front of him and a towel over his lap. He was too far away for her to see his face as anything but a blind spot. It looked as if he was watching her, but she couldn’t be sure yet. She swam nearer. He watched her as she approached.

  She swayed for a moment with exhaustion and a sudden feeling of lightness as she climbed out of the water. Otto was reading the paper. She sat down on the towel beside him and asked for a cigarette. He went on reading as he passed her the pack and the lighter. She enjoyed the slight dizziness when she inhaled. He asked if it was cold. She looked at him through the blue plastic of the lighter, it distorted his profile. Not once you’re in. She rolled her swimsuit down to her navel, lay down and closed her eyes so the sun was dulled to an orange fog behind her eyelids.

  The drops shrivelled up on her skin which tingled as they evaporated. She licked her under-lip to remove a shred of tobacco, and the taste of salt blended with the taste of smoke. The sun bit into her skin but the slight puffs of wind felt cooling. She let her fingertips slide languidly along his flank under the edge of the towel and on down his thigh. Her fingers recognised his muscular contours and she imagined the faint tickling it gave him, the sensation of her nails among the tiny curled hairs. She smiled at the thought of what might be going on underneath the towel, as she went on casually caressing him.

  Someone had seen her the other evening . . . his voice penetrated through the orange fog, the other voices and the cars further away, and the waves lapped around the stakes beneath them. The stakes she held onto, with slight distaste because they were slimy to the touch, as she let herself be rocked up and down by the waves. Yes? She visualised the stakes, they were black and covered with shells and green fringes of seaweed, which alternately stuck to them and streamed out in the water like loosened hair.

  One of his friends had seen her with Harry Wiener, getting into his car. Otto’s voice was as firm and supple as his body. It was at home with facts, everything that was firm and essential. It was a voice that handled words with the same matter-of-factness as when his broad hands took hold of objects or of her, opened a jar of capers with a single snap of compressed air or closed round her wrist when he bent over h
er in bed. He didn’t know they knew each other, she and Wiener.

  She pushed the stub between two planks. Nor did they. She saw it fall through the shade and hit the water with a brief hiss. Honestly, she said . . . that old poseur! She shaded her eyes with her hand, he leafed through the paper and bent over as he read a headline, as if he was short-sighted. Did he really think . . . ?

  He didn’t know what to think. The sun shone on the page and made her screw up her eyes. She couldn’t see what it said. He turned towards her, she smiled. He lay down and closed his eyes. She turned onto her stomach and leaned over him, so that damp ends of hair brushed his chest. He put his hands round her neck and with his thumbs rubbed between the vertebrae of her neck. He just wondered why she hadn’t said anything about it . . . that she had met him. She studied her fingers, they were still crinkled like the sand on the seabed. Otto’s voice sounded different when he lay down, flatter, she thought and, putting on her sunglasses, she lay down beside him so his shoulder was against hers. She must have forgotten to.

  She had almost forgotten. At least, until Otto reminded her, she had not thought about it for several days. Nothing had happened anyway, not like that. It was one of the last evenings of the run, and the theatre was half empty. The reviews had been positive, and she had been singled out for mention in several of them. But the weather was too good that spring, there were too many evenings when people just wanted to drift around town and sit in the twilight feeling summer was on the way. Only very few would feel like spending such evenings in a dusty cinema converted into an underground theatre, on a gloomy street away from the city centre. Besides, none of them was really well known, certainly not the dramatist, a big-headed Swede of their own age, in his mid-twenties, always in black, of course. They had spent all their time imitating his arrogant Stockholm accent.