Astrid and Veronika Read online

  Then, just as she put her feet on the floorboards, there was a new sound. She heard a window open, then a door. The sound of steps on icy snow, a car door open, then close again. Sounds of life.

  Her morning routine was set and she did not welcome disruptions. The daily regime was not directed by discipline, but for convenience. It allowed her a sense of safety. The days had a pattern, unaffected by the changing seasons. Her life was a matter of sustenance, survival, and her needs were minimal. She made no plans for the future. The garden had gone to seed, the house was crumbling. She knew that the paint was peeling, the chimney cracked. A dying building, housing a dying body.

  She walked to the village only when necessary. Especially now in the winter. The roads were rarely cleared up here, where cars had no business, and the melting snow became treacherous ice. She had no fear of death, but wished for it to be on her terms. A broken hip would land her in the hands of those she feared the most. Those who had been waiting for her to need them.

  The past was kept at bay. There was no future, and the present was a still void where she existed physically, but with no emotional presence. She waited, her memories kept submerged. The effort was a constant, draining task, absorbing all her energy. And there were moments when it failed. When she was overcome by feelings as intense as when they were new. The triggers were unpredictable and she trod cautiously. For a long time she had drifted in still backwaters, patiently awaiting the final undertow. And now this, a slight rippling of the surface.

  She got up and began her day. Washed herself, made coffee. Her kitchen was the same as always, with the old wood stove the centrepiece and an electric cooker on the side. The embers were still alive, needing only a soft breath of air and new wood to rekindle.

  She cradled the coffee mug in her hands, sucking on a lump of sugar. When she put the mug down on the kitchen table, her hands absentmindedly stroke the brittle oilcloth, as familiar as her own skin, and brushed off non-existent crumbs. She sat sipping the cooling coffee while a pale sun rose. Her eyes wandered to the window.

  Life intruded. Incrementally, it made its way back into her house. Sounds. Windows opening and closing. Faint music through an open window. A car driving off. And she found herself adding them to her daily pattern. As the days went by, observing the house across the field became a central part of her early mornings. She found herself at the table well before the other house stirred, waiting while the shadows of the night withdrew. Her eyes would settle on the upstairs window, where the first signs of life would appear.

  She stood by the kitchen window, waiting, until the slight figure emerged from the other house and walked past. She made sure she kept still, well inside the window. Her arms crossed over her chest, embracing herself, she watched the young woman pass by, waving. Then, one morning, she found herself lifting her hand in response. It was a hesitant, slow movement, and as her hand sank she stared at it, as if surprised by its action. She sat down at the table and put both hands in front of her. She opened and closed them several times, then laid them flat, palms down. An old woman’s hands, she thought. Translucent, papery skin stretching over raised veins. Liver spots. Yet that split nail on the right little finger, where the soft tip of a five-year-old finger had been caught in the barn door, was intact on the old woman’s hand. And the indent at the base of the left ring finger. All those years and it was still there: a permanent, visible scar. A reminder. The mark of her wedding ring.

  Her peace had been disturbed. She found herself wandering through the rooms of the house, hands on her lower back. The days were grey, the nights cold. The evenings grew longer and, as she lay awake, hands clasped on her chest, her eyes searching the ceiling over her bed, she listened intently for the new sounds. Muted music escaping through a closed blind. Bed linen shaken out through the upstairs window. The front door opening or closing. Quick steps over the front yard.

  She listened and she felt the world invade. Life. And she turned her face to the wall and cried.

  Then, on the morning of the first of May, she lay in bed, waiting. The birdsong, the wind were picking up. But no sound from the other house. The room grew lighter; she was ready to rise. But she was still waiting, her ears alert. Later, she sat at the table, her eyes focused on the house across the field. The windows were closed; there was no smoke from the chimney. The car stood silent. She waited.

  She opened the window and stood watching. She placed her hands on the kitchen bench and leaned forward, looking out. Only when the cold air filled the kitchen did she close the window.

  Two days went by. On the second night she woke and went and stood by the window. The other house lay deathly still. She sat down at the table, looking out. Just as the black night had reached its peak, the dark shapes of two moose gracefully emerged from the solid wall of black trees beyond the open fields. The two animals moved soundlessly over last year’s dry grass, the only signs of life in a still world.

  Astrid could no longer sleep. She wandered between her room and the kitchen, coffee mug in hand. The car was still in the same place. She couldn’t have left. Yet there was no sign of life. She means nothing to me, she told herself. I know nothing about her. I have no business intruding.

  She knew nothing more about her neighbour than what she had been able to observe. A young woman. She was no longer sure how to tell age. Twenty-five? Thirty? Slim, with curly dark hair. Short. Not tall, anyway. She had overheard someone talking about her in the shop one day, but as was her habit, she had walked away. Veronika. She had heard the name.

  She found herself registering time again. The time of day, the day of the week. Time passed increasingly slowly, and with each passing minute she found it more difficult to tear her eyes away from the other house. It grew to occupy all space, all her thoughts. Eventually, she went and got her jacket.

  As she stepped out onto the porch and hesitantly wandered down the gravel path, she was still not fully aware of where her feet were leading her. As when her hand returned the wave, her legs were now acting independently of her conscious mind. She walked down the road and across the front yard of the other house. There were no signs of life. She knocked on the door and stepped back, as if preparing to flee. But when there was no response, she stepped forward and knocked again, harder. She thought she could hear soft sounds, as of bare feet on wooden steps.

  When the door opened and she stood face to face with the young woman, she realised that life had irrevocably returned. She cared.

  3

  . . . tell me, who will save you then?

  The day before had been so full of promise, with bright sunshine on the snow. Then, dull and cold again. Veronika sat at the kitchen table sipping tea, watching the wind picking up. There were no colours, just shades of grey and white. The bare trees moved restlessly and snow lifted and swirled in irregular bursts. Time seemed to stand still, poised in a no man’s land that was neither winter nor summer.

  She had been in the village two months. Finally, she had started to write. It was hard labour, not the rapid process she had anticipated. It was as if the story were a fragile cobweb, and she had to take the utmost care not to rip the thread. The contract and the discussions around the book belonged to another time, as distant as a prehistoric era, and she was struggling to recall her enthusiasm and joy for the project. Yet words emerged. Painfully, slowly. Unexpected words.

  It was the last day of April, Valborgsmäss Eve. The celebration of the end of winter and the beginning of spring. Yet, as always, a bitterly cold day with an icy wind. She had been thinking of making her daily walk a late one so she could go down to the village to watch the bonfire. But she was tired, spring tired. She sat at the kitchen table in front of the laptop. The room was warm — she had lit a fire in the stove — but she still felt cold. The words on the screen in front of her seemed to paint an almost forgotten landscape. It was as if she were slowly unpacking, pulling out one scene after another and exposing them to this bleak light. The effort was enormous. Here, n
ow, each passage seemed out of place, like clothes bought on holiday. Distant and without any connection to her, to this place. She lifted her eyes and looked out the window, but the still landscape seemed withdrawn. She felt as if she were suspended between two worlds, belonging to neither.

  The neighbour’s house was closed and silent. But the day before, as she had walked past waving, she had noticed that the kitchen window was again ajar, despite the weather. She could have been mistaken, but she thought she saw a movement in the darkness behind the glass. She thought she saw the old woman return her greeting. Today, there was no sign of life.

  She shivered and went upstairs to get her fleece jacket. The red one. James’s. She pulled it on and sat down again at the table. Unconsciously, her hand stroked the soft material of the sleeve. She lifted her hands to her mouth and blew into them to warm her stiff fingers.

  The day drifted into afternoon and she remained in front of the screen, reading more than writing. But as the hours passed the words seemed to withdraw, to blur and rearrange themselves into sequences that became increasingly difficult to decipher. Eventually, she turned off the laptop and closed the lid. The kitchen lay dark; the grey day had deepened into early evening. As she stood she had to support herself with a hand on the table for a moment before crossing the floor. Upstairs in the bedroom she lay down on the bed, curled up and pulled the bedspread tightly around her body.

  She lay naked on her back on a beach. The universe was black. Blacker than black — where she was there had never been light. The rough sand was scalding hot under her back, burning and scratching her skin. Yet cold water sloshed around her body. A wild sea roared beyond and the sound was deafening. Her eyes ached, staring wide open into space that was completely void of light, trying to make out shapes in a solid blackness. All around her the thunder of the sea. The air was thick and salty, sticking on her tongue and in her nostrils. She wanted to get up, to run, but the weight of the black night pressed her body deeper into the hot sand, paralysing her. Then, in the splitsecond between sleep and wake, there was a blinding flash of light and she could make out a wave of gigantic proportions, filling the entire universe and moving towards her, rising ever higher, gaining momentum, looming above in its deadly, shimmering enormousness, poised to break. Her hands clawed at the sand, breaking her nails. Soundless screams filled her mouth, choking her. When darkness swallowed her again, she knew the wave was breaking.

  She only just managed to make it downstairs to the bathroom before she threw up. She shivered and her teeth chattered, yet her skin was on fire. She turned on the tap and let the cold water run over her hands, then put the wet palms against her cheeks. She cupped her hands and filled them, and drank. The house was dark.

  Then it was not night, but not daylight either. She was in her bed, her throat throbbing. The sheets were twisted and rumpled. Colourless light filtered in through the half-pulled blind. She was desperately thirsty, but the door and the stairs were impossibly distant. There was a sick smell in the room. And such sad light. She closed her eyes.

  She was on a New Zealand west coast beach, her bare feet on the hot dark sand. High hills loomed behind; in front of her the sea stretched to the horizon, thundering waves crashing onto the empty beach. She was panting, running, her feet sinking into the sand. He was ahead — all she could see was his bare back and his legs moving swiftly, his feet light on the sand. She was trying to catch up, struggling to fit her feet into his footsteps. But his strides were much longer than hers and she had to jump to reach each mark in the sand. She knew she had to hurry — the marks were getting fainter and more and more difficult to distinguish. The tide was coming in, moving closer and closer to the fading imprints in the sand. She stumbled, lost momentum and began to miss steps. When she looked up she couldn’t see him any longer; she was alone on the deserted beach. She stopped and the tide reached her feet, lapping against her ankles. Helpless, she watched it sweep over the sand and in one brief stroke erase the prints, leaving a flat mirror behind as it withdrew. She sank to her knees, overcome by a sense of grief so intense it stopped her heart, her breath. Tears streamed down her face and she cupped her hands over her eyes. But her hands could not contain the tears: they fell between her fingers over her thighs until she sat in a pool of tepid water. When she lowered her hands she saw that the rising water was the brown, coppery stillness of a Swedish lake. She lay down and let the soft water carry her body, sinking deeper and deeper, the water closing over her face. Shafts of light filtered through the amber liquid, making golden flecks of innumerable drifting particles. She was gently rocked, weightless.

  Then white morning light outside the window and she was back in her room. A blackbird sang outside the window. Veronika crawled out of bed and made it downstairs to the bathroom. She pulled off her nightgown and stepped into the shower, making no effort to wash, just allowing the water to run over her body. Eventually she sat down, her back against the tiled wall and her forehead against her knees, while the shower kept running. She sat immobile until the hot water slowly ran out, bearing the gradually colder water until the skin on her shoulders felt numb. She stood slowly, dried herself and returned upstairs, where she pulled off the crumpled sheets and replaced them with clean ones. The effort made her pant, and as she lay down the room seemed to pulsate with the beating of her heart. She closed her eyes.

  Her father was standing outside a house. She didn’t recognise it, but she felt that she ought to. He waved at her, smiling, and she wanted to wave back, but there were cars and buses obstructing her view, separating them. She stood on her toes, bending this way and that, craning her neck, trying to look over the traffic. But each time he came back into view he seemed to be further away. She tried to shout to him to stay put, to wait for her, but the noise of the vehicles drowned her words. She ran into the traffic, attempting to cross the road. There were buses, cars, trams and motorcycles all around her; she was caught in a turbulent sea of traffic. She realised that she would never reach the other side and she was overcome by a sense of loss that drowned all sounds. She stood like an island in the silent turmoil that swirled around her, unaffected and unconcerned.

  There was a sound. Or was it in her dream? She was on her knees, on all fours, pounding her hand on the packed, black sand of the beach. She was trying to speak but tears kept choking her, and the more upset she became, the harder she beat, her palm burning. But then she was back in the bed, her hand stuck between the mattress and the edge of the bedframe, and there was a knock on the door downstairs.

  Except for the stale pancakes, the small jar and the blue thermos that were still on the table the following morning, it could have been the creation of a feverish brain. She had opened the door and her neighbour had been there, standing on the doorstep, peering hesitantly and looking distinctly uncomfortable. After a brief look and a nod, the woman’s eyes had wandered, focusing on a spot just beyond Veronika’s shoulder. And when she had spoken, it was with obvious effort, slowly and hesitantly. As if she were uncomfortable with the sound of her own voice and needed the time to listen to each uttered word before releasing another. She had said she would be right back. And then she had turned and hurried off.

  Veronika had gone into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror above the hand-basin. Her face looked small, as if observed from a distance. She ran her hairbrush through her tangled hair and brushed her teeth slowly. She sat down on the closed toilet lid, her head between her knees, with her arms around her thighs. When she heard the front door open, she wrapped the dressing gown tightly around her body. She lifted the sleeve to her face and buried her nose in the dark red terry cloth.

  In the kitchen she saw that her neighbour had returned and was busy lighting the stove. She had her back to Veronika, and didn’t indicate that she had noticed her. Veronika sat down at the table, watching the old woman. She was dressed in a large green woollen jumper and grey trousers, too long for her and clumsily rolled up to expose a glimpse of blue-veined pale
skin between sock and trouser. She had found the frying pan and Veronika could smell melting butter. On the table was a small jar of jam and a dented old blue thermos. The old woman was frying pancakes and when she had finished the first one she brought the plate to the table. She opened the jar and spread a generous helping of jam over the pancake before rolling it up with a fork. Her eyes on Veronika’s face, she pushed the plate across the table, but said nothing. Veronika took the rolled-up pancake between her fingers and took a small bite. It tasted wonderful — light, yet smothered in butter, and the jam sweet and filled with the flavour of wild strawberries.

  The old woman returned to the stove, saying nothing, but every now and then she turned around, nodded and gestured with the spatula, urging Veronika to take another bite. Meanwhile she kept her focus on her task, pouring mixture into the pan, watching it set, with her hand on her hip holding the spatula, then turning the pancake with a swift movement before sliding it onto the serving plate. Still she said nothing.

  She brought out two mugs and poured tea from the thermos. It was strong, almost black, and very sweet. Eventually she turned off the stove, rinsed the frying pan under the tap and sat down at the table. She didn’t eat. Her right hand brushed the surface in front of her in quick nervous circles and her eyes kept drifting towards the window. After a while she stood up, took her jacket, which she had hung over a chair, and started to put it on. Halfway through, she stopped, turned to Veronika and said, ‘Just open your bedroom window and call out if you need anything.’ Then she pulled on the other sleeve and walked towards the hallway. With her hand on the door handle and without turning around she said, ‘I will look out for you.’ Then she stepped out onto the porch and softly closed the door behind her.