He did not answer right away.
“Yes,” he said at last. “I stood among them once.”
The path widened again. Carrying the same image in our minds, both aware of its nature, we walked on side by side.
Late afternoon. When the sunbathers take one last dip in the sea. Dizzy from lying down, drunk from the heat. On North Sea beaches, the rising tide comes with channels and currents that can sweep you out to sea. The rescue teams know to be extra alert around that time. The drowning hour.
I had seen them at work. Rolling the body, heavy and limp as a fish, pressing down on the back, folding and lifting the arms. To the best of my recollection, the miracle always occurred. The eyes opened, the body rose on its elbows in stunned surprise, and asked for a cigarette.
One evening there was no circle, only a huddle of people looking out to sea. Waiting for a lifeboat to return, knowing the body had gone undiscovered. Close to shore, three crewmen jumped into the water, lifted the outboard motor, and dragged the sloop onto the sand. I can still see their faces. Men who had lived through the moment of no longer believing in their search.
Then came the time when I woke at first cockcrow with his name on my lips. With the untidy sense of expectation known to young animals and unsound minds. I began to dress to his taste. He had never told me which blouse he liked to see me wear but, empathizing with his gaze, I soon became adept at accentuating the line of my body. I discovered a perfume that would have tugged at his senses. I noted that the black T-shirt with the oval neck allowed the flat, gold chain to rest undisturbed against my collar bone.
I took good care of my youth. My twenty-five years. I felt that I had to secure their future. If I did not, who would be around to love him later? And so I took to pulling on a pair of shiny cotton shorts and running through the woods in the early morning. As you push past the boundaries of tiredness, sometimes you see things with great clarity. The beauty of our relationship. The mystery. Of tree trunks in the morning mist. Of the blood pounding just behind my ears. Our love had been perfectly simple. Nothing shameful had taken place between us.
At school I knocked over my coffee at breaktime, breezed past the cleaner with a radiant smile, allowed an uneasy silence to linger during conversations with parents. “Who’s the lucky guy?” Lucia said to me one day. “The whole village thinks you’re in love.”
I was in love. And by being in love, I was bringing my husband back from the dead, bringing him back to life. Was it so strange that, with nothing else to hand, I chose to bestow my emotions on a silent phantom? At night in bed, I spread my legs, caressed the extraordinary need of this love. I could feel the transfer of warmth from my body to his and knew he could no longer snigger at me, silent in his satin-lined coffin. Ton had been completely crazy about me. And I began to think of us as a single being. A touching, awkward, and—given the whimsical nature of our attraction—rather pitiful creature.
In August I woke up one night to the sound of a mosquito dancing around the room. I lay there listening to the muted whine for minutes on end before I realized I was shivering. I got up and closed the windows, then rummaged in the linen closet and pulled out the old quilted nightdress I would wear when I felt a cold coming on. I crawled back into bed. Eyes wide open, and about time, too. At last I was ready to break my lover’s vow, the solemn, mutual promise I alone had kept, both before and after my husband’s death.
My husband had loved someone else.
Months of wet weather must have followed. For, thinking back, there was always rain in the comments that the outside world inflicted on me and the various forms of obsession that brought me comfort. After a weekend spent locked away with my jealousy, bitterly angry that there was no longer any point in calling the one or two men I knew who might have helped me cheat on my husband, all my colleagues had to say come Monday morning was “For heaven’s sake, put on a raincoat on a day like this!” And when I came to, after fainting in the supermarket—the checkout girl had been taking her time and I had been in a hurry, impatient to be alone with thoughts of how to eliminate, yes kill, the man who had abandoned me long before I’d had the chance to be a proper wife—the only response the locals could muster was to shove a stranger’s dripping black umbrella into my hands at the exit.
“What were you thinking, ma’am? Out in this weather without anything to keep the rain off?”
I wanted to know who she was, this secret love. That meant dragging the box of papers and photos back down from the attic and, perched on the edge of my bed, sifting through them with a very different purpose. In my determination to find her, my gaze was mostly cool and dispassionate. Seldom did I admit, though I knew damn well, that I was a pathetic individual, humiliated by my own ritual and deeply ashamed of myself. And so it was that one day I happened upon a group photo.
I knew as soon as I saw her. There, with Ton, at the back of a group of students posing outside a university building. Broad smiles. Arms thrown around shoulders. There had been cause for celebration. Which made it all the more conspicuous that two of the gang were standing side by side, yet remained aloof. They were not touching, she and Ton. I picked up the magnifying glass from the table and studied the girl’s face for a while. Round features, eyes without pretense, and something indomitable in the way she pressed her lips together. Was I coming to know something real and true about Ton for the first time? I took a deep breath, in and out. Relief. Perhaps my jealousy had not completely faded, but my anger had. I liked her. It wouldn’t have bothered me all that much.
Days passed before I finally got Hugo Kakebeke on the line. Having recognized him in the photo, I had found my informant. At the student lodgings on Pietersteeg they kept insisting they had never heard of him. Nor did the names Dela and Milou Neefjes ring any bells. It was only when I refused to let up that they managed to dredge up a young man who, after a good deal of reluctant fumbling, supplied me with a telephone number. It was Thursday before Hugo Kakebeke deigned to pick up the phone. He hadn’t changed. After exchanging hellos, his first words were “Dear God, this rain! Is it as grim up north as it is down here?”
One week later, I found myself amid blocks of brand-new houses in Leiden, checking the name by the door. A door that showed no sign of opening. An hour later and I was back, staring at the nameplate, complete with his title and three initials. Again, no trace of him. At a loss, I wandered into town, walking familiar streets bereft of familiar faces. It was Friday evening and the cafés and bars were full to bursting. Leaning on an imitation marble tabletop, shoulder-to-shoulder with two men in leather jackets, I sat nursing a ludicrous cup of hot chocolate. I didn’t even like the stuff. Lips smudged on tacky porcelain. The men joked as they left, sighing that it was time to head out and get rained on again. Good idea. For me, it was either head to the station and catch the first northbound train, stick around for pancakes, or eat something Greek. I went for Greek. The owner dragged a single table out from a row just for me, and presented a greasy, handwritten menu. Squid, eggplant, or yogurt with garlic. I ordered squid and yogurt with garlic, while eavesdropping on an intriguing conversation at the big table next to me. Something about a pianist who had lost his right arm in World War One.
Motel Cécile had a room for the night. I ran a bath and finally managed to squeeze a drop of delightful orange blossom oil from a foil packet into the water. I looked at my face in the washbasin mirror and saw, deep in the background, a cozy, quiet bedroom, and a bed with the covers turned down. What more could a body ask for? Should I go to sleep at once or lie back and ponder first?
I skipped the lying back and pondering. As I slid between the sheets and clicked off the light, I resolved to take an early train home. This madness had to end.
The next morning on the tram to the station, I spotted Hugo Kakebeke. He was sitting two rows in front of me, engrossed in his newspaper. I got up and edged my way toward him.
“What happened to you yesterday?” I asked, not quite able to contain my irritation
.
He insisted that our appointment was for this afternoon at five, and that a wild duck had been marinating in my honor since last night.
I was taken aback. It was less than a year since I had seen him last, yet here I was gazing down on the benign face of a male in middle age, a foundation on which he was clearly going to build for the next forty years. I had always wondered when it began, as a gradual transition or—
I showed him the photograph. Passengers squeezed past me, damp and dripping.
It took a while for the name to come to him. Linda! That was it. Linda—give me a sec—Passchier. He looked up at me in surprise, then looked away. He disapproves of what I’m doing, I thought, or perhaps he’s just not a fan of being cornered on an early morning tram. I continued my inquiries regardless, but it turned out that he had known her only vaguely. The same went for Ton, or so he said. She had dropped out after the first year.
I got off at the next stop.
She was nice.
Every bit as nice as I’d thought she would be. We sat by the fire in her studio; the university dropout had become a photographer. I have always loved places where people work. The stable, the wash houses, the chicory greenhouse with the heavy curtain that plunged the roots into their familiar darkness. And now here, with Linda: bare floorboards, walls crammed with photographs, a thicket of mysterious racks, the white expanse of two open umbrellas.
Would you like tea? she had asked. Yes, I would. Lovely, thanks. She stood with her back to me, rummaging at a washstand in the corner. Firm legs, slippered feet. Attractive blond curls. She turned to look at me and smiled, top lip lifting to reveal a row of big, beautiful teeth. It was open, tender, the way she smiled. No, I wouldn’t have minded. I held out the photo to her. She peered at it. Ah, good times! Half the class had failed their first-year exams and, of course, she’d been one of them. She remembered Ton vaguely, a red-haired boy, bright, cheerful. She had borrowed his notes once ahead of a tough assignment and their accuracy had left her feeling deflated. Whatever became of him?
He was dead.
Then I asked her if she had a car. Yes, she did, same one for years. As far back as Thursday, March 2, 1971? I asked. On the verge of laughter, she looked me in the eye and my neutral expression gave her pause for thought. She pressed her lips together. No, of course not. In her student days, she had zipped around on a moped, a Solex that did twenty, tops. She still missed it sometimes.
It was close to six when I left. We parted as friends. I was welcome anytime, she said.
The bus wound its way north. A stop in every village, which for the driver simply meant slowing down and speeding up again at this late hour. Few people felt the need to brave the evening rain.
Three villages on, I was the sole passenger. Sitting above the wheels, I heard the water hiss beneath my feet. In the rearview mirror I caught the watchful eyes of the driver, a colossal, dark-skinned man who was practically wedged behind the wheel. I lit up a smoke and let tiredness wash over me.
I knew that it was over. Ton, my silent guide on a journey to nowhere, had brought me to this destination. I would never know who he had been. I was not his widow. I was the widow of this bus journey in the rain, of the toothy girl with the tender smile, of the dark-skinned driver steering me home.
I took a slow drag on my cigarette and looked out at the sleeping farms.
When the church bell clangs in the distance, I stand still and count. Six o’clock. I have made it through the night. Fully conscious. Wiped out. Walking has failed to calm me this time. And though this man’s coat has kept my body warm, my feet are cold as stone. Not exactly wise to pace the floor barefoot while an icy draft blasts through the baseboards. In the dark, my fingers feel for the ashtray on the table. I bump into the edge and hear it slide away from me. I take his last cigarette from the pack and switch on the light.
Blinded in my own living room. This comfortable space with its plants, cushions, and paintings. In the corner lies Anatole, head resting on his front paws. Eyes cast upward, he is trying to gauge my aberrant behavior. The table has not been cleared. The dessert plates are still there, the mocha cups, the sugar bowl. Even the casserole dish failed to make it back to the kitchen after dinner. It was eleven by the time I placed the vodka on the table. There had been a silence then. We had stared at each other.
It had begun as the walk ended. I wanted to go home because I wanted him. I had a body, I could do with it as I pleased, and it pleased me to live life to the fullest. The way it should be lived. I spied my car and broke into a run. But when he caught up with me and, as if I had yelled instructions at him, grabbed me by the arm, spun me around, and pressed my face to his—narrow red nose, lean, clownish features, up close—I wriggled free.
“Let’s go home,” I said. “I’m freezing.”
And I pulled off my gloves, held out my yellow-white fingers, and—oh Christ!—he took hold of my hand, and kissed them. The only thing missing was an “if I may be so bold …”
“Look at the state of them,” I mumbled to defuse the moment. “No feeling left at all.”
We reached home and—no, once again I deferred. Even though I knew that, rattled by the nerve-racking ritual of acquaintance, the best thing to do was surrender to the stranger’s mouth and arms as soon as the moment was ripe. Yet there I was, crouched by the hearth, holding a match to a pyramid of kindling. It caught fire at once, and I told him where he could find the port. Then came dinner and oh, how we talked.
“Do you hear from her often?” he asked. I had told him that, for the past two years, Lucia had been working at the racetrack in Sydney.
I shook my head, reluctant to pursue the topic.
“No,” I said. “Never.”
At the time, she had sent word of her arrival on that other continent. After that, nothing.
He asked if I knew why she had wanted to move so far away. I shrugged. God only knows.
I pulled the salad bowl toward me, picked up the fork and spoon, and began tossing the leaves. “I put a little sugar in the dressing,” I informed him.
There was something perverse in my determination to keep happiness at bay, though for hours I had felt it darting around me like a stray dog. We climbed the stairs, I put the two slender glasses down by the bedside lamp and strode into the bathroom. There I snapped on the harsh light, brushed my teeth, rubbed cream on my cheeks, drummed my fingers against my eye sockets, and, by the time I slid fragrant and naked into his arms, my exaltation had turned to agitation. There we lay, grappling until he was on top of me, looking me in the eye, defiantly, indulgently. He had understood that I wanted this tussle, we have been together for years, and as I think this, something makes me hate him from the bottom of my heart. Makes me scream that I don’t want him anymore, that he’s gone too far, that I will never forgive him, never. I could spit in his face, drag my nails down his back. I feel the threat in his muscles, a man of flesh and blood, capable of anything, angry, seized by his own depths of rage. I am pushed down hard, onto my back—sure, why not, let him get on with it, let him—but my fury came to its senses. And my hands began to touch this man’s warm, familiar body.
Once, on a winter’s day, I met a young man with red hair and his sister’s checkered scarf around his neck. We went skating together, fell through the ice somewhere near Hoogmade, and something tucked away among these simple facts must have led us to begin a relationship that lasted until the senseless crack of a pistol shot.
The night holds still now. Hesitates. I do not know if I can go on like this. Meet and tell, meet and tell. Chasing down the facts, hounding them in the hope that one day they might make the wrong move and dodge down a dead-end alley. Where I can corner them, search them, strip them of their smuggled goods.
I no longer hear a train, a dog howling. I look at the cinders in the hearth, still warm no doubt. The cigarette butts in the ashtray, the rims of the cups and glasses—they, too, must still be warm, sticky from my lips and the lips of the sleeping
man upstairs. I would rather the tears did not come, but it occurs to me that maybe it was love after all. True and, in theory, for all time. That Ton and I honestly did love one another. Without much of a song and dance, perhaps, but still … And that this was something, in the absent way we live from day to day, that I honestly believed.
The cold in my feet has become unbearable. Dancing with pain, I climb the stairs.
This time he snaps awake. For a moment I see him blank and bewildered. Then I see him realize where he is and with whom. The room, the bed, the brown coat that glides from my shoulders and onto the floor. He holds the covers open for me, and I slide into the glowing warmth.
And just as I am about to ask him, for no particular reason, about everything that has remained unasked and unspoken since yesterday—“When she threw the vacuum cleaner at you, you know, when you were asleep, did it actually hit you?”—an infernal noise erupts downstairs.
He looks at me dumbfounded.
“What the hell is that?”
Even I have to listen for a moment before I realize the kitchen timer has gone off.
I wrestle free of his arms.
“Time to take the Bundt cake out of the oven.”
EXPOSED BY JEAN-PHILIPPE BLONDEL
A French teacher on the verge of retirement is invited to a glittering opening that showcases the artwork of his former student, who has since become a celebrated painter. This unexpected encounter leads to the older man posing for his portrait. Possibly in the nude. Such personal exposure at close range entails a strange and troubling pact between artist and sitter that prompts both to reevaluate their lives. Blondel, author of the hugely popular novel The 6:41 to Paris, evokes an intimacy of dangerous intensity in a tale marked by profound nostalgia and a reckoning with the past.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/exposed/
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