The case was light; I noticed this as I carried it out into the street. In actual fact, I stopped on the steps outside after discovering that I’d laid down my hat on the hall table and forgotten to put it on before leaving the house. I was about to reach into my pocket for the keys when I realized that I’d forgetten them on the hall table as well. Which is why you found both hat and keys when you awoke, the hat nearer the front door, if I remember right, the keys next to that yellow vase, the one we bought in Copenhagen in a moment of extravagance the day when we first made love.
The ship sailed at dawn for Copenhagen. A Danish cargo vessel that had arrived a few days earlier loaded with timber and coal. The captain was amenable when I went to see him; I got a bunk with the deckhands for a small fee. I couldn’t wait for the next ship to New York because it wouldn’t arrive for another month and I felt I was hanging in midair, had jumped but still hadn’t landed. The sky above, the abyss below. My thoughts at war. The day after we docked in Copenhagen I boarded another ship for New York.
I couldn’t say goodbye to you. I couldn’t bring myself to. Still less did it occur to me to lie to you about my intentions. I left during the night while you were all asleep. Walked out into the darkness before dawn, stepped into it, vanished.
The sound of my footsteps followed me down the street and for some reason I felt as if they were out of step with me. Then they, too, faded and all of a sudden it was as if I had never existed.
36
The money. I can’t avoid mentioning it.
I’m sure your relatives enjoyed gossiping about my departure, and I can well imagine their remarks on the subject. I could never be bothered to try to correct their slander, but as appearances are misleading in this case, I feel I have to say a few words about it. This time you won’t be able to avoid paying attention, though you’ve always been good at letting worldly matters pass you by.
Before going any further I should explain what state your father’s affairs were in when I took over. I’ve hinted at the fact once or twice in these letters, but never wanted to state it baldly because I know how fond you were of the old man and I didn’t like to speak ill of him or his actions in your hearing; didn’t want to blacken his memory. So I must insist, in the strongest terms, that you are not to blame him for anything; he was never guilty of any dishonesty, though he squandered his assets and neglected the business, at least in his later years. But to be fair, there were also a number of factors that he had no control over.
The company was in ruins. His business contacts had been allowed to slide; when I got in touch with buyers in England and Spain who’d previously imported fish from him I was told that as he hadn’t replied to their correspondence for over a decade, they’d assumed he was dead. It turned out that he owed money to many of those from whom he’d purchased goods for import, and I’d have been better off not to have introduced myself to some of them, as they’d written off his debts. But he had kept up his payments to those he still had dealings with, and they had nothing but good to say of him. That was about half of his trading partners; he seems to have handpicked them as his most important clients.
He’d let a subsidiary company, registered in Sweden, go bankrupt. It wasn’t actually registered in his name, but I won’t go into that.
I remember often wondering how he’d gotten into this mess; to look at him you’d never have known anything was wrong. To be fair, he did let me know in his own way from the very beginning how things stood, but when I tried to discuss it with him later he would abruptly change the subject. What was behind his habitual mask? Perhaps I never knew him. Yet somehow I suspect that you did. Perhaps none of this will come as a surprise to you.
So that was the state of the business when I got involved in this company that your relatives envied me for. I wasn’t remotely prepared. You remember how I worked those first years, you know how I never let up; indeed you often said to me: “Smile, dear. What can be weighing on you so?”
Your and the children’s future. That’s what was weighing on me. And also—I freely admit—the fear that all those who were critical of me would blame me if things went wrong. To tell the truth, I sometimes suspected that your father had done a thorough job of introducing me to all your relatives the week before the wedding in order to toughen my resolve. “Look,” I felt he was saying to me, “what do you think these people will say if you don’t manage to save the business? Do you think they’ll blame me for what happens? Oh no, no one will listen to your excuses. You’ll have to bear the blame. You alone. But I’m sure you’ll prove yourself, my boy.”
He himself had long since given up. But he saw that I was proud enough to risk everything. And I took the bait. Swallowed it whole.
It’s not surprising that he resigned himself to your marrying beneath you. The sons of rich families would have run a mile the moment they saw the books, and made sure that everybody knew. And that would have been the end of your father’s empire.
We were the only ones who knew, he and I. Apart, maybe, from his friend Halldor, the bank manager, though I think he was never fully informed. Your relatives knew nothing; they thought everything was as good as it could be. But I’m sure they had plenty of theories when they found out what had been in the safe before I left. How that must have pleased them.
I’m not going to get down on my knees and grovel for forgiveness. No, the money I took was mine, and I left behind more than I took, much more. It wasn’t more than a quarter of our capital, a third at most. I don’t need to justify myself to anyone for not having gone to the States empty-handed. Not to anyone.
I’d better slow down here. Put down my pen, get up, look out the window. I mustn’t get worked up, that’ll only make things worse.
They must have told you that the money proved I never meant to come back. That’s wrong. I didn’t know what I intended. I had no plans, was in no state to make any arrangements, it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. When I finally came to my senses it was too late. I won’t try to justify that. But I had every right to the money.
It was pure coincidence that I had all that cash in the safe the evening that Stefan and I went down to the harbor to meet the ship from New York. It so happened that a few weeks earlier I had received a letter from an attorney in Sweden addressed to your father, who had been in his grave for almost a decade by then. The letter demanded that he pay off his debts to the lawyer’s clients, three companies which I assumed had long ago written off these debts from their books. He probably didn’t expect an answer, was just writing on the off chance, a debt-collecting lawyer turning over some rocks. Nevertheless, I panicked. I had changed the ownership of the company and done my best to ensure that your father’s sins would not catch up with me, yet somehow I was never sure; something had lurked in the back of my mind all those years—the fear that I could lose everything I had worked for.
So I always kept a large sum of cash in the safe, money that no one could touch if anything went wrong. When I got the letter from Sweden I withdrew even more money from the bank and stashed it away. I also sold off some assets, that’s true; no doubt your uncle told you about that. But this was the reason, pure and simple. Anything else is the invention of those who you know have always had it in for me.
I hesitated. I admit it. I hesitated before taking the money. But I had no choice. There was more than enough left.
Sometimes I’m woken in the middle of the night by voices from my dreams. Your relatives are talking. Although I can’t see you, I know it’s you they’re talking to. They say: “As if it’s not enough that he walked out on you and the children, he stole from you, too. Imagine, from his own children!” And I jump out of bed, unable to control my anger. “No!” I want to scream. “No, it’s not true!” When I begin to shake, I collapse, defeated, back on the bed.
Because I know how it must look to you.
37
The quiet before the storm.
Silent afternoon light in the vines on
the slopes, no movement down on the plain. Then the sky darkens and a storm breaks out. The keepers tie a hunk of meat to a large oak to attract the wild animals that have been causing problems on the hill; the clouds race overhead and the air is filled with thunder. I am uneasy. Somewhere out in the blackness I think I hear a wail, perhaps it is nothing but the storm. I stand by the window in Casa del Monte, looking out; a moment ago I sensed Klara was here. It happens increasingly often these days. The memories I thought I could control by writing them down . . .
I didn’t know whether she was still living with Jones. There was no mention of him in her letter, no return address. She was fully capable of telling him that he was the father of the baby she was carrying, but somehow I didn’t think she had. Why, I have no idea. I also thought about the possibility of her returning to Sweden to be with her family, but that didn’t seem right either. I had a hard time picturing her in my mind.
The evening I arrived in New York, I went to the theater and sat at the back, waiting for her to appear. But she didn’t and it finally dawned on me that a pregnant woman, seven months gone, would hardly appear on that stage. What a fool I am, I remember saying to myself.
I was gripped by a sudden despair, the suspicion that I had lost her forever. I hadn’t had any contact with her fiancé while I was in Iceland, as our dealings had tailed off since the war ended and Europe opened up again. Stefan had taken care of the correspondence with him, put in orders and sorted out payments. I avoided doing so. But now I had no choice but to let him know I was back.
“Are you in town?” he exclaimed. “Where are you staying? At the Waldorf? Always first class. I’ll meet you there for breakfast tomorrow morning.”
Had his voice changed? Was there an edge to it that hadn’t been there before, or were my suspicions nothing but the product of an overactive imagination? He smiled broadly and took my hand in his firm grasp.
“Good to see you. I wasn’t expecting you. Hardly get an order from you these days.”
A different tone, more careless—no longer the obliging salesman. I fumbled for words, spent too long explaining how much more expensive it was to import goods to Iceland from the States than from Europe, and was about to start quoting figures to support my excuses when he interrupted.
“I’m joking!” he said. “I can’t believe you’d take me seriously. Is everything all right?”
I relaxed. Yet I still wasn’t sure where we stood. Could it be that she had told him about us? He didn’t mention her, not a word. Could she have gone back to Sweden? I asked myself again.
“What brings you here, if I may ask? You turn up out of the blue with no warning. You haven’t started doing business with someone else?”
I had prepared an explanation for my arrival, but somehow I found it difficult to put it into words. It had been on short notice, I said. The commercial attaché had asked me to come and attend a series of meetings over the next few weeks, a cooperative agreement with the government in Washington, I said, a gesture of friendship between our two nations . . . I meant to use the opportunity to look around for new business . . . cars . . . electrical goods . . . “You should be able to help me out—naturally it wouldn’t cross my mind to go to anyone else.”
“Good,” he said. “Good. I’d begun to worry.”
He smiled and raised his coffee cup as if to drink a toast.
“Business is booming,” he said. “I’m sure you can feel it. Everybody is optimistic after the war. Everybody wants to get rich yesterday. And I’m no exception, my friend. Don’t pretend to be!”
He burst out laughing. I’d never seen him happier, he must have been making a lot of money. You could always tell with Jones. He was not a complicated man. Just as I was about to ask after his fiancée, the waiter came to our table and told him there was a phone call for him in reception.
“Excuse me a second. Always something.”
I discovered I was sweating under my jacket and buttoned it so he wouldn’t notice the wet patches on my blue shirt.
“Well, old chap,” he said when he returned, “I’m afraid I have to get going. It was good to see you. Let’s be in touch. I’m going to Chicago after the weekend, but let’s definitely have dinner when I get back.”
I stood up to say goodbye.
“It must be getting close to your wedding,” I commented as I took his hand.
The answer seemed a long time coming, but that was probably my imagination.
“August,” he said eventually. “Saturday August sixteenth. You’ll get an invitation.”
I was about to ask after Klara’s health when I realized he had said nothing about her being pregnant.
“I have to go. Let’s meet up when I get back from Chicago.”
“When are you off?”
“On Monday.”
38
I waited.
Waited for him to leave.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Sometimes loitering on the other side of the street, hoping for a glimpse of her, in the lee of a wall, on the opposite corner, but I never saw her, never saw either of them. Empty days, long nights, moonlight crawling on the rooftops like a white cat.
I watched him leave on Monday morning. He was wearing a light-yellow suit and a light-brown hat. I waited for five minutes after he had gone before I entered the building.
There was new wallpaper in the living room, but the furniture had not been touched. The window behind her was half-open. On the mahogany table between the windows stood an opal-gray vase containing some kind of yellow flowers that I didn’t recognize. The wallpaper was blue. The sun illuminated it for a moment, then retreated behind a cloud.
I moved one step towards her, then stopped, resting my knuckles on the polished tabletop.
“You’re not pregnant.”
She smiled.
“Was that why you came?”
“I got your letter. Have you forgotten what you wrote me?”
“I thought you were never coming back.”
Silence.
“I had an abortion.”
She turned away. I stood still.
“Klara,” I said at last. “You wrote me in February. You’d have been six months gone if I’d been the father.”
“I’d already got rid of it. I thought you were never coming back . . . I wanted . . . You can’t believe how much I wanted . . .”
I was about to leave. I was a second from walking out the door, taking the elevator down to the lobby, running into the street, a free man. But then she reached out her hand and touched me. My fingers first, tentatively, then my arm.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” she said.
I jumped. I fell. And the sun shone on the blue wallpaper above us as we made love on the cool floor.
39
You mustn’t think I don’t realize how ironic all this is. I’m disgusted by the servile nature that I seem never to shake off, this need to make everyone like me. My heart still misses a beat when he calls me. I hurry to him along the cool passages. “Did he sound as if he was in a bad mood?” I ask myself, quickening my steps, hoping I haven’t done anything to annoy him.
But I’ve always been like this. When I first took over the business, your father said to me: “Kristjan, you’re the one in charge. It’s as if you forget sometimes that you don’t have to ask anyone’s permission. You’re the boss. Don’t go around seeking other people’s approval. You’ll never get anything done that way.”
I never liked being the boss. Not for one minute. I don’t know why.
Mr. Hearst can be unreasonable at times. At sunset yesterday evening he went for a stroll around the paths near the house, took a book and sat down under a lantern on a bench with a view of the bay. Miss Davies was resting, she had gone to lie down that afternoon after getting hold of some alcohol. How she managed it is beyond me, but she seems to have become more cunning than ever. The sun was a red globe on the horizon, the trees casting a row of shadows like royal lifeguards
at attention on the terrace where he sat; he was silent, lost in thought, didn’t say a word to me on the way out. When I peeped cautiously through the window to see what he was up to, I noticed he had put down the book and the magnifying glass and was sitting absolutely still, gazing at the sunset until the lifeguards vanished and the twilight reached the bench where he was sitting.
When he came in again he called me on the internal phone system. I hadn’t noticed him return to the house.
“Someone’s broken off a rose from the bed in front of Casa del Monte,” he said.
“The dogs maybe?”
“You know it wasn’t the dogs.”
“It’ll grow back.”
“There are rules. I want you to find out who did it and fire them.”
You bully! I said to myself. You can be such a monster when you want to! And all for the sake of a single rose—which will fade away, one of a thousand roses in the gardens around the house. But I said: “I’ll do my best.”
“Without delay! I want you to find the culprit this evening!”
I knew it must have been somebody who didn’t know the Chief’s rules. I already had a pretty good idea who it was. For the past few days a new employee at one of his newspapers had been acting as a courier between Los Angeles and San Simeon, a cheerful young man whom I had noticed showing the cooks a photo of his girlfriend.
He had come up earlier that day, bringing papers and films, and was due to head back the following morning. I took him aside. He immediately confessed to having taken the rose earlier in the week, blithely unaware of the dreadful penalty for such a crime. I told him not to mention it to anyone and advised him to drive to Los Angeles that evening instead of waiting until the next day.
“I just wanted to give my girlfriend a rose when I got home,” he said, trembling. “Her name’s Rose. May I show you a picture of her?”
Walking Into the Night Page 11
