Tench

by Inge Schilperoord

  Through the branches he could see the sky, which was still overcast. A suffocating layer of grey cloud. He stopped at the start of the path that led to the pond. The dog made a few low, growling noises, raised his nose in the air to sniff, then wanted to carry on. “Milk.” He gave a short, quiet whistle. “Here.” The dog obeyed and came shuffling back.

  He was too scared to keep going. Together with the dog he stood indecisively in the hot air that had gathered round them like thick smoke. It was still raining, but the drops were feeble, as if they too had been reluctant to fall, suddenly mistrustful. He pressed the toe of his boot against a pile of sand, but it was solid and unmoving. The rain was trickling down from his hair in little streams over his temples and cheeks, without cooling him the way he’d hoped.

  Slowly he turned left onto the last path, reached the clearing where it branched, and took the narrower track on the left that led east, down to the water. Soon he could make out the shape of the pond on his right.

  He paused. In the distance he could see mist over the water. Now a terrible fear was upon him. Faced with the stretch of open ground that separated him from the pond, it was like his legs had stopped working. Then he moved one foot and felt like he was angling forwards, as if he would topple over an edge if he took another step. It was like a strong, unearthly gravity pulling him down, then pushing him up away from the earth. He didn’t dare to look, not ahead, not back. He felt like lying down flat until it was over. Until it had blown over like a storm he could hear raging past, and only when the wind had died down would he stand up again, brush the pine needles off his jeans and look around. But nothing in his life ever passed over like that: they were just vain hopes. This too would not pass. He had to complete it. He had to go to her; he was almost certain she was at the pond. On the bank, whispering to a jam jar full of snails. He clung to that image. That was what it would be like, what it had to be like. He tried again to get his legs moving. He could feel the muscles of his face tensing up. Slowly he began to walk.

  As if from an enormous distance he saw himself walking towards the water, back bent, shoulders hunched, staring at the ground. The longer he watched, the smaller he got. As if the world had cut him loose and he was floating through a cold universe like a tiny little planet. He raised his head. His gaze searched in all directions, as if he might still find someone or something, anything that could give him an answer, a place where he could lie still. Above him he saw a beam of light trying to pick its hesitant way through the clouds. He looked at it carefully. For a moment the pencil of light seemed to get stronger, but it couldn’t break through the thick layers.

  His jaw started to quiver. The little muscles around his mouth tightened. He struggled to hold back the tears and scanned the surroundings. The air was still sickly warm. Light, feeble rain was dripping on his face, his body. He sped up.

  He walked round the east side of the pond. His mind was blank and overflowing at the same time and he walked as if there were two of him. As if part of him was leading the way, nervous, focused on the toes of his boots, while the other part hurried along behind, trying to see past him.

  He couldn’t see her anywhere. He walked purposefully; he knew where she would have got into the water. There was only one spot where the reeds were thin enough. That was where he was headed. And in the same instant he heard a sound of something breaking, a branch, and spun around to see if he was being watched. It was nothing. He turned back. His eyes began to scan the bank, casually at first, then faster, further into the water. First he didn’t see anything, he didn’t want to see anything, he let his eyes be guided by a tension he felt high in his throat, but then he forced himself to look more closely.

  He approached cautiously and stepped into the middle of the slowly growing patch of light the sun had cast down through the clouds. Legs apart, rocking on the balls of his feet. He moved a little closer and then he saw it.

  The girl was floating in the middle of the pond with her face in the water. Hair fanned out like seaweed, arms weightless, stretched out on both sides of her body. She was wearing her towelling shorts, her wellies and the top with the flower. It seemed like such a long time since he’d seen her in that top. A different life, a different person. Or at least he thought he was a different person then.

  He stayed standing where he was, arms dangling awkwardly by his sides, his hands trembling. It was impossible to believe that it was really her. The girl. He couldn’t say her name. As if that would somehow make it real.

  Each time he thought of her name, it fell apart in his head. The letters and sounds detached from each other; the glue that held them together dissolved before he’d formed the word. Now you have to do something, he told himself. This is your fault.

  He took a couple more steps in her direction. From this distance she looked so small, much smaller than she really was. He felt dizzy and knelt down, but even on his hands and knees he kept feeling like he could topple forward at any moment. He wanted to lie down. Stretched out. Sinking into the earth like it was a grave. But he couldn’t leave her floating there like that. He had to save her, save what was left to save. He closed his eyes and shook his head hard, but everything in him was numb and solidified. Everything except the part inside his head that had him getting her out of the water and laying her down next to him. That was the only thing he could do for her.

  “Here,” he told the dog, who scratched his coat with his hind leg and didn’t react. “Here!” His voice sounded as thin as a gossamer thread that could be blown away by the slightest hint of a breeze.

  When Jonathan started to walk, Milk began to follow him with his slow lope. Together they walked a distance into the pond. Then Milk stopped and Jonathan walked on. The water washed over the top of his rubber boots. He felt the suction of the muddy bottom of the pond. Now and then he sank into a hole. But it only got deeper slowly.

  After a while he could no longer see his boots, and the legs of his jeans were saturated. When it had risen to halfway up his chest and he had almost reached her, he thought in a flash that he could keep going. He screwed up his eyes. Keep walking, he thought, until the water comes pouring into your mouth and lungs. Until everything’s over. But he wasn’t going to let himself off like that, he hadn’t earned it. Death would be too easy. He had to suffer, facing up to what he’d caused, and so he looked at the floating body, not less than four metres away, and thought of all the things he’d wanted to do to her. All his rage, the aroused fury he’d felt in his body, was gone. There was just a deep silence and a powerful but gentle longing to look after her.

  He reached out cautiously, gripped her by the shoulders, pushed his hands firmly under her armpits and, shuddering, turned her body towards him. With one arm wrapped around her back and chest and the other supporting her chin, he lifted her face a little. A few tufts of hair were stuck to her forehead. Her mouth was open. Strangely, the expression on her face was no different from what he was used to seeing. It was just her eyes that he didn’t dare look at. With his face averted, he used the thumb of his right hand to slide the lids down over the two eyeballs in which he, looking from the corner of his eyes, couldn’t even see an edge of pupil. He brushed some hair away from her face and began pulling her through the water to the side. She was heavier than he’d expected. He started panting.

  After reaching the reeds he took a step up the bank, dug his heels into the mud, slipped for a moment, recovered, gripped her with his arms around her back and pulled her up onto his shoulder. Again he was struck by how heavy she was. A few steps away from the water, he wobbled and fell face down and the girl landed on top of him. He lay there like that for a moment, the dead weight of her body on his, which was gasping heavily. If he could, he thought, he would stay lying there with her for ever.

  But finally he pushed up with his back and the girl rolled off, falling on the sand with a thud. Now he lay down next to her, his breathing calmer. For a long time, a time he could never have measured, a time nobody could have
measured, he stayed there stretched out next to the girl’s unmoving body. Close enough to touch her with an outstretched hand, if he had dared.

  I’m lying here with you, he thought. You’re with me. That’s all that counts. All he wanted now was to have her with him. “I did look after her well,” he whispered with a choked voice, rolling onto his side. He leant on one elbow and looked down on her. Through his tears he saw her still, unscathed face, and let his gaze drift over it. She looked angelic, not puffed up at all, more beautiful than ever. “There you are,” he heard himself say. He could only look at her. Carefully, without touching her skin, his finger brushed her hair to one side. Just stay lying here a little longer, he thought. Don’t think. He knew he had to go. But in a strange, twisted way, he could finally breathe.

  The dog was sitting right next to the girl’s head and pressed his nose against her chin. A quiet, high-pitched squeak escaped his nostrils. It had stopped raining. There was mist hanging over the water of the pond.

  “Here, boy.” He took Milk by the scruff of his neck and pulled him over against his own body, gently scratching his head for a moment. Then he stood up, walked around the girl and sat down on the other side of her. He wanted to be with her so much, now it was still possible. Looking down at her hesitantly, he gently explored her face with his fingertips. He felt the loose hairband in her wet hair. He brushed her cheek lightly with his knuckles. He held an ear lobe between his fingers like a thin, flat pebble. Still inquisitive, the dog came over again to investigate the lines of her face with his quivering snout. Jonathan stayed calm and circumspect, but took him by the scruff of the neck again, hushing him and pulling his head gently towards him.

  For a moment it was like nothing had happened, he thought, she was still here. But her mouth was drooping open to reveal a thick, fleshy tongue. He gently pushed her jaws closer together. The tooth with the chipped corner seemed smaller and so did her nose. The light shining down from behind the clouds struck the side of her face, lighting the corner of her jaw and her sweet, sharp chin.

  He studied her face for a long time. It was the first time he was able to do so undisturbed. There was something strange about it, something wrong, looking at her like this when she couldn’t open her eyes, but he couldn’t tear himself away.

  The very light, almost translucent shade of her skin made her face look even younger. All the things he hadn’t understood about her were gone, they no longer existed.

  And the things he didn’t understand about himself didn’t exist any more either. He had no strength left to think about things. Through his dejection, a deep calm had descended on him.

  He looked up. A very thin quivering ray of sunlight was still stabbing through the clouds. Still. He knew this feeling wouldn’t last, but now, for this moment, and at least as long as the light kept its distance and he was sitting here with her like this, he could live with who he was. The thick trees with their long, pale trunks stood around the pond like ranks of soldiers, keeping the rest of the world at bay.

  He wanted to see the copper-coloured fleck in her eye in the light that would catch it so beautifully now, but he didn’t dare to raise the eyelid he had just closed. Slowly, searchingly, he let his gaze slide over the rest of her body and kept finding places that caught his attention. In the pocket of her shorts he could still see the piece of chalk. It was partly dissolved and had left a round, lilac stain in the material. He saw the trashy ring on her index finger. And on the knuckle of one of her thumbs there was a wound he hadn’t noticed before. Had she just scraped it on something? The idea that she might have injured herself when she was alone was suddenly too much for him to bear and tears leapt into his eyes. He bowed his head and tensed his hands, curling his fingers until they’d formed fists. He’d managed to control his tears so far, but now he began to cry silently next to the motionless body.

  “You poor thing,” he whispered with his voice choked. “You poor thing.” And then, “Elke…”

  He had to go and struggled to his feet, forcing himself to leave her, starting to walk, but looking back once again. Suddenly it struck him that she must be cold. He rejected the thought, but still took a few hesitant steps back, and stopped again. It was crazy: of course she couldn’t feel the water soaking into her body from her saturated clothes, but it was something he had to do. And in a strange way he was also proud of what he was about to do, something he didn’t properly understand.

  With the tears still trickling down his face, more slowly now, and his shoulders shivering, he unzipped his raincoat, took it off, unbuttoned his shirt and peeled the vest under it from his body. He stood there for a moment like that, holding his clothes, heavy from all the water they’d soaked up.

  “What are you doing now, Jonathan?” he heard his lawyer’s voice in his head. This isn’t very smart, he thought. The moment the police find her with your clothes over her body, you’ll be a suspect. What would happen next, the thing he’d been so scared of all this time, seemed to no longer exist. A ship that had disappeared over the horizon so that he could only see the foam-flecked ripples in the water. This felt like the only possibility. This was the only thing he could do, the only thing that still linked him to her. The only thing that kept the bond whole.

  So he walked up to her, and carefully draped the vest and shirt over her body. Then he pulled his raincoat back on, the material cold against his skin, and began slowly, reluctantly, to walk away. But after four or five metres he again felt the urge to go back to her, and pictured himself doing just that, lying down next to her again and pressing his cheek against hers, his nose in her hair as if that might warm her up. He shook his head. You have to go. Even if he had nothing to go back to. The move to the new house was in three days. His mother would be alone again; she would have to move by herself. It was over. He’d never get out again.

  He turned to Milk. “Come on, boy.” The dog wagged his tail and ran on, stopping to wait for him at the start of the sandy path with his mouth hanging open.

  Jonathan took a few more steps away from her. The sun was now shining under the clouds and straight onto her, lighting up her face. It had something biblical, he thought. It reminded him of a picture of Mary he’d once found in the drawer of his mother’s bedside cabinet. A faded print with a pale-faced Mary, but with a halo around her head so bright it almost glowed and seemed to have burnt a circle in the card.

  He took a couple more steps and looked back again. With every step it became more difficult to keep her image close. He concentrated on his feet, on the path stretching ahead of him.

  It had stopped raining, but the muddy clods sticking to his boots still dragged his heels back down towards the earth. Just before taking the path that led to the village, he stopped to stand still one last time. He closed his eyes, rubbed his face, pressed his knuckles against his neck muscles, opened his eyes again and turned his head a few times from left to right, quietly cracking his neck. He brushed his eyes with his forearm, but they kept on filling, over and over.

  Without rain to hold them back, the birds were cautiously starting to chirp and whistle and Jonathan listened as they broke the silence with their distant, lonely notes. He pulled his hands back out of his pockets, slowly rubbed the knuckle of his left thumb with his right, and then, not even bothering to look around, walked the rest of the way back to what was still, for the moment, his home.

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