Landing

by Laia Fàbregas

  “I woke up in a hospital bed.”

  “I know, sweetie, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  I had kept my silence for over four years. I wanted to talk, I wanted to make her uncomfortable by telling her everything that had happened to me. Most importantly I wanted her to understand that my mother was still here, despite the fact that Anneke had taken her place.

  “I woke up in a hospital bed. There was a girl sitting next to my bed who wasn’t my mother.”

  “It was the girl who saw the accident. She just happened to be riding past on her bike. She called the ambulance and then she went to the hospital. She stayed in your room for a few hours. But when Jan and I arrived she had left.”

  I knew. I knew everything that had happened.

  “She was there when I woke up, and then I never saw her again.”

  “She must have been tired from riding her bike so far, poor girl. She had already done so much, she probably wanted to go home.” Anneke was searching for words, as if she could help me. But she couldn’t.“It was very important that she ride to Someren-Eind as fast as she could to raise the alarm. Thanks to her the ambulance arrived just in time to get you out of the car.”

  “The ambulance was late,” I said angrily.

  “You’re right. It was too late for your parents, but the girl couldn’t pedal any faster, and it arrived in time to save you.”

  “No, the ambulance was too late for me, too.”

  She furrowed her brow.

  “Before the ambulance arrived, there was a boy,” I explained. “He was an angel. He got me out of the car. When the ambulance arrived, the car was already a ball of flames.”

  That night I heard Anneke and Jan talking in their bedroom. Anneke was softly saying that I had been so traumatized by the accident that I had invented an angel.

  They didn’t know. They didn’t know that apart from the girl on the bike there was a boy who had saved me and held me until the ambulance arrived. I knew. And my body knew, though I couldn’t remember anything between when I fell asleep in the car and when I woke up in hospital. I had no memories, I just had the conviction that a real-life angel had come, and that my parents were dead.

  The next day I told Anneke that I wanted to go to Someren, that I wanted to find the angel and the girl. Anneke said that sounded good and we set a date to visit.

  We took one of the first trains of the day to Helmond and then we took a bus to Someren. On the way there I thought how one day long ago I had taken the same journey, there and back, with my parents on the way there, and on the way back in an ambulance that had taken me from Someren to the hospital in Helmond.

  The bus left the N226 before we passed the place. We got out in the center of Someren, in front of the town hall. I was happy because I had decided that was where they’d know the most about the residents of Someren. Anneke suggested that we have a cup of tea and some apple pie in a café first, to rest from the journey, and I agreed because I needed to use the toilet.

  While we were eating the apple pie Anneke tried to prepare me for disappointment.

  “You know, they might not be able to help you, sweetie, okay?”

  “That’s alright, Anneke.” I was a child and I was cruel. I liked calling her by her first name so that people would realize she wasn’t my real mother.

  “Have you considered the possibility that the girl on the bike wasn’t from around here?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t say anything else.

  We walked in silence to the town hall. There weren’t many people around, and it looked like they might be about to close, so I hurried to one of the counters.

  “Do you know anything about a serious car accident that happened here four years ago?” I asked resolutely.

  “A car accident? Unfortunately we have lots of car accidents every ye . . .” The woman paused for a moment, looked at Anneke, who was standing behind me, and looked back at me. Suddenly her face clouded over.“Are you talking about the accident on the highway between Someren and Someren -Eind? A couple with a little girl?”

  “Yes!” I said excitedly. “Do you know anything about the people who saved the girl?”

  “Uh, the ambulance crew?”

  “No,” I said sharply.“The boy who got there before the ambulance, and the girl who called the ambulance.”

  “Well, young lady, no, I didn’t know there was a boy.”

  Anneke butted into our conversation.

  “He was an angel, that boy, a real life angel,” she said slowly, emphasizing the word angel. I saw her wink at the woman.“The angel is the one who really saved her, not the ambulance crew.”

  “Oh, I see, an angel.”

  “What about the girl on the bike?” I asked, to get the town official’s attention back.

  “The girl . . . wasn’t from around here. I remember her saying how lucky it was that she happened to be riding past right then. But she wasn’t from around here. She witnessed the accident, rode to Someren-Eind as quickly as she could, asked someone to call an ambulance, and left again in a hurry.”

  “She was also at the hospital,” I said, sounding a little like a know-it-all.

  “I didn’t know that.” She knew a lot less than I had expected.

  “Thank you,” Anneke said to end the conversation. But the woman wasn’t quite ready to say good-bye.

  “Once in a while we still talk about that awful day here in town. I’m happy to know that the little girl is alright.” She moved her hand as if to caress my hair, but I didn’t let her.

  “I’m not that girl,” I said abruptly. “I’m doing some research for a school project. About angels.”

  “Oh, sorry, I thought it was you.” She winked at Anneke.

  “I need some information for my research,” I continued. “Could you give me a list of everyone who was between the ages of fourteen and fifteen in Someren in the year 1987?”

  “A list from the town census? The census only has the names of people who live here.”

  “The people who were on holiday in Someren at that time too.”

  “Those people aren’t in the town records. There’s no way of knowing who they were.”

  The woman thought for a moment and added, “Now that you mention it, that year there was a tourist campground on the south side of town. Maybe the girl was chaperoning a group of children . . .”

  Finally she was taking me seriously, I thought triumphantly.

  “But I’m sorry, I can’t give you a list,” she continued, in the same tone as before.“The names of people who live here are private information. I can only give a list like that to the police, if they request one, of course, and they need to have a really good reason for asking.”

  I didn’t believe her.

  “We understand,” Anneke said behind me. I turned and looked at her, infuriated. Why did she have to take sides with the woman, when she should be on mine? She should have tried to convince the woman how important the list was to me. “You know what?” Anneke said in an unfortunate, maternal tone of voice.

  “What?” I said angrily.

  “Let’s go to the church. Pastors always know lots of things about their congregations. Maybe he’ll be able to help us.”

  “That’s a very good idea,” the town official said. Now she was happy to see us leave.

  “No. Let’s go to the police,” I said emphatically.

  So we went to the police. Anneke walked along beside me, worried. At the police station, an officer told me in a babyish voice that they only had lists of bad people, not angels. I told him that I wasn’t a little girl, that he could speak to me like an adult, because I had been through a lot in my life.

  “My parents died when I was eight,” I said gravely. His expression changed. Now I had his attention.“I don’t want you to make me a list,
I want you ask the lady in the town hall to give me one. If you ask her, she’ll give it to you, but if I ask her, she won’t.”

  “Ah, now I see,” the officer said.

  He didn’t say he would. And he didn’t say he wouldn’t. He smiled at me and I quickly took a piece of paper and a pen from his desk and wrote down Anneke and Jan’s address.

  “When you get the list, you can send it to this address.”

  “But you know I can’t do that, right?” he insisted.

  “Just in case you can.”

  “Okay.” He took the piece of paper with the address and held it in his hand.

  “Thank you very much,” Anneke said. “It’s time to go, sweetie. This man will do everything he can but he might not be able to get a list for you, he has to catch thieves and things like that, you know?”

  “He doesn’t have to make the list himself, Anneke, he just has to request the list and post it. That’s not so hard. It won’t take much time at all.”

  “He’ll do what he can, okay? Now it’s time for us to go, we told Jan we’d be home soon . . .”

  “Don’t forget to ask for the names of the older kids from the tourists’ campground, they should be on the list, too,” I said to the officer. “And thank you very much, sir. Now we can go,” I said sharply to Anneke.

  On the train Anneke was silent. I was happy.

  Two months later a folded sheet of paper without an envelope came through the mail slot. I picked it up, opened it, and read the heading: One Hundred People. Beneath the heading was a list of one hundred names and surnames, in four columns of twenty-five.

  Him

  It was midday on a Friday when, walking back to work after lunch with Willemien, I passed something unusual that gave me the little push I needed. That day, near the Plaza del Comercio, I crossed paths with a couple from abroad who asked me, dictionary in hand, where to find the Dalí Museum. I noticed the woman was enjoying a chocolate bar from the Dutch supermarket Albert Heijn, and I told them the address in my best Dutch. They were so surprised that I had to give them the directions several times, because the first few times they were still processing the fact that I had spoken to them in their own language.

  That afternoon I wondered why a Dutch couple would come all the way to Spain just to see the Dalí Museum, when I, who had been in Figueres for four months, hadn’t even stopped to take a look at the façade of the building. I knew where the building was but I couldn’t even tell them where the main entrance lay.

  At the end of the workday, since I was still wondering, I decided to go to the museum and have a look at the building. When I got to the plaza where the entrance was I realized that visitors were still going in and that it was open for another hour. So I bought a ticket.

  I had no idea what I was getting myself into. And I felt similarly when I left, not having fully digested what I had seen. I returned home beneath a blackened sky, my perspective of the city around me altered by what I had seen in the museum. In the world of Dalí, things were not what they seemed: a sofa was a woman’s lips, but those lips were also a red sofa; balls floating against a sky-blue background were also a woman’s face. I thought of the kind of dreams in which things change shape. I thought of Willemien’s stone houses, and I knew I had to do whatever it took to get her to the museum as soon as possible. I knew it would make her feel better. With any luck she might even start painting again.

  When I got home I could see from Willemien’s expression that she expected an explanation for my delay. So I told her I had been inside the Dalí Museum, and that I wanted to do whatever I could to help her see it soon. I remember her smile, her excitement about this plan, but I also remember the sadness in her eyes when, out of the blue, she told me that she could never leave the house again. Her look of fear and powerlessness broke my heart. Those eyes gave me the incentive to make a permanent change the following Monday.

  I got to the shop before my boss and waited for him at the door. He was surprised to see me so early but he realized there was something important I wanted to discuss with him, because he opened the security screen, but he only raised it halfway, making it clear to any potential customers that we weren’t open yet. We bent down and entered the shop, took two chairs from the shop floor, and sat down amongst the televisions and VCRs.

  “What happened?” he asked, looking at me in a way he never had before.

  “Nothing happened. I just want to explain my situation to you.”

  “How’s your wife doing?”

  I had been working in the shop for months and I had never mentioned my wife, not once. Willemien had hardly left the house, and naïve as I am, I had convinced myself that no one knew she existed. The truth is that I didn’t want people to get to know Willemien as she was now, I wanted to wait for the old Willemien to return, to introduce strong, healthy Willemien to the world. I didn’t want anyone’s sympathy, for her or for me. But when my boss asked me if my wife was okay it dawned on me. I realized that in a town like Figueres, after living there for a few months, everyone knows what’s going on in your home. The kids would have talked about it at school, the woman at the market would have had her suspicions when I asked for some chicory, and the checkout girl at the supermarket would have realized it when I bought sanitary towels for Willemien.

  On the one hand I felt as if a huge secret had been suddenly exposed, but on the other I knew that being able to talk about it was for the best. So I told my boss what I had been thinking of telling him.

  “My wife is the same as usual, I think she’s gotten a little better since we arrived from Holland, but she still doesn’t want to go outside. We’ll have to start sometime, though she worries about going out when the streets are busy, not that she’s avoiding people. She needs to have contact with someone besides me and the children, she still hasn’t met anyone here, though she’s always been quite social.” I stopped talking for a moment, worked up my courage, and eventually said,“What I want to ask you is . . . I mean, what we need is . . . I’d like to take her to the Dalí Museum one day, but on a weekday, because there would be less visitors and we’d be more comfortable.”

  There it was, I’d said it. My hands were sweating, I was afraid some customer would poke his head under the security gate to see if we were open yet, I was afraid that my boss would say I couldn’t take a day off until August. I was afraid that if he turned down my request, I’d have to quit working for him. But I didn’t need to be afraid of anything.

  “A few days ago I was speaking with my wife,” he said. “Years ago my mother-in-law was living with us when she was ill. She never went out, but she had family and friends who would come and visit her in the afternoon sometimes. Time passed more pleasantly that way. I think there are people who don’t like to see anyone when they’re bedridden, but there are others who need to see their loved ones. What I mean is that my wife was asking whether your wife is having a hard time, being alone here without relatives and friends to visit her. No one knows what’s going on, but my wife was offering to visit your wife. I know that doesn’t have anything to do with your question, but for the past two weeks I’ve been wondering whether I should mention it to you or not. As far as taking a day off to go to the museum, anytime is fine.”

  I was speechless. I realized how difficult we can make things for ourselves when we don’t have the nerve to say what we’re thinking or what’s going on. We fill our lives with conjecture and supposition, which we base our actions on, and in the end they’re false assumptions.

  Our conversation that Monday morning changed many things. I felt that Willemien and I weren’t alone in what we were going through, because there was a whole community around us, which cared about us and wanted to see us triumph.

  That Thursday we went out to see if we could make it to the Dalí Museum. Our plan was just to go and look at the building, to have a seat on one of the benches if she needed to rest, and r
eturn home. In the morning I went to work but I finished earlier than usual so we could have an early lunch. We left the house at two in the afternoon. It was a quiet time of day, because the shops were shut and the neighbors were all at home eating.

  We walked out the door of our building into a gorgeous May afternoon. The streets smelled like spring and the blue sky was dotted with little clouds that looked like the eyes through which it was watching us.

  Willemien held my arm as we walked, carefully observing the façades of the houses, the stones in the pavement, and the clothes of the few people with whom we crossed paths. When we arrived at the museum plaza, instead of sitting down, she felt like she wanted to keep going. If the museum had been open right then, there’s no doubt we would have gone in. But it was fine to leave it for another day, too. That way we could make another plan, there was something to look forward to, to keep us going.

  In the afternoon I returned to work and told my boss about our small victory. And from that day forward there were more and more victories in our adventure. The following week we went to visit the museum, inside; we were there for two hours and we only saw half of it, because Willemien could spend ages staring at a painting or a sculpture. At one point during our visit I asked her if it made her feel like taking up painting again, but she said definitely not, that she needed to find a new way to express what was percolating in her mind. I realized that we’d had this conversation a few years earlier, and that she was still convinced she was finished with canvas. I tried to imagine what she would do instead of painting and shuddered when I remembered the artist who had emptied the bottle of lemonade into the North Sea. I hoped Willemien would find a less extravagant way of expressing her creativity. I continued to hope that she’d return to painting, but it was pointless. When Willemien put her mind to something, she didn’t change it lightly. And although I didn’t believe her at the time, it was true: she never touched her paintbrushes again.

  Maria, my boss’s wife, was waiting for us at the museum exit. She walked us home and offered to come over the following morning, to keep Willemien company.