“You can’t run away from guilt,” said the lover. “It must be atoned for.
“Atoning is not talking,” he continued. “Atoning is doing. Action.”
“But how, Doris?” Sandra asked inside. A sticky white snow was falling. The wind was cold, almost icy. And such a pain inside her, you could almost touch it.
They had walked past the clothing store and were standing outside the bookstore.
She turned toward him, on the great glitter scene, but now it was private, and fastened her eyes on him and said, “May I ask you something? Why are you telling me all of that ahead of time? If you tell the plot before then there isn’t any excitement left. Why should I read it then? Why should I?”
But he did not answer. He ignored her. And then they were inside the bookstore. Just there, when she and everything were at their worst, she had understood that she would not be able to carry out the play or the game or whatever it should be called, to the end.
She was in the process of stopping. And a few minutes later, by the shelf with miserable classics. In the extremely well-sorted bookstore, which happened to be the only one in the big city by the sea at this time, she stopped altogether.
In other words, it would be wrong to say she had grown tired of her role. In reality, it would have been most flattering to say so, for all parties. But the truth was, and it was what she had properly been reminded of on the street when he was walking and carrying on about the plot of that book, that she could not pull it off. She could not play the role until the end. She absolutely loved the role itself. My God, how easy it would have been to walk on the street and through life with her overage lover, play out the whole Lolita role, or what it was now called.
But that is not what she was. She was just a little girl. A small child in the world.
She could not. Her legs turned to jelly on the glitter scene.
Poor poor Sandra.
And in the bookstore, by the French classics, she was suddenly standing and stammering like a child.
“Go away! I don’t want to see you anymore!”
And it had not been the slightest bit erotic. Or any game. Just nasty, the awkwardness.
“Stop pursuing me! Stop harassing me!”
It was not a child acting, but a real one. A child with all her faults and shortcomings, with her egoism, her altruism, her lovability, her weakness, and her strength. Her confidence and her vulnerability.
A child whom no normal adult would ever dream of relating erotically to.
And he was no abnormal adult. It was not actually the child in her who had brought something in him to life.
He stood there in the crowd and understood everything. Pushed his way through the people toward the register, away from her. Paid for the book himself and left. Quickly, quickly, away from there. She was left standing by the French classics. And she cried.
A young girl’s tears. Big tears rolled silently down her cheeks.
He stopped working as a teacher at the French School. He wrote a letter to her in which he asked her for forgiveness.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
She wrote an essay that she thought about giving to him as a farewell present. It was never finished. It was about a game called the American Girl.
It was La fille américaine, in French.
But at the same time she wanted to forget all of it instantly. She obliterated it from her memory, everything—
But otherwise it could not be seen on her. Otherwise she carried on like before. Stayed at the French School where she took her final exams the following year.
It was exactly that letter, the sorry-sorry-sorry-sorry letter from her second lover, which she was standing and tearing into small, small pieces at the edge of the pool when the Islander and his young, new wife Kenny returned to the house in the darker part after weeks at sea and a hasty wedding in the Panama Canal.
Inget Herrman’s cigarette butts were still floating on the surface of the pool.
Tearing the paper to bits, after having made airplanes out of them.
And Kenny, Dad’s new wife, a few days later: pulled in cigarette butts and pieces of paper with the pool rake . . . In a shapeless clump of all sorts of crap. “What’s this? Love letters?”
And smiled her bright smile, not exactly innocent, but open, bright.
And then you could not say it like it was. “I wish her all the happiness in the world, she hasn’t had an easy time of it,” said Inget Herrman, Kenny’s sister.
The Islander had during the previous years sat in the rec room and been bored. And while he had been bored he had been thinking. And thinking. While he was thinking something started growing inside his head. It was a boat. Over time he began seeing it more clearly in his head. It was a sailboat. Little by little other details also appeared: length, width, height over the waterline, the like. A sea dog, truly.
And on the stern was its name. The boat was called, not surprisingly, Freedom.
Only then did the Islander understand that it was just a daydream. Freedom. Who would want a boat called Freedom? The Islander had enough humor left when it came to himself that he knew to laugh when everything became all too clear.
And the Islander had laughed. “Ho ho ho.” Laughed so that the ice clinked in the almost empty mixed drink glass that he stretched toward Inget Herrman or, when Inget was not there, toward his little daughter who finally grew up during these years. She had taken the glass and refilled it.
Handed him the glass again and taken the opportunity to turn down the volume on the stereo system; it sometimes happened that the Islander turned the volume up so loud during lonely moments that it crackled from inside the speakers. He had taken the glass and turned the music up again; he needed it to accompany his dreams. The dreams were, of course, despite the fact that they were for the time being only dreams, rather pleasant to find yourself in, and the music also served the purpose of acting as a solid wall against all the trespassing from the outside. From everything, enough, outside. From Inget Herrman, from everything with the girl, from everything!
Sometimes Sandra sat down there in the rec room with him, in the same extreme inactivity. Sipping at a glass, and she really had not had anything against the music but this happened to be the theme from Spartacus, a melody that in the Islander’s world was the equivalent of the signature tune of The Onedin Line, the only series he watched on television. It was about, surprise surprise, a family of shipowners and an unmarried captain who travels around on the seven seas.
And no, Sandra really had not had the energy to follow along on all of these developments and the music, it was really the b-o-t-t-o-m.
But the Islander had closed his eyes again. Of course. It was still there. The sailboat. “Interesting,” he thought, “fascinating.” And turned the music up like a wall around it.
During that time the girl had left, gone up the stairs, up to the first floor. Up to her room, to kill time, do her own things. A car had driven up on the drive. Inget Herrman had run up the steps and come in from the rain outside.
“I think I’m going to start sailing again,” the Islander had carefully said to Inget Herrman while she poured her first drink.
“Weren’t we just on the water?” Inget Herrman asked and had a hard time concealing her irritation, but had still done her best because this was sensitive territory, this she knew.
At sea. The Islander had not favored Inget Herrman with an answer, just muttered something barely audible. “You’re a lovely woman, Inget, but . . .” he had said to her once. It was just like that. She was a lovely woman, as wonderful as could be (the Islander had thought in a sudden moment of generosity), but she was not a suitable partner. Not for him anyway.
And so one day he had just been gone. Out on the seven seas again. And when he returned home he had his young, new girl-wife with him. The one who was Inget Herrman’s sister: Kenny, born de Wire.
They had met sometime over the summer. On the Aegean Sea. Kenny had had a position as
crew on one of the two sailboats that the Islander’s little business rented out to people who wanted to travel on private sailboats among the islands. The Islander himself was the captain on one of the boats. To begin with not on the one where Kenny was crew, but on the other.
It was in a harbor. The Islander saved Kenny from drowning. She fell in the sea next to the jetty where the boat she was working on was moored next to the boat the Islander was the captain on, and was seized with panic in the water. She could certainly swim, but not very well, and the Islander, realizing the severity of the situation, jumped in after her and got her up on his boat. This according to legend, as it was told when the newlywed couple came home to the house in the darker part of the woods. The legend was important, would be important, so that there would be something real between the Islander and Kenny.
Without any further ado they had gotten married a few weeks after the event. The Islander sent a message home about everything after the wedding was over, just before the pair returned to the house in the darker part of the woods.
“This is, uh, Kenny,” the Islander said, introducing “the young ladies,” or whatever they were called, to each other and adding, rather pricelessly, “You might know each other.”
“We’ve seen each other,” Kenny said brightly and untroubled. She was sunburned and had long, light hair and white clothes. You, Sandra determined, truly had a desire to be in her company.
It was the charisma that Kenny had always had. Also back then, ages ago, the summers while Doris was still alive and Sandra and she had hung around her sister Inget Herrman in the Women’s House while Kenny held court for the sea urchins in the Glass House on the Second Cape.
With Inget Herrman, who would continue to be a “good friend,” especially to Sandra, the Islander more or less swore he had not known they were siblings. “Not until it was too late. After all she’s . . . It went so quickly. Bam. And I was a captured man. Try and understand, Inget Herrman. You’re a lovely woman, Inget Herrman, but . . .”
That was almost the worst, thought Sandra, who was eavesdropping on the telephone line. You’re a lovely woman, Inget Herrman, but . . .
“I understand you,” Inget Herrman said in a definitely sober tone of voice. “Kenny is special. Kenny is a man’s woman. Take good care of her. She hasn’t had it easy.”
And added, after a well-considered and extremely sober pause:
“If I were a man I would definitely fall head over heels for her too. The only thing that surprises me,” she had ended with a less sober dyke laugh, in which all of her wounded pride finally appeared, “is what in the whole wide world does she see in you?”
And, by way of conclusion, she hissed:
“And now Sandra is going to hang up immediately!”
The first time Kenny came to the house in the darker part of the woods and carried out an inspection she said “pretty” and “special” about almost everything she saw around her and even though you knew she could not possibly mean it, it sounded like she meant it. She did not dwell fatefully on her words like Lorelei Lindberg had done when she had walked around and stated “interesting” and “fascinating,” did not wander restlessly from room to room with a wineglass and a burning cigarette, constantly searching for a place where she could settle in with her books and her papers, the material from her thesis that could benefit from being collected into a meaningful whole, like Inget Herrman.
Kenny was none of that. She was honest and untroubled. Which in and of itself could have depended on the fact that the house in the darker part meant nothing to her, it had nothing to do with her dreams and expectations as it had for Lorelei Lindberg (“I was going to show you what your dream looked like”), nor was it a place that she in some way needed to try and conquer from the Islander as it had been for Inget Herrman, which the Islander had always explained because he could not imagine living together with her in the house in the darker part of the woods. The Islander and Kenny were already married of course: that Kenny was going to live there, that it was also her territory now, that was a matter of course.
“Nice, pleasant,” Kenny said and it sounded in other words as if she thought so. Maybe she would continue to think so, in the same cool way. Maybe that was how the house should be treated because it was a very calm and in some ways harmonic time, the time that Kenny lived there with the Islander and Sandra Wärn.
After a while they would move to an apartment in the city by the sea anyway. Not give up the house in the darker part of the woods, but certainly leave it, for the winter—which would turn out to be for good, but for different reasons for all three of them. But that would also happen imperceptibly, without any fuss. It would, quite simply, happen. And would have nothing to do with the house in the darker part.
Moreover Kenny was not someone who had a habit of expressing discontent, she was not like that, quite simply. She was truly an agreeable person to be around, Sandra could state that over and over again. Just like her sister, the one Inget Herrman rejected by the Islander, had said.
“If it wasn’t Kenny. Then maybe I would . . . I don’t know. Claw his eyes out?” She had laughed as if the thought were so absurd, so ridiculous. “No. Never in my life. Kenny is worth all of it. She hasn’t had it easy.”
It was deserving and generous.
But. But what were you supposed to do with such a bright and uncomplicated person around you?
“I’m going to live here,” Kenny said the first time she came into the narrow hallway. “I hope I’m going to enjoy it here.”
“I’m not the decorating type,” she would also say, a bit apologetically, but not very, that was also not her style. She did not create problems where there were none, in that way she and the Islander were alike—time passed and it was the way it was in the house in the darker part of the woods, with the exception of the basement. “But I like plants. And that pool is horrible.”
The Islander looked at Sandra, suddenly exposed, in order to get some support. He was not interested in any revolutions.
Sandra looked away. Suddenly she refused to have any sympathy for him. Any at all. She was so tired of everything, so tired. HE was the one who had gotten them into this, he was the one who had brought Kenny to the house in the darker part of the woods.
• • •
“They buried her in the pool.”
Damn overaged sex addict. She stood there on the other side of the pool’s edge over the water where paper, cigarette butts, and other such disgusting items were floating around and thought about the Islander with Doris’s words inside her. Suddenly so invisibly upset (not angry, especially not at Kenny, it was not actually Kenny’s fault) that she forgot the hickeys on her own throat, forgot altogether to conceal herself.
“What a mud puddle.” Kenny laughed happily and turned to Sandra. “Do you grow water lilies?”
The Islander left the two of them alone. She did not know what she was going to say. She just continued to be embarrassed and blush and finally she had to leave rather abruptly because there really was nothing else to say. The Islander was taking a long time. On purpose of course. He was an expert at disappearing during precarious situations and he rationalized this in the style that the young women, of almost the same age, needed to work things out once and for all. From the beginning. But maybe Kenny had even suggested it to the Islander before they arrived at the house just in time to see Inget Herrman standing in the rain among her bags, waiting for a taxi that she had naturally ordered a long time ago but that, of course, was taking so long that the humiliation became complete for her and all three of them had to stand there in the rain and talk to each other.
She was a “man’s woman.”
Kenny swept past Sandra on the stairs and said softly to her so that the Islander would not hear:
“And what have you been up to? Kissing disease. Here. Take this.”
And she had taken off her scarf and held it out to Sandra who had not taken it but had taken the hint well.
&
nbsp; The band of dark hickeys on her throat. She had forgotten about it then. Even on the morning before the Islander and Kenny arrived the sight of the marks alone had evoked a sensual pull in her stomach.
Nymphomaniac.
And it did not exactly get any better because of it either. That she thought Kenny was okay. So damned okay.
“Thanks,” she replied. “For the reminder.”
“Don’t play with fire, Sandra,” Inget Herrman had said about the same marks on Sandra’s neck, the evening before, the last evening with Inget Herrman in the house in the darker part. “I ALSO mean to clarify it, that I would like to encourage you not to start acting like a psychopathological case study. You’re playing with things you don’t believe in, which aren’t you. But suddenly they are you.”
“Don’t get any of it,” Sandra replied nonchalantly.
Inget Herrman had impatiently thrown one of her countless half-smoked cigarettes into the pool and taken a deep gulp from her champagne glass and then tried to fix Sandra in a stare with a spine-chilling look. This, she had actually, despite the fact that she already had quite a bit to drink, partly succeeded in.
“Don’t forget that if you do something long enough then you become it. Your hickeys and bruises—small fetishes that evoke feeling in you. Something that is reminiscent of lust. You want to feel alive. Life. Certainly there are a lot of people who would be tickled at being able to have a closer look at your so-called double life. It’s something one would gladly like to write about. Read about. Preferably make a movie about. Without many drawn-out naked scenes out of that other life.”
The girl in the blouse with lace and the pleated skirt and briefcase who is completely naked underneath. “My God.” Inget Herrman sighed and lit a new cigarette. “You ARE a walking and standing dime-a-dozen sexual fantasy. You don’t need to pretend at that at all.”
“But the question is,” Inget Herrman had finally said, “if it has anything at all to do with that which burns. The question is if everything isn’t . . . the entire arrangement isn’t just a camouflage in order to conceal something else.”
The American Girl Page 40
