by Ian Mcewan
The thought came to Leonard, and perhaps it was a habit from all his time at the warehouse, that they should do nothing to betray their awareness of the presence. A pretended conversation was not possible. So Leonard stood in the dark in his underpants and began to hum through a constricted throat his favorite song while he tried to think, in his terror, what to do next.
Sixteen
Maria reached for her skirt and blouse. Her movement made the candle gutter, but it did not quite die. Leonard took his trousers from a chair. He had increased the tempo of his humming, transforming it into a cheerful tune of dotted rhythms. His only thought now was to be dressed. Once his trousers were on, he felt the bareness of his chest pricking in the dark. When his shirt was on, his feet were vulnerable. He found his shoes, but not his socks. While he was tying the laces he fell silent. They stood on either side of the bed, the engaged couple. The rustle of fabric and Leonard’s song had obscured the breathing. Now they heard it again. It was faint, but deep and steady. To Leonard it suggested some unflinching purpose. Maria’s body blocked the candle’s light and threw a giant shadow toward the door and wardrobe. She looked at him. Her eyes were sending him to the door.
He went quickly, and tried to tread quietly on the bare boards. It took four steps. The light switch was right against the wardrobe. It was impossible not to sense the presence, to feel on his fingers and his scalp the force field of a human presence. They were about to give themselves away, make it known that they knew. His knuckles brushed against the polished surface as he snatched at the light. Maria was behind him; he felt her hand on the small of his back. The explosion of light was surely more than sixty watts. He screwed his eyes up against the brightness. He had his hands up, ready. The wardrobe doors would be bursting open now. Now.
But there was nothing. The wardrobe had two doors. One opened onto a set of drawers and was firmly closed. The other door, the one that opened onto the coat space, a space big enough for a man to stand in, was slightly ajar. The catch was not engaged. It was a big brass ring that turned a worn spindle. Leonard put his hand out toward it. They could hear the breathing. It was not a mistake. They were not going to be laughing about this in two minutes. It was breathing, human breathing. He got his fingers and thumb on the ring and lifted it without making a sound. Still holding on, he shuffled backward. Whatever was going to happen, he wanted there to be space. The greater the distance, the more time he would have. These geometrical thoughts came in hard little packets, tightly bound. Time to do what? The question too was wrapped tight. He squeezed harder on the ring, and yanked the door open wide.
There was nothing. Only the blackness of a serge coat, and a smell, a miasma, sucked outward by the door’s movement, of alcohol and pickle. Then the face, the man, was right down by the floor in a sitting position, with his knees drawn up, asleep. The sleep of a drunk. It was beer and Korn and onions, or sauerkraut. The mouth hung open. Along the lower lip was a trail of whitish scum, interrupted in the center, at right angles, by a big black split of congealed blood. A cold sore, or a whack on the mouth from another drunk. They stepped back, out of the immediate path of the sweet stench.
Maria whispered, “How did he get in?” Then she answered herself. “He could have taken a spare key. When he came last time.”
They stared in at him. The immediate danger was subsiding. What was taking the place of fear was disgust, and a sense of violation, householderly outrage. It did not seem an improvement. This was not how Leonard had expected to confront his enemy. He had a chance to size him up. The head was small, the hair was thinning on top and was of the sandy, tobacco-stained kind, almost greenish at the roots, that Leonard had noticed frequently around Berlin. The nose was big and weak-looking. Along its sides were ruptured vessels under tight shiny skin. Only the hands gave an impression of strength—raw red, and bony and big at the knuckles and joints. The head was small, and so were the shoulders. It was hard to tell with him slumped down, but this was beginning to look like a runt, a bully and a runt. The threat he had represented, the way he had knocked Maria around, had magnified him. The Otto of Leonard’s thoughts had been a weathered Army tough, a survivor of a war Leonard had not been old enough to fight.
Maria pushed the wardrobe door shut. They turned out the bedroom light and went into the living room. They were too agitated to sit. Maria’s voice grated with a bitterness he had never heard before.
“He’s sitting on my dresses. He’s going to piss on them.”
This had not occurred to Leonard, but now she had spoken it appeared the most pressing problem. How were they to prevent this further violation? Lift him out, carry him to the toilet?
Leonard said, “How are we going to get rid of him? We could get the police.” He had a brief bright thought of two Polizisten carrying Otto out through the front door, and the rest of the evening resuming after a calming drink and a good laugh.
But Maria shook her head. “They know about him, they even buy him beers. They won’t come.” She was distracted. She muttered something else in German and turned away, changed her mind and turned back. She was going to speak, and thought better of it.
Leonard still held to the possibility of rescuing their celebration. It was simply a matter of getting rid of a drunk. “I could carry him out, drag him down the stairs, put him out in the street. I bet he wouldn’t even wake …”
Maria’s distraction was settling into anger. “What was he doing in my bedroom, in our bedroom?” she demanded, as though Leonard had put him there. “Why aren’t you thinking about that? Why is he hiding in the wardrobe? Go on, tell me what you think.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t care for now. I just want him out.”
“You don’t care! You don’t want to think about it.” She sat down suddenly on one of the kitchen chairs. She was by the heap of shoes piled up around the cobbler’s last. She snatched a pair and pulled them on.
It occurred to Leonard that they were about to have a row. It was their engagement night. It was not his fault and they were having a row. Or at least she was.
“It matters to me. I was married to this pig. It matters to me that when I am making love to you, this pig, this piece of human shit, is hiding in the cupboard. I know him. Do you understand that?”
“Maria—”
This time she raised her voice. “I know him.” She was trying to light a cigarette and making a mess of it.
Leonard wanted one too. He said soothingly, “Come on now, Maria …”
She got hers alight and inhaled. It did not do her any good, she was still close to shouting. “Don’t talk to me like this. I don’t want to be calmed down. And why are you so peaceful? Why aren’t you angry? There is a man spying on you in your own bedroom. You should be breaking the furniture. And what are you doing? Scratching your head and saying nicely we should get the police!”
It seemed to him that everything she was saying was correct. He had not known how to react, he had not even thought about it. He did not know enough. She was older than him, she had been married. This was how you were when you found someone hiding in your bedroom. At the same time it irritated him, what she was saying. She was accusing him of not being a man. He had hold of the cigarettes now. He took one out. She was still going on at him. Half of it was in German. She had the lighter in her fist and she was barely conscious of him taking it away from her.
“You’re the one who should be shouting at me,” she said. “It’s my husband, isn’t it? Aren’t you angry, just one little bit?”
This was too much. He had filled his lungs; now he expelled the smoke with a shout. “Shut up! For God’s sake, shut up for one minute!”
She was instantly quiet. They both were. They smoked their cigarettes. She remained in the chair. He went and stood as far away as was possible in the tiny room. Presently she looked at him and smiled an apology. He kept his face neutral. She had wanted him to be a little angry with her; well he would be, for a bit.
She spe
nt some time stubbing out her cigarette and at first did not look up from what she was doing when she spoke. “I’ll tell you why he’s in there. I’ll tell you what Otto wants. I wish I didn’t know, I hate knowing why. But, so …” When she began again, her tone was brighter. She had a theory. “When first you know Otto, he is kind. This was before the drinking began, seven years ago. At first he is kind. He does everything he can think of to please. This was when I married him. Then slowly you see that this kindness is possession. He’s possessive, he thinks all the time you are looking at other men, or they are looking at you. He is jealous, he starts hitting me, and making up stories, stupid stories about me and men, people he knows, or people in the street, it doesn’t matter. He always thinks there’s something. He thinks one half of Berlin has been to bed with me, and the other half is waiting. About this time the drinking gets worse. And finally, after all this time, I see it.”
She was reaching for another cigarette, but she shuddered and changed her mind. “This thing, me and another man, he wants this. It makes him angry, but he wants it. He wants to watch me with another man, or he wants to talk about it, or he wants me to talk about it. It excites him.”
Leonard said, “He’s … he’s a sort of pervert.” He had never actually said the word before. It was satisfying.
“Exactly so. He discovers about you, that’s when he hits me. Then he goes away and thinks about it, and can’t stop thinking about it. This is all his dreams come true, and this time it’s real. He thinks and he drinks, and all the time he has a key from somewhere. Then tonight he drinks even more than usual, comes up here and waits …”
Maria was beginning to cry. Leonard crossed the room and put his hand on her shoulder.
“He waits, but we are late and he falls asleep. Perhaps he was going to jump out while, when … it was happening and accuse me of something. He still thinks he owns me, he thinks I am going to feel guilty …”
She was crying too much to speak. She was fumbling in her skirt for a handkerchief. Leonard gave her his big white one from his trouser pocket. When she had blown her nose, she breathed deeply.
Leonard started to speak, but she spoke over him. “I hate him, and I hate knowing about him.”
Then he said what he had been going to say. “I’ll take a look.” He went into the bedroom and turned on the light. To open the wardrobe he had to close the bedroom door behind him. He stared at the voyeur. Otto’s position was unchanged. Maria called from next door. He opened the bedroom door an inch or so. “It’s all right,” he told her. “I’m just looking at him.”
He continued to stare. Maria had actually chosen this man as her husband. That was what it came down to. She might say she hated him, but she had chosen him. And she had also chosen Leonard. The same taste exercised. He and Otto had both appealed to her, they had that in common—aspects of personality, appearance, fate, something. Now he did feel angry with her. She had bound him by her choices to this man whom she was pretending to disown. She was making out it was all an accident, as if it really had nothing to do with her. But this voyeur was in their bedroom, in the wardrobe, asleep, drunk, about to piss on all the clothes because of the choices she had made. Yes, now he really was angry. Otto was her responsibility, her fault, he was hers. And she had the nerve to be angry with him, Leonard.
He turned out the bedroom light and went back into the living room. He felt like leaving. Maria was smoking. She smiled nervously.
“I’m sorry I shouted.”
He reached for the cigarettes. There were only three left. When he chucked the pack down, it slid to the floor, by the shoes.
She said, “Don’t be angry with me.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
She looked up, surprised. “You are angry. Come and sit down. Tell me why.”
“I don’t want to sit down.” He was enjoying his scene now. “Your marriage to Otto is still going on. In the bedroom. That’s why I’m angry. Either we talk about how we get rid of him, or I’m going back to my place and you two can carry on.”
“Carry on?” Her accent gave the familiar phrase a strange lilt. The menace she intended was not there. “What are you trying to say?”
It irritated him that she was coming back at him with anger, instead of allowing him his scene. He had let her have hers. “I’m saying that if you don’t want to help me get rid of him, then you can spend the evening with him. Talk over old times, finish the wine, whatever. But count me out.”
She put her hand to her beautiful high forehead and spoke across the room to her imagined witness. “I don’t believe this. He’s jealous.” Then to Leonard. “You too? Just like Otto? You want to go home now and leave me with this man? You want to be at home and think about Otto and me, and perhaps you’ll lie on the bed and think about us …”
He was genuinely horrified. He did not know she could talk like this, or that any woman could. “Don’t talk such bloody nonsense. Just now I was for dragging him out into the street and leaving him there. But you just want to sit here and give me a loving description of his character, and cry into my hankie.”
She balled the handkerchief up and threw it at his feet. “Take it. It stinks!”
He did not pick it up. They both went to speak, but she got there first. “You want to throw him in the street, why don’t you just do that? Do it! Why can’t you just act? Why do you have to stand around and wait for me to tell you what to do? You want to throw him out, you’re a man, throw him out!”
His manliness again. He strode across the room and grabbed her by the front of her blouse. A button came off. He put his face up close to hers and shouted, “Because he’s yours! You chose him, he was your husband, he got your key, he’s your responsibility.” His free hand was in a fist. She was frightened. She had dropped her cigarette into her lap. It was burning, but he didn’t care, he didn’t give a damn. He shouted again. “You want to sit by while I sort out the mess you’ve made of your past—”
She shouted back, right into his face. “That’s right! I’ve had men screaming at me, hitting me, trying to rape me. Now I want a man to look after me. I thought it was you. I thought you could do it. But no, you want to be jealous and scream and hit and rape like him and all the rest—”
Just then Maria burst into flames.
From where the cigarette had smoldered leaped a single finger of flame, which instantly crossed and wreathed itself around others springing from the folds of white fabric. These flames were multiplying outward and upward even before she had drawn her first breath to scream. They were blue and yellow, and quick. She scrambled to her feet, beating with her hands. Leonard reached for the wine bottle and the half-full glass that stood beside it. He emptied the glass over her lap and it made no difference. As she stood and began a second long scream he was trying to pour the wine from the bottle over her. But it would not come quick enough. There was a moment when her skirt was like a flamenco dancer’s, all oranges and reds, with in-woven blue, and to a crackling sound she was turning, thrashing, pirouetting as though she might rise up and out of it. This was a moment, a fraction of an instant before Leonard hooked both hands into the waistband and tore the skirt away. It all came in one piece, and blazed afresh on the floor. He stamped on it, glad of his shoes, and as the flames gave way to thick smoke he was able to turn and see her face.
It was relief he saw there, stunned relief, not physical pain. There was a lining, a stitched-in petticoat of satin or some natural material that had been slow to catch. It had protected her. It was under his feet now, browned but intact.
He could not stop what he was doing. He had to go on stamping as long as there were flames. The smoke was bluish-black and thick. He needed to open a window, and he wanted to put his arms around Maria, who was standing motionless, perhaps in shock, naked but for her blouse. He needed to fetch her dressing gown from the bathroom. He would do that first, when he was certain that the carpet would not catch fire. But when at last he was satisfied and ha
d stepped away, it was natural that he should turn and embrace her first. She was shivering, but he knew she was going to be all right. She was saying his name over and over. And he kept saying, “Oh God, Maria, oh my God.”
At last they pulled away a little, only a few inches, and looked at each other. She had stopped trembling. They kissed, then again, and then her eyes shifted from his and widened. He turned. Otto was leaning by the bedroom door. The remains of the smoldering skirt lay between them. Maria stepped behind Leonard. She said something quick in German which Leonard did not catch. Otto shook his head, more to clear his thoughts, it looked, than to deny what she had said. Then he asked for a cigarette, a familiar phrase that Leonard only just managed to understand. Whatever the improvements in Leonard’s German lately, it was going to be hard following the conversation of this once-married couple.
“Raus,” Maria said. Get out.
And Leonard said in English, “Clear off, before we call the police.”
Otto stepped over the skirt and came to the table. He was wearing an old British Army jacket. There was a V shape of darker material where a corporal’s stripe had been. He was sifting through the ashtray. He found the largest stub and lit it with Leonard’s lighter. Because he was still covering Maria, Leonard was unable to move. Otto took a drag as she stepped around them and made for the front door. It hardly seemed possible that he was about to step out of their evening. And it was not. He reached the bathroom and went inside. As soon as the door closed, Maria ran to the bedroom. Leonard filled a saucepan with water and poured it over the skirt. When it was drenched through, he lifted it into the wastepaper basket. From the bathroom came the sound of a terrible hawking and spitting, a thick and copious expectoration through the medium of an obscene shouting noise. Maria came back, fully dressed. She was about to speak when they heard a loud crash.
