On A Day Like This (14 page)

The air was warm and stuffy. Andreas’s eyes had got used to the darkness, and he found his way around quite easily, though the window shutters were all closed. He stood in his former room, and looked around. The bed and desk were where they had been when they had been his, but the walls were covered with posters of footballers and pop stars who were unfamiliar to him. The room was tidy. Andreas remembered that they had always been made to tidy up before going on holiday. His mother had cleaned the whole house, as though she was afraid she might not come back, and leave dirt and untidiness behind.

Delphine stood next to Andreas.

“Come on,” she said. “This is wrong.”

“I grew up here,” he said. “This is my room.”

“It was your room, you mean,” said Delphine. “Now you’ve seen it. Can we go?”

“I don’t know my brother’s children very well,” said Andreas.

He had only met his niece and nephew on a couple of occasions. At their grandfather’s funeral they had been shy and awkward. And once, a few years ago, the whole family had visited him in Paris. He had booked a hotel for them, and taken them to museums and inexpensive restaurants. But he had mainly spoken to Walter and to Bettina. The children struck him as quiet and polite, but of no interest. They seemed bored when he explained or demonstrated something to them. They looked up at him briefly, and seemed not to hear what he was saying. In restaurants, they only picked dishes they were already familiar with, and they always seemed to be tired, or thirsty, or needing the lavatory. The idea that the family would live on in those individuals, that these were his descendants, his heirs, had always irritated Andreas. And now Maia was eighteen. He knew her age because she was born in the year he moved to Paris. Lukas was three or four years younger.

He should have been more engaged with the children, he thought. It was too late now. He was sure he meant no more to them than they did to him. Their peculiar uncle in Paris, whom their father always talked about with an undertone of anxiety in his voice. If he talked about him at all, that is. Andreas had never been close to his brother. Now he had the feeling of being very close to him, and at the same time, of losing him altogether. He was standing in an empty house.

“It’s all gone,” he said.

“Come on,” said Delphine again, but this time it sounded as though she wanted to comfort him. He followed her slowly down the stairs, and into the open.

It was late when they got back to the hotel. The door was locked, and they had to ring the bell. The night porter was a young man. Andreas asked him what his name was. It was a familiar name, one of his classmates at school had been called that. The young man said he had finished his military service in the spring, and was going to college in the fall. In the meantime he was filling in here. Andreas didn’t say anything about his own time as a night porter. It was another hotel, another village, another time.

The next morning they went to the swimming baths. Delphine swam half a mile, and then she leaped from the ten-foot diving board. There was something touching about the way she was showing off in front of Andreas. For the first time, he had a sense of her as younger than himself.

They lay on the river bank, reading. Andreas still felt cool from swimming, the sun that burned his back and legs didn’t seem to warm him; only his skin was scorching. For the first time in a while, he felt well. For lunch they bought hotdogs at a stand, and sat down at a wooden table in the shade of some trees.

“What now?” asked Delphine.

“We could go on a trip,” said Andreas. “We could go hiking in the mountains, or drive to Lake Constance or to the Rhine Falls.”

“But that’s not why you came here.”

Andreas was silent for a moment. Then he said he had come to the village in the hope of seeing someone.

“A woman?”

“An old girlfriend.”

Delphine groaned. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“Knew that you’d leave me stranded here, in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’m not leaving you stranded. It’s ancient history. I’ve seen her once in twenty years, and that was ten years ago.”

“When are you meeting her?”

“I don’t even know if she’s here at the moment. Maybe she’s on vacation as well.”

“You drive from Paris to Switzerland to meet her, and you don’t even know if she’s here?”

Andreas said he would phone Fabienne, he would be back in a moment. He went back to the changing area, and got out his mobile. He called information, and got the number. The idea that he could find himself talking to Fabienne in the next minute made him nervous. He walked rapidly to and fro a couple of times, to the end of the big meadow. He leaned against the wire-mesh fence, and stared out into the forest, which began here. It smelled of earth and mold. When Andreas punched in the number, he wasn’t sure that he’d remembered it correctly. Fabienne picked up, using Manuel’s family name. Andreas said his name, and there was silence for a moment.

“This is a surprise,” said Fabienne, but her voice didn’t sound surprised, and Andreas couldn’t say whether she was pleased, or whether his calling her was disagreeable to her. “How are you?”

“I’m here.”

“What, here in the village?”

“At the baths.”

He said he would like to meet her. Did she have time? She said Manuel had taken Dominik to the lake. They would be back around five. Why didn’t Andreas come to supper.

“I’m sure Manuel will be pleased.”

“I can’t make it this evening. Could I see you before that?”

Fabienne hesitated, then she said she was home all day.

“What about three?”

“All right.”

Andreas went back to Delphine and said he had arranged to meet Fabienne at three.

“I expect you don’t want me at this meeting of yours.”

“She’s married,” said Andreas. “But I don’t think it would be very interesting for you. You wouldn’t understand anything. And we’ll only be talking about old times, anyway.”

In the afternoon, more and more children had come into the baths. They played Frisbee and ball and ran around the meadow screeching.

“Shall we go?” said Delphine.

She said she would go and lie down in the hotel for a while. Andreas said if she liked they could go and eat fish together by the lake in the evening. He would book them a table. The restaurant was one they had often gone to for family celebrations.

The afternoon was muggy, and it looked as though a storm was on the way. Andreas walked through a part of the village with single-family homes that had been put up on the other side of the highway. Fabienne had had to tell him the way. When he was a child, it had all been fields and meadows.

The roads in the new subsection were named for wildflowers. Every house was built differently, but they all looked the same, with their white facades and red tiled roofs. Fabienne and Manuel’s house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. The garden was enclosed by a picket fence, and looked tidy and well cared for. On the lawn stood a plastic slide and a blue igloo tent.

Even before Andreas had rung the bell, the door opened and Fabienne came out. She was wearing white jeans and a white shirt, and she looked very lovely, fresh and relaxed. Andreas sensed the awkwardness that had always come over her in his presence.

“Our little castle,” Fabienne said smiling, and offered Andreas her hand. He took it and kissed her on both cheeks. She invited him in. Would he like a tour of the house? She showed him around from attic to basement and told him about the gas heating and the washing machine. The rooms were not especially distinctive, but it was all nicely done. Other than innumerable family photographs, there were no pictures on the walls. When Fabienne showed him Dominik’s room, he asked how old he was.

“He’s crazy about water,” said Fabienne. “We’ve got a camper by the lake. In the summer we go there every week, and sometimes on weekday evenings.”

“On Manuel’s parents’ land?”

“It’s in the nature reserve,” said Fabienne. “You’re not allowed to build there, but they allow the camper.”

“I’ve been there with him a couple of times,” said Andreas.

In the master bedroom there was a thin foam rubber mat on the floor. Fabienne explained she did exercises. Suddenly she bent down, and did a headstand, stayed on her head for a moment, and then jumped back on her feet. The blood had shot to her head.

From the living room, a sliding door opened on to the terrace. Outside was a white plastic table and chairs, in the shade of a parasol. The table was set.
Fabienne said she had baked a cake, and brewed some ice tea. The cake was still warm. Andreas said she needn’t have bothered. She told him to go out, and she would follow.

He sat down on the terrace. The traffic from the highway was only faintly audible, but someone was mowing the lawn on one of the neighboring plots. The smell of freshly cut grass wafted across. Fabienne came out with a tray that had on it an apple cake and a big glass jug of iced tea, with peppermint leaves and ice cubes floating in it. It all might have come out of a housekeeping magazine. She poured a couple of glasses, and sat down opposite Andreas. For a moment they looked at each other in silence. Fabienne smiled, then she looked at the garden, where a lawn sprinkler was moving back and forth.

“Nice you’re here,” she said. “How do you like my garden?”

She got up, and Andreas followed her over the lawn to a flowerbed, where she showed him some special flowers she’d planted recently. A little further back, she had a couple of plots for vegetables. She said her garden was her empire. Manuel had no interest in it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t big enough for everything she had in mind. They strolled back to the table and sat down, and
Fabienne asked what Andreas had been doing with himself all this time.

“What can I say?” he said. “If we’d last seen each other a week ago … But now, after so many years.”

He said he had worked, eaten, slept, and gone to the cinema. He shrugged. Nothing special.

“I get up early, make coffee, go to work. I lead a regular life. I’m content.”

Fabienne asked if he was married, had a family, or a girlfriend. He raised his hands, showed her his bare fingers. He said he had come here with a woman he had recently met, a trainee teacher at his school. But it wasn’t anything serious. She was far too young for him. In Paris he had a lover, Sylvie, who was married with three children. Fabienne said nothing. Perhaps she regretted her question. She looked out over the garden, and smiled again, as though she hadn’t heard what he had just said. Andreas said that was a nice thing about growing older, that you could take a more relaxed view of these things than when you were, say, twenty. Fabienne didn’t take up the subject, and began to talk about people in the village whom Andreas had once known. He had the feeling she was only talking to prevent a silence. She asked him if he remembered Manuel’s sister, Beatrice. “She’s divorced now. She has three children.”

“But she was so religious.”

“Not so much now,” said Fabienne.

Andreas said he had gone out with Beatrice for a while, but she was so repressed he had left her not much later.

Fabienne said Beatrice had declared one day that she no longer loved her husband. And she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with someone who didn’t matter to her. Andreas said that was brave of her. He wouldn’t have thought her capable of such a step.

“Everyone thought there was some other man involved. But she lives alone. She seems to be doing fine.”

Her brother-in-law often came to talk to Fabienne, but she didn’t know what to tell him. No one really knew.

“I don’t believe in everlasting love,” said Andreas.

For a while Fabienne didn’t say anything. She seemed to be thinking. Then she said she and Manuel had been through a couple of rough patches too. Twenty years was a long time. But somehow they had always managed to get back together again. Andreas couldn’t imagine strife with Fabienne, raised voices, arguments. He couldn’t imagine her depressed, sad, or aggressive.

“For a while, I was doing very badly,” she said. “That was ten years ago. I moved out, and went back to
my parents in France. Manuel was really sweet to me. He called every day and asked how I was doing, and said Dominik was missing me. I missed them too. After ten days I went back.”

“Why?”

Fabienne didn’t say anything. She looked at Andreas as though he ought to know, really. Then she got up and went into the garden again. Andreas followed her. The wind had dropped, and the sun was obscured by clouds. The lawn mower had stopped, and it was very quiet. The few sounds you could hear sounded very distinct, as if they were happening nearby, and in an enclosed room. Fabienne had kicked off her slippers, and was walking barefoot on the grass. Andreas saw that she was wearing ankle chains, which didn’t go with his idea of her. She turned off the lawn sprinkler and picked up a few garden tools that were left by the flowerbeds. Then she peered over to the edge of the forest, as though she was looking for something.

“Did you see the photos we have in the house?”

Andreas said he had noticed that they didn’t have any pictures, just family photos.

“Manuel is a keen amateur photographer,” said Fabienne. “He must have taken thousands of pictures. He photographs us all the time. Dominik. Dominik when he’s sick. Even when he’s asleep.”

He had a video camera now, she said. He filmed them all the time. Recently he had begun to copy all his video tapes onto DVDs. Tapes she had never seen before. An uncertain smile. She said sometimes Manuel struck her as very strange, even though she’d known him for such a long time. The uncertain smile again.

“I’ve never lived with a woman,” said Andreas. “I’ve no idea what that’s like.”

They went back inside the house. Fabienne put away the garden tools, and asked if Andreas wouldn’t have a piece of cake after all. He shook his head, and she seemed to be relieved. She carried the dirty glasses into the kitchen and rinsed them under the tap. Andreas was reminded of detective movies, where the criminals removed all trace of themselves, and ended up forgetting something, like a cigarette butt or a handkerchief.