“My, what a coincidence.”
“But my wife and I separated when he was three, and she hasn’t allowed me to see him since then.”
“Oh…” she said. We fell silent for a moment and listened to the sound of the sea.
“We were on our way home from the zoo,” she continued. “It was terribly cold and we had been the only visitors. I remember exactly the sort of coat the boy was wearing, the pattern on his scarf. He asked me why the giraffe’s neck was so long. He said it was ‘absurd.’ How did a ten-year-old child know a word like ‘absurd’?”
“He must have been very intelligent,” I said.
“He was, and I was so proud of him. At any rate, the snow kept falling and we were hungry. It was getting hard to walk, and he started feeling dizzy. He never complained, he just kept walking, but I could tell from how he gripped my hand that he was afraid.”
She stared at her palm, perhaps trying to remember the feeling of the boy’s hand.
“The road was deserted, but then the headlights of a car came out of the darkness with no warning at all. It pulled to a stop right in front of us, as though the driver had been out in the storm looking for us. ‘Can I take you home?’ he said. He was terribly polite—much like you.”
“Did he really look like me?”
“Exactly. I realized it the moment we met. The way you wear your hair, your eyes, your chin … you’re identical.”
I sat perfectly still as she reached over and traced my profile with her fingertips. Her cool, slender hand lingered for a long time on my face.
That night I dreamed about parasites wriggling in the dolphins. With each breath, their long bodies quivered in unison—like the motion of the woman’s finger. Blood oozed from the lungs.
* * *
The weather forecast said it would be the hottest day of the summer so far, but the pool was chilly and refreshing. Some birds were flitting about on the terrace, drawn by breadcrumbs from the tables. Umbrellas would be opening on the beach before long.
I was doing leisurely laps in the pool, practicing the crawl stroke. A blue dolphin had been painted on the bottom, giving the illusion that the water itself was bright blue. The morning sun was blinding as it reflected off the glass.
I lost count of my laps after about four hundred meters. The dolphin watched me with big, round eyes, its tail flipping at a jaunty angle. A fine stream of bubbles rose from a chlorine tablet dissolving on the bottom.
I was just reaching the wall of the pool and preparing for my turn when I heard the sound of applause. I stopped at the edge.
“You’re very good. I thought you might go forever.” She was sitting on a deck chair under an umbrella. “Can you do other strokes?”
She wore the same skirt and blouse as the day before. The dog lay at her feet. A waiter with a tray of drinks passed between us. I did three laps of breaststroke and two of backstroke, and the applause grew louder.
“Marvelous!” she said. “Like an Olympic swimmer.”
No one was paying attention to us—not the children laughing and clinging to tubes in the pool, nor the woman in a bikini applying sunscreen, nor the man on the lounge chair reading the newspaper. Only the woman and her dog seemed impressed with my performance.
“And the butterfly?” she said. “Or is that outside your repertoire?”
“Not at all,” I said, and I did a lap of butterfly as well. The spray flew and the children took refuge in the far corner of the pool. The buzz of conversations around the pool came and went as I plunged in and out of the water. The chlorine tablet continued to shrink.
“Bravo!” shouted the woman, rising from her chair and clapping. The dog wagged its tail.
* * *
The hotel library was on the first floor of the annex building, facing west to a garden. The walls were lined with bookshelves and there were a few furnishings—a desk, a couch, and some rocking chairs. The books were all quite old: the collected works of various novelists, anthologies of poetry, thick tomes of botanical prints, picture books, a volume on American country cooking, a study of black magic in the thirteenth century, a dictionary of business English … Some of the bindings were beginning to fray and the spines were faded.
“Could you turn a little to the left?” I said.
“Does my hair look all right? I combed it before I came.” She sounded a bit anxious but also excited to be having her picture taken.
“You look fine,” I said, clicking the shutter. “Like a professional model.”
The library was empty. Not a single guest had wandered in to find a book. A breeze gently tugged at the curtains in the window. The sun streamed in through a skylight, illuminating the woman and the dog at her feet.
“Try to relax,” I told her. “Just pretend I’m not even here.”
As I took the picture, its caption appeared in my head: “While away an afternoon in the quiet of the hotel library.” I wondered how many books they had here—something to check later with the assistant manager.
“Would you mind putting down your package for a moment?” I asked. “The shot might look better without it.” She had insisted on keeping the bundle on her lap.
“No, I’m afraid I can’t,” she said, shaking her head.
“I’d be happy to hold it for you,” I said, and reached out for the package. But she turned her back and clutched it still tighter. The dog snapped to attention and barked for the first time since I’d met them.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, but the bark seemed to hang in the room for a long time.
“We’re nearly finished,” I said. “Just a few more. Are you getting tired?”
“Not at all,” she said, resuming her pose. When I looked in the viewfinder again, she seemed to have become even tinier.
* * *
“I wonder why there’s no one here?”
“I suppose it’s too quiet for most people.”
“But it’s such a lovely library…”
“Shall I order something to drink from the lounge?” I suggested.
“Why don’t we just sit a bit longer.”
Outside, sunlight filtered down through the trees in the garden. The dog had dropped off to sleep.
“It was warm in the car despite the snow,” she said, continuing her story as though she had paused only for a moment. “The seats were soft; music was playing on the radio. It was as if we had suddenly entered another world.”
“It must have been a very nice car,” I said.
“It was indeed, extremely comfortable. And as we rode, my son finally seemed to relax. He let go of my hand and began playing with the button lock on the door, wiping the steam from the window. In those days not everyone had a family car, so it must have seemed quite strange to him.”
“But what was he like—this man who looked like me?”
“I don’t really know,” she said, staring down at her lap as though the fact caused her considerable pain. “I asked his name, hoping to thank him later, but he didn’t tell me. I never learned where he lived or what he did or why he was passing by. The only thing I know for sure is that you and he are absolutely identical. Face, body—even your hands are the same as the ones I saw holding the steering wheel that night.” I looked at my hands resting on the film case.
When the wind changed direction, I could hear the faint sound of laughter from the pool, but the books around us formed a wall of silence.
“What is your son doing now?” I asked.
“I haven’t seen him since he was twelve,” she said, tugging at the knot on her bundle. The silk was soiled and fraying in places from being carried about so much. “He wasn’t really my son,” she added. “He was my husband’s child from a previous marriage. I’ve never had children of my own.”
The dog half-opened its eyes and scratched its neck. Then it settled down again and went back to sleep.
“He would be just about your age now,” the woman said.
“Then I seem to have all the parts in your story,” I said. “Both your savior and your son.”
“I suppose you could say that.” Her smile was warm but a bit sad.
My body felt heavy from the morning’s swim, and I thought I might drop off to sleep in the heat—like her dog—so I asked a question that had been bothering me for some time.
“What do you have in your bundle? It must be something very important.”
“A manuscript,” she said, gathering it up in her arms again.
“Well, don’t worry,” I told her. “I’m not going to touch it.”
“You can never be too careful,” she said.
“What sort of manuscript is it?”
“A novel. I’m a writer, and I couldn’t bear to have it stolen. That’s why I take it everywhere I go. You’re a writer,” she added. “You can understand how I feel.”
“Of course, though in my case losing a manuscript wouldn’t make much difference—no one cares what I write … So, did you come here to work on the book?”
“You could say that,” she said. A cicada started to cry in the garden and then fell silent. The sun had slowly made its way across the skylight, leaving the dog in shadow. “When I’m away from home, they sneak in and try to steal what I’ve been writing. I went out to the supermarket, and when I got back the lamp had been moved and the papers on my desk were askew. The next day I took the dog for a walk and my eraser was on the floor and some pages were missing. I could tell someone had been there. It was horrible. But it was no everyday burglar—he was after my manuscript.” She spoke more quickly, her fingers working frantically at the knot on her bundle. “And then that hunchback woman with the glasses published a novel exactly like the one I’d been writing. The same plot, same characters, even the same title. Isn’t that the most horrible thing you’ve ever heard?”
I nodded but said nothing.
“She pretended she’d written it herself and even had the nerve to give interviews. I read that she told them the book was the ‘result of destroying the world [she] had built in all her previous works’—or some such nonsense.”
She snorted and the tip of her tongue appeared between her teeth. It was shockingly red, like the tomatoes I’d eaten the day before.
“So that’s why I carry everything around with me now. You never know when they’ll try again. I’ve got eight hundred pages here; two hundred more and I’ll be done.”
She rubbed her cheek against the bundle.
“Do they have any of your books here?” I asked.
“They do,” she said, standing up and going to one of the shelves. “This is mine—one that managed to escape the burglar,” she said, handing it to me.
Afternoon at the Bakery
. The book was slender, and as tattered as her bundle.
* * *
I worked on my article in my room until 7:30, phoned my editor, and then went down to dinner: bouillabaisse, salad, and a beer. The evening was still, but there were ripples on the surface of the pool. People were eating out on the terrace.
I had chosen the seat facing away from the view of the ocean, expecting her to appear at some point. I had even moved the extra chairs so the dog would have room.
There were no tomatoes in the salad tonight. I ordered another beer and ate the last few mouthfuls of bouillabaisse. But there was still no sign of her.
Later, in my room, I read “Afternoon at the Bakery.” It was about a woman who goes to buy a birthday cake for her dead son. That was the whole story. I should have gone back to my article, but I read her novel through twice, finishing for the second time at 3:00 a.m. The prose was unremarkable, as were the plot and characters, but there was an icy current running under her words, and I found myself wanting to plunge into it again and again.
Inside the back cover was a short biography of the author—her date of birth, titles of her major works, and the fact that she had disappeared in 1997—and a picture of a woman I had never seen before. She wore glasses and had a hump on her back.
* * *
As I was getting ready for bed, I stopped to take a picture of my son out of my wallet. He was turning three when it was taken, just about to blow out the candles on his cake. He was holding a monster doll someone had given him. The corners of the picture were dog-eared, but I would never have a newer one.
“He’ll be eleven this year,” I said aloud. But there was no answer. The boy in the photograph was completely absorbed in his cake. I knew his age, but what good did that do me?
* * *
“Why don’t you start with the backstroke?”
She sat under a cloudless sky, waving from the deck chair. I was not particularly good at the backstroke, but I managed a hundred meters. “Marvelous!” she called. The dog watched, his head resting between his paws. “Now the breaststroke. Four hundred meters.”
“Four hundred?”
“I like watching you do the turns,” she said. Sunlight glinted off the bottom of the pool. Legs crisscrossed in front of me; a child’s inflatable ring drifted in the next lane. Fifty, seventy-five, one hundred … I kept track of the total at each turn.
“Four hundred!” I caught my breath for a moment, resting against the side of the pool.
“Wonderful!” she shouted, clapping on and on, the sound filtering down through the water. I took some pleasure in seeing how happy she was. “And for the finale, my favorite. The butterfly, if you please.”
When I was finished in the pool, I had to go to the aquarium to get the last of the material for my article. I even considered asking her to go with me. The aquarium was said to own a dugong—a creature much like a manatee—if it hadn’t died like the dolphins.
But when I completed the last lap of butterfly and pulled myself up on the side of the pool, she was no longer there. The deck chair was empty; the dog, too, had vanished.
* * *
The dugong was alive and well and, when I arrived, was eating some lettuce. Later, when I returned from the aquarium, I took a moment to organize the film I had shot and to pack my suitcase. I had to check out before noon, and the article was due to my editor the next day.
“She was an older lady, small, always carried a bundle about this big.” I held up my hands to show him, and the man behind the desk thought for a moment. “And she had a dog with her. A black Lab.”
“Oh, I know who you mean,” he said, nodding at last. “She checked out this morning.”