Where Love Begins (4 page)

Four

Next morning the bell rings shortly before ten, and it rings as if it were a certainty that Stella wouldn't come to the door. Casually, in passing. Much more briefly than yesterday or the day before yesterday. The ringing of someone who just wants to say, Here I am, I'm here, standing outside your door.

Stella sees him. She's sitting upstairs in her room at her desk, and she sees him. She's been sitting in her room at her desk by the window and waiting since returning home after taking Ava to kindergarten – the shift at Esther's begins in an hour and a half. She saw him coming. He was coming from the left. Not from the direction of Main Street, from the shopping centre, from the bus route from the new development; he's coming from the left, from her own neighbourhood. Appearing at the edge of her property, he walks at once both listlessly and purposefully along the fence, stops in front of the garden gate, turns and rings the bell, and almost simultaneously puts a hand into the inside pocket of the same old jacket and takes out something white, an envelope.

He lets the envelope drop into the mailbox attached to the fence and looks up towards Stella's room. Then he crosses the street, turns into Forest Lane, heads down towards Main Street and disappears.

*

For a while Stella sits at her desk, leaning back, hands folded in her lap. A flock of sparrows flies up out of the trees in the garden across the way, as if hurled into the air by a large hand. Downstairs in the kitchen the gas hot water heater switches on and off again. Four minutes, five. Then she stands up.

The air in the garden outside is wonderful. It smells of late spring, sweet woodruff and boxwood. Postponing it is out of the question. Stella opens the mailbox and the white envelope drops into her hand like something that can't be changed any more.

The envelope is of ordinary paper, precisely addressed. Stella's first and last name, house number, street and postal code properly provided in a curving, feminine handwriting, a postage stamp, as if the sender had intended to have the post office deliver the letter, only to change his mind at the last moment. The stamp is neutral, inconspicuous, the head of a queen on a green background. Stella turns the letter over. It seems there's nothing to hide; on the back are the sender's name, house number, street and postal code written in the same matter-of-fact hand:

Mister Pfister.

Mister Pfister is the sender of the letter, and he lives, as Stella now reads, on the same street as she does. Seven or eight houses farther on; they are neighbours. It makes no sense to take a letter to the post office if you can deliver it yourself. Mr Pfister simply drops a letter like this into the mailbox personally; that's no problem for him.

Stella doesn't know her neighbours. People around here are extremely reserved; they make no effort to get to know each other. A female university student lives in the house next door with changing subtenants. In the house next to her, an Asian family with half-grown children; in the house across the way, a retired teacher; that's as far as Stella has got. Mister Pfister's being a neighbour narrows the radius from one moment to the next. She thought he would simply vanish again. She didn't think that he was this close, had been all along, only a few houses farther on; that he lived here – just like her.

Stella sits down with the letter on the bench next to the front door. The outside thermometer says fourteen degrees centigrade, and the little olive tree ought to be watered; it stands just under the gutter and seldom gets any rain. A shiny blackbird comes hopping across the grass along the hedge. Stella crosses her legs, puts the letter down next to her on the bench.

Then she opens it. She tears it open. She picks it up and rips it open. The feeling she had only the day before yesterday – the quiet amazement, the memory of what it was like once to be tempted – is totally gone.

*

By evening the next day Jason is back. He puts Ava to bed while Stella cleans up in the kitchen; she can hear Ava jumping upstairs. Jason was away for a week. Ava is exuberant.

It's nice when Jason comes back. And in a certain way also nice when he goes away again.

Jason builds houses. Restaurants, hotels, workshops, apartment houses, pavilions, factories, bungalows. Sometimes Stella thinks that maybe he really wanted to do something else. She couldn't say why she thinks that; she can sense a certain disillusionment in the way Jason deals with his work, his reluctance to talk about it; she is glad that she doesn't have to sense this disillusionment every day. She herself is not disillusioned about his work. He was already doing this work when she put her hand in his on the airplane as it took off; the dirt on his hand wasn't from working as a sculptor but from laying tiles; and Stella claims that she knew that. Sometimes Jason draws a cat for Ava, a cottage with a smoking chimney, and also a big bee; sometimes he draws Ava with braids sitting at the kitchen table early in the morning in front of a bowl of porridge. Drawings that frighten and delight Ava; but Jason is hiding something, it's in the way he then takes the drawings away from Ava. Probably, Stella thinks, Jason feels that he missed out on something. He hides the drawings in the waste-paper bin, and she retrieves them from the waste-paper bin and saves them for Ava. Jason earns enough money with his work, money for this house, for Stella and Ava, and the work distracts him and tires him. Without his work he would feel worse. Jason is calm only when he is tired. Back then, on the airplane, he was. So tired that he fell asleep before the plane had flown through the clouds. Otherwise he might not even have got involved with Stella. None of all they had here would have come to be. None of it, not even the glass of water on the table, and certainly not Ava's little voice upstairs in the house.

*

Did I let go of your hand on the plane when I was sleeping?

No, you didn't let go of my hand. I could feel that you were asleep; you twitched in your sleep; you were dreaming. I could tell you were dreaming.

They keep asking each other. The same question, the same answer. As if to hold on to the beginning, to keep reaffirming it.

*

Stella puts Jason's clothes into the washing machine, his black work trousers, the blue overalls, the green shirts. Coins in the trouser pockets, a pencil, a pebble. Jason brought back a piece of wood for Ava with an ingrown pine cone; he brought her a booklet full of glittering decals. The piece of wood and the book are lying on the kitchen table, like proof of his return. Stella puts on her jacket, unfolds the second chair on the terrace, and turns off the light in the sunroom. This year the hornets simply moved from one corner of the shed to the other; when the light in the sunroom is turned on, they leave their nest, flying in the darkness across the lawn, bumping against the glass panes, and falling stunned onto the windowsill. Jason comes out on the terrace with two bottles of beer; he stops briefly and looks around as if to make sure where he actually is. Then he sits down next to Stella.

You look tired, he says. Ava says you should come upstairs again. To say goodnight and bring her something to drink.

In a little while, Stella says.

They sit next to each other looking out across the garden, to the wild meadow; skylarks swoop diagonally down into the grass, the nocturnal sky is lilac-coloured. Jason stretches and exhales. He opens the two beers with his lighter and says, Jesus. I have four days, maybe five; then I have to leave again. There's something I'm doing wrong, and someday we'll do something else, Stella; we can't stay here like this forever.

When Ava has to start school, Stella says. She says, By then at the latest, a year and a half to go still.

Jason says, A year and a half. Do you know how long that is? You've got to come and see me at the construction site next weekend; you have to plan to do that, and you should make a note of it on the weekly schedule before someone else wants to take that time off. The first storey is done. The roof isn't on yet; the stairway just reaches up into the sky. They've now decided on the materials to be used; they want the doors made of rusty metal. What do you think of that. Metal from barn doors; they want to see the traces of other people's work when they sit down evenings by the fireplace.

Stella would like to stay with the image of the metal from barn doors; it's a picture she could spend some time on, but she can't stand it any longer. She takes Mister Pfister's letter out of her jacket pocket; she wants to get it over with. She's got to get it over with. She thought about not telling Jason about Mister Pfister's letter. She thought about it pretty intensely. But she knows it's better to tell Jason how matters stand than to let him find out on his own. If Jason were to find out on his own it might lead to misunderstandings. To a fight.

And Mister Pfister is an unpredictable factor. Hard to say what might happen next.

Jason takes the letter, even that is a relief. He looks at Stella, takes the envelope from her hand, takes out the letter, awkwardly unfolds it and reads.

I wish you would look at me.
That you would look at me and listen to me. I also wish that we had always known each other; you're getting older, and we don't have much time left. You'll smile when you look at me; it can't be any other way. I'll show you what I see: the thrush, her spotted feathers, the park, pages of the book I'm reading.

Good lord, Jason says. What is this? He reads the letter all the way to the end, folds it up again, and puts it back into the envelope. He looks at the envelope, both sides; puts it on the table in front of him, then he leans back. The expression on his face is really quite inscrutable. He says, OK. And what's that supposed to mean?

Stella says, I have no idea. She thinks her voice sounds false, even though she's trying to tell the truth. She says, I have no idea; I don't know him. I've never seen him before. On Wednesday he stood outside the door for the first time and wanted – to talk to me.

He wanted what? Jason says; now he's looking at Stella.

To talk to me, Stella says irritably. I can only repeat what he said. He said he would like to talk to me, and I said I had no time to have a conversation.

He was standing outside our front door, Jason says. He says, Is that right?

He puts the bottle of beer down on the table without looking at it, and Stella realises that he can't bring himself to stop looking at her face, that he doesn't trust her. Jason thinks she would show her true face only the moment his eyes are turned elsewhere. She feels something electric between herself and him, something, surprisingly, from before, from their first months – fear and uncertainty, doubt about the feelings of the other, of one's own feelings. Jason looks at her as if maybe he didn't know her at all, as if he were discovering at precisely this moment, after five years and seven months, that Stella isn't the person he thought she was. He looks as if he wanted to get up and leave, and Stella suddenly remembers an evening five years ago, an evening in the hallway of the apartment where they were living at the time, when Jason, drunk, banged his head against the apartment door, over and over again, because he wanted to leave and couldn't leave. Her recollection of it is unexpected and it is frightening, and Stella leans forward and takes Jason's hand.

She says, No, he wasn't standing outside the front door. He was standing outside the garden gate, and I spoke to him through the intercom. She says, He came again on Thursday, and again yesterday. Yesterday he dropped this letter in the mailbox, and today I'm showing it to you.

Jason says, And you have no idea. You have no idea, but you're certain that you don't know him. Never saw him before.

I'm sure I don't know him. I've never seen him before.

Jason pulls his hand from hers. He says, Shit.

You can say that again, Stella says.

*

Later, the light of dawn wakes her up. It's five o'clock in the morning. Beside her Jason is asleep, lying on his back, his arms stretched out, relaxed. She wakes up because it's unusual for him to be there, lying next to her and reaching for her in his sleep. She lies awake next to Jason and thinks that Mister Pfister's sentences, his words, that for her don't really fit together – each word standing alone by itself is a foreign word and toneless – apply to her and Jason in a spooky way. She wishes that Jason would look at her. She wishes that he would listen to her. She wants to show him what she sees. She wishes she could always have known Jason, although she knows that if she had always known Jason, she would certainly not still be with him today. She has got older. Jason has got older. Ava is growing up.

*

Noiselessly Stella goes to Ava's room; she flips Ava's sleep-warmed blanket over. She goes into her room and stands by the window for a while; when Ava was a baby, she used to stand by this window too, in the evenings, with Ava in her arms, and at night, after nursing her, she would stand here by herself. The waxing moon is setting over the house across the street. No birdsong yet. Stella can hear Ava and Jason breathing.

Five

Jason stays four days. He takes Ava to kindergarten and picks her up from there.

*

Jason is here, isn't he, Paloma says as Stella comes into the office. She says it casually, pleasantly, not necessarily to embarrass Stella.

Yes, Jason is here, Stella says. He's – how would you say – onshore?

And Paloma smiles and prudently says nothing.

*

The days have turned unexpectedly warm, and the hedges and trees have suddenly burst into white bloom, hastily, as if belatedly. After work Stella rides home on her bike, sees Jason's car in the driveway and cycles past the house and farther on, along the edge of the forest until there are only fields on both sides of the road. Rabbits crouch in the ditches so motionless that Stella can look into their blank eyes. She cycles straight ahead until she comes to an invisible boundary; she couldn't say why she turns around there and cycles back, but at some point she turns around. She thinks, tomorrow I'll ride farther, but she doesn't ride any farther. On the second afternoon she goes to the movies and sees a film that takes place in San Francisco: American light, middle-aged women who, after running, support themselves on park benches to tie their trainers more tightly, who turn their possibly make-up-free faces to the camera with an expression that seems docile and idiotic to Stella, a stubborn faith in better times ahead. Stella used to like going to the movies alone in the afternoon, but ever since Ava came along, she can no longer forget about reality unless the cinema is totally dark. She sees the exit sign in the left-hand corner of the theatre glowing throughout the entire film; she has to go to the toilet and can't think of anything else. As she comes out of the cinema, the day outside is still bright. She pushes her bike through the pedestrian zone; she is hungry, thinks vaguely about not wanting to work as a nurse any more, taking a trip, having her hair cut; she thinks of nothing at all as she pushes her bike home through the pedestrian zone.

*

Paloma stops by in the evening. She brings tulips and ranunculus, a bottle of wine, and a game for Ava in which she can fish little cardboard fishes out of a golden box with a fishing rod. She brings films, banana gummies and candyfloss in a plastic container. Goodbye, till later. Ava forgets Stella, forgets Jason. She waves to them from the kitchen table, casually and without looking up. It's the golden box and the candyfloss, but it's also Paloma's way of speaking to Ava, looking at her for a long time, thoughtfully and candidly.

Take care, Paloma says to Stella and Jason. She stands by the open door, her arms crossed over her chest; then she disappears into the house.

*

Right or left, Jason says. Stella knows that Jason is really asking himself and that he would drive in exactly the opposite direction she would like anyway. Automatically. A reflex; she could think about what this reflex actually meant, but she has the feeling that she wouldn't arrive at any conclusion. She thinks, Right, and they drive in the car along the dark forest in the direction of Main Street. Let's turn left and drive along the lakeshore, Jason says. Let's see what we'll find.

There are impressive rain clouds above the tile roofs of the new development. Traffic is sluggish; Stella says, almost casually, Can you turn off the radio; she rolls down the window and sticks her hand out. They drive out of the city, along the shore of the lake, across the bridge to the other side and up into the hills. Jason parks at the observation platform, and they get out and walk down towards the valley; they share a beer on a bench with a view of the water. We're sitting next to each other the way we were on the airplane, Stella thinks, and she wonders about the silence between them that seems to be closed and taken for granted. Jason, in any case, is a taciturn man. But maybe the silence is cryptic, expectant; perhaps Jason is being watchful. Is Stella watchful?

On the other side of the lake, some late rockets soar up above the trees. Fountains of cool blue and silver sparks shoot up and spread out, opening up like flowers or stars. The explosions sound faint, and it is starting to rain. They continue to sit there until the rain starts to come down through the dense foliage of the May-time trees, then Jason gets to his feet, pulling Stella up from the bench. They walk back to the car; Stella's face is wet, and she is suddenly awake and exuberant, and happy. She turns to Jason and holds him tight, even though she knows that it will make him suspicious.

Get in, Jason says. Not fending her off, more likely embarrassed. Get in, let's drive a bit farther, and Stella regretfully pulls the car door shut.

She thinks, Well, so that's how it is then. Doesn't matter; it doesn't matter. That's how it is then.

How is Esther doing, Jason says. What's Walter doing; what has Dermot got to say; he starts the engine, turns the car around and rolls back down to the street. For Jason it's easiest to ask questions and talk while he's driving a car. Having a conversation with him while sitting across from each other at a table, perhaps eating, drinking, is almost impossible. While driving he can look at the street, he's busy, it's easier for him then; the street is a red thread that leads through the imponderable, seemingly mined territory of a conversation. Stella thinks she knows this, and it makes her both inattentive and relaxed. She gazes out the window, turns back to look at the lake; the surface of the water is choppy and metallic; a last rocket shoots up over the trees.

She says, I have to stop, Jason. I have to stop working for Paloma. I have to get away from Walter and Dermot. She says, Thanks for asking what Dermot says; because Julia doesn't say anything at all any more. Julia sits in a chair by the window twiddling her thumbs all day long.

Jason says nothing, and Stella is silent for a while, then she says, Maybe I'd like to sit at a cash register in the shopping centre. I'd like to sell coffee and croissants there in that little booth. For one season I'd like to pick strawberries. Train as a florist. Help out in a bookshop. Sit around in an office like Paloma. Maybe I'd like to be Paloma?

It occurs to Stella that it might be risky to talk to Jason about her ideas of another life, a different profession. What is he supposed to say? But he's laughing softly now and he says, Then just go ahead and do it. Not being Paloma, but everything else – why don't you simply do it.

Because it isn't simple, Stella says. At any rate, for me it's not simple. Nothing in this world seems to be simple to me, except maybe preparing supper for Ava or putting fresh sheets on the beds or washing the dishes properly.

Jason nods. He turns on the windscreen wipers; the road is a dark green ribbon being rolled out before them, silky, wide. The rain blurs the beechwoods; the trees seem to fall into one another. It's warm inside the car. Jason takes his right hand off the steering wheel to rub his head; putting his hand back on the steering wheel, letting it drop back on the steering wheel, he says, By the way, I walked by there.

Where did you walk by, Stella says; her stomach contracts, her heart suddenly pounds faster as if it had been waiting for this sentence, as if the sentence were a hideous cue.

Mister Pfister, Jason says. He pronounces the name in a funny way, something between hostile and revolted. I walked by Mister Pfister's house; I had a look at it.

And…, Stella says.

Were you ever there, Jason says.

No, Stella says truthfully; no, I never was.

She'd thought about going past Mister Pfister's house. Not in the days since Jason's been home, but the day before Jason came back, on Friday. She thought about it, and she didn't go by there; she didn't want to look at it after all. What was there actually to see, and what for.

She says firmly, I don't want to see it. I never go down the street in that direction, and I'm not going to do it now either.

Yes, Jason says, but he says it as if it weren't about Stella but about himself and this was something completely different. I know. But I went down there and looked at it; it's a totally normal house, exactly the same as ours. It doesn't look either occupied or unoccupied. Anyway, he seems to live there alone; it has only his name on the door, and he wasn't there. In case you were going to ask.

I would have wanted to ask that, Stella says. Of course I would have wanted to ask that. I would have asked you whether you'd seen him.

No, I didn't see him, Jason says. He looks into the rear-view mirror as if something were approaching very fast, but the road behind them is empty.

He says, I don't think he was there. For some reason I don't think he was home.

Did you walk by or stop in front of it.

I stopped in front of it.

For how long, Stella says; she can't help smiling.

Long enough, Jason says. Long enough in any case.

*

Back home, Paloma is sitting in Stella's easy chair by the window watching television. She's drawn her feet up onto the chair; she doesn't look out as the car drives up. Jason gets out and opens the gate. Stella stays in the car; she sees Paloma through the windscreen, framed by the picture window like a painting – Paloma's dependable figure in the flickering glow of the TV; she watches as Paloma casually takes a large swallow from her glass of water and puts the glass back on the table without taking her eyes away from what's happening on the TV. For one moment Stella has a tremendous and simple longing for Clara. What would Clara do? She would be sitting in the kitchen and would certainly be eating something, a ham sandwich with mustard and pickles probably; the radio station would have been turned from classical music to pop; she'd have lit candles; she'd probably be drunk, and Ava would still be awake. In spite of that it's a gift for Stella to have Paloma sitting in the armchair by the window. Taking Stella's place for a short, maybe an important time.

Gifts like this, Stella thinks, are something new in my life. Didn't exist before this. Or I didn't recognise them?

*

The next day Jason takes Ava to kindergarten, comes back, packs his own suitcase, and is ready to drive off. He stands next to Stella in the garden watching as, her hands in yellow plastic gloves, she pulls the wind grass out of the rose bed, pulls dandelions up by the roots, stinging nettle, wild oats. The sunshine is incredibly bright. Stella sees her shadow, Jason's shadow, and the distance between them.

She says, Did Ava cry. She can't look at Jason.

No, Jason says. She didn't cry. I think she'll cry this evening. Will you call me.

We'll call you, Stella says. She does get up after all and embraces Jason fiercely, exuberantly; then she lets him go.

What are you going to do about Mis-ter-pfis-ter, Jason says. He's standing there as if she hadn't embraced him.

What am I supposed to do about him. Stella has to squint because of the sun; she can't properly see Jason's face.

Do you want to hear my advice, Jason says, not waiting for an answer. You should stay out of it. You shouldn't react to it. I've read about this; reacting signifies contact; that's what it's about; that's what these people want. It's sick.

I'll stay out of it, Stella says. I'd stay out of it in any case. Where did you read this.

On the Internet, Jason says. On the goddamn, miserable Internet, where else.

*

Stella stands on the corner of Forest Lane and waves until the car with Jason in it has turned onto Main Street. She feels close to tears, and she doesn't know where they're coming from. Only later does she ask herself how she's supposed to stay out of something that she herself didn't cause; how is she supposed to control something that someone else is controlling. Jason's cigarettes are lying next to his coffee mug on the table in the kitchen. He's forgotten his jacket. He made the bed, leaving the bedroom window open. He read a report about a refugee camp in the newspaper; maybe he read the sentence,
Space changes; the relationship to places and spaces changes in times of war
before he got up from the kitchen table to drive to work, to drive off.