“How do you know the way?”
“From your letters, Mr. Robert. And the map.”
“You must have looked at an ordinance map, the lake isn’t on the regular road maps. Good thing too.” A note of doubt sounded in his voice: “From my letters? I don’t recall describing the way.”
“All these years, there were so many letters, Mr. Robert. You can’t remember everything. Me, I tried to learn something from each one of them. It just goes to show how carefully I read them. All the more because for a long time now I’ve wanted to come visit.”
“It’s true, I wrote endless letters.” He relaxed a little. “You didn’t always reply. You’d write back once to every two or three of my letters. And usually only a few lines. Or just a postcard, thanks, greetings, best wishes. I often used to think you weren’t interested. That it got on your nerves. Though after all …” I could tell he was upset. So I jumped in:
“The thing is, Mr. Robert, I hate writing letters. I’d much sooner call, or even just come, as you see.” I gave a laugh.
“You hate it?” He thought for a moment. “But it’s like talking with someone, confiding in them. Except on paper.”
“That’s exactly it — the paper.”
“What about the paper?”
“The letter’s on paper. All we’re doing is leaving unnecessary traces.”
“In that case why didn’t you let me know I should stop writing to you?”
“You were the only person who wrote to me from here, Mr. Robert.”
“How is that possible?”
“Let’s drop it.”
“We can drop it.” He didn’t say another word till we reached the lake.
But in his silence I could sense a growing mistrust. When we arrived, all he said was:
“Park the car over there.” Whereas he ought to have at least said, Here we are, take a look around. It’s like I said in my letters, just like I said. I didn’t need to make anything up.
He took our things from the trunk and with a jerk of the head as if to show where his cabin was, he said:
“Come on.”
He’d written so much about that cabin of his, yet he didn’t even suggest a tour.
“Let’s sit out on the deck awhile,” he said. “Should I put the parasol up or do you prefer it like this?” He carried out a little wicker table, two wicker armchairs, two cans of beer and a couple of glasses. “See the logo? I bought these glasses that evening, as a souvenir.”
“How about that,” I said.
“Are you hungry maybe?” he asked. “Fine, then let’s just have a drink. I’ll make something to eat later.”
Something was clearly bothering him. As we drank our beers he hardly said a word, he just mumbled some triviality or other every so often. As for me, I was overcome by a feeling of helplessness in the face of everything that was happening to me. I couldn’t think of anything worth saying. So we sat there sipping our beers, and the sun rose and rose, as if it meant to reach the top of the sky and then, instead of starting to drop toward the west, it was intending to keep on rising upwards till it disappeared in the distance, breaking the age-old laws. So that even the sun seemed to have changed from those earlier years when it would set every day beyond the hills that could be seen in the distance. Nothing here looked like itself anymore. The smell of sap did still come from the woods, but I somehow couldn’t even believe in the sap. Its scent seemed no more than a faint trace, not as bitter as it should be. Back then it would make your nose wrinkle up and your eyes water, especially when sap was collected from the mature trees. Except that those trees grew only before my eyes, because as I gazed at it all I was looking inside myself. But I wasn’t able to retrieve much from my memory. Not even the old course of the Rutka. Maybe because the new lake dominated everything — earth, sky, woods, memory. All the more so because it resounded, it made a din — it fairly shook from all the shouts and cries and squeals and laughter, as if it was showing me how it was able to change the world. Its shores seemed to push deep into the woods. Or perhaps the woods had retreated before it of their own accord, making room for the sunbathing bodies that kept spilling from the cabins and the incoming cars, or emerging from the water. The water in turn was strewn with boats, canoes, floating mattresses, and with heads, heads in colorful caps, that looked as if they were crawling unhurriedly across the surface in every direction, without rhyme or reason. They would disappear only to pop up again a few yards further on, or rise suddenly above the surface of the water as if they were trying to break loose of their bonds. There were multitudes of them. They reminded me of the water lilies, the ones called white lotuses, when they’d bloom in one of the broad bends of the Rutka. In the midst of all this I felt like a thorn able only to inflict pain, because I was evidently incapable of anything else. I decided to leave that same afternoon.
I was just about to let Mr. Robert know when he spoke first, breaking our silence.
“I think I told you in one of my letters that I’m planning to sell this place.”
I swear that in fact he’d never mentioned this. Why on earth had he invited me in that case? As a farewell to the cabin?
“Then I’m going to move. Away from here, away from the city, the whole nine yards. I don’t yet know when. I’m waiting to find a buyer. There is one guy, but he wants to pay in installments. And you know what that’s like. He’ll pay the first installment and the second, then after that he’ll start making excuses. With installments that’s just the way it is, there are always more important things, the payments can wait.”
“Maybe I could buy it?” I said jokingly. I immediately regretted the joke. The words had bypassed my will, my intentions — they’d come out by themselves. Especially that at that very moment I’d meant to say to him: I’m sorry, Mr. Robert, but I have to leave today, this afternoon. I’ve a long drive ahead of me and tomorrow I ought to be at work. I have commitments, you understand.
“You?” He laughed, I didn’t have the impression that he’d taken what I said as a joke. “You?” he repeated with a hint of mockery. “That’s a good one. You live in a different country, miles and miles away. And here you’d have your summer house. How would that look, you’d drop by for a day or two at the most?”
“Sometimes it’s good to visit another country even just for a day or two,” I said, blundering ahead as if to spite myself, to spite him for not having understood that it was a joke.
“And you’d visit often? I don’t think so. All those letters for so many years and I couldn’t get you here. Now you say you’d come often. I don’t think so. Exactly how often?”
“It would depend.”
“On what?”
“The circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“All kinds. There’s no predicting circumstances.”
“The thing is, a cabin like this can’t just sit there waiting for circumstances to be right for you. It needs looking after. Aside from the fact that something’s always in need of repair. Plus, crime is getting worse. Not a week goes by without a break-in somewhere. We tried forming a neighborhood watch, but then one person would come, another would forget, for the third person something would come up that night. Best of all would be to hire somebody to mind the place, but they’d have to live here.” Then after pondering for a moment, calmly now, as if finishing his thought: “And you could only come here maybe once a year …”