‘Are you ok, Alice?’ Alex prods her arm with his long fingers. ‘By the way,’ he says, ‘I really like your blue dress.’ He asks her when she is returning to the UK. She tells him she is leaving later that evening. ‘Uh huh,’ he says. ‘Then tonight you will kiss yourself good night. And I will kiss myself good night.’ He tells her he’s going for a walk in the woods to stretch his legs before the drive back to Prague. The woods are just across the road from the pub. Alice asks if he minds if she joins him? She wants to see autumn leaves.
The sky has clouded by the time they cross the road to where the entrance to the woods begins. When they get there, Alice doesn’t want to walk with him after all. She has changed her mind. He says, ‘Well, anyway, I’m really happy to meet you.’ He waves his hands around a bit and suddenly grabs the ends of her blond hair with his fingertips. She wants to ask him where on the map his country is but it sounds insulting and ignorant and she doesn’t think she can ask a question like that. He lets go of her hair and he says, ‘I really like so much your blue dress and red tights. If I stop working in my stupid job, one day I will buy you a pair of shoes.’ And then he walks into the woods.
The season is turning and she wants to go home to England. A bird scrambles in the upper branches of a tree. She watches the bird and she thinks about Adrijana and Jasna swimming in the deep, cold lake. They have been hurt in ways she has not been hurt. They have left all the seasons in their country behind them.
When she looks at her watch she wonders if Alex might have got lost. Has something happened to him in the wood? She thinks something is about to happen. This is how she felt at the baggage reclaim. A feeling of dread in her stomach when she knew her bag had gone missing. Strange thoughts occur to her now as she waits for him. She wonders if there are people hiding in the woods because they have lost their country and their home and their children and their sister and cousin and she thinks Alex might have lost his brother and father because of something he said earlier. She thinks about the form she had to fill in at the airport and the official who looked bored when she listed all the things she had lost.
The material of her blue dress is rubbing against her skin as she paces up and down the road on the edge of the woods. A wind suddenly blows in and then she sees him.
He is walking towards her. There are small leaves in his hair as he stands too close and tells her his name is not Alex. Not exactly. It is Aleksandar. He tells her he saw a deer in the woods with small antlers and how he used to have an Italian coffee-making machine in his kitchen in his country which he liked a lot, the coffee machine he means, not the country, and he is sorry to have missed the Rolling Stones film last night in the park because then he would have been near her a little bit longer. Aleksandar squeezes his lips and lowers his eyes. He offers to charge up her mobile phone for her before she leaves for London. He folds his arms across his chest and leans back on his heels as if to get a better view of her and then he tells her it’s nice to watch her laughing at him while the wind blows her hair about.
Vienna
‘Before I forget,’ Magret’s voice is low and vague, ‘I want to test my new microwave.’
He nods, as if he is a secretary taking notes from an inscrutable Executive Director who wears purple lipstick to frighten the more timid of her staff. She rips the silver foil from a carton of langoustines and slides them into the microwave that still has the price taped to its side. He watches her bend her long neck to check the minutes and seconds and then fold her arms against the pearl-grey cashmere that hugs her small breasts. While she waits she tells him she has no idea why her husband has bought her a microwave.
When the timer pings she takes out the langoustines and places them in front of him in a delicate blue china bowl. He cracks the pink and grey shells with his fingers and then sucks the white flesh into his mouth, suddenly aware that her accent, which he can’t place, makes him think of wolves. He looks down at the frayed cuffs of his shirt sleeves and notices a small rash on the back of both his hands. Does she know he has brought his agitation and turbulence into the white walls of her apartment? The rash on his hands is the memory of saying goodbye to his small children when he left the family house, knowing he was never going to return.
Magret walks across the carpet towards a sleek black answering machine and presses the Play button. A man’s voice speaks to her. He suspects it is the authoritarian voice of her new Italian husband.
Ti penso sempre
Mi manchi
Cara mia, ti voglio bene
‘What does it mean?’ He understands that her husband has told her he loves her but wants her to tell him anyway.
‘It means now I am going to pull down the blinds and you and I are going to take off our clothes.’
For the first time all evening he feels frightened. He wraps his fingers around the pulse of his wrist and shuts his eyes. A boiler concealed somewhere in the building makes the sing-song sound of cicadas. Worst of all, a picture of his ex-wife slides into his head when he least wants it to. She is sitting with his daughter and baby son, threading glass beads onto a length of red string.
When he opens his eyes, Magret is naked. Her long limbs are warm, he discovers, moving his cold hand between her legs and leaving it there, letting her move his fingers, while the hidden boiler fills the room with its own peculiar sounds. He likes her disdain for small talk after sex, relieved she does not ask him to exchange small confidences, pleased not to have to tell her about his wife and children, temporary bedsit and unpacked suitcase.
But he doesn’t want to let go of her yet.
He asks her a question in the language of his father, a language he has almost forgotten how to speak.
‘I don’t know what you’re saying.’ She sits up and shakes down her hair.
‘It’s Russian for do you have children?’
‘I do not.’
Now he knows she does not have children. This is one of the few things he knows about her. He knows she does not need him. He knows she can cook langoustines to perfection in a brand new microwave. He knows she is married. That is all he knows.
She stands up and walks to a cupboard made from Swedish blond wood, aware that he is watching her take down a blue silk bath robe and loop it over her long, tanned arms.
She is middle Europe, he thinks. She is Vienna. She is Austria. She is a silver teaspoon. She is cream. She is schnapps. She is strudel dusted with white icing sugar. She is the sound of polite applause. She is a chandelier. She is a velvet curtain. She is made from the horn of deer found deep in the pine forests of middle Europe. She is spun from money. She smells of burnt sugar. She is snow. She is fur. She is leather. She is gold. She is someone else’s property. He holds out his arms, inviting her back to her own bed, inviting middle Europe to share her wealth, to let him steal some of her silver, to let him make footprints across her snow and drink her schnapps.
Magret ignores his invitation to return to his thin white arms.
‘My husband wants me to learn Italian. So he tests me on the seasons. I have to say in perfect Italian all the months, January, February, March, until I get to December and then he corrects my accent.’
‘But you speak Italian don’t you?’
He hides his hands under the sheet, hands that are livid and itching.