A watery sun shone through the grey vapors, the weather was clearing up quickly now. Silver stripes pulsed on the sea’s surface. In the distance, further than I had been able to see for days, a lonely white wave rose up; for a long time I had been hoping to see a whale, I longed for those great souls of the sea who spoke their mysterious sonar language under water.
At home I went up to my room and sat down at the desk. I couldn’t imagine a life beyond that moment. Every once in a while I was caught by an unexpected fit of retching, eruptions of slime and gall. I kept the wastebasket close at hand. I could have taken my diary and scratched out my feelings in letters of blood; instead I closed the curtains, lay down on the bed and fell asleep.
The next morning the sun had returned, the weather was blustery. Before my window, gulls fought their way into the wind. They hung above the edge of the cliff, great black-backed gulls, and continued to flap their wings stoically, even when being blown backwards.
I hurried out the door and stayed away all day. For some time, I don’t believe my mother even noticed that I was avoiding her. I slept a great deal. I slept my way through the shock. I looked up Eve LeSage on the Internet. There was plenty to be found. She had acted out her roles alongside Linda Lovelace and Sylvia Kristel, for a time she had been a cult figure. Lilith was viewed as artistic in its day. She had played in six films. Lilith was the very first, and it made her a star. I found photographs and interviews; websites where her memory was kept alive — she had suddenly left the sex industry behind, various rumors circulated on the web about the reason why.
One evening I was sitting with her at the table. We were eating jacket potatoes with crème fraiche, beans and chili sauce; I sculpted a landscape of snow and blood in my gouged potato. I could hear her chewing. Swallowing each bite. Her cutlery scraped across my nerves. This time, when she looked up, I didn’t lower my eyes.
‘Is it possible that something’s bothering you?’ she asked.
I shrugged.
‘Ludwig?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is something wrong?’
‘Something wrong. Does the name Eve LeSage mean anything to you?’
She raised the fork to her mouth and chewed slowly, cautiously. She nodded almost indiscernibly.
‘It had to happen sometime,’ she said.
Silence followed.
‘I didn’t know whether I should let you find out yourself,’ she said, ‘or whether I should tell you about it.’
So you just did nothing.
‘I was grateful for every day you didn’t know.’
I slid my potato to one side.
‘It’s so. . filthy. . I’ve never seen anything so filthy in my life.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ she said ‘. . for you. You’re the one I feel sorry for. For you, I wish it hadn’t. . that it could have gone differently. That I could have spared you this.’
‘Too late.’
‘Too late, that’s right. I tried to keep it from you. I’ve always dreaded this moment. Later, someday, I’ll tell you how. . how it went. If you want to know. There’s more to it than you see right now. Than you can see. My life, back then, it made sense. I don’t know how to say it. .’
‘Six films. Six.’
‘It wasn’t a crime, Ludwig.’
‘Prostitution is illegal.’
‘They were films. I’m not proud of it, not at all, but I’ve never regretted it terribly either. I can imagine. . for you it’s different, it doesn’t have anything to do with you. You weren’t even. .’
‘How could you?’
‘I’m not my body, Ludwig, it’s just a vehicle. . I didn’t hurt anyone, on the contrary. Except for you, now. But you weren’t even around then, you can blame me for it but you mustn’t hate me for it, sweetheart. Okay? You mustn’t hate me for it.’
I had no words left. Not one.
‘Ludwig, would you please not look at me that way? Your father used to look at me that way. So. . full of disgust.’
Two tears, the one beginning its descent before the other.
‘I don’t want you to look at me that way, do you understand?’
In the days that followed the subject came up a few times. She didn’t ask for understanding, she explained the circumstances under which it had seemed more or less normal to her to act in porno films. I noticed that knowing about the background to it watered down my rage. It reduced the distance between me and that gross blunder. In other words, life went on. It sought a balance between extremes, and kept on doing so until a certain degree of everydayness returned, a way to go on. It wrapped itself around the alien irritant like an amoeba around a bacteria.
At the club, they already knew about it. I was sure they talked about it when I wasn’t around. Sly jokes were made on occasion, but I learned to live with it. A well-known saying has it that football is a gentlemen’s game played by thugs, while rugby is a thug’s game played by gentlemen. Among footballers I would have suffered social damage, but at the Alburgh Rugby Football Club I was given consideration, and not condemned — something I have always credited to the degree of refinement that goes along with rugby.
On the field I became more reckless. The technically perfect tackle is one thing I never mastered, so I simply threw everything I had at my opponent, sometimes with surprising results. I played in the second row and was injured as often as I was not. One recovers quickly at that age. While making one of those insane tackles, I broke my collarbone. They said the boy I hit came from Sizewell, home to the nuclear power station whose dome we could see on the horizon on clear days, like a pale, setting sun. It felt like smacking into a bus. The boy could not have been older than seventeen, but he already had a bushy moustache. An injury bears the signature of the one who caused it — for the rest of my born days, I will never forget that boy from Sizewell.
The English have a useful expression: ‘adding insult to injury’.
A letter arrived at our house from the district council, signed by the local secretary, A. Brennan. In it we were summoned to leave 15 Flint Road before 21 October. If we left within the time allotted, the council would see to the razing of the house, the removal of the debris and the cleaning of the plot. If we did not comply, the damages — including the cleaning of the beach below — would be recouped from us. If asbestos had been used in the house, the damages could be even more considerable. The tone of the letter was bland, as though we were being asked to no longer put our rubbish out for collection on Tuesday, but on Wednesday. The date, 21 October, was repeated in the final paragraph; on that day, gas, water and electricity would be cut off.
We had landed in the danger zone, there was no denying it. All those years the abyss had been stalking us in a slow, creepy dream, now it was about to pounce.
The day the letter arrived, the outside eastern wall of the house was still four meters from the edge. It could take years, but it could also happen that same winter. My mother was at the table, the letter in front of her.
‘They don’t waste any time,’ she said.