Lea felt uncertain about Lucca when they were introduced. She had never before been with a blind person and was shy about her dark glasses and searching manner of turning her face in the direction of anyone speaking. She made an effort to seem natural and behave nicely, but it did not help that she was handicapped, this strange woman who had moved in with her father, even though they were not lovers. As if that wasn’t odd enough anyway. Conversation at the dinner table languished. Lea’s replies were only monosyllables, and Lucca withdrew into herself. Robert felt like an unsuccessful clown desperately rushing around the ring trying in vain to elicit a smile from the audience.
It helped when he fetched Lauritz the next day. The boy’s joy over the reunion made an impression on Lea and she began to relax with Lucca. Lea and Lauritz played blind man’s buff with her in the garden. Standing inside he wondered at her cynical ease as he heard them laugh and saw her reeling around after the children. She was touched, he could see, to sense how Lea treated the boy as if he were her little brother. She succeeded in winning Lea’s confidence, he didn’t know how, and when he saw them sitting on the lawn together, he did not disturb them.
It was one of the last warm days of August, and after lunch they went to the beach. Lea took Lucca’s hand and led her out to the other side of the reef where it was deep enough to swim. He stayed on the edge of the sea with Lauritz. While the boy tumbled around in the waves he watched Lucca, standing with her arms crossed, in water up to her waist. Lea kept encouraging her and finally she gave way and stretched out her arms, lifting her feet off the bottom. They swam slowly side by side towards the posts. Robert admired her courage. She laughed, at once nervous and released. He wasn’t sure he would have dared entrust himself to the water without sight.
28
The sky was visible now, but it probably would not get much brighter. An October day with low-lying clouds and sticky withered leaves on the damp asphalt. When Robert had dressed he went into the kitchen and switched on the coffee-maker. Lucca must have fallen asleep again, she liked to sleep late. He put out bread and cheese and went to wake her up. The door of Lea’s room was ajar. He opened it cautiously, without a sound. The grey daylight met the wall and shone on the glazed poster above the bed, blurring all but Michael Jackson’s small, arrogant face in a milky haze. Lucca’s hair was spread out on the pillow-case with its pattern of swallows and cheerful stylised clouds. Her eyelids were closed and her lips lightly parted, she was breathing peacefully.
She had put on a little weight while staying with him, her face was no longer as bony and drawn and still showed a touch of summer colour. It was a long time since he had seen her without her dark glasses. A long, white scar above her left eyebrow seemed to be the only trace left by the accident. Her serious expression reminded him of the photograph Andreas had taken of her at the pavement café in Paris, when she knew their relationship had ended. Her lips were parted in the same way, as if she had been surprised in the middle of a word, not by the photographer but by sleep.
The corners of her mouth curved. I’m not asleep, she said. I woke up when you came in. He protested. He had no shoes on and the door had opened without a sound. It wasn’t you, I heard, she said, it was the coffee-maker. Listen… Now he too could hear the faint snorting and gurgling sound. He went down the drive to fetch the newspaper from the letterbox. When he came in again he heard water splashing on the tiles in the bathroom. He had a cup of coffee and read the paper, but when he put it down he had forgotten what was in it.
She came into the kitchen and sat down opposite him. She had buttoned her blouse crookedly, but he did not remark on it. She let her hand roam over the table until she found the bread basket and the butter dish. She asked when they would be in Italy. Her damp towelled hair fell in front of the dark glasses. Tomorrow afternoon, he replied, and noticed how accurately she scraped up butter with her knife and spread it on the bread. Anyway, we should be in Milan by tomorrow afternoon, he went on. She searched with her hand again, found a slice of cheese, put it on the bread and brushed her hair away from one cheek before taking a bite. Milan, she murmured, chewing.
How about Lucca? she asked as he locked the front door. Maybe late the next morning, he said, carrying their luggage to the boot. Maybe late in the evening… He had suggested going to Lucca merely because it occurred to him and so as not just to suggest a trip into the blue. Perhaps that was why she had acquiesced to his suggestion without hesitation. When he hit on the idea he had thought she might find it easier to reflect on her future if she got away. At least she would not have to use so much energy on defending herself. But he too felt the urge to go, exhausted as he was with shielding her isolation. He explained to Andreas that she needed to get out of his reach before she could think of him without feeling under pressure. Had she said that? No, said Robert. It was something he had thought out for himself. Andreas agreed he was right.
Neither of them said anything when he started the car. He drove through the industrial district, past the hospital and further on to the viaduct with slip-roads down to the motorway’s north- and south-facing lanes. I never saw Lucca, she said finally. She said it in a matter-of-fact way. He replied that they didn’t need to go there if she didn’t want to. She let down her seat so she could lean back. No, she said, I need to know I have been there.
It began to rain again a few kilometres south. The rainwater whistled under the tyres and the red rear lights of the cars glistened on the wet asphalt. I’m not nervous, she said. He smiled. Then why did she say that? She pondered for a while. Because I ought to be, she replied. To drive that far, and to drive for so long with someone I hardly know, in a way. He turned into the fast lane. It’s strange, she said, to know such a lot about someone I have never seen. He replied that he had only told her so much about himself because she couldn’t see him. She nodded. That was why she had dared to talk about herself. Because she couldn’t see him. It precluded her from forming an impression of how he looked at her.
It had occurred to her a little while earlier, when he opened the door of Lea’s room to wake her up. When he stood looking at her because he thought she was asleep. Had she felt spied on? No, it wasn’t that. On the contrary, she had realised that it no longer affected her if she was looked at. Her face had become irrelevant, something separate from herself. That’s probably why I am not nervous, she laughed. Because of that and because you are not in love with me. If I thought you were I would never have told you my story, and if you were, you would certainly not have told me yours. She paused. Stories, she went on, stories give out too much light. You can’t hide from them. He smiled. She often made him smile, and each time it struck him that he was alone with his smile. You’re right, he said, in the end they always catch you up. Yes, she replied after a pause. They have no escape routes… even if my own story is about one long flight.
After she fell silent he sat for a long time thinking over what she had said. They had grown used to keeping silent in each other’s company, when one of them paused in the narrative. It no longer worried them, but there was something significant in the silence between them now, in the car. They were outside everything, sitting here among the other cars on the motorway, where the towns they passed were no more than white names on blue signboards. It was the right place to be, he thought, in a car on a motorway, for they had met the same way, as unknown to each other as the cars on the road, beyond all relationship. Perhaps she was right, perhaps they had no need to feel nervous. Gradually they had immersed themselves more deeply into each other’s life than one normally does, but at the same time he had felt as if they were conversing by satellite, across an enormous distance. They were close to each other and yet apart, and maybe they could only become so close because they were restricted to words alone.