Each knew more about the other than many other people did, but her blindness protected both of them. Particularly when the details grew so intimate that they would never have believed they would tell them to anyone. She was spared seeing how he reacted to her story, and he could speak freely about himself without the surveillance of a searching, sympathetic or reproachful glance. They felt free because they could speak without worrying or having any hopes about the impacts of their narratives. And yet they went on behaving like two people who have just got to know each other, considerate and cautious. She behaved modestly like the guest she was, modestly because she felt he didn’t want her to express her gratitude too fervently. And he restrained his way of helping her, afraid of exaggerating and making her feel indebted.
Their restraint was not lessened by knowing so much about each other. So far they had barely commented on their own story or the other’s, nor had they talked of how unusual it was, revealing so much to a stranger. They were content to listen and ask about specific matters. It was almost as if they had made a rule for it, albeit unspoken. He felt sure she thought about this too, sitting beside him, leaning back against the head-rest. That she had just broken the rule which in the past months had made it possible to speak without fear of being exposed to judgement or pity.
Their evenings had passed with one or the other telling more of their story. She lay on the sofa, he sat in an easy-chair. Sometimes he had not even looked at her. He had gazed out into the summer evening or the first evenings of autumn, listening to her voice or hearing himself speaking. They had been like two strangers who meet in the dimness of a quiet hotel vestibule and fall into conversation. Two strangers who take into account that they have no previous knowledge and therefore need an explanation for everything. Two homesick tourists who have stayed in the hotel instead of going on the excursion to Luxor or the Cheops pyramid, because they prefer to sit listening and noting the congruencies and divergences between their otherwise quite ordinary stories.
Her story had emerged in a gliding progression of events and ideas, people she had known and places where she had been. To begin with he could feel she was embarrassed when she touched on things she had never confided to anyone, and feelings she had never before expressed in words. She could blush in mid-sentence or hesitate before continuing, but at the same time he sensed the pressure of the untold things waking at the sound of her voice and impatiently insisting to be expressed and given a place in her narrative. As it gradually unfolded she quite forgot to distinguish between what was acceptable and what was revealing or directly unattractive. One event or emotion drew another with it, her tone gradually grew calmer and more confidential, and he discovered that he too was no longer too startled or embarrassed to listen to her intimate revelations. Only in the pauses when silence fell between them could he see how she suddenly directed her mind’s eye towards her story, amazed, sad or ironic, as if she were a stranger meditating for a while on its tortuous course, its blind alleys and delusions, the agitation and restless craving of emotions.
Something similar took place in him when he heard his own voice narrating. He did not see himself in his story but another, and he saw that other from behind, unable to fathom his deeper impulses. His secret, intimate feelings became secretive even to himself. And it was as if she read his thoughts. You don’t know why things happen, why they come to be as they are, she said one evening, after he had made a long pause. No, he replied. You can never really know.
An escape… could her story be concentrated into that one word? Was it an attempted flight that had been halted by the Dutch truck that evening in April? As he followed the peaceful rhythm of the traffic he felt it sounded like an answer to something he had said the previous day when they walked out to the headland. They had gone as far as they could get, right out to the end of the reed beds. She asked him to tell her what it looked like, and he described the tall reeds and the tussocks of grass and the rowing boat moored to a post in the inlet, reflected in the quiet water. They had passed the rotten post where he used to sit. She balanced on it, supporting herself with a hand on his shoulder. The faded pack of Gitanes had vanished. He told her about it and said Andreas must have been out there one day.
Apart from the humble and practical messages he passed on he seldom mentioned Andreas, but now and then he asked if it wasn’t time for them to talk. Each time she gave him the same answer. Not yet… he asked again out on the headland. She stopped. Was he tired of having her as a guest? No, he said, but I feel you are running away… It had started to rain in earnest and he suggested turning back. They took shelter from the rain in the shed made of tall, tarred planks, the only break in the flat landscape. The grey light penetrated the gloom through the spaces between the planks, where the inlet and the sand bank stretched horizontally, broken by the dark into vertical bands. He saw a big seagull flying across the strip of sand, disappearing and appearing again in the cracks. Not any more, she said. I am not running away any more. But to go home… that would be a flight.
He glanced at her briefly. What about their trip then? She turned her dark glasses towards him. He switched on the windscreen wipers and concentrated on the road again. The rain was like fog around the wheels of the lorry ahead of him. Wasn’t that an escape too? Her being here with him in the car driving south? She waited a few moments before replying. No, she said. What should they call it then? Going back, she said. All the way back. To the beginning… He overtook the lorry and pulled in again. Yes, he replied. That’s probably the only way to go.
It rained through most of Germany. The countryside was unvarying, woods, fields, factories and woods again, blurred and blue-grey in the misty rain. The names of towns told them how far they had come. He read them aloud to her when they passed yet another signboard. She took a cigarette from the pack under the window and put it between her lips. They had just passed Hanover. On the satellite picture of the weather forecast the night before, a gigantic spiral of cloud was moving in over northern Europe in a slowly ticking movement. So tonight the astronauts couldn’t see the lights of the cities. She smiled with her lips clamped round the cigarette and ignited her lighter. She was always nervous when she lit a cigarette. During the first weeks she had scorched the tips of her hair several times or set light to the filter, but he had accustomed himself not to interfere.
She lit the cigarette, inhaled and slowly blew out smoke. The astronauts? Yes, he said, describing a picture he had once seen in the newspaper. It had been taken on a clear night, from space, and you could clearly distinguish the contours of Europe surrounded by dark blue, with shining spots for each big city on the continent. The picture had illustrated an article on light pollution. He hadn’t understood that word. How could light pollute? She agreed. She had seen that picture too. It was one of the most beautiful pictures she had ever seen. Like a reflection of the firmament, she said. As if each city was a star. Yes, he replied, taking his hand off the gear lever and pulling out the ashtray. And imagine, if one day the lights of cities should reach some distant, inhabited planet, long after the cities and their inhabitants had disappeared. She nodded. Poor things, she said, if they found out the lights were not stars, but cities. Then they would believe they were not alone in the universe.