She always focused on appearing to eat more than she did: I eat. She placed a bucket of cold water outside on the veranda in the shade. When they carried the things in from the car and unpacked, she put a carton of milk and a bag of frozen peas in the bucket and pushed it under the bench out of the sun.
They drank fizzy drinks together outside, until the mosquitoes came and chased them in again. They woke up too early, or else they woke up all the time, never finding sleep; the place kept waking them up. If I was on my own here, she said to him in the night, I’d be miserable.
So what are you now. Now that you’re here with me.
She decided not to cry any more that night.
He slept.
Are you asleep.
I won’t fall asleep until morning, she remembers thinking to herself. The place kept getting in through the tiny windows, insistent. And she didn’t sleep: at 6 A.M. she began to fondle his earlobe, blowing gently into his ear. His hand swatted out in sleep a couple of times before his body submitted and his eyes opened. Where have you been, she wondered, what dreams have you dreamt, she said. Mm, he said.
She goes out onto the veranda and retrieves the carton of milk from the bucket. He comes out in his underpants and a sweater, wooden shoes on his feet, a bag of oats in one hand, a packet of raisins in the other. This is how they seat themselves on the bench. The milk carton drips onto the decking, then stands in its own pool on the table. It’s cold enough, he says, meticulously pouring a measured amount onto his oats. He eats like a ritual, sleeps in the same way. A change has taken place: what began as a singular exception has become a state of exception; which in turn has become a state of repetition, that has become an instance of love. Exception has become ritual, and the ritual is now quotidian. Love has become a ritual. Sex has become a ritual. What are we going to do today, he says. She thinks: survive. I was thinking of going kayaking, he says. Or maybe we could go fishing.
Some time passes.
Maybe, he repeats with a nod. Coffee.
We’ll need to get the stove going, fetch some wood, and that.
Yes, you’re right, he says. The wilds of Sweden, I’d nearly forgotten.
The wilds of Sweden, yes.
He slaps his arm. Mosquito, he says. She laughs.
The wilds of Sweden, she repeats.
And you didn’t sleep a wink.
No, she says. You could say that. They laugh, and their laughter is recognizable from somewhere. From where, exactly, she doesn’t know, but recognizable, nonetheless.
ALL KINDS OF things we said to each other that had already been said. I read out loud from a manuscript, and you listened, shifting uneasily. I have begun to doubt whether you actually understood that I was real. That I was there.
I get the feeling I could become someone else. If I pulled myself together.
But then it’s your feeling instead.
You shiver in the sunshine on the shore. I pull a blanket up over our legs, lie down on my stomach again, flick back a few pages in Duras’s Moderato Cantibile. Start from there again. So now we are lying here. What is it that keeps postponing reality. That’s my feeling.
Expectation and postponement, and nothing else.
SHE PHONES TO cancel an appointment. What excuses might be valid. The body does not count. The weather does not count. Disasters count.
IT’S SPRING ALREADY in Berlin, her father writes. It’s just the place to be.
She writes back and says it’s nice to know that spring is on its way. That it’s nice to know they’re thinking about her, and that she is thinking, too — I’m thinking about you, too, a lot.
The confusions are many. Sentences begin to doubt themselves. Mothers suspect they are less woman than other women, less mother.
A bit like me, she thinks.
A couple wrap themselves around each other and kiss, and think everything is for the first time. Roasted chestnuts, for goodness sake.
ARE YOU COLD. They arrive back at the hotel, and he has been drinking. She pulls her legs up underneath her on the sofa and puts her head in his lap. Warmth, and the feeling of having a home in the midst of being away. I’m tired, she says. He mutters something back. Smooths his hand across her hair. Nudges her playfully. Be still, she whispers. Leave me alone, she thinks. He reaches for the remote and changes the channel. She closes her eyes; I don’t understand how you can be tired now, he says. He shifts her body, altering its position; placing it so as to give him room. She is so tired of wanting to be somewhere else all the time; it’s mostly that kind of fatigue that consumes her. And the next day there is a bird sitting on the railing on the decking outside. He wants to stay asleep. She lies there looking at the bird. She does not rise. It hops about on the railing. Flits down onto the ground, hops about there, as if searching for something. Other places. He doesn’t understand that a person can long to be home when they have no home to long for. I am here, what more do you want. That was what he said. Wasn’t that what he said. Quite without irony. But there is no logic in the world. Who told you that. That there is a logic of dreams. Whatever it might be. There is awake, and there is asleep, and neither of the two states cause the world to work by any principle of logic.
She is tired all the time.
She is awake again, she can never wake. No two things exist in this world that may be kept apart, she thinks. She gets up, her legs are stiff and sore from all her odd positions. She slides the glass door aside, so the place may enter. She lies down cautiously again. The bird wants in, but hesitates. It is transparent. One understands in some way what it is frightened of.
THEY LIVE IN the last apartment block before the woods, where the detached houses begin. Do you remember the first time we saw each other, he asks.
He beams.
Yes, she lies.
They are watching a French film that takes place in cold rooms. Beautiful women with dark hair. Water. You don’t need to know anymore. More doesn’t interest her.
But you remember it best, she says, staring into the blue rooms.
They live in the last block, before the city ends.
All their furniture is hers. She remembers the first time she thought: if I leave him all he will have is an empty shell. He owns nothing except the apartment.
The three actors kiss. All conceivable combinations are enacted. Albeit simply.
They go to a bar and eat nuts. As if nuts were a solution to anything. They drink themselves senseless, and full of life. So potentially lethal is how they understand themselves, that much is obvious, as if everything were a frenzied blur, only then it is the exact opposite. Immaterial.
Do you want some tea, she asks.
No, he replies, without considering.
Do you want some wine, she asks.
No, he replies. I don’t drink anymore, you know that. I’ve given it up.
She gives a shrug, her skin is a stiff coat. She sighs and leans back in the armchair. She reaches to the shelf behind her, removes the cork from an already opened bottle with her teeth. Spits it into her lap. She pours some port wine into his empty water glass and uses that.