Poke the fire, it makes such a lovely shower of sparks. Go on, fly away, up the chimney, you lot. Out there you'll all be extinguished by the snowflakes with a big hiss. Black dots on the snowy roof, that is all that remains of the falling sparks. I've seen it many times, coming home from a winter walk in the woods with Robert.
Graham Greene. Didn't he write Our Man in Havana? I saw the movie once, with Alec Guinness. I remember only a scene of two men playing a game of checkers. But instead of checkers they play with small bottles of liquor. Bourbon and Scotch. Every piece that is taken must be drunk. The loser wins.
'Do you remember Our Man in Havana, that film with Alec Guinness? Based on a book by Graham Greene?' I deliberately shout a bit, so as to be heard above the television.
'Vaguely,' she says, wiping a crumb from the corner of her mouth.
'Based on a book by Graham Greene.'
'Could be, yes.'
She does not react to the name. Surely it would have been natural for her to say: That's a coincidence, I am just reading a book by him. Then I would have replied: Not at all a coincidence. I saw that book lying here and it reminded me of the film. Then everything would tally, our words would fit together like pieces of a jigsaw. But she says nothing.
Walk, I must get up for a moment and walk about. Then it will ebb away again, this feeling of being absent while being fully conscious, of being lost, of losing your way, I don't know what to call this feeling, which can apparently be aroused by the simplest objects, like this book.
Robert scratches at the kitchen door. Vera can't hear him. I have to hold the door knob with two hands against the wind. The dog immediately pushes his cold nose into my outstretched hands. I stroke his tobacco-brown spotted hide in which snow crystals still glisten here and there. Robert knows the way, straight to the crackling fire.
From the kitchen window you can usually see the rocky coast through the trees, and the grey, rolling sea, but today there is nothing in the distance except a black hole. Not even a light anywhere. The fishermen have probably stayed indoors in this weather.
I can see the fishing industry going to the dogs here in Gloucester. The rusty fishing vessels are small, dirty and old-fashioned, and the fishermen are quite unaware of the development of modern, all-automatic fishing fleets on the other side of the globe. I know about it through my work, but I don't tell them. When I occasionally go to the tavern I only listen to their stories. At sea you don't learn how to talk, one of them said to me the other day. You're too busy. And when you're free for a moment there is always the sea about you and you must never take your eyes off it. IMCO, would that mean anything to them? There is surely nobody who knows it stands for Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization? Not even Vera. She has always said IMCO right from the start, without ever asking what those letters actually meant.
I used to take the minutes at meetings. Later they had a secretary for that, and I switched to doing the catch targets, together with Karl Simic. He never said much. And certainly not about himself, unlike, for instance, Chauvas who always chattered nineteen to the dozen. Catch targets. There were years when I used that phrase every day. No, I don't really think about the office much anymore. Occasionally of that tall, skinny Karl Simic, even though he is dead now. Simmitch, that's how you had to pronounce it. A Yugoslav name. He lived on his own in an apartment in Boston. And one morning they found him dead in his bath. When I heard that, I was sorry I had never struck up a friendship with him. But he was just like me: shy and reserved. When we were working you could hear a pin drop.
'What were you doing in the kitchen so long?'
'Catch targets.'
'What?'
'Oh, nothing, a phrase from work. I was suddenly thinking of the office. And of poor Karl Simic who committed suicide and none of his colleagues understood why, except me, but I kept my mouth shut. What is left of it all, apart from some faded old minutes and reports full of advice that no one ever took?'
'You men are always so keen on being important and having meetings.'
'I was a cog, a well-paid cog, admittedly. But how that
intergovernmental machinery fitted together exactly I still don't know to this day.'
She has switched off the television. I sit down beside her on the settee. We are silent. Then she puts her hand on my knee.
'You shouldn't always wear the same old pants,' she says.
From the front room comes the ringing of a bell. It stops and then starts again. An irritating, intrusive sound that stridently advances among the furniture. At last it stops.
'Wasn't that the phone?'
'No,' I say, 'you must have imagined it.'
'Maybe it was Ellen Robbins,' she says. 'She said she might drop by this evening.'
She gets up and walks out of the room. I feel an impulse to follow her but, of course, that is silly. She'll be back in a moment. I intertwine my fingers and squeeze them.
It should soon become day now. If only spring would come soon. Once it is spring again Robert and I can walk on the beach or along the bay. I throw pieces of driftwood into the waves and he brings them back to the beach. A pointless pastime which we both enjoy, each in his own way.
I go to the window and press my nose against the glass. Black. Vera was up first, as usual. She has opened the curtains. I close them again. It's much too early to have them open on such a cold wintry morning. Even the schoolchildren are still in bed. I rub my hands together. Wouldn't mind my coffee now. I sniff. Nothing. She can't have started pouring the water on yet. Might as well read a little first.
I take the book from the fireside table and open it where I left off yesterday. I read in bed last night. It happens sometimes that I then fall asleep and the next day I cannot remember what I last read. I leaf a chapter back and put the bus ticket to Rockport inside the front cover.
Vera enters the room. Not in her navy-blue dressing-gown but in black cotton pants and a loose lime-green jacket over a white blouse. In her hands she is holding long shreds of paper, strips of torn newspaper.
'Did you do this?' she asks.
I shake my head. 'Maybe Robert?' I suggest hesitantly.
'Since when do dogs tear newspapers into strips in the toilet?'
She goes to the wastepaper basket beside the piano and drops the paper into it. I watch her and cannot understand why these dumb bits of newspaper make me feel so embarrassed. And it still isn't getting any lighter, it still won't become light.
'If you're closing the curtains, then close all of them,' she says. 'I'm going to phone Ellen Robbins. It's such foul weather, she'd better not come this evening.'
Of course, it is evening. 'What's for supper?'
'I'll heat up a pizza. It's Sunday, after all.'
'Of course,' I say. 'Sunday. All right with me.'
I try to read the book I am holding in my hands, but the words refuse to form sentences. It is as if I suddenly no longer know English, even though I have been virtually bilingual these last fifteen years. At home we speak Dutch together, but as soon as someone else is present we effortlessly switch over to English. And it also happens quite often that we catch ourselves still talking English together long after the guests have left. I stare at the sentences. Slowly they slide back into place. Something flutters to the floor. I bend down and pick it up. An old bus ticket. I put it at the back of the book.