But to begin with, he would have the packing cases destroyed, get the car mended and sold, and put the house up for sale. He would sit down at the computer and find a comfortable place in the Philippines, collect Benjamin, assure his sister that he would still be sending her money, and then he would set off through Europe to Romania in some nondescript vehicle he could abandon in a street somewhere, secure in the knowledge that within hours it would be stripped to the chassis.
The plane tickets made out in their new assumed names would reveal nothing about their true identities. No one would take notice of a little boy and his father traveling from Bucharest to Manila. Only in the opposite direction, perhaps, would the pair be remarked upon.
A fourteen-hour flight to the future.
He went downstairs into the hall and found his Ebonite bowling bag. In it were the accoutrements of his sporting success. He had triumphed so often over the years, and if there was one thing he was going to miss about this life, it was bowling.
Truth be told, he was not overly fond of his teammates. Two of them, at least, were morons he would prefer to see the back of. All were simple men, of simple ideas and simple lives. Average, by name and by nature. Yet to his mind it didn’t matter who they were, so long as their usual score was the right side of two hundred and fifty. The sound of the ten pins scattering was the sound of success. On that count, all six on the team were as one.
That was the beauty of it.
The team went out to win. It was the reason they could count on him being there whenever there was something at stake. That, and his very useful friend: Pope.
“All right?” he said as he approached the bar. “Sitting here, are we?” As if they would sit anywhere else.
High-fives all around.
“What are we drinking?” he asked. The usual entry into team togetherness.
Like the rest of them, he stuck to mineral water prior to a game. Their opponents generally did not, which was their mistake.
They sat for a few minutes, kicking around the pros and cons of the team they were up against, conversation drifting on to how certain they felt about winning the district championships on the coming Ascension Day.
And then he told them.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to find a replacement for me before then.” He spread his arms out apologetically. “Sorry, guys.”
They fell silent, gawping at him with accusations of treachery blazing in their eyes. For a while there was silence. Svend, always with gum in his mouth before a match, upped his chewing rate. He and Birger looked decidedly pissed off. He had expected as much.
Lars broke the silence. “Sorry to hear it, René. What happened? Trouble with the wife? Typical!”
It was an interpretation that won support.
“Nah.” He allowed himself to chuckle. “It’s not the wife. It’s work. I’ve been offered an executive position with a new company spearheading solar technology in Tripoli. But don’t worry, I’ll be back in five years, once the contract runs out. I reckon you’ll be needing me for the Old Boys team by then.”
No one laughed, but then he could hardly blame them. What he had done was sacrilege. The worst thing anyone could do to a team before an important match. A distracted mind could only ever put a wrong spin on the ball.
He apologized for his poor timing, knowing it was all he could do.
He was already on his way out. Just like he wanted.
He knew exactly how they felt. Bowling was their escape. For them, an international top job would never loom on the horizon. Now that he had driven in the wedge, they would be feeling like mice in a trap. He had felt like that, too, once. But that was a long time ago.
Now he was the cat.
44
She had seen the light of morning percolate down through the packing cases three times and felt certain that she would see it no more.
She had cried a few times, until she was no longer able. Until she hadn’t the strength even for that.
When she tried to open her mouth, her lips would not part. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. A day perhaps had passed since there had been spit enough in her mouth to allow her to swallow.
Now the thought of death seemed liberating. To sleep forever, with no more pain. To end this desolation.
“Let he who stands before death, he who knows that the end is nigh and who sees the moment at which it all must cease, let him speak of life,” she recalled her husband once having sneeringly quoted his father as saying.
Her husband! That man, who had never been alive in the slightest, how dare he heap scorn on such a sentiment? In a moment, she might even be dead herself. Certainly that was how she felt. But at least she could say she had lived.
Hadn’t she?
She tried to recall when, but everything merged into one. Years became weeks; partial recollections ricocheted in time and place, mingling together in all sorts of impossible patterns.
My mind will die first, I know that now, she thought.
She was no longer aware of her own breathing. It was so faint that she could not feel the air passing through her nostrils. The fingers of her free hand tingled. The fingers that yesterday had scratched a hole in the packing case above her and encountered something made of metal. For a while, she had tried to figure out what it was, but couldn’t.
Now her fingers tingled again. It felt like they were being pulled by strings directly attached to God. Tinglings, and the occasional flutter, like butterfly wings.
Do you want me, God? she asked. Is this the first touch, before you take me to heaven?
She smiled inside. She had never been this close to God before, this close to anyone. And she felt neither afraid nor alone. All she felt was exhaustion. The weight of the boxes on top of her no longer existed. Only this exhaustion.
Then suddenly she felt a pain in her chest. A stabbing sensation, so astonishing it made her open her eyes wide in the dark. The day is gone, my last day, flashed through her mind.
She heard herself groan and felt the muscles of her chest contract around her heart. Her fingers opened in spasms of cramp. Her face tightened.
Oh, it hurts. Please, God, let me die now, she prayed, over and over, until these portents of death at once ceased with a stab of pain almost more unbearable than the first.
In the seconds that followed, she was certain her heart had stopped. She waited for the darkness to come and take her away once and for all. And then her lips parted in a desperate attempt to snatch one final breath. A slight gasp that lodged itself in the tiny place inside her where her will to live stubbornly remained.
She felt a vein pulsate at her temple. Another in her lower leg. Her body was still too strong to succumb. God’s ordeal for her was not yet over.
Fear of what might now be in store made her pray. A brief prayer that she might escape the pain and that death would come soon.
She heard her husband open the door and say her name. But she was no longer able to form or utter a response. And what good would it do?
She felt her index and middle fingers twitch reflexively. Felt them strike the box above, her nails against the metal object she had encountered before. Metal, cold and unreal, until a spasm of cramp caused all her fingers to splay, and she sensed that protruding from the smooth surface of this object was something in the shape of a little V.
She tried to think rationally. Tried to separate things, so the nerve impulses from her colon that had ceased to function, from cells that screamed for water, and from skin that was no longer sensitive would not disrupt the image she now struggled to comprehend. The image of something metal with a raised V on its surface.