After he has, in other words, yelled at his wife, screamed at the aupairgirl Gertrude and even at twelve-year-old Elizabeth Ida, who unlike his wife does not answer back, just looks at him with her big eyes, in contrast to Gertrude, who produces long shrill harangues in French, German, and with assistance Italian as well, if she gets insulted. Which she has been this late afternoon and develops a cacophony of everything, and Tom Maalamaa from his Service of Mankind stood there and battled with the Swiss she learned at the nice private schools and secretarial institutions (oh no, there aren’t any Sri Lankan domestic servants in this household) with complete self-control. And handle things with great care, it does not say things or great on the boxes with the sherry glasses that he fumbles down from the dining room table, craaasssh; it says HANDLE WITH CARE, but he sees the sentence in his head in that way, for some meaningless reason. Well, glass like glass, sherry glasses, wineglasses, china cups, a fine china, can always be bought new but then it has already been way too much, over the edge, and he felt ashamed inside like a dog on the one hand, on the other hand he still barked like the same dog on the outside. For a while. So. Away from here: such an impulse and he went to the bathroom. Where the telephone in the pocket of his blazer started ringing and the name on the display was not the name of one of his golf buddies (he does not like golf, but sometimes you have to play golf, go and bond, he has golfed with cannibalistic dictators and played cricket with terrorist leaders in India; well-brought-up boys from good schools too, besides)—rather from the Head Office! Not the one that is his superior in this country, but another one, the only other one—the Head Office that was and is the entire goal and direction of his career, that level, which he thought he still had a ways to go to get to, now wanted to get in touch with him. But he stood in the bathroom in his own home, overwhelmed by his own rage, and looked at that, stared at it, damned telephone, angry angry at it because he suddenly understood not only that he should answer but that he WANTS to answer but cannot due to the fury still pounding at his temples, it is too great, he is not capable of getting himself together, which rarely happens, he is usually always able to get it together. So he did not answer, it stopped ringing, he turned it off, put it in the pocket of his blazer, and then first calmed down, took care of business, and carefully washed his face with ice-cold water for a good while.
Ashamed like a dog and mellow mellow. But that energy inside him: if there had been a fresh brush set out ready in the bathroom, which there had once been in the rectory and the Coral washing powder in a glass jar “Goes for Tom too!” he certainly, out of regret and frustration, would have scrubbed and scrubbed the sink shiny with it.
But, the avenue now, Rosengården 2, they are almost there. “Courage.” “I’m not afraid.” Her hand. In his hand. Handle things with great care. This turned out to be long.
But it has to be, long, this. And still, these thoughts, ideas, maybe only a distillation of an entire story too long to fit into the few minutes between an entrance gate to a large house in a fantastic location just a third of a mile away. Of everything possible, everything, he had wanted, wants, should have said to her. Which he will always think about, the rest of his life, afterward.
It has to be long. Eternally ongoing. It is, has been, his explanation of love for her.
Her eyes, “I’m not afraid.” The Sorrow, an appeal? What it is. In her. No, he cannot find the words for it. Cannot. But he has loved her, he loves her, for it. The unknown in her, because of the question mark. And, in contrast to what his sister once thought, he is not very preoccupied with fine-tuning pretty formulations that run out of his head like water, a tap, or like diarrhea, when he is going to hold a speech, debate, he can certainly debate, “You can say anything here as long as it sounds good.”
The opposite. Here. Susette. His wife. A love that simply makes him defenseless, and mute.
Later, he will wish for a great deal, about talking, in the car, that bit to Rosengården 2, that that night some kind of dialogue between him and his wife had played out, a dialogue that could have gone something like this:
“What are you thinking about?” she would have asked suddenly, since they had been sitting in silence the entire car ride.
“I’m thinking,” he would have replied, “about us. About everything.”
“What do you mean?” she would have said but with poorly concealed happy surprise. Despite the fact that she usually does not engage in disputes with him, she has always been good at sulking and keeping quiet and then, when you are going to make up, he has always been the one who has started speaking, spoken his way forward the entire way—but then, despite the fact that she does not want to show it, she has of course become happy.
And then he would have placed his hand on her hand, which he had also done in reality, despite the fact that he had not said any of it, here in the car, on the avenues in Rosengården 2, and she would have taken his hand, held it, as she also does, for real.
“I like it when we dance together,” he would have said.
“Yes,” she would have answered. “I do too.”
And as if it were… or it is, this snippet of a conversation that was never held but that existed anyway, silence between them, which makes it so that despite the fact that he, in the entire future, will have facts and laws and justice against him, there will always be a figure inside him who will never believe what they accuse her of after her death.
They have arrived now. At the right address. Get out. He discovers the small shoe bag with the silver shoes in the backseat, the party shoes, she has remembered them. Liz Maalamaa’s party shoes, strass, with a brooch, fifties model, small heel, which he and Susette had taken with them as a memento from Portugal, seventeen years ago. He liked them back then already, how they had fit her perfectly.
“Don’t forget—”
He will always remember the shoes, the silver sandals in the backseat, and her, her eyes, all of her, when he handed them to her.
“Courage,” he says. She laughs a little, everything is okay. And how she takes the silver sandals he hands to her, he has loved, loves her.
THE GLITTER SCENE
(Susette in landscape, 2006)
THIS, FIRST, is shorter. Suddenly on the avenues, in Rosengården 2, in the darkness, in the car after the entrance and the gate that has closed behind her, she recognizes where she is.
Maybe it is something with the trees, the same trees in straight lines along the road, as if they had always been there. And the tall houses, several stories, despite the fact that there is a light on in almost every window, which there was not then. Remembers. Tabula rasa. Being nothing, and new. That possibility. Spinning around around in the avenues, one fall day, sunshine then.
My love, my life, around around, nothing and new.
She remembers a feeling, a body, her body, her skin, the skin on her wrist, patinated by the summer and the sun and the scrubbing of windows on a veranda called the Winter Garden in the Glass House, the French family’s summerhouse, on the Second Cape. Standing high on a ladder wedged between rocks on the beach, scrubbing scrubbing, hating the sea like a secret, not looking up not looking down, a cat meowing on the cliffs, long haired and white.