Then I thought I heard her say, but I’m not sure about this, that I should be tolerant of Dad even though he was a bit old-fashioned and eccentric in his ways. And continue to be good to my brother Jósef.
— Be good to your dad. And don’t forget your brother Jósef. You held his hand when you were still in the carriage — might she have said that?
Then I hear a faint shuddering breath, like the beginning of pneumonia; Mom has stopped talking.
The conversation is over, but I hear a background murmur of male voices.
— Is the phone still on? someone asks.
— She’s gone, it’s over, another voice can be heard saying.
Then someone picks up the phone.
— Hello, is there anyone there? they ask.
I say nothing.
— He’s hung up, the voice says at the end of the line.
— The tow truck is here, another voice can be heard saying.
— We couldn’t reach her properly with the shears while she was still alive and really couldn’t do much for her, says one of the ambulance men who fully understands that I want to ask questions. But we saw that she was talking on the phone, which was incredible, considering how badly hurt the woman was; she must have been steadily swallowing blood. There was never any hope, no hope of her ever surviving this while she waited to be cut out of the wreckage.
Her clothes and glasses were returned to us in a bag, along with her berry-picking rake and various other objects that she had with her in the car. Her glasses were covered in blood with both lenses cracked, one arm twisted back ninety degrees.
Dad and I took care of the flowers on the coffin. I wanted to have wildflowers, meadowsweet, chervil, wood cranesbill, buttercups, and lady’s mantle, but Dad wanted something more solemn, bought in a shop, imported roses. In the end, though, he gave in and left the floral arrangements to his son.
Eighteen
I’m still in the forest, which seems endless and spans the entire spectrum of green. This gives me the seclusion I need to sort out my thoughts, as Dad would put it, not that I expect to have reached any concrete conclusions by the end of these one thousand twenty-seven miles. Most of my current thoughts — apart from sticking to the right side of the road — are on last night. What still bugs me and throws me and dominates all my thoughts for the first one hundred miles is the radical transformation of my childhood friend, to see her as a new person without glasses and with a woman’s body. I could actually ask myself the same question she asked me: whether I’m not particularly into women. I can easily put up with a woman for half a night, but I’m not sure I can protect one against anything she might be afraid of. Girls generally have a lot more to say than I have; they tell you stuff, like about their relationship with their granddad they grew up with, and how he taught them chess and took them to concerts before he got cancer of the bladder. Sometimes they tell you something sad that’s happened to the family, maybe even last century, if there haven’t been any other tragedies in recent years, other than maybe Granddad dying and then sometimes Granny dying shortly after that. Women have very long memories and are sensitive to the bizarre events that have colored their family histories over the past two hundred years. Then they even try to link me to their family trees. I find it difficult to open myself up like that to other people, although I’m perfectly willing to sleep with a girl.
I get the feeling there might be an extra sound coming from the car. If any mechanical problem were to come up, I wouldn’t have the required macho-ness to fix it. I’m just not that kind of guy. I could change a tire, but not a spark plug or a fan belt. I haven’t the faintest interest in engines. No one is expecting me for dinner, but I have to find some lodging for myself, and I better hurry before there’s total darkness and it’s impossible to find my way. Even though dark forests can give you the creeps, I reassure myself that there’s nothing to fear, because I know that somewhere within the darkness there’s some human settlement, some invisible village with a church and post office by a small paved square. I’m hungry, and beside the church there will probably be a restaurant with white lace curtains. Then, beside the restaurant, there might be a guesthouse. Because these are all roads that have been traveled on for thousands of years. Of course, it’s a completely different experience to take the pilgrim’s route instead of driving on brand-new asphalt roads that have been laid over rough, barren black lava.
I scan the horizon for a landmark, such as a church. There’s obviously a lot going on in the sky, a half-moon and constellations glistening like swarms of silver butterflies. I don’t notice the church until it suddenly pops up in my rearview mirror; I’ve missed the turn and have to reverse to find the side road through the forest. There isn’t a soul in sight, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be stranded here. Driving a short distance farther, however, I find a sign for a restaurant with an arrow pointing even deeper into the woods, with the distance written beside it: one mile. I follow the sign and drive down a faint trail through the dark forest. One side road leads into another; the signs are homemade, as if children had made them in some treasure hunt game. Although I only have a very basic grasp of the language, I notice there’s a letter missing in one word. I first spot the steeple of the church; then I make out a track, until the church shrinks and grows more distant and starts to look like a LEGO model in my rearview mirror. I’m in the middle of the woods, literally surrounded by trees on every side, and I haven’t the faintest idea of where I am. Can a person who has been brought up in the heart of a thick dark forest, where one has to beat a path through multiple layers of trees just to take a letter to the post office, have any conception of what it’s like to spend one’s entire childhood waiting for a single tree to grow?
Nineteen
Just when I think I have completely lost my bearings, an inn appears at the end of the side road. As expected, there are white lace curtains in the windows. There’s one car in the driveway. I walk past the front side of the house until I reach the kitchen. The skinned furs of forest animals adorn the walls in a row: hares, rabbits, and wild boar. The owner comes out the door to greet me and ushers me into a small dining room with a few tables. There are more furs on the walls and stuffed stag heads, along with a collection of guns. I’m clearly the only guest. The place gives off a pleasant odor of cleanliness and food. There are white tablecloths on the table and linen napkins, three glasses per plate, and three sets of knives and forks of different sizes.
I’m none the wiser after reading the menu, which the man tries to talk me through over my shoulder, but I can’t follow the thread.
— One moment, he says, to prevent me from immediately turning around, and he fetches a woman from the kitchen in a lily-white apron whom I imagine he must have lived with for several decades because he doesn’t even need to explain the problem to her. The woman presents me with my options:
— Would you like this or would you prefer this? asks the woman.
I just nod. The woman suddenly bursts out laughing.
— Which do you want? she asks.
This is the worst question she could have asked me, and it throws me into a panic. I don’t know what I want; there’s still so much I’ve yet to try and understand.
— That’s the problem, I say to the woman, I don’t know what I want.
I imagine you can’t really sink much lower than this on the estimation scale of a restaurant in a forest, not even to know what you want to eat. The woman nods, full of understanding.