A breeze moved across my teeth. I must have been smiling.
Back in the car Millie turned to look at me. ‘Trouble?’
I shook my head. ‘Just drive me home, will you?’
What did I think I was doing, going to look for her like that? She’d be in the lobby of the Kosminsky, smoking a cigarette with Arnold (Nina was the one person who might get someone like Arnold to loosen up and talk). Or else she’d have gone home to her mysterious apartment and there’d be one small light flashing on her machine — my message. What had I been thinking of? I sank lower in my seat, moulding my shoulderblades into the upholstery.
I’d known her for three weeks. Three weeks since she appeared in that bar. Sat next to me, her elbow touching mine. Three weeks since that first kiss. Then we were in her car, we were driving …
An old mansion in the suburbs. We lay on a sofa talking, smoking joints, while someone I’d never met fucked someone else in the kitchen (we heard a saucepan crash). The club she worked in, she was a waitress. Some nights there were shows — exotic dancing, talent contests, cabaret. She lived near the flower market. She was twenty-two.
I remembered how I heard a clock chime five somewhere, how I got up and began to dress. I remembered that my jacket smelled of her perfume.
She shifted in the bed behind me. ‘What time is it?’
I told her.
‘Are you leaving?’
‘It’s easier now,’ I said, ‘while it’s still dark.’ She couldn’t have understood what I was saying, of course, but at least it had a kind of ambiguity. ‘Can I see you again?’ I asked her.
‘Something I should tell you,’ she murmured.
‘You’re married.’
She didn’t laugh. ‘I’m seeing someone else —’
There are people who unload their disappointments early. I stood in that bedroom, someone else’s bedroom. I stood quite still for a moment and told myself it didn’t make any difference. But there was an ache in my throat, as if I’d been crying.
‘Martin?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve been seeing him for a while.’
‘Can’t I see you as well?’
‘Maybe …’ She was asleep again before I’d finished dressing.
But it was those four words of hers that I was thinking of as Millie drove me home: ‘I’m seeing someone else.
I looked out of the window at the cold glare of the lights. The streets iced over, treacherous. It was strange. Though she kept saying that everything was temporary, unstable, she never seemed to want to bring things to an end. I had the feeling that maybe I could change her mind. There was room for hope. And this uncertainty produced a genuine erotic charge, a desperation, a kind of fever: each time we slept together could be the last. Sometimes I wondered if it was deliberate, simply her way of sustaining interest. Whose, though, hers or mine? (I didn’t think mine needed much sustaining.) I felt I was caught in a storm. I was clinging to a tree and waiting for the wind to drop. I had to cling so hard, my arms were numb. But I didn’t dare let go.
The man outside the club, the bouncer. He had shoulders like the slopes of a volcano and diamond studs in both his ears.
Or they could’ve been gold.
It was warm in the back of the car. I dozed off. Straight into the dream and running. I feel my fingers loosen at the knuckles. I start to come apart.
Then the driver’s shaking me. ‘Mr Blom? Mr Blom?’
‘OK,’ I mutter. ‘I’m awake.’
I lean forwards. And, just for a moment, as I reach for the door, I’ve got no hands.
It snowed that week. The powerlines were thick with it, the rooftops smooth and white. A hush to the traffic, people’s feet. I knew Nina had been home because there was a new message on her machine. No voice. Just a church bell tolling, then a beep. Was this the death of our relationship? Twice I put the phone down, trembling. The third time I left my name and number. I waited in my room till dawn. I didn’t eat. Outside, the snow kept coming down. You wouldn’t think the sky could hold so much of it. She never did call back.
The hotel was different, too. Quieter. Even on the second floor. I hadn’t forgotten Arnold’s lecture, but I found myself ignoring it. Night after night I walked the corridors. I sat on the black vinyl sofa by the lift. I was waiting for something to happen. Anything. Once I saw a man in a silk dressing-gown putting his shoes outside his room. I wished him a good evening. He looked at me sideways, as if I might be dangerous, then withdrew without a word. Otherwise it was silent, deserted. Unrecognisable. I could only think that the police had exposed the operation, closed it down.
I walked the streets in sub-zero temperatures. I felt I was part of something that was decaying. During the day there was the illusion of purpose — activity, movement, noise — but it was just the obscene bustle of maggots on a corpse. At night the truth revealed itself. The wind could be heard on the avenues and in the squares. The buildings with their blank façades. People sleeping in tram shelters, cardboard boxes, alleyways. People drunk and bleeding. I stood in front of a travel agent’s window. The posters looked surreal at four o’clock in the morning: sunshine, laughter, turquoise water — some lunatic’s hallucinations. But everybody fell for it.
Towards the end of that week I returned from Leon’s to find Victor taping a notice on to the lift.
‘It’s out of order,’ he said.
‘What? Again?’
‘They’re going to fix it tomorrow. Arnold said.’
‘They’re always fixing it. But it’s always broken.’
‘I know, I know. But what can I say? This isn’t the Metropole.’
I began to climb the stairs. When I reached the second floor I instinctively glanced in both directions. And there, in her crisp white uniform and her starched white hat, was Nurse Maria Janssen.
I stared at her in disbelief.
She began to walk towards me, smiling. Her eyes were looking into mine. Her hands reached out to me. I could almost hear her voice. Outside your window there are three beautiful trees …
But then, as she came nearer, I realised it wasn’t Maria Janssen at all. This woman was older. She must have been standing under the light. That was the only possible explanation. The light in the corridor had deceived me.
‘I saw you,’ the woman said. ‘The other night.’
Now she was closer she reminded me a little of Gregory’s ex-wife, Hedi: the peroxide hair, the drinker’s skin. Certainly she looked nothing like Maria.
‘You were lost,’ she was saying, ‘don’t you remember? I should have helped you, but I didn’t. I don’t know why …’
I could smell vermouth, I thought. Stale tobacco, too, and soiled underclothes. My stomach heaved. Why was the woman talking to me? Was she mad?
‘What’s wrong, dear?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered. ‘I thought you were someone else.’
I turned away from her and suddenly I was falling. I saw the banister rotating past me like a stick flung to a dog. I ended up at the bottom of a flight of stairs. I wasn’t sure exactly how it had happened. I must’ve turned too quickly, lost my footing. I’d have to be more careful in future. Look where I was going.
‘Are you hurt?’
Oh God. The woman was still there, somewhere above me. She was wearing slippers that were like my mother’s — brown leather with a pattern of embossed gold flowers, and black fur trimming round the ankles.
‘I’m fine.’ My elbow hurt. My left leg as well. But it was only bruising.
‘Are you sure?’ She was peering down at me in that way I hated. ‘If you come to my room,’ she said, ‘I’ll bandage it for you.’
What? Bandage what? I wished I could bandage her. I’d start with her mouth. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘All I want is to be left alone. All right?’