We’d been living at the hotel for about six months when a police van pulled up outside one afternoon. I was by myself that day; Kroner had taken Karin with him to the quarry, and Mazey had gone out two nights before and hadn’t returned. I opened the front door and stood on the porch. The policeman was already standing at the foot of the steps. I recognised him as the constable from the next village. He looked down into his hat, which he was holding in both hands, then squinted up at me. ‘Mrs Kroner?’
I grunted. I no longer used the name.
‘It’s your son. He’s in hospital.’
As we drove towards the town, he told me that Mazey had been found lying in a ditch. His right leg had been broken in two places. They thought he’d been knocked down by a car. It was hard to be sure, of course, because he wouldn’t talk to anyone.
‘He hardly ever talks,’ I said. ‘He’s backward.’
‘I know. They didn’t realise. They thought it was shock.’
When we reached the hospital, I was taken to see the doctor. He wore half-moon glasses with thin gold rims. His lips were too dark, almost purple; it made me think of Felix, when we woke up on that winter morning and he was dead. The doctor explained that the double fracture had not, in itself, been too severe, though it had been complicated by the length of time that had elapsed before the leg received medical attention. It was possible the patient would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.
‘Are you in the habit of letting your son wander the countryside at night?’ He peered at me over his glasses. ‘You’re aware that he’s retarded?’
‘This wasn’t an accident,’ I said. ‘It was deliberate.’
The doctor began to ask me something else, but I interrupted. ‘I’d like to see him now. Alone.’
Lying in his ward, Mazey looked unshaven and exhausted. His leg was in plaster, all the way from the top of his thigh to his ankle, and it was being supported by a system of ropes and pulleys. I sat beside the bed and put my hand on his.
‘Are you all right, Mazey?’
His eyes lifted, fixed on me.
‘It doesn’t hurt too much?’ I said.
He shook his head, two tiny movements. Right, then left. Then still again. He was glad to see me. I could tell.
I gripped his hand. ‘You’ll be out of here in no time,’ I said, ‘don’t worry.’
When I got back to the hotel, Kroner and Karin were eating supper at the kitchen table — just bread and cheese, a glass of milk. I knew they’d stopped talking as soon as they heard the front door open. You can always tell when people have just stopped talking: they seem to be acting suddenly — and they’re not actors so it doesn’t feel natural. I walked across the dark, empty dining-room and into the light of the kitchen. Kroner asked me where I’d been.
‘I’ve been with Mazey.’ I took off my coat and hung it behind the door. ‘Didn’t you hear what happened?’
No, he hadn’t heard.
‘Someone knocked him down with a car. He was lying in a ditch for twenty-four hours with a broken leg.’ I was watching Kroner carefully now. ‘Do you know anything about it?’
No, he didn’t. He was studying his sandwich, as if he couldn’t quite decide what angle to approach it from.
‘Look at me.’
His eyes lifted to my face for a moment, then slid away. ‘I just told you, Edith. I don’t know anything about it. You tell me that there’s been some kind of accident. Well, it’s the first I heard of it. All right?’ He took a deep breath and blew the air out noisily. ‘Jesus Christ.’
I stared at him. ‘You didn’t do it?’
‘No.’
The lights in the kitchen flickered, but stayed on.
‘Is he dead?’ Karin asked.
She lifted her glass of milk to her mouth with both hands and drank from it. Nine years old, with dark-blue eyes and brown hair curling down on to her shoulders. She felt less like mine than ever.
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s not dead.’
‘Old Miss Poppel’s dead. She —’
‘We’re not talking about Old Miss Poppel.’
Kroner put his sandwich down, only half-eaten. ‘There’s no need to shout at her.’
I went over to the sink, ran the tap and rinsed my hands in the warm water. I noticed my reflection in the window.
‘So you don’t know anything?’ I said, with my back to the room. ‘It’s not another of your little games?’
I heard Kroner’s chair scrape backwards and saw his reflection rise behind my own.
‘Karin,’ he said. ‘I think it’s time you went to bed.’
I stared at my face, then at his. Then I stared into the blackness that was beyond us both. There’s no such thing as an accident, I whispered to myself. There’s no such thing.
One night, when the moon was almost full and Kroner was asleep, I crept into Karin’s room and woke her up. I put my mouth close to her ear. Told her to get dressed.
‘Is it an adventure?’ she asked me.
I nodded. ‘It’s a secret, too.’
I took her by the hand and led her down the stairs. Standing in the passageway outside the dining-room, I could hear Kroner snoring in his bed one floor above. I opened the side door and we walked out into the gravel car-park. Then down the steps, towards the pool. Karin was wide awake now, and too filled with wonder at being out at night to say a word. We moved past the fir trees at the back of the hotel, over some rocks and along a narrow path, into the shadow of the woods. It was half an hour to the main road. I looked at Karin, walking beside me. ‘You’re not tired, are you?’
She shook her head. ‘Where are we going?’
I smiled mysteriously. ‘You’ll see.’ In my right hand I had a bucket and every time it swung, the moon broke into a thousand pieces.
I’d spent the afternoon smashing empty beer bottles and pickle jars behind the shed where the pool equipment and the gardening tools were kept. Everyone was out except for Mazey, who was upstairs, listening to his chimes. (Miss Poppel had been as good as her word: The wind-chimes that hang from the crab-apple tree in my front garden, I hereby bequeath to Mazey Hekmann.) Even if he heard me, though, it didn’t matter. He was hardly going to tell anyone.
When we reached the main road, we crouched down in a shallow ditch. ‘This is the place,’ I whispered.
Karin looked at me. It wasn’t anywhere she knew.
I showed her how the road sloped upwards, dipped, sloped upwards once again, then curved to the left and vanished behind some trees.
‘From here we can see them coming.’
‘Who?’ she said. ‘Who’s coming?’ Her eyes had widened. Maybe she thought it was Holy Jesus, or the Three Wise Men. Christmas was only a few weeks off.
But I didn’t answer. I put one finger to my lips and watched the road. Minutes passed. Then I touched her shoulder, pointed to the west. There was a beam of light in the distance. At first it looked like a triangle, long and golden, lying on its side. But as the car came accelerating round the bend, the triangle turned into circles, two circles, also gold. They were so bright that we had shadows, even though the car was still at least a kilometre away. I tipped the bucket, shook some broken glass on to my hand. I waited until the car was hidden in the dip, then stood up and threw the glass across the road. I ducked down again, one hand braced on my knee.