I felt the bottom with my feet; I’d reached the shallow end. I couldn’t stop to rest, though. I had to keep moving away from him, around the pool. While I was crouching there, with my head turned in his direction, I noticed that the sounds were weaker than before. They didn’t seem to be coming any closer either. It was as if he hadn’t moved in the water. And suddenly I realised. All that splashing. Swimming didn’t sound like that. But drowning might. Then I understood why he’d hesitated so long before he jumped. He’d never been in the pool before. He couldn’t swim.
I began to make my way towards him. It was quiet now and I had the feeling I was entering a trap. The silence, I didn’t trust it. What if he was waiting for me? I swam more slowly, trying to listen out for him.
I trod water, called his name.
There was no reply.
I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but I thought I sensed something move beneath the water, something reaching sluggishly for the surface. An arm, maybe. A hand.
I took one deep breath and dived. I touched the bottom of the pool. There was a kind of dust down there, centimetres thick, and soft as velvet. I pushed my fingers through it. But there was nothing else.
I rose to the surface, took some air. Then dived again.
Nothing.
The water was so warm, so dense.
I shifted some distance to my left and dived a third time. The fingers of my right hand touched his teeth. His mouth was open. He’d been lying right below me.
I came up shouting. ‘Mrs Hekmann? Mrs Hekmann?’
I dived again and tried to lift him. But he weighed more than I did. I got halfway to the surface, then I had to let him go. I had the feeling I was sweating, even though I was underwater.
It was probably too late anyway. His body was a dead weight: no movement in it, no resistance. I swam until I reached the side of the pool. I clung to the rope that felt like porcelain and began to shout again.
‘Mrs Hekmann?’
I just clung to the rope and shouted.
‘You must have woken just about everyone in the village,’ she said, ‘screaming and yelling like that. What’s the matter with you? Did you fall in the pool?’
‘It’s your son,’ I said.
‘What about him?’
I was sitting on the terrace in wet clothes, my hands wedged under my arms. I could still feel the imprint of his teeth at the end of my fingers.
‘What about my son?’ she said.
‘He’s dead.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He’s at the bottom of the pool,’ I told her. ‘He drowned.’
Her voice was in my ear suddenly. ‘I could shoot you for saying that.’ She stepped back. ‘Why would he be in the pool? He can’t swim.’
‘He jumped in.’
‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘He wanted — to kill me.’ I was shivering. It was hard to speak’. ‘I jumped in to get away from him. He came after me. I tried to save him, but it was too late.’
She walked away and when she returned she was dragging something along the ground. I thought it was probably one of those long-handled nets that people use for scooping leaves out of a pool. Or it could have been a gardening implement. A hoe, for instance.
‘There’s nothing there,’ she said after a while.
‘He’s further out,’ I said, ‘towards the middle.’
The water swirled as she poked at it.
‘You’ll need some men,’ I told her.
‘I found a jacket,’ she said, ‘that’s all.’
‘It’s probably mine.’
She lifted it clear. I heard it dripping, then it landed on the ground beside me with a soft slap.
‘There’s nothing else,’ she said.
‘You should get some men,’ I said.
But she wasn’t listening. She’d started talking, half to herself, I heard the words child and lake. She was back in her story again, somewhere near the beginning.
Her voice faded, the way stations fade on the radio. Then it came back, stronger than before. I thought she must be pacing up and down beside the pool.
Her life was made up of everything that she could not forget. That wasn’t so uncommon. The difference was, she had to rehearse it constantly, as if it hadn’t happened yet. She went over it again and again, even though she knew it off by heart.
My teeth were clattering so hard, I couldn’t keep my mouth closed. My body ached from being held in one position for too long.
‘Get some men,’ I said.
One hand on the banisters, I climbed the stairs to the first floor. Though I didn’t expect Loots for a while yet, I doubted I’d be able to sleep. All I could think of was the dead man lying in the dust at the bottom of the pool. Martha had fetched two brothers from the village. I hadn’t caught their names. One of them ran the grocer’s shop. They were out there now, dredging the water for Mazey’s body. I wondered how soft his skin would be by the time they brought him up. I wondered whether they would find my shoes.
I felt for the lock and slid my key into it. I needn’t have bothered; the door was already open. I walked into my room. I could tell there was someone there. I could tell who it was, too. The smell of smoke gave her away.
‘Mrs Hekmann?’
Where was she? I remembered the chair and table by the window. I thought she must be sitting there.
‘Did they find him yet?’ she said.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Maybe he went to the city. He’s always doing that —’
‘I told you. He’s dead.’
‘But of course there’s no reason for him to go there,’ she said, ‘not now.’
She was sliding a hard object around on the surface of the table. The ashtray, probably. I doubted if she knew she was doing it. It was like Nina and the beer mats.
Nina …
‘I’ve decided to tell you the rest,’ Edith Hekmann said.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
‘Of course he didn’t tell me everything. I’m going to have to make some of it up. But I’ve got a pretty good idea. The bare bones of it, in any case.’ A hollow chuckle.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ I said. ‘I just told you.’
‘You’re not chicken, are you?’
I laughed, but it sounded unconvincing.
‘It won’t take long,’ she said.
And though the room was different, it was just like that other night. She began a long way back, in a place where the story ran smoothly. She set you afloat on it. You drifted. Then, quite suddenly, you were in white water and by then, of course, there was nothing you could do.
She’d found out that Mazey was going to the city and she’d found out why. He had a photograph of Nina, the one Jan Salenko had sent. He thought it was Karin, though. Not that they looked identical. They didn’t. But the girl in the photo and the girl in his memory were the same age. For Mazey, that was enough. The two girls were the same girl, and he was determined to find her. He had a question for her. An important question.
The photo never left his hand, not even when it was winter and he wasn’t wearing any gloves. His fingers would practically freeze around it. He would walk into a bar or a cheap café or a fast-food restaurant, and he would lay the photo down in front of him and then he would stare at his hand and wait for the life to flow back into it. People in those places, they were always teasing him. Is that your little sister? Is that your girl? You think I could make it with her? How much? And when he didn’t say anything, when he just looked at them with eyes that turned them into ghosts, they sometimes said, What are you staring at? You got some kind of problem? And he’d come back to the village with a tooth missing, or flakes of dried blood in his ears. Other times they were fascinated by the picture and they bent right over it and studied it close up. No, they’d say. Don’t know her. No, I’ve never seen her.