‘She sat on your face?’
‘Technically, it wasn’t what I’d call sitting,’ I say. ‘She just … lowered herself. For a short time. As though she had hopped on a bicycle saddle, but after a few seconds grew tired of it and hopped off again.’
The big man thinks about this for a moment.
‘That’ll perk you up,’ he says. It sounds as though he is speaking more to himself than to me. ‘All this baking. Buns, buns, buns. It would make a nice change.’
‘I didn’t find it particularly stimulating,’ I say, keen to steer the conversation back on track. ‘And fifty thousand euros is—’
‘I got that bit,’ the big man interrupts me; he is his old self again. Well, the self that I have previously encountered. He sits up straighter in his chair, pointing the pistol at me all the while.
‘Do you have fifty thousand? Extra?’
‘What?’ I ask. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘How is the bank doing?’
‘It’s too early to say precisely,’ I reply. ‘Where we have exceeded all expectations is in the number of loans granted.’
‘So, money is flowing out but it’s not coming back in.’
The big man’s voice is frightening now, I think. Frightening in the sense that it remains perfectly neutral as he states something that goes against his financial interests.
‘At this stage, that is to be expected,’ I say, honestly. ‘Getting operations under way is—’
‘Has anybody paid back their loan?’
There is only one answer to this question.
‘No. But I didn’t expect them to either. The first repayments are due next week.’
‘What about the amusement park?’
‘Adventure park. It’s in the black. Only just.’
‘So, in a nutshell, the parent company is doing quite well, and the bank has got off to a promising start?’
‘That’s a fair assessment of the current situation,’ I say. That’s my assessment too.
But there’s a tone to this conversation that I don’t fully understand, something that doesn’t quite fit. In front of me is an investor whose capital is dwindling and whose immediate future involves only more and more risk, but who doesn’t look the least bit worried about it. Be that as it may, I don’t have time to sit around pondering the matter. I still have to take care of—
‘As for the mid-level staff,’ he interrupts my train of thought. ‘Let’s just say, I’ll look into it.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘If you don’t have fifty thousand euros, how are you going to pay him fifty thousand euros?’
‘I can’t.’
‘And what happens then?’
‘He’ll show those photographs to you and…’
I am about to say Laura, but she has nothing to do with the photographs, with this situation or this man.
‘…And you’ve already seen them, in a way,’ I continue. ‘So there’s nothing with which to blackmail me.’
‘I intend to tell him that.’
I am astonished. Was everything really this simple? Then it dawns on me.
‘What happens then?’ I ask.
‘Que sera sera, what must happen will happen,’ he says. ‘The stronger man will survive. And as you’ve learned today, you have to eat what’s in front of you.’
The big man doesn’t offer me a lift and I don’t ask for one. First I walk one and a half kilometres along the dirt track, then another one and a half along the cracked cycle path running alongside the main road. Evening draws in, darkening the afternoon, the trees have grown tight against the sky. I don’t have my phone with me; I deliberately left it at the adventure park. It’s a strange feeling, as though contact with the outside world has been severed outright. But right now, that suits me perfectly. I need to think. Or, more to the point – a point I only realise once I am on the bus and the gloomy forests and ever-brightening, intensifying suburbs swirl endlessly behind the window – I think about everything I still need to calculate.
22
Laura is painting her fourth wall on the eastern side of the adventure park. She is moving around in front of the wall like a boxer, stepping back then returning to the wall for another round of jabs and punches. The children are screaming, the smell of paint blends with the scent of meatloaf wafting in from the Curly Cake.
Time passes as I make a variety of plans. Sometimes I try to decide what to do about Lizard Man, other times I try to find a mathematical path to guide me through everything, but I can’t seem to find the kind of clarity I need. With one exception. I know Lizard Man is following me, biding his time, waiting for the moment to strike. I know he is near me, though I have no empirical evidence to prove it.
Everything moves as if on fast forward.
Time passes.
Although, time never does anything else. This is a one-way street. In one of the definitions of time that I have read somewhere – the continuous and essentially irrevocable progression of existence and events from the past to the future via the present moment – my attention is drawn to the word ‘irrevocable’. For this reason alone, time should come with a warning label.
I find myself getting lost in these kinds of thoughts more and more. And no matter how many calculations I perform, it all feels pointless. Meanwhile, I’ve noticed there are problems with my calculations. Or, if not problems per se, then at least a sense of slowness, a lack of focus and general sluggishness. Such things are new to me and very strange indeed.
I stand behind Laura, but I don’t know why I can’t bring myself to say anything. She is working on the de Lempicka wall.
‘Hi,’ I finally stammer.
Laura turns quickly, she looks a little surprised. I try to behave the way we have behaved before: I lean towards her an inkling, ready to hug her and give her a kiss. But she doesn’t lean towards me. Our kiss is awkward, a dry peck on the cheek. Even the hug becomes my responsibility, and I realise that one-way hugging is neither natural nor particularly invigorating.
‘I’ve asked the cleaners to give the hall a thorough going-over next week,’ she says. ‘There was another surprise in Caper Castle, the slides in the Big Dipper smell of stale milk. They’ll be scoured thoroughly.’
Her tone is suddenly very matter-of-fact. She looks first at Caper Castle, then the Big Dipper, but doesn’t so much as glance at me.
‘Good,’ I say automatically.
‘We’ll clean the Doughnut too,’ she continues, and I realise she sounds the same as she did on our first day working together. ‘The walls are so sticky in places that the children might get stuck.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, suddenly almost on autopilot. ‘Thank you for looking after the park.’
‘That’s my job,’ she says.
‘Right,’ I say.
Then neither of us speaks for a while. A cold knife slashes my stomach. I feel detached from my body, as though there is nothing holding me down. It’s not a very pleasant sensation.
‘I wondered if, later on, we might—’
‘I’ll be here all evening,’ says Laura, and by now she has turned fully to face the wall. ‘Johanna is taking Tuuli to the cinema. I need to get this section finished.’
‘Perhaps after that…’
‘And I have an early start tomorrow.’
‘Maybe tomorrow…’
‘And Tuuli has her aerobics class in the evening.’
And with that she starts painting again. Her movements are quick and precise; Laura clearly knows what she is doing. I am still standing near her, but it feels as though I am drifting further and further from her, as if sucked away by the sea or into outer space.