Nearby sat a man of about fifty. He wasn’t eating or drinking anything. Beside him he had a sheaf of papers covered with writing. He looked over at Kathrine. She smiled, but he didn’t react, and just looked at her for a long time with curiosity. She put her tray back, and took the escalator downstairs. Then she saw the colored glass dome, over the atrium in the middle of the building. It was pretty, but Kathrine had imagined it would be bigger and prettier.
She walked along between counters, as though looking for someone. Everything was much too nice for her. Undergarments were called lingerie in French. She took an unbelievably sheer nightie, all trimmed with lace, off a rack, held it in front of herself, and looked at the effect in the mirror. It was a ridiculous sight, the dark blue fleece over her shoulders and the fine, flowing silk. It’s so delicate, she thought, I could just stuff it in my pocket and leave with it. But that’s not my style. She looked at the price tag. That wasn’t her style, either. The whole department store smelled of vanilla.
On the ground floor, she bought herself some perfume. She passed the counters of the various cosmetics firms, the young salesgirls who were no prettier than she was, but much better dressed, and carefully made up. They spoke to the customers, and squirted perfume on their hands, the backs of their hands, their wrists. None of them came up to Kathrine. At one counter, there was a little purple bottle, with the word Poison on it in gold. Fish, she thought, what a strange name for a perfume. She held out her hand to one of the salesgirls, who took it between her fingertips, turned it over, and squirted some perfume on her wrist. Kathrine sniffed at it, but she couldn’t smell it in the suffocating scent of a thousand other perfumes. She could only smell the alcohol, which slowly evaporated and chilled her wrist. The salesgirl had already turned away. She was talking to a colleague, and Kathrine had the feeling they were both making fun of her, maybe for the suitcase she was carrying around with her. Then she said she wanted a bottle of Poison. It was very expensive, but who cared.
She went out on the street. A man walked by, dressed like an orange. Kathrine was relieved when she saw the steps down to the metro. She was relieved that she knew where she was going. She was looking forward to seeing Christian, and hoped he would be pleased at her visit. She was annoyed she hadn’t traveled through to Boulogne.
She imagined how Christian would touch her, how he would kiss her neck, push his hand under her fleece, under her T-shirt. He was lying next to her, kissing her, his hands were everywhere, he was whispering in her ear, he was lying on top of her, she sat on him. The room was furnished with beautiful antiques. There was even an open fireplace, with a fire burning. It was warm, and there were lots of blankets and sheets on the bed, and a very soft mattress that squeaked when they moved.
Kathrine took the metro back to the Gare du Nord. The Russian singer and her accompanist, her father or her lover, weren’t there anymore, but maybe that was a different tunnel than Kathrine was going through this time, she couldn’t be sure.
Dusk was falling as Kathrine arrived in Boulogne. She asked a taxi driver for directions to the Hotel du Vieux Matelot, and then walked there, even though it was raining, and it was a long way. The hotel was an ugly modern building. The door was locked. Kathrine rang. It took a long time for someone to answer, then a young man came along. Before letting her in, he scrutinized her through the glass door. She asked whether Christian Nygard was staying at the hotel. The young man nodded, and asked whether she wanted a room. Yes, she said. The man had her fill out a form, and handed her a key. She asked what Christian’s room number was. Seventeen, said the young man, he had put them both on the same floor. But Monsieur didn’t get back from work until very late. The room was furnished with old pieces that didn’t go together. On the wall there was a color print of Venice. The heating was off, and the room took a long time to get warm, after Kathrine had turned the knob. The view out of the window was of a narrow street. There was no one around at all.
So this was where Christian was staying, and this was his life, these little rooms in hotels, in some town or other. Kathrine wondered what he had in the way of possessions that he took with him, if he had books or pictures from home. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure whether it was such a good idea to come. They had liked each other quite well, but maybe there was a woman here whom Christian liked too. A woman who walked through these streets every morning, who had caught his eye, whom he had spoken to in a café or a bar. A customs employee, thought Kathrine, called Chantal or Marianne, with a baby. Unhappy. Christian will meet her, they will drink wine together, he will show her the home page of his company, later on he’ll send her e-mails, which will say that the women in Denmark are different from the women in France. She will write back, first in the hope that the episode was more than that, because she will believe she’s found at least a friend, and then later on out of habit. Christian won’t make her happy, Chantal, or Marianne, or whatever her name is.
Christian was no sort of Don Juan, he hadn’t so much as kissed Kathrine. But maybe he just hadn’t liked her. Her breasts were on the small side, too small, she thought. And she was too boyish altogether, she hardly had any hips. And she’d rather have been blond. Why didn’t she get her hair dyed, Thomas had suggested once, but she didn’t want to do that.
Perhaps Christian liked women better who had big breasts and blond hair. Perhaps he liked exuberant women with long, painted fingernails. Women who laughed aloud and had a slinky walk like cats. Maybe French women were different, the way Portuguese women were different. That’s what he’d written to her after all, back when he’d been in Portugal. I’m sure, thought Kathrine, that he’s got a girl here and a woman there. He’ll be annoyed that I showed up. I’ll see him at breakfast, she thought, I won’t knock on his door. He can’t do anything about me staying here, it’s a free country, I can do as I please. But what’s that good for? It got darker in the room. Kathrine didn’t turn the light on. She was incredibly tired, she had never felt so tired. She lay on the bed, she thought about Thomas, she thought about her son, her mother, Alexander. It was as though she was thinking twice over, as though a second stream of thoughts were following the first, that only occasionally left her with a picture and penetrated her consciousness, a dark, blurry picture where you couldn’t make out much, a room, people who were doing things or had done something, some expectation or memory.
She was afraid. She felt she was losing her mind. As if she were very old and had a life full of enigmatic encounters behind her, of which she had only a dim memory. There were hints of dreams, maybe dreams she had once had, and that now that they were coming at the wrong time, only frightened her. Stories waiting for their endings. There was something to be done, but she didn’t know what it was. Someone wanted something from her. People were crowding her. A shadow, which seemed to be her, was running off ahead, and she couldn’t catch up with it. There was a world waiting for her, just by her, an incredibly big, dark world, with laws of its own. Nothing went away. The other figures only moved when she moved. Just like the game she’d played when she’d been a child. You had your back turned to the others, and they ran toward you, and when you turned round, they stopped still. It was Kathrine’s turn, but she didn’t dare to turn away. She was afraid the others would jump on her if she turned her back.