A Book of Memories (113 page)

For three years he lived with them in this house. In this room. And if in these reminiscences I've been referring to him as my friend, it is not because of our shared boyhood but because during these three years we became very close. Even if we spoke mostly in allusions. Whether we talked of our past or our present, we both cautiously avoided total candor. I learned nothing about his life I hadn't already known, or was forced to witness. And I didn't show him a new or different side of myself. But after twenty years we did return to that mutual attraction which had once transcended our dissimilarities and which we didn't know what to make of as children. This reversion may have had to do with the fact that slowly but surely my successes were turning into failures, and that he never again wanted to be united with anyone on any level. Not with me, either. He remained attentive, sensitive, but shut up in himself. Turned cold. If I wasn't familiar with the painful reverse side of this coldness, I'd be tempted to say that he became an accurate, intelligently responding, precisely calibrated machine.

My experiences in human relations have made me see everything in this world as temporary and ephemeral. What I perceive today as love or friendship can turn out tomorrow to be nothing but the need to gratify a physical urge, or a move prompted by crass or sly self-interest. I acknowledge this with the greatest of equanimity. I have never lied to myself, because I know all about the necessary fluctuations of purposeful action. In the foregoing pages I have already prepared my balance sheet. No loves, no friends. When down in the dumps, I feel the world is nothing but a pile of disappointments. If I could be disappointed, in myself, in something or somebody else, then I could yield to this feeling of disappointment. But in me the absence of this feeling has remained so vivid that it is all I can feel. Which simply means that I haven't yet sunk into total apathy. And that is probably the reason why during those three years it became a vital necessity to have the attentiveness and sensitivity of someone whom I didn't need to, wasn't allowed to, touch. And he himself no longer had such desires. Still, he was closer to me than anyone whose body I could possess.

My aunts did not communicate their astonishment with so much as a flash of their eyes. Maybe a stiffening in their backs hinted that they didn't quite understand. They were more talkative than usual. For long moments they kept moving and fussing about us as if my friend were not there at all. They completely ignored his two suitcases. They were upset. They both talked at once. Not cutting into each other's words, just rattling on, dwelling on different details of the same story. The day before, two boys from the village had hanged themselves. I knew them, too. To help my memory, they went into detailed physical descriptions. Luckily, they were discovered in time to be cut off the rope. They both survived, they were in the hospital. They did it with a single rope. Tied a sliding loop at both ends and threw the rope over a crossbeam of the barn. They stood on apple crates and kicked them away at the same time. Supposedly they were in love with the same girl, who told each of them she was in love with the other. Now if the neighbor's hens didn't lay their eggs all over the place. If she wasn't looking for eggs just then. If she didn't manage to shove the crates back under their feet. It wasn't easy to put a stop to all this. Quite abruptly I told them we were hungry. They quickly improvised a supper for us.

Ella holds the power, Ilma is more sentimental. I followed Ilma into the pantry, where she went to get some pickles. While she was poking around in a huge jar, I briefed her on the situation in a few whispered words. For a certain amount of time, I don't know how long, they must keep him here. This one's soft, she said, and threw back a pickle. They must nurse him as they would nurse me if I were sick. She nodded nervously. Why are these pickles so soft this year, she wondered aloud. The two sisters must have a secret system of communication. Because from that point they weren't alone for a second, couldn't exchange a single word in private, yet Ella went ahead and lit the fire in the tile stove. By the time we sat down to eat, they had both gotten over their nervousness, they were relaxed and back to their amiable, good-natured selves. They tried to draw my friend into conversation and did not once mention the two suicidal boys. In the end they had to see the situation for what it was, though my friend kept smiling throughout. The conversation and the continued smiling took so much out of him that when dinner was over I had to put him to bed, literally. Pull off his clothes and shake him into his pajamas. He protested feebly. He couldn't possibly stay here. Felt awful about it. Being a burden to strangers. I should take him back. I covered him up well, because the room was still freezing cold. I said I'd be back to shut the stove when the fire died down.

The details of his recovery I learned from my aunts. There is a sofa in that room, and in front of the unusually narrow, vaulted windows there's also a walnut table, worn marble-smooth with age, and some old armchairs. Opposite the entrance is a big chest of drawers with a simple mirror above it. The white walls are bare, the beams of the ceiling heavy and dark. He slept for two days. Then he got up, put on his clothes, but for another few days left his room only at mealtimes. On the second day of Christmas, and again shortly after New Year's, I drove out to see him. On both occasions I pretended to be visiting my aunts and exchanged only a few words with him. He lay on his bed. He sat at the empty table. He stared out the window. That's what he did all day. It was quiet. I sat on the bed while he was staring out the window. He was silent for so long that my mind began to wander and I was startled when he finally did speak. He would love to have the mirror covered. Nobody's died here, I said. It seemed we couldn't find the right words. There was a copper candlestick on the table and he kept pushing it back and forth, giving it all his attention. When there are many objects in a given space, he said, our attention is taken up by the relationships among them and we lose sight of the space itself. If there are only a few objects, we look for the relationships among the objects and the space. But it's very difficult to find a permanent, final place for a single object. I can put it here or there. Compared to the whole of the space every possible place seems contingent. It was something like that he said, obviously talking about himself. As if the thinking machine were talking. He was talking about his own situation like that, and it made me laugh, which I did. It wasn't very kind of me to laugh at him, but it was also ridiculous the way he wrapped his confession in transparent abstractions. And then we looked at each other, trying to see where this mutual antagonism would lead. Our eyes were smiling. I was smiling at my own urge to laugh at him, and he at his self-conscious cerebrations.

In the morning he'd sit at the table. The afternoons he'd spend lying on the bed. At the end of the day he'd be at the table again, staring out the window. His daily routine for the next three years grew out of the rhythm of these three compulsively assumed positions. The recovery itself didn't take very long. At the end of the second week he ventured into the trophy room, where my aunts had put back my grandfather's more or less intact thousand-volume library. It may be an exaggeration to call it a library, as it consisted of turn-of-the-century literary dross, collected with unerring bad taste. He began to work. Papers appeared on the table, finally determining the place of the candlestick.

Within a few weeks it became clear that my idea of bringing him here wasn't half bad. It proved to be such a good move, in fact, that my aunts were ready to take over for me. On my next visit Ella drew me aside and said she was sure I would have no objection to my friend staying with them for a longer time. It was so restful for him here. And good for them, too. Because, frankly, there were days when they were afraid. She couldn't really say why, but they were scared, and not just at night but during the day, too. They'd never brought it up before, because they didn't want to trouble anyone. They were familiar with every noise in the house; they checked the doors and made sure the gas was turned off. Still, it was as though danger was lurking about, a fire perhaps, or somebody eavesdropping or prowling, and not an animal, either. She laughed, because my friend wasn't exactly a strong lad who could protect them. If anything, he was a weakling; just the same, since his arrival their fears had vanished. But if I needed the house for my own entertainment or if I felt like a little vacation with the family, there were plenty of extra rooms, downstairs or upstairs. Everything here belonged to me, I must know that. That's why they'd like to have my consent.

She said something about certain financial advantages. That was laughable, because I knew that my friend's financial situation was worse than hopeless. The rent he offered to pay for the room should be considered symbolic. They didn't even mention food. Anyway, what they ate they grew in the garden. At worst, they'd give my family a little less of their surplus. In short, they grew fond of him and were trying hard to find a material framework and financial assurances for their affection. The unconditional admiration they had for me they now transferred to him. What is more, his conduct fit their ideals better than mine ever did. In three whole years he had no more than five entirely harmless visitors. While they kept busy around the house or in the vegetable garden, he worked silently in his room. Between eight in the morning and three in the afternoon not a sound was heard from that room. He ate little and went to bed early. But a new taste in the kitchen, a winter sunset, a late-blooming plant that defied the season
—such little things could make him happy. He helped with the more difficult household chores. He chopped wood, carried manure, could work the chain saw, repaired broken objects. And what was most important, he listened to them, and not just patiently but with genuine interest in what they had to say.

His stay, assumed by all to be temporary, aroused a mixture of suspicion and curiosity in the village. My aunt reported that some of the villagers asked for permission to peek into his room, through the window, when he was out. What they really wanted to see was what anybody could be doing alone within the four walls of a room. He knew nothing of this specific request, but he felt his situation to be precarious. He was afraid, he once said to me, that my aunts might look at his manuscript one day. If they did, he'd surely lose their trust. He was also afraid, he said another time, that when he got up from the table at three in the afternoon everybody knew what he'd been up to, because he felt he was walking stark naked among them. He was afraid, he said with a laugh, that one day they'd club him to death like a mad dog. And it was true that the villagers didn't know what to make of his long, solitary walks. A few times a ranger followed him from a safe distance, but of course my friend noticed him. The Protestant minister was the first man in the village whom he befriended. The old women called the minister the man with a smile.

The police investigation concluded that three motorcyclists were the likely perpetrators. Because of good visibility that day and unmistakable track marks, the possibility that the death was accidental was all but ruled out. A body lay on the gravelly shore closer to the water than to the retaining wall. When the water recedes as far as it did that autumn, one can see the layout of the riverbed. There is a wide strip of sand, closest to the central channel, above that a narrower band of silt strewn with larger pebbles, and the area nearer the shoreline is covered with fine pebbles. He was lying on his back, on a towel. His head reached the strip of silt. He'd probably fallen asleep. Before that he may have gone for a swim, or at least a dip, because his swimming trunks were still wet. The three cyclists, riding side by side, were approaching at about forty kilometers an hour on the slightly sloping, pebbly, dried-out shore. In principle, it's not possible to ride any faster on such terrain. They were coming upriver. At the same time, from the opposite direction, a tugboat towing barges was heading to the nearby pier. Otherwise the riverfront was in all probability deserted. Vacationers are gone by this time of the year. And the villagers come to the river only to scrub down their horses or to fetch a wayward goose. There was no one at the boat station either. When they were about sixty meters from my friend, two of the cyclists accelerated, though the experts could not agree on the rate of acceleration. The third cyclist followed suit only when he was about forty meters away; perhaps he hesitated, or maybe he was the last one to spot the fallen figure. In any case, he rode over the legs. The middle one rode over the chest, then tipped over. After a long skid upward, he slid into the hardened strip of silt. The third hit a stone, leaped in the air, and then landed on the victim's head. The one who fell over got back on his bike, made a loop around the body, presumably to have a look, and only then did he follow his friends. About ten minutes later death completed the job they had started. While waiting for the third to catch up, the other two apparently kept looking back; for about a thirty-meter stretch the two sets of tire marks showed them circling, weaving in and out. Then the lines became straight again and in parallel formation led to the pier. Here they formed a single file and got on the paved road. And that's when the tugboat reached the pier. From the deck, one of the ship's engineers saw the three cyclists. Although he couldn't give anything approaching a detailed description, he thought they were young men, possibly teenagers. Later, he also saw a man lying on the shore, but thought nothing of it.

By the time I made it to the village, alerted by my aunt's telephone call, the police had already finished taking pictures and examining the evidence. It was almost dark. His body was brought up from the shore on a makeshift stretcher. I walked alongside him, accompanied him. Once, just once, I cast a glance at what remained. One of his hands hung down and flapped about. The outspread fingers now and then grazed the ground. I would have liked to catch that hand, hold it, put it back in its place. But I didn't dare.