Comedy in a Minor Key (12 page)

And Marie plucked absently at her handkerchief.

There was a knock at the door and they both jumped up. The elderly woman appeared, in hat and coat, with the four o’clock tea. Marie took the tray out of her hands.

“Aga called,” the pension owner said with a friendly smile.

“Aga?” Marie asked. “Who’s that?”

“Aga, you know—Coba calls herself Aga on the phone.”

“Of course,” Wim confirmed. “Understood. And . . . ?” He was burning with curiosity.

“She can’t come today, she wanted me to tell you.”

“Again, nothing,” Marie said, filled with consternation and turning to Wim. “You see.”

“Has she been in contact with—I don’t know with who, but . . .”

“It’s being handled through an intermediary,” the dear old woman explained, looking especially nice. It sounded soothing.

“Well then, we’ll just have to practice being patient,” Wim said, laying his hand gently on Marie’s shoulder. She put the tray down on the table in silence.

“Don’t worry a bit about your ration cards,” the woman explained. “You’ll get them no matter what—if it’s necessary,” she added quickly. “I have to rush off to the train. I’ll be back again this evening. Everything’s been taken care of.”

And walking firmly upright, she left the room.

“I don’t believe it,” Marie said, falling into a chair. She looked at Wim, completely helpless.

He shrugged his shoulders. Wait it out!

But at the same moment the old woman shut the door behind her, he had the sense that somewhere, invisible in the room, another door was opening, giving him a view out into an unknown distance. While he stood there and looked, a milk-white fog rose up and flooded into the room, overflowing its fixed contours. He had the feeling that everything all around him, even the floor he stood on, was growing vague and in a way contingent. He rubbed his hand thoughtfully over his hair, as though he had to protect it against a suddenly rising wind that was disheveling it. He could feel his heart beating. It had altered its inner rhythm; it beat harder, braver. Then he saw Marie sitting there. She too had receded into the distance and was far away from him, almost
unreachable. The way she sat there now, arms pressed tight against her body and hands folded in her lap, alone and full of sadness, she was no longer his wife. There was no connection between them. He saw her as though for the first time. In that moment, this image of her in her foreignness, her otherness, was etched deeply into his mind. He saw she was crying.

“But Marie, you’re crying,” he said, and he took her hands. The tears ran down her cheeks.

He went on while he tenderly stroked her hands: “What’s wrong? . . . Are you scared?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered back, almost inaudibly.

Silence.

Afterward they drank their tea.

At the same time, the landlady was herself taking steps to make contact. But Coba hadn’t told them that. Why should she? The old woman had an even older sister in the town where Marie and Wim lived. For some time, ever since they had started coming and taking men away, this sister had done her part. The task fell to her of making contact with the police officer handling the case of the nighttime find in the park, and finding out all the essential information: whether in fact the police were investigating the clue that had fallen so easily into their hands—the number on the laundry tag.

After she had found out the name of the policeman, and learned at the same time that he was still what was called “a good patriot,” she practically stalked him.

It took several days, too long for the two people in the room on the fourth floor.

Gradually Wim stopped taking pleasure in his reading. They went downstairs together and walked around the city, tense and worried. Maybe they would run into someone they knew from their town who would know why they were here. But everything went off without a hitch. No one was looking for them. The weather stayed cold and stormy. Staying in a heated room, near the stove, was still the most pleasant option they had. Soon Wim too grew impatient.

“What do you think, Marie?” he asked one day. “Do you think I can get work from the office to do here?”

Marie shrank back. “But—so you don’t still think we’ll soon be—”

“No, it’s not that,” Wim interjected. “That has nothing to do with it. I just meant we have enough work to do at the factory, and I certainly have enough time here.”

Marie took it as a sign, though: that he had lost all hope too.

Then, two days later, at an hour when they hadn’t expected her, Coba was standing in their room. She laughed with satisfaction.

“Coba!” Marie cried, and rushed toward her. The laugh annoyed her. Was it supposed to mean that now they were really . . . Now that it was here, so suddenly, it was almost impossible to believe.

“What is it?” Wim said in a monotone.

“Everything’s all right,” Coba answered, stepping closer.

Wim tucked his book under his arm and gripped it so tight that he almost crushed the finger he had stuck between the pages. Still, he waited.

“You can go back.”

Marie fell around Coba’s neck. Quiet sobbing.

“I know,” Coba said, patting her encouragingly on the back. “It took such a long time. And the uncertainty.”

“You did it,” Wim said, and gripped her hand. He couldn’t say anything more. A warm feeling rose inside him; he wanted to be happy and to show that he was happy. But it sounded muted, almost sad.

“It wasn’t me,” Coba replied, happily excited. “It was the policeman! You were lucky.”

So we’re going back home, Wim thought to himself. We were lucky. So this warm feeling, with a little grief mixed in, that’s luck? They had gained in experience—maybe that’s luck?

“I’ve been so angry with myself,” Marie said, still crying, and she let go of Coba’s neck.

“But Marie, it was both of us” escaped Wim’s lips.

But she shook her head slowly. It was a little celebratory too, since she was also wiping away her tears. No, it was her fault, only hers! The same way she alone knew the secret. Because somehow or other there was a secret
connection running between these two events, she just didn’t yet know what.

Coba went on: “. . . He cut out the laundry number and the monogram himself and destroyed them as soon as he noticed them. Yes, our police . . . ! He understood right away. Later, when the police chief came, and the coroner, there wasn’t a trace.”

Wim was silent and bit his upper lip.

But Marie said, after a little pause, “Don’t we need to find him and . . .”

“Thank him!!” Coba cried “—Marie! You’re . . . ! If you want to, you can send him some flowers after the war!”

After the war! “I’m afraid that’ll still be a little while yet,” Wim said bitterly. With all the excitement, worries, and day-to-day trivialities, you could almost forget there was still a war going on.

“Now come with me,” Coba said decisively. And they packed their little suitcase.

When they came home late on the last train, a little before eleven, the moon’s sickle hung in the sky and cast a dull light. It was bright enough to show that two people, a man and a woman, were walking there, but their faces remained unrecognizable.

Marie and Wim liked the half-dark. For they had the feeling that there was still, even now, something to hide.

Big, dark clouds sailed across the sky, and for a moment, everywhere they looked it was gloomy. A wind was blowing from the sea. It would bring rain tonight. But the rain would not find them sleeping.

When they turned the corner, they were hit by the full strength of the wind coming in from the fields and across the park. Searchlights in the distance. When the wind let up, they could hear weak thuds from far away . . . The airplanes had chosen another route tonight.

The park was empty. Alongside the footpath a chain-link
fence, interrupted in only one place. The road led slightly downhill. The last time Wim had walked it . . . Behind the path, as tall as they were and casting deep shadows, were bushes and shrubs, like the darkness itself; farther back, like extinguished candles, were trees and telephone poles. It was like looking at a cemetery.

They found their house just as they had left it. Still, they went inside as though entering something they used to know intimately that had suddenly become unfamiliar. Their happiness too was dampened.

Since they couldn’t turn on any lights right away, they felt their way through the dark rooms and hallways to hang the blackout curtains in the windows. Once, they bumped into each other in the dark. They stood for a moment, two warm islands in the cold sea of darkness, facing each other and waiting and calming down. They had had enough adventure. When they started to move carefully through the house again, their arms slightly raised, they reclaimed possession of their things in a new way, different from the way you do when you turn on a bright light the moment you set foot in a house, even before you have walked through a room and straightened a pillow here, tugged at a blanket there.

Afterward, Wim went down to the cellar to get wood for the next day. Marie brewed some coffee. Everything started up again in the ordinary way they were used to. They felt abashed and a little lonely; even though they didn’t say anything about it, each noticed it in the other.

Then Wim wound the clock back up and reset it to the right time. And with every half hour and hour that chimed while Wim was gently pushing the hand around with his finger, they too returned as though to a new day.

It was almost midnight.

“Tomorrow morning early, as usual?” Marie asked.

“Seven-thirty. Come up to bed!”

As they climbed the steps to their bedroom and walked past “his” door, they shyly and silently looked at the brightly painted wood. The black door handle remained at the horizontal, as always.

But it seemed to them both that the door was closed in a way it had never been closed before.