The Seventh Candidate (45 page)

In any case, he said, they weren’t reduced
in the immediate future to living off the land. They weren’t
absolutely penniless. He’d read of survival for months on pennies.
Sacks of flour for unleavened bread, sides of salted pork. She must
have read about that too. They could scrape by. Later on in the
ease and abundance of summertime they’d look back with nostalgia at
the hardships of founding-time. Surely she had a little money in
the bank to tide them over? Later of course he’d put his flat up
for sale.

With the flat, her question about where
the money was going to come from, supposedly limited to the future,
now took in the past he refused to hear or talk about. But she
couldn’t speak of the debts of
Ideal
and the obvious significance of the changed locks on the
door of the apartment, once his.

Frustrated, she began raising objections
more explicitly but without daring to get to the heart of the
thing. Temporizing seemed the best tactic. You can’t be serious
about staying there, she said. We’d die of cold and hunger. If I’m
able to locate it we’ll spend a few hours there, reconnoitering.
You’ll see what it’s like, what we’re up against in the winter.
Then we’ll drive about the mountains, go to an inn like I wanted to
instead of a horrible place like this. Then we’ll drive back. Maybe
in the spring if you still want to we could move out there.

We will never return, he said.

But you don’t just pull up and go like that,
she objected. He asked what was important back there for her. She
blinked at the question, thought a little and said that there was
her cat, her job, she would have to give notice, there were the
three borrowed books that had to be returned to the library by the
end of the week, she had a dental appointment on Wednesday, two
dresses that had to be picked up at the dry-cleaner’s. She stopped.
Wasn’t the plumber coming in for the toilet leak?

Those were all reasons for leaving and for
never returning, he said. Leaving for what? where? she thought. She
said: “But I
want
to go back.
I didn’t even want to go to the farm in the first
place.”

“You used to talk about it all the
time.”

“Things have changed. I don’t even think
about it any more.”

“If what bothers you is the idea of both of
us being there together, naturally our relationship will be
regularized.”

She blinked again. As she’d done so often
years before, she asked him for a definition. She said she didn’t
understand the meaning of “regularize a relationship.”

He replied that the term was
self-explanatory. Anyhow, their relationship would have to be
regularized after what happened last night.

She asked him what he meant by that. What
had happened last night?

He said that perhaps she could take such an
act casually, but he couldn’t. He had old fashioned views on such
things. For him what had happened last night was binding.

“Nothing happened last night. Nothing at
all.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Anyhow what gave you the idea that I want
to … have a regularized relationship with you?”

“From the beginning, from the very first day
I hired you, that was obvious. We should have, long ago.”

“You’d have saved on my salary that
way.”

“You’re not yourself again, Dorothea. I want
you to be yourself, forever, the way you used to be. How can you
say what you said?”

“We do nothing but quarrel. We haven’t
stopped quarreling since this morning. We’re incon… We don’t get on
at all.”

“I haven’t been quarreling with you,
Dorothea. ‘Incompatible’ is the word, but we’re not. We are
perfectly complementary.”

“Stop telling me about words all the time.
I’m not an imbecile. You see how incompatible we are, about
everything, even words. Where’s the salt?”

A few minutes later she returned to the
subject. There was all her furniture and books and records, you
couldn’t just leave them there like that and disappear. It was
crazy. She wasn’t even sure she’d be able to find the farm.

“Of course you’ll find the farm. You drew
the route in your diary.”

She set the goblet of wine down on the
table. After a while she said in a barely audible voice: “You
looked at my diary?”

He refilled her goblet out of the
jagged-necked bottle. “All of that is the past.”

“You actually looked at my diary?”

“It was lying on the floor that night. Why
are we talking about all that?”

“My private locked diary?”

“Certainly it was an indiscretion on my
part. I apologize for that.”

Long silence.

“Did you read everything?”

“Certainly not everything. Mainly I saw the
map.”

“It’s a… an unforgivable violation of my
privacy. I would never have done that to you.”

There was another long silence. He went on
eating.

“You must have been shocked,” she said.

He swallowed his chlorinated water, dabbed
his lips with the paper napkin and then pursed them, visibly
reflecting as he buttered another slice of bread.

“I accept you as you are, Dorothea, with all
your qualities but also your shortcomings which are things of the
past. Just as, I like to think, you accept me with whatever
shortcomings I may have had.”

At that, she burst into laughter,
irrepressible and bitter, and was silent for the next quarter of an
hour, saying no more than, “Don’t know,” when he asked more of his
technical questions. He frowned. They passed each other the salami
and cheese with elaborate politeness.

Finally she said: “Just a few shortcomings
like leaving me for dead, not a glance, not a phone call after. I
could mention others if you really want to know. I filled three
sheets.”

She felt depressed, close to tears. She
hadn’t imagined it like this, not at all like this. A terrible
thought came to her. Maybe I’m not an easy person. Maybe I’ve been
living alone too long. Maybe I’m too old for it. Hadn’t he
practically proposed to her?

Why are we talking about the past? he said.
They’d agreed that the past was dead. After a while he said he’d
tried to phone her, over and over, from down there but there’d been
no answer.

Yes there had been, she said. He’d rung her
up in the middle of the night, three different times. She’d
answered. She’d heard him breathing. You were the one who didn’t
answer.

Why are we talking about the past? he
repeated. After a while, he said that the first time he heard her
voice he couldn’t say anything. He’d thought she was dead. It must
have been gladness that prevented him from talking. And when he was
about to talk she hung up. The two other times he hadn’t dared. He
didn’t know why. He hadn’t been well. Then he’d rung her up again.
He was going to tell her everything, where she could meet him,
which station, which panel, because he still couldn’t leave, but
when he phoned a voice said over and over that the number didn’t
exist anymore. He’d thought she’d left the capital for the farm
without him. But all that was behind him.

His voice was taking on the strained sound
of the night before and she said it didn’t matter, he was right,
they shouldn’t always be talking about the past. It was dead.

She cleared the table and took everything
back to the car.

When she returned he was standing in the
doorway, staring at the blank wall of the corridor.

He asked her if she’d heard it too, the
voice.

No, she hadn’t heard any voice here outside
of his and hers.

A man’s voice. You must have heard it.

We’re all by ourselves here, Edmond, just
the two of us. There’s still no other car in the car park.

He said he would look on the other floors.
He’d be back in a few minutes.

He started down the corridor. She closed the
door and locked it.

After half hour had gone by she unlocked the
door. Taking the staircase, she started looking for him, saying his
name on every floor, louder and louder. She found him on the top
floor, seated with his back against the corridor wall, head bowed.
She placed her hand on his shoulder. He started and looked up at
her.

“I heard him again. He was saying my
name.”

“That was me calling you. Let’s go back. I’m
tired. You must be tired too.”

She guided him to the elevator and then to
their room. She pressed the button. They were melodiously warned.
The bed replaced the table.

In the night he drew close to her back,
timidly touched her shoulder and then a breast. She moved slightly
out of his hand saying she was sick. At that word instead of
persistence or reluctant relinquishing, there was the old familiar
recoil and she said he shouldn’t worry, it wasn’t catching unless
he changed his sex. In a few years she’d be beyond it and children.
She started talking about children, the ages and names she
preferred. She asked him which age he preferred and without waiting
for an answer started weeping. She said it was the wine. She came
with flowers for me in the hospital, she said. I couldn’t
understand half she said. I don’t know what language it was in. I
couldn’t give her the money. It would have been like buying the
flowers. She stroked my head and cried and cried.

He said nothing for a minute. Then he said
he’d dig a flower garden for her. They’d plant rosebushes. She
liked roses, didn’t she? She’d show him how to dig the holes and
he’d do it for her.

Sometime in the middle of the night she awoke
and saw in the pallor of the wood-scene (he’d asked her if she
minded leaving it lit) how he was staring up at the ceiling. She
saw his eyes and drew close to him. Go to sleep, she said. She said
it over and over and went to sleep herself.

When she woke up, he was puttering about in
the room. In the pallor of the wood-scene she could see that he was
dressed. He was placing clothing in his valise. He couldn’t leave
without her, she said. Even if he had a car he’d never be able to
find the farm without her. Don’t leave me here all alone in this
horrible place. There was no question of leaving her, he said. He’d
intended waking her up, of course. No, they couldn’t stay in this
horrible place. She should get up and dress.

Instinctively she looked at the window-like
space to see the state of the sky. It was the same golden noon as
hours ago. Her watch said 6:37am. The real sky outside must still
be dark.

They stopped for petrol at eight. They were
the only customers. There was a little yellowish light gathering
low in the overcast sky. The rare capital-bound trucks still had
their headlights on. There was no traffic at all on their side. In
the shop she bought a corkscrew and while she was at it another
bottle of white wine. He bought a detailed map of the region and
they consulted it. Twenty kilometers ahead on both sides of the
motorway they could see patches of green with scattered towns and
villages: hill country. South of it, the mountains. When he asked
her to locate it exactly she made a gesture toward a particular
part of the mountains, a gesture that encompassed a good fifty
square kilometers. She’d never been able to read maps, she said.
Once they were in the mountains she’d know, she assured him.

They looked at the near green with longing.
She said they should turn off at the next exit. He noted that it
was over a hundred kilometers from the turn-off she’d marked in her
diary map but he didn’t dare refer to that again. There must be a
number of possible routes. He just asked her if she was sure that
it was the right road. All roads lead to Rome, she said. He
corrected: all roads flee Rome, which she didn’t understand. They
had coffee with more of their sandwiches. They had to watch the
money, he said. He said that he’d have to drive carefully. They had
to hope it wouldn’t snow again. The whole sky was filling with a
sullen yellow.

She felt the conflict of distress and relief
growing at each sign that announced the impending turn-off into
green (green on the map, white in reality now).

Now they were there. He slowed down to quit
the motorway. But the turn-off was blocked by police-barriers with
no-exit signs. The next exit twenty minutes later was also blocked
off. Exit after exit was blocked off. It went on for fifty
kilometers. Maybe we won’t be able to turn off, he said with a note
of panic that expressed her own. She had to reassure him although
she too had had that thought, had imagined them both condemned
forever to the empty motorway and the hotel room with the immobile
noon deer and a voice that didn’t exist.

Before she had time to come up with a valid
reason for the barred exits they heard a siren behind them, then
powerful motorcycles. A goggled motorcycle policeman in black
leather roared alongside them making imperious signals to get on
the slow lane. More black riders on motorcycles powered past, then
expensive cars and finally a prodigiously long low black car with
more black riders in escort.

In a few seconds the motorway was empty.

Somebody important, she said. Wasn’t he
dead? he asked. Wasn’t it a hearse? A dead man wouldn’t be in that
much of a hurry, she replied. And why the motorcycle police? Or the
blocked exits? Nothing threatened the dead. In any case they’d be
able to turn off into the countryside in a few minutes.

But the countryside had disappeared and on
both sides there were piles of tarred ties still holding a little
dirty snow, rusty heaps of girders, used car lots, the flaming
pipes of chemical plants, mountains of garbage with crows and gulls
circling above. That went on and on. Finally they took the turn-off
she’d marked on her diary map after all. It had already started
snowing. From here on you’ll have to guide me, he said.