street.
The picture appeared again as she hurried along through the streets of Jordaan: disappear into the forest, down to the spot by the marsh, between the pines, a place only she, not even Mailin, knew about. For as long as she could remember she had thought of it as the last place , and it always used to calm her down to think of it. Nothing could calm her down now.
At Haarlemmerplein she hailed a taxi. Huddled up in the back seat. The driver was shaven headed and wearing a grey suit, reeked of a type of aftershave Zako sometimes used. She grabbed the door handle to get out again.
– Where does the young lady want taking to?
She slumped back. Thought she’d told him where she was going.
– Schiphol, she murmured, and pulled the thin leather jacket around herself.
The taxi driver turned again, winked at her in the mirror. – Travelling light, he observed as he offered her a cigarette.
A S I WRITE this, I think of all the things I would have said to you, dear Liss, if only you had let me tell you. Everything that happened that spring. And how I got through that summer, how I found myself on Crete in the autumn, under a different sun, but with the same black light shining inside me. Among people gorging themselves, drinking, coupling. They argued and vomited and left the kids to look after themselves. That’s where I got to know Jo. In the evening I sat and read on the terrace outside the restaurant, the same poem over and over again, by the light of a candle. It’s about the end time, I think, or at least it felt to me as though it was about my end time; roaming through a waste land, no water, no meaning, blindness, emptiness, death.
What are you reading?
Jo asked when he came up to me. He was suspicious, as he no doubt was of everyone he met; what he needed more than anyone else was someone he could trust. I told him about the poem, recited the section called ‘Death by Water’, told him about the image of the dead Phoenician at the bottom of the sea.
Jo was twelve years old and left completely on his own. He knew what I felt like.
PART II
1
Sunday 14 December
A S THE PLANE began its descent and the captain announced that they were approaching Oslo airport, Liss woke in the midst of an avalanche of thoughts. Two of them remained with her. Mailin is missing. I must find Mailin.
Sunday afternoon. Just after four. She’d spent the night on a bench at Schiphol, hadn’t managed to find a seat on a plane until morning. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since she’d sat in the café in Haarlemmerdijk. Wouters was the name of the policeman who’d answered when she called Zako’s number. Could one ever forget such a name? It isn’t true that I last saw Zako a week ago. I was there that night. Just before he died … Enclose those thoughts in a room. Lock it. The name Wouters on a sign on the door. Not to be opened. Will it ever be possible to forget that there is something inside that room? Start with the name, Wouters, forget the policeman’s name. Forget his voice, and what he told her. Then it might also be possible to forget where she was on Saturday night. I must find Mailin. I don’t care a damn about anything else.
The woman sitting next to her had finished reading VG . She handed it to Liss, even though Liss hadn’t asked for it.
She flipped through without reading. A few pages in, she stopped and just stared at the headline above a big story: Missing woman (29) due to appear on Taboo. It was about Mailin. Her partner had mentioned this TV programme. VG called it ‘a scandal show’. A talk show hosted by Berger, she read, a name she associated with obsolete rock music. Now he was attracting huge audiences with this series on the subject of taboos. Yesterday’s show was apparently about sexuality. It had caught fire when Berger defended the idea that child sex might be okay. Liss struggled to put this into context. What could Mailin, always so careful about the views
The picture appeared again as she hurried along through the streets of Jordaan: disappear into the forest, down to the spot by the marsh, between the pines, a place only she, not even Mailin, knew about. For as long as she could remember she had thought of it as the last place , and it always used to calm her down to think of it. Nothing could calm her down now.
At Haarlemmerplein she hailed a taxi. Huddled up in the back seat. The driver was shaven headed and wearing a grey suit, reeked of a type of aftershave Zako sometimes used. She grabbed the door handle to get out again.
– Where does the young lady want taking to?
She slumped back. Thought she’d told him where she was going.
– Schiphol, she murmured, and pulled the thin leather jacket around herself.
The taxi driver turned again, winked at her in the mirror. – Travelling light, he observed as he offered her a cigarette.
A S I WRITE this, I think of all the things I would have said to you, dear Liss, if only you had let me tell you. Everything that happened that spring. And how I got through that summer, how I found myself on Crete in the autumn, under a different sun, but with the same black light shining inside me. Among people gorging themselves, drinking, coupling. They argued and vomited and left the kids to look after themselves. That’s where I got to know Jo. In the evening I sat and read on the terrace outside the restaurant, the same poem over and over again, by the light of a candle. It’s about the end time, I think, or at least it felt to me as though it was about my end time; roaming through a waste land, no water, no meaning, blindness, emptiness, death.
What are you reading?
Jo asked when he came up to me. He was suspicious, as he no doubt was of everyone he met; what he needed more than anyone else was someone he could trust. I told him about the poem, recited the section called ‘Death by Water’, told him about the image of the dead Phoenician at the bottom of the sea.
Jo was twelve years old and left completely on his own. He knew what I felt like.
PART II
1
Sunday 14 December
A S THE PLANE began its descent and the captain announced that they were approaching Oslo airport, Liss woke in the midst of an avalanche of thoughts. Two of them remained with her. Mailin is missing. I must find Mailin.
Sunday afternoon. Just after four. She’d spent the night on a bench at Schiphol, hadn’t managed to find a seat on a plane until morning. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since she’d sat in the café in Haarlemmerdijk. Wouters was the name of the policeman who’d answered when she called Zako’s number. Could one ever forget such a name? It isn’t true that I last saw Zako a week ago. I was there that night. Just before he died … Enclose those thoughts in a room. Lock it. The name Wouters on a sign on the door. Not to be opened. Will it ever be possible to forget that there is something inside that room? Start with the name, Wouters, forget the policeman’s name. Forget his voice, and what he told her. Then it might also be possible to forget where she was on Saturday night. I must find Mailin. I don’t care a damn about anything else.
The woman sitting next to her had finished reading VG . She handed it to Liss, even though Liss hadn’t asked for it.
She flipped through without reading. A few pages in, she stopped and just stared at the headline above a big story: Missing woman (29) due to appear on Taboo. It was about Mailin. Her partner had mentioned this TV programme. VG called it ‘a scandal show’. A talk show hosted by Berger, she read, a name she associated with obsolete rock music. Now he was attracting huge audiences with this series on the subject of taboos. Yesterday’s show was apparently about sexuality. It had caught fire when Berger defended the idea that child sex might be okay. Liss struggled to put this into context. What could Mailin, always so careful about the views
Similar Books
