affair
1
His eyes fall on the telephone. For a moment it seems to assume an extra power, it holds him. He glances again at the piece of paper in his hand. The name is written clearly on it. He repeats the numbers out loud to himself. Can it be nearly two years already he asks, two years since I last saw her.
He looks around at the toys lying on the living room floor. The wooden train tracing a line across the rug, painted in shiny red, yellow, and green. Blocks, soft toys, books, the scattered concentration of a four year old boy. He hesitates. Should he put the paper back into the book from which it fell? Or should he tear it up and throw it in the bin?
He knows what he wants to do. He wants to lift the telephone receiver and carefully, deliberately, push the buttons underneath the relevant numbers. It is her voice he wants to hear. He would like it to be warm and friendly, glad to hear him at the other end. It will not be. Probably it will be cool and polite, a little distant, something like his. He stands for a moment.
A voice calls from the bedroom. He goes in. His son is sitting up in the bed, tears in his eyes.
“I hadda bad dream Papa, I hadda bad dream,” he is saying.
“Hey," says François,” it’s okay, don’t be crying. Papa is here now. You’re awake. It’s all over. Don’t worry.”
The child looks at him doubtfully. His eyes are still sleepy. François goes over to him and lifts him out of the bed. He carries him slowly into the living room, points to the toy train.
“Look, what’s that?”
“Train, Papa, that’s my train.”
“Yes, that’s your train. Why don’t you go and play with it? Mama will be home soon.”
He puts his son down on the carpet.
“I am just going to get some coffee. okay?”
Straightening up, he walks to the kitchen. He reaches for the coffee machine. The piece of paper is still in his hand. No more than a metre away is a small bin. Taking a step, he places his foot firmly on the pedal. The top springs open. He crumples the paper up into a tight ball, raises his arm as if about to throw it, then stops.
It’s just a number he thinks. Why shouldn’t I throw it away? Am I being sentimental?
He raises his arm once again then stops once again.
No, maybe I'll keep it. I can still remember her writing it out that evening as we sat in the cafe.
Somehow he cannot quite see himself throwing it in with the rubbish. Somehow it does not seem right. His foot lifts off the pedal. The top comes down with a bump. He smoothes out the ball of paper and walks back into the living room. His son is now playing happily with the train.
“Papa my train is coming into the station. Look! Peep, peep!”
“Yes, yes, I see.”
“Papa is not looking.”
“Yes I am. Okay I’m not. Just a moment Mattias.”
He walks across the room, stepping over Mattias and the train. Picking up the book where he left it on the armchair, he opens it and carefully places the wrinkled piece of paper between the pages.
Remember, François, do not forget, he says quietly to himself. Between pages twenty-nine and thirty.
He closes the book and pushes it in between the others on the shelf.
2
It was a Thursday evening. He was working late. It was quiet in the office, and she, bored, came to ask him if there was anything she could do to help. He was trying to fix a sleeving machine. Oil on his fingers, a screwdriver in his hand, he was frustrated and tired. He was searching in the back of the machine for the problem. Suddenly he was aware of her standing beside him. He felt a little awkward and half-smiled.
“There is some client’s work ready, over there, by the light-box,” he said.
“No, it's okay. There’s no hurry,” she replied. “I was only wondering if I could help.”
“Do you know anything about this machine?” he asked.
She smiled.
“No. Not really.”
“Then I am not alone.”
The blue of her eyes, the soft line of her mouth caught his attention. He wondered why he had not noticed it before. She laughed lightly. He gave the screwdriver a sharp turn, then flicked the man switch to `on’.
“Let us see if this is any better,” he said.
He took a film from the rack and inserted it between the grooves, beneath the spools of film-protector, pushed it forward over the sensor. There was a low click, a pause, and then the machine suddenly whirred into action.
The spools turned and the transport pulled the film forward, sandwiching it between the matt and shiny plastic, sealing it with two fine lines of acetone, and then ejecting it safely the other end. He cut it free and holding it up to the light, examined it both back and front.
“It’s okay,” he said, “it's good now. It seems to be working again.”
He turned towards her. Her head was cocked slightly to one side, and she was looking at him curiously. There was an awkward moment of silence.
“You must have a magic presence,” he said.
She suddenly blushed. Her hand went up to her hair, pushing it back to one side, behind her ear.
“I doubt it,” she answered.
Turning back to the machine, he concentrated on setting up the receiving spool. He threaded the plastic through and stuck it down with a piece of clear tape.
“Don’t you need to put the back on again?” she asked, pointing to the back of the machine.
“No,” he answered, glad to be able to say something, feeling that he had embarrassed her. “I'll leave it off just in case it stops working again. That way I shall save time.”
“Okay,” she said. “If you need me to do anything, I’ll be out in reception.”
He watched her walk away. She was wearing a brown jacket, loose khaki pants and black leather shoes. His eyes remained on her until she turned a corner and out of sight. Even as she went, as she disappeared, he wanted to call her back.
He ran his hand across the front of his t-shirt, cursed under his breath as he realised he had put two long oil stains on it.
It was not quite eight o'clock. There was another two hours work in front of him. Two large orders of film were still waiting to be done, black and white, colour, transparency, some of it straightforward, some with special instructions. The noise and the harsh white light of the laboratory seemed stifling.
Outside it would be getting dark. The trees would be swaying lightly in the park, creaking, contracting, as if letting go after the close heat of the day.
The sky would be falling into turquoise, the trams rattling around the red-bricked facade of the museum. Their lighted windows would be moving though the dusty air.
He imagined he could hear the clink of glasses in a café. He could hear the murmur of voices underneath spinning ceiling fans. He could taste ice-cold beer, creamy coffee. The couples in corners, their gestures, their movements, the turns and dips of their secret conversations would suggest intimacy. Suddenly he was thinking of her. He was seeing them there together. Would she smile the way she had just smiled?
He put the screwdriver down then walked to the washroom. Whistling, he cleaned the remains of the oil from his hands. For a moment he stood in the corridor that led to the office. He wondered if perhaps he should go out to the reception and see what she was doing. He decided it was better to get on with his work. He went to the computer and entered figures, took a sip of Cola from a cardboard cup he had left sitting to the side. It was too sweet and already flat.
3
François sits down in the armchair. He looks at his son playing on the floor. Trains move in various lines, stopping every now and then at stations made from an improbable collection of objects. Here some blocks, there a book, imagination serving to finish and decorate what the eye cannot see.
François wonders if it is better to have a child's faith in imagination. Perhaps it is more than just illusion, a weaving of something around what is not really there. He hears Mattias.
“Papa, this train is going to that station there, and this one is a metro that is going to go across the sea to a very big island.”
His son is pointing to a line of wooden carriages.
François smiles.
“Metros cannot go across the sea. Only boats or airplanes. A metro is only for the city. How would it cross the water? Maybe you could make it go somewhere else.”
The child looks puzzled for a moment.
“Why not papa?”
“Well they need tracks to run on, don’t they?. You can’t build tracks on water because they would sink.”
François pauses. He waits for the reply. The eyes move, the head tilts a bit to one side.
“Yes, but this is a special train.”
“Why?” asks François.
“Because the station-master built a very, very, big bridge all the way over.”
His son’s hands move in the air as he indicates the length of the bridge. François smiles. He wants to laugh happily at the way in which his son’s mind works. The way at this age, space, distance, the attributes of the physical world, of reality, are not yet insurmountable, unchallengeable.
“Yes,” he says, “I guess the station-master could do that if he wanted to, couldn't he?”
François realises how big his son has become. He knows the miracle of growth and development in a child is something repeated countless times the world over. Nevertheless, it is true in your child it always seems special.
Two years have seen such a change. Gone are the diapers, the baby talk, the stroller, and the high chair. Mattias has grown under his nose. He has already been one-and-a-half years in a playgroup and is just about to start school.
4
There were the early days of the marriage. There was the June day they moved to this apartment, a couple of months after Mattias were born. There were those first nights when all he remembers is the feel of his wife, Sophie, and the warmth of her body as he got into the bed beside her each time.
The long cycle along the Plantage-Middenlaan on the way from work. Clear days. Wet days. Afternoons when the canal outside the living room window could not be seen for fog.
There were the Saturday evenings sitting around the old wooden table, eating. A large dish of cannelloni or lasagna, cheese sauce, thick and creamy, the tomatoes, the meat, rich and hot. The lingering smell of the basil. The sweetness of the garlic.
Often they ate late, well after Mattias was asleep. Sometimes the student from the next flat joined them. They sat and talked, sharing a bottle of wine, breaking off pieces of the fresh baguette, laughing, teasing each other, until it seemed the street outside went quiet, and they noticed the lights in the buildings on the other side of the canal going out one by one.
Occasionally he stood by the window and watched a boat, a barge, cut its way through the dark water. It glided under the spindly branches of trees, its engines churning up the surface behind it.
There were the times they were both tired, both exhausted. Yet there were also the times when each cycle of tiredness seemed to bring with it a flowering, a freshness, a sense of some shared achievement.
It was a year or so before the first problems, difficulties, began to appear. At first it was an irritation, a sharpness. Then a sarcastic edge began to creep into some of their conversations.
The arguments, the silences, became more frequent. They lasted longer. It was not that they constantly fought. It was more that the avenues of communication became strained.
They tried talking but it only seemed more confusing than clarifying. Then it felt like he was hardly ever there. He was up early watching the sun break the day over the water, hearing the cascade of birdsong that late spring and early summer brought.
Regularly he was not home till late, till after ten. Then Sophie was in bed, or sitting sleepily in front of the T.V.
Was it then he noticed he had begun to find escape in work? Was it then he realised that he felt a stranger at home. He felt himself to be somehow drifting away from it?
“Papa, the train has crashed.”
François turns his head and looks to where his son is playing. Mattias is pointing to a line of overturned carriages.
“What is it? What has happened?”
“Papa, the train crashed. It was going very, very fast, and the signalman didn’t change the signals, and then it went crash and fell off the tracks.”
Mattias is kneeling down, looking intently at the overturned carriages. Then he sits back up. There is a mixture of curiosity and concern on his face.
“And what about the passengers,” François asks, “are they all right? Are any of them hurt?”
There is a moment of silence, and suddenly with a big smile the child declares...
“No! All the people jumped out before the crash, ‘cause they didn’t want to be hurt. And the first carriage was a goods carriage and it had lots of water in it, and it spilt everywhere and made the driver wet.”
He kneels up, obviously pleased at his explanation, his handling of events. François smiles and looks at him.
“Well I’m glad no-one was hurt. The signalman should really be more careful. You will have to speak to the stationmaster about him, won’t you?”
Mattias nods his head in agreement then takes up his other train. He pulls it around towards a book, making that familiar approximation of the noise of an engine. Stopping it as straight as he can, he rolls over lying on his back. His eyes stare up at the ceiling, his hand going up to his mouth. His hair falls back off his forehead, and in the fairness of his face, the whiteness of light reflected from the walls, his eyes look all the bluer, all the brighter.
François gets up and goes over to him. He bends down and tickles his stomach. Mattias wriggles and laughs.
“Hey little fellow,” François says, “what about something to eat, what about a nice salami sandwich?”
“Cookie, Papa. I want a cookie.”
5
She was already in a relationship. He knew her partner was older than her and that they had lived together for some time. She referred to him now and then in conversation, but never directly.
More and more he found himself thinking of her. Somehow she combined with his need to work, his need to escape the tensions building at home. He was always glad to see her.
At first they only talked about their work. Despite the difficulties in his marriage François still felt committed to it. He felt responsible to his son. He knew he was somewhat cautious and was relieved to have an excuse to avoid any definite or impulsive action.
Their friendship moved forward gradually and carefully. In many ways she puzzled him. At times she appeared insecure and over eager to please. He knew she worked well. The comments, the gossip, the petty jealousies of small company life, went past him.
She was friendly. She seemed intent on involving herself in things around her. Yet somehow different, somehow apart.
On more than one occasion she demonstrated to him that she considered him special. Once after having being away for a week and delayed in returning, she hugged him, kissing him on both cheeks affectionately when he returned. It was more than friendship should have required.
At other times she was cool and distant. He realised she had guessed he was having problems in his marriage. He never openly mentioned it, was not the type to discuss his personal life quickly.
Now and then she made a reference to it, a comment, but he knew he was the one guilty of avoiding any discussion of the subject.
It continued like this for four or five months. In fact it grew slowly, as summer passed into autumn, as the nights became deeper and longer, as the year fell into winter. It was that February he realised it was becoming something other than friendship.
At weekends he found himself wondering what she was doing. He imagined she was thinking of him, and that if out in the city alone, he would maybe run into her by accident. Occasionally they had to work Sundays together.
Then he would get up early taking the tram so he could walk through the park. As it rattled its way through the quiet streets, he would think of her. His eyes would take in the rows of four storey apartments, the windows empty and still, curtains open, curtains closed. Dreamily he would stare at the long lines of the tram rails, sometimes vivid and mercurial under a sparkling winter sun.
There would be the crunch of his feet on the gravel as he entered the park. He would walk underneath the trees, their long leafless branches stretching up into a frosty blue, or ash grey sky. By the frozen lake he would cross a wooden footbridge and breathe in the sharp smell of a line of evergreens.
Sometimes he sat on one of the benches in front of an unused bandstand. A wide circular opening, surrounded by tall, bare chestnut trees. It was set in a layer of loose grey and white stones.
Then she would be somewhere in the back of his mind. Her face, the way her eyes lit up when she smiled, the crinkle of her nose, the shy turn of her mouth, the fall of her hair against the curve of her back as she walked past him. She would somehow mix with the morning to come, mix with the smell of the freshly made coffee, the penetrating peep of the telephone and the radio that was always playing somewhere in the background.
February became March. The clearness and coldness of midwinter gave way to the colours of early spring. By April the trees lining the canal in front of the window, were dusted down with a coating of green. The squalls, the sudden showers, the leaden skies that it seemed with deceptive speed replaced the blue, the banks of drifting cumulus, brought with them change. Evenings became brighter.
Once he stood in a downpour with her, the umbrella too small, and the rain bouncing off the pavement around the tram-halt. They waited a couple of moments, their shoulders pressing against each other and then ran to a cafe to get in from the wet. They sat at a black table, on steel chairs, and each ordered a coffee. He smoked a cigarette, fingering the crumpled red and white pack, the rain still running down their foreheads, dripping off their hair, down the back of their necks.
As spring advanced he felt himself lighten. The longer evenings and the fine weather lifted his spirits. He watched his son grow, watched him grapple with a world that was still all new. Somehow he was encouraged by the evidence of life's determination. He saw its instinctive move forward, its continual willingness to learn and adapt.
The park that in February had formed a vein-like pattern of bare branches over the glassy surface of ice and frost, became a vibrant weave of green. Older Turkish men sat around in groups talking, their wrinkled hands fingering prayer beads, their lined faces serenely observing the world pass by. Kids playing ball shouted out to each other. Mothers fussed over newborn babies. Bicycles maneuvered their way around casual strollers. Africans with drums, squatted on the grass, their elastic, insistent rhythms, bouncing off the continuous background of traffic.
As the summer reached its peak, the July nights full of the murmur of voices from the busy terraces of cafes, he felt himself more involved. It was not an affair. Not in the way he would normally have thought of an affair. Still it skirted the edge of any deeper intimacy.
He kissed her only once. An evening when a couple of glasses of wine at a noisy bar found them on the turn of the street, a line of trees forming an covering, a canopy between them and the first show of stars. Her face, soft under the street lights, her cheeks flushed from the drinks were more than he could resist. Leaning over he put his mouth to her mouth. He tasted the wine, smelt her skin, felt the softness of her lips. She did not hesitate, in fact she responded, moved towards him but then pulled back.
Immediately he felt foolish. He apologised but she only smiled, brushed her hair back off her face and said it was late and she should get home.
Wheeling his bicycle over the street, he looked back, thinking to see her go. She was standing there, waving, her arm raised against the night, the orange spheres of the pedestrian-crossing, lighting then un-lighting her shape, somehow reflecting the contradiction of what had just happened.
As August slipped into September the questions seemed to grow. He felt caught between two equally distant points. Was he being fair? Was he being hasty? Was he throwing away something which he would later regret?
He reasoned with himself that if he found himself looking outside home then there was something missing within home. He knew he had begun to feel something for her which he no longer felt for his wife. There was no denying the growing emptiness. His marriage had moved from affection to arrangement. It still had some sense of purpose but that was something that had supplanted the earlier tenderness, the earlier attachment. And then there was his son. If he broke the marriage, would he not in some way be letting Mattias down? The willingness, the innocence with which a child trusted, was there to be seen. He felt responsible for reciprocating that trust. He felt if he stepped outside the marriage, if he broke or destabilised the home, he would be guilty of betraying that trust.
As autumn crept in he realised the issue was betrayal. When September finally let go of the summer and October arrived the only question to which he really needed to answer, was, who would betray whom.
6
There is a picture of him at that time. He is standing on a bridge, one arm leaning on the railings, wearing faded blue jeans, a black turtleneck sweater and brown suede shoes. The photograph is a little blurred. There seems to be a question mark over it, something transient, and something not quite clear. It gives the impression of movement, of liquidity. As if the act of catching him on film was accidental.
He cannot remember exactly when it was taken, though he remembers her with the camera. The black and silver body, her hand twisting the focusing ring, the click of the shutter, the rasp of the film-advance.
They did it in turns. Photographs of each other. They joked about where they would have it developed. He laughed when she said she thought she had a contact in the business. There are times when he wonders if she still has the close-up he made of her.
7
He has not forgotten that October evening. She sat at the table. There was the slight creak of the wooden chairs, the footsteps on the bare floor.
She fingered her cup nervously. He drank quickly from the cold beer in front of him. Between them was a tension that had not been there before. It was he who had asked if they could meet. He had decided he needed to say how he felt, needed to know where he stood with her. He had made up his mind what he should do. He should at least, take the risk.
His heart leaped that bit more while walking there. The moon seemed to travel with him, appearing and reappearing between the gables of the houses. Wrapping his scarf tight around his neck to keep out the gusts of chill air, the damp, he was too busy thinking, hoping, to hear the quiet fall of leaves.
He looked at her, then started to say what he wanted to say but she forestalled him. She did not let him get any further.
She explained that she valued the relationship she already had, that she and her partner had been together for nearly five years, they had decided to have a child together. Her eyes looked straight into his and then down at the table. He did not know how to reply.
At that moment he wanted her, wanted her more than at any time since he had known her.
He sat there, the cuff of his jacket in the ashtray, the head of his beer sliding slowly down the half-empty glass. When he spoke he said little. He realised that she was still sitting in front of him, that while she was there he could not be angry with her. He did not know if he should tell her he was disappointed, if he should say that he was hurt. He looked once again into her eyes.
The line of her mouth was not as soft as it usually was. It was set, stiff, and he knew her mind was made up. He felt her decision had perhaps been made with difficulty. He said he was glad for her and sorry, and she replied, she was too.
They talked for a couple of minutes and then he said, he should go. She called a taxi and he waited at the door. As she stepped into the car, she turned to him and for a moment put her hand on his arm. Her hair fell over her face and she pushed it up behind her ear, the way she had done that night when he had been fixing the machine, the way she had done that first time he had noticed her.
The shiny door closed with a thud. The tires bit into the roadside and he saw the yellow, neon sign of the taxi moving away through the evening traffic.
8
He has phoned her once before. A year ago. They talked politely with each other. She was well, had become a mother. He suggested they get together, but she said, she was busy, tied up between home and work. 'Call again sometime,' she suggested, 'maybe you could arrange to come by some evening for a drink'. He answered, `yes', but never did.
It is not that he thinks about her much. Every now and then when he finds himself somewhere where they once were together, or when he walks through the park, the gravel crunching under his feet, he remembers.
9
François stands before the old bandstand with Sophie and Mattias. His son climbs the steps, curiosity pushing him on, stepping into the great circular space. The early November air carries the excited cries of, ‘Papa, Papa, come and look’.
He finds himself on empty, greying boards. Moss and weed grow between them. His hands are deep in the pockets of his winter coat. He stops.
Mattias runs around him, his arms outstretched, making the sound of an airplane. His child’s face is flushed, his eyes joyfully free. Zooming and zooming, ducking and darting, his four year old body is lost in its own movement.
Francois turns back toward the layer of grey and white stones. There is a woman standing there, her back turned to him, her hair blowing loosely in the breeze. It is not her. It is Sophie.
At that moment they both appear to form a line, a polarity, like the opposite points of a compass. There is the creak in the empty trees, the rustle of curled brown leaves being blown across the bandstand floor. A bell from a bicycle somewhere, rings.
He remembers the mornings when he waited there, when he looked forward to seeing someone else.
Then calling out to Mattias that they are going, he moves down the steps. He comes up beside Sophie. He startles her. She turns quickly around, surprise showing in her face. The distance that has grown between them, the disappointment, the dreams which have not come to fulfillment are also to be seen in her face. They say nothing. He takes her arm and they wait for Mattias to catch them up before walking on through the park.
His eyes fall on the telephone. For a moment it seems to assume an extra power, it holds him. He glances again at the piece of paper in his hand. The name is written clearly on it. He repeats the numbers out loud to himself. Can it be nearly two years already he asks, two years since I last saw her.
He looks around at the toys lying on the living room floor. The wooden train tracing a line across the rug, painted in shiny red, yellow, and green. Blocks, soft toys, books, the scattered concentration of a four year old boy. He hesitates. Should he put the paper back into the book from which it fell? Or should he tear it up and throw it in the bin?
He knows what he wants to do. He wants to lift the telephone receiver and carefully, deliberately, push the buttons underneath the relevant numbers. It is her voice he wants to hear. He would like it to be warm and friendly, glad to hear him at the other end. It will not be. Probably it will be cool and polite, a little distant, something like his. He stands for a moment.
A voice calls from the bedroom. He goes in. His son is sitting up in the bed, tears in his eyes.
“I hadda bad dream Papa, I hadda bad dream,” he is saying.
“Hey," says François,” it’s okay, don’t be crying. Papa is here now. You’re awake. It’s all over. Don’t worry.”
The child looks at him doubtfully. His eyes are still sleepy. François goes over to him and lifts him out of the bed. He carries him slowly into the living room, points to the toy train.
“Look, what’s that?”
“Train, Papa, that’s my train.”
“Yes, that’s your train. Why don’t you go and play with it? Mama will be home soon.”
He puts his son down on the carpet.
“I am just going to get some coffee. okay?”
Straightening up, he walks to the kitchen. He reaches for the coffee machine. The piece of paper is still in his hand. No more than a metre away is a small bin. Taking a step, he places his foot firmly on the pedal. The top springs open. He crumples the paper up into a tight ball, raises his arm as if about to throw it, then stops.
It’s just a number he thinks. Why shouldn’t I throw it away? Am I being sentimental?
He raises his arm once again then stops once again.
No, maybe I'll keep it. I can still remember her writing it out that evening as we sat in the cafe.
Somehow he cannot quite see himself throwing it in with the rubbish. Somehow it does not seem right. His foot lifts off the pedal. The top comes down with a bump. He smoothes out the ball of paper and walks back into the living room. His son is now playing happily with the train.
“Papa my train is coming into the station. Look! Peep, peep!”
“Yes, yes, I see.”
“Papa is not looking.”
“Yes I am. Okay I’m not. Just a moment Mattias.”
He walks across the room, stepping over Mattias and the train. Picking up the book where he left it on the armchair, he opens it and carefully places the wrinkled piece of paper between the pages.
Remember, François, do not forget, he says quietly to himself. Between pages twenty-nine and thirty.
He closes the book and pushes it in between the others on the shelf.
2
It was a Thursday evening. He was working late. It was quiet in the office, and she, bored, came to ask him if there was anything she could do to help. He was trying to fix a sleeving machine. Oil on his fingers, a screwdriver in his hand, he was frustrated and tired. He was searching in the back of the machine for the problem. Suddenly he was aware of her standing beside him. He felt a little awkward and half-smiled.
“There is some client’s work ready, over there, by the light-box,” he said.
“No, it's okay. There’s no hurry,” she replied. “I was only wondering if I could help.”
“Do you know anything about this machine?” he asked.
She smiled.
“No. Not really.”
“Then I am not alone.”
The blue of her eyes, the soft line of her mouth caught his attention. He wondered why he had not noticed it before. She laughed lightly. He gave the screwdriver a sharp turn, then flicked the man switch to `on’.
“Let us see if this is any better,” he said.
He took a film from the rack and inserted it between the grooves, beneath the spools of film-protector, pushed it forward over the sensor. There was a low click, a pause, and then the machine suddenly whirred into action.
The spools turned and the transport pulled the film forward, sandwiching it between the matt and shiny plastic, sealing it with two fine lines of acetone, and then ejecting it safely the other end. He cut it free and holding it up to the light, examined it both back and front.
“It’s okay,” he said, “it's good now. It seems to be working again.”
He turned towards her. Her head was cocked slightly to one side, and she was looking at him curiously. There was an awkward moment of silence.
“You must have a magic presence,” he said.
She suddenly blushed. Her hand went up to her hair, pushing it back to one side, behind her ear.
“I doubt it,” she answered.
Turning back to the machine, he concentrated on setting up the receiving spool. He threaded the plastic through and stuck it down with a piece of clear tape.
“Don’t you need to put the back on again?” she asked, pointing to the back of the machine.
“No,” he answered, glad to be able to say something, feeling that he had embarrassed her. “I'll leave it off just in case it stops working again. That way I shall save time.”
“Okay,” she said. “If you need me to do anything, I’ll be out in reception.”
He watched her walk away. She was wearing a brown jacket, loose khaki pants and black leather shoes. His eyes remained on her until she turned a corner and out of sight. Even as she went, as she disappeared, he wanted to call her back.
He ran his hand across the front of his t-shirt, cursed under his breath as he realised he had put two long oil stains on it.
It was not quite eight o'clock. There was another two hours work in front of him. Two large orders of film were still waiting to be done, black and white, colour, transparency, some of it straightforward, some with special instructions. The noise and the harsh white light of the laboratory seemed stifling.
Outside it would be getting dark. The trees would be swaying lightly in the park, creaking, contracting, as if letting go after the close heat of the day.
The sky would be falling into turquoise, the trams rattling around the red-bricked facade of the museum. Their lighted windows would be moving though the dusty air.
He imagined he could hear the clink of glasses in a café. He could hear the murmur of voices underneath spinning ceiling fans. He could taste ice-cold beer, creamy coffee. The couples in corners, their gestures, their movements, the turns and dips of their secret conversations would suggest intimacy. Suddenly he was thinking of her. He was seeing them there together. Would she smile the way she had just smiled?
He put the screwdriver down then walked to the washroom. Whistling, he cleaned the remains of the oil from his hands. For a moment he stood in the corridor that led to the office. He wondered if perhaps he should go out to the reception and see what she was doing. He decided it was better to get on with his work. He went to the computer and entered figures, took a sip of Cola from a cardboard cup he had left sitting to the side. It was too sweet and already flat.
3
François sits down in the armchair. He looks at his son playing on the floor. Trains move in various lines, stopping every now and then at stations made from an improbable collection of objects. Here some blocks, there a book, imagination serving to finish and decorate what the eye cannot see.
François wonders if it is better to have a child's faith in imagination. Perhaps it is more than just illusion, a weaving of something around what is not really there. He hears Mattias.
“Papa, this train is going to that station there, and this one is a metro that is going to go across the sea to a very big island.”
His son is pointing to a line of wooden carriages.
François smiles.
“Metros cannot go across the sea. Only boats or airplanes. A metro is only for the city. How would it cross the water? Maybe you could make it go somewhere else.”
The child looks puzzled for a moment.
“Why not papa?”
“Well they need tracks to run on, don’t they?. You can’t build tracks on water because they would sink.”
François pauses. He waits for the reply. The eyes move, the head tilts a bit to one side.
“Yes, but this is a special train.”
“Why?” asks François.
“Because the station-master built a very, very, big bridge all the way over.”
His son’s hands move in the air as he indicates the length of the bridge. François smiles. He wants to laugh happily at the way in which his son’s mind works. The way at this age, space, distance, the attributes of the physical world, of reality, are not yet insurmountable, unchallengeable.
“Yes,” he says, “I guess the station-master could do that if he wanted to, couldn't he?”
François realises how big his son has become. He knows the miracle of growth and development in a child is something repeated countless times the world over. Nevertheless, it is true in your child it always seems special.
Two years have seen such a change. Gone are the diapers, the baby talk, the stroller, and the high chair. Mattias has grown under his nose. He has already been one-and-a-half years in a playgroup and is just about to start school.
4
There were the early days of the marriage. There was the June day they moved to this apartment, a couple of months after Mattias were born. There were those first nights when all he remembers is the feel of his wife, Sophie, and the warmth of her body as he got into the bed beside her each time.
The long cycle along the Plantage-Middenlaan on the way from work. Clear days. Wet days. Afternoons when the canal outside the living room window could not be seen for fog.
There were the Saturday evenings sitting around the old wooden table, eating. A large dish of cannelloni or lasagna, cheese sauce, thick and creamy, the tomatoes, the meat, rich and hot. The lingering smell of the basil. The sweetness of the garlic.
Often they ate late, well after Mattias was asleep. Sometimes the student from the next flat joined them. They sat and talked, sharing a bottle of wine, breaking off pieces of the fresh baguette, laughing, teasing each other, until it seemed the street outside went quiet, and they noticed the lights in the buildings on the other side of the canal going out one by one.
Occasionally he stood by the window and watched a boat, a barge, cut its way through the dark water. It glided under the spindly branches of trees, its engines churning up the surface behind it.
There were the times they were both tired, both exhausted. Yet there were also the times when each cycle of tiredness seemed to bring with it a flowering, a freshness, a sense of some shared achievement.
It was a year or so before the first problems, difficulties, began to appear. At first it was an irritation, a sharpness. Then a sarcastic edge began to creep into some of their conversations.
The arguments, the silences, became more frequent. They lasted longer. It was not that they constantly fought. It was more that the avenues of communication became strained.
They tried talking but it only seemed more confusing than clarifying. Then it felt like he was hardly ever there. He was up early watching the sun break the day over the water, hearing the cascade of birdsong that late spring and early summer brought.
Regularly he was not home till late, till after ten. Then Sophie was in bed, or sitting sleepily in front of the T.V.
Was it then he noticed he had begun to find escape in work? Was it then he realised that he felt a stranger at home. He felt himself to be somehow drifting away from it?
“Papa, the train has crashed.”
François turns his head and looks to where his son is playing. Mattias is pointing to a line of overturned carriages.
“What is it? What has happened?”
“Papa, the train crashed. It was going very, very fast, and the signalman didn’t change the signals, and then it went crash and fell off the tracks.”
Mattias is kneeling down, looking intently at the overturned carriages. Then he sits back up. There is a mixture of curiosity and concern on his face.
“And what about the passengers,” François asks, “are they all right? Are any of them hurt?”
There is a moment of silence, and suddenly with a big smile the child declares...
“No! All the people jumped out before the crash, ‘cause they didn’t want to be hurt. And the first carriage was a goods carriage and it had lots of water in it, and it spilt everywhere and made the driver wet.”
He kneels up, obviously pleased at his explanation, his handling of events. François smiles and looks at him.
“Well I’m glad no-one was hurt. The signalman should really be more careful. You will have to speak to the stationmaster about him, won’t you?”
Mattias nods his head in agreement then takes up his other train. He pulls it around towards a book, making that familiar approximation of the noise of an engine. Stopping it as straight as he can, he rolls over lying on his back. His eyes stare up at the ceiling, his hand going up to his mouth. His hair falls back off his forehead, and in the fairness of his face, the whiteness of light reflected from the walls, his eyes look all the bluer, all the brighter.
François gets up and goes over to him. He bends down and tickles his stomach. Mattias wriggles and laughs.
“Hey little fellow,” François says, “what about something to eat, what about a nice salami sandwich?”
“Cookie, Papa. I want a cookie.”
5
She was already in a relationship. He knew her partner was older than her and that they had lived together for some time. She referred to him now and then in conversation, but never directly.
More and more he found himself thinking of her. Somehow she combined with his need to work, his need to escape the tensions building at home. He was always glad to see her.
At first they only talked about their work. Despite the difficulties in his marriage François still felt committed to it. He felt responsible to his son. He knew he was somewhat cautious and was relieved to have an excuse to avoid any definite or impulsive action.
Their friendship moved forward gradually and carefully. In many ways she puzzled him. At times she appeared insecure and over eager to please. He knew she worked well. The comments, the gossip, the petty jealousies of small company life, went past him.
She was friendly. She seemed intent on involving herself in things around her. Yet somehow different, somehow apart.
On more than one occasion she demonstrated to him that she considered him special. Once after having being away for a week and delayed in returning, she hugged him, kissing him on both cheeks affectionately when he returned. It was more than friendship should have required.
At other times she was cool and distant. He realised she had guessed he was having problems in his marriage. He never openly mentioned it, was not the type to discuss his personal life quickly.
Now and then she made a reference to it, a comment, but he knew he was the one guilty of avoiding any discussion of the subject.
It continued like this for four or five months. In fact it grew slowly, as summer passed into autumn, as the nights became deeper and longer, as the year fell into winter. It was that February he realised it was becoming something other than friendship.
At weekends he found himself wondering what she was doing. He imagined she was thinking of him, and that if out in the city alone, he would maybe run into her by accident. Occasionally they had to work Sundays together.
Then he would get up early taking the tram so he could walk through the park. As it rattled its way through the quiet streets, he would think of her. His eyes would take in the rows of four storey apartments, the windows empty and still, curtains open, curtains closed. Dreamily he would stare at the long lines of the tram rails, sometimes vivid and mercurial under a sparkling winter sun.
There would be the crunch of his feet on the gravel as he entered the park. He would walk underneath the trees, their long leafless branches stretching up into a frosty blue, or ash grey sky. By the frozen lake he would cross a wooden footbridge and breathe in the sharp smell of a line of evergreens.
Sometimes he sat on one of the benches in front of an unused bandstand. A wide circular opening, surrounded by tall, bare chestnut trees. It was set in a layer of loose grey and white stones.
Then she would be somewhere in the back of his mind. Her face, the way her eyes lit up when she smiled, the crinkle of her nose, the shy turn of her mouth, the fall of her hair against the curve of her back as she walked past him. She would somehow mix with the morning to come, mix with the smell of the freshly made coffee, the penetrating peep of the telephone and the radio that was always playing somewhere in the background.
February became March. The clearness and coldness of midwinter gave way to the colours of early spring. By April the trees lining the canal in front of the window, were dusted down with a coating of green. The squalls, the sudden showers, the leaden skies that it seemed with deceptive speed replaced the blue, the banks of drifting cumulus, brought with them change. Evenings became brighter.
Once he stood in a downpour with her, the umbrella too small, and the rain bouncing off the pavement around the tram-halt. They waited a couple of moments, their shoulders pressing against each other and then ran to a cafe to get in from the wet. They sat at a black table, on steel chairs, and each ordered a coffee. He smoked a cigarette, fingering the crumpled red and white pack, the rain still running down their foreheads, dripping off their hair, down the back of their necks.
As spring advanced he felt himself lighten. The longer evenings and the fine weather lifted his spirits. He watched his son grow, watched him grapple with a world that was still all new. Somehow he was encouraged by the evidence of life's determination. He saw its instinctive move forward, its continual willingness to learn and adapt.
The park that in February had formed a vein-like pattern of bare branches over the glassy surface of ice and frost, became a vibrant weave of green. Older Turkish men sat around in groups talking, their wrinkled hands fingering prayer beads, their lined faces serenely observing the world pass by. Kids playing ball shouted out to each other. Mothers fussed over newborn babies. Bicycles maneuvered their way around casual strollers. Africans with drums, squatted on the grass, their elastic, insistent rhythms, bouncing off the continuous background of traffic.
As the summer reached its peak, the July nights full of the murmur of voices from the busy terraces of cafes, he felt himself more involved. It was not an affair. Not in the way he would normally have thought of an affair. Still it skirted the edge of any deeper intimacy.
He kissed her only once. An evening when a couple of glasses of wine at a noisy bar found them on the turn of the street, a line of trees forming an covering, a canopy between them and the first show of stars. Her face, soft under the street lights, her cheeks flushed from the drinks were more than he could resist. Leaning over he put his mouth to her mouth. He tasted the wine, smelt her skin, felt the softness of her lips. She did not hesitate, in fact she responded, moved towards him but then pulled back.
Immediately he felt foolish. He apologised but she only smiled, brushed her hair back off her face and said it was late and she should get home.
Wheeling his bicycle over the street, he looked back, thinking to see her go. She was standing there, waving, her arm raised against the night, the orange spheres of the pedestrian-crossing, lighting then un-lighting her shape, somehow reflecting the contradiction of what had just happened.
As August slipped into September the questions seemed to grow. He felt caught between two equally distant points. Was he being fair? Was he being hasty? Was he throwing away something which he would later regret?
He reasoned with himself that if he found himself looking outside home then there was something missing within home. He knew he had begun to feel something for her which he no longer felt for his wife. There was no denying the growing emptiness. His marriage had moved from affection to arrangement. It still had some sense of purpose but that was something that had supplanted the earlier tenderness, the earlier attachment. And then there was his son. If he broke the marriage, would he not in some way be letting Mattias down? The willingness, the innocence with which a child trusted, was there to be seen. He felt responsible for reciprocating that trust. He felt if he stepped outside the marriage, if he broke or destabilised the home, he would be guilty of betraying that trust.
As autumn crept in he realised the issue was betrayal. When September finally let go of the summer and October arrived the only question to which he really needed to answer, was, who would betray whom.
6
There is a picture of him at that time. He is standing on a bridge, one arm leaning on the railings, wearing faded blue jeans, a black turtleneck sweater and brown suede shoes. The photograph is a little blurred. There seems to be a question mark over it, something transient, and something not quite clear. It gives the impression of movement, of liquidity. As if the act of catching him on film was accidental.
He cannot remember exactly when it was taken, though he remembers her with the camera. The black and silver body, her hand twisting the focusing ring, the click of the shutter, the rasp of the film-advance.
They did it in turns. Photographs of each other. They joked about where they would have it developed. He laughed when she said she thought she had a contact in the business. There are times when he wonders if she still has the close-up he made of her.
7
He has not forgotten that October evening. She sat at the table. There was the slight creak of the wooden chairs, the footsteps on the bare floor.
She fingered her cup nervously. He drank quickly from the cold beer in front of him. Between them was a tension that had not been there before. It was he who had asked if they could meet. He had decided he needed to say how he felt, needed to know where he stood with her. He had made up his mind what he should do. He should at least, take the risk.
His heart leaped that bit more while walking there. The moon seemed to travel with him, appearing and reappearing between the gables of the houses. Wrapping his scarf tight around his neck to keep out the gusts of chill air, the damp, he was too busy thinking, hoping, to hear the quiet fall of leaves.
He looked at her, then started to say what he wanted to say but she forestalled him. She did not let him get any further.
She explained that she valued the relationship she already had, that she and her partner had been together for nearly five years, they had decided to have a child together. Her eyes looked straight into his and then down at the table. He did not know how to reply.
At that moment he wanted her, wanted her more than at any time since he had known her.
He sat there, the cuff of his jacket in the ashtray, the head of his beer sliding slowly down the half-empty glass. When he spoke he said little. He realised that she was still sitting in front of him, that while she was there he could not be angry with her. He did not know if he should tell her he was disappointed, if he should say that he was hurt. He looked once again into her eyes.
The line of her mouth was not as soft as it usually was. It was set, stiff, and he knew her mind was made up. He felt her decision had perhaps been made with difficulty. He said he was glad for her and sorry, and she replied, she was too.
They talked for a couple of minutes and then he said, he should go. She called a taxi and he waited at the door. As she stepped into the car, she turned to him and for a moment put her hand on his arm. Her hair fell over her face and she pushed it up behind her ear, the way she had done that night when he had been fixing the machine, the way she had done that first time he had noticed her.
The shiny door closed with a thud. The tires bit into the roadside and he saw the yellow, neon sign of the taxi moving away through the evening traffic.
8
He has phoned her once before. A year ago. They talked politely with each other. She was well, had become a mother. He suggested they get together, but she said, she was busy, tied up between home and work. 'Call again sometime,' she suggested, 'maybe you could arrange to come by some evening for a drink'. He answered, `yes', but never did.
It is not that he thinks about her much. Every now and then when he finds himself somewhere where they once were together, or when he walks through the park, the gravel crunching under his feet, he remembers.
9
François stands before the old bandstand with Sophie and Mattias. His son climbs the steps, curiosity pushing him on, stepping into the great circular space. The early November air carries the excited cries of, ‘Papa, Papa, come and look’.
He finds himself on empty, greying boards. Moss and weed grow between them. His hands are deep in the pockets of his winter coat. He stops.
Mattias runs around him, his arms outstretched, making the sound of an airplane. His child’s face is flushed, his eyes joyfully free. Zooming and zooming, ducking and darting, his four year old body is lost in its own movement.
Francois turns back toward the layer of grey and white stones. There is a woman standing there, her back turned to him, her hair blowing loosely in the breeze. It is not her. It is Sophie.
At that moment they both appear to form a line, a polarity, like the opposite points of a compass. There is the creak in the empty trees, the rustle of curled brown leaves being blown across the bandstand floor. A bell from a bicycle somewhere, rings.
He remembers the mornings when he waited there, when he looked forward to seeing someone else.
Then calling out to Mattias that they are going, he moves down the steps. He comes up beside Sophie. He startles her. She turns quickly around, surprise showing in her face. The distance that has grown between them, the disappointment, the dreams which have not come to fulfillment are also to be seen in her face. They say nothing. He takes her arm and they wait for Mattias to catch them up before walking on through the park.
Copyright (C) Peter Millington. October 1994.
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