Alice (8 page)

No, Alice said. No. I can't.

All right, Lotte said. It doesn't matter. You don't have to.

Come with me, Lotte said, I want to show you something.

They stood next to each other on the large terrace with the chair and the stone sphere. Lotte pulled the green hose from the drum, turned on the water. She aimed the broadly fanned glistening stream into the lavender bushes; it took a little while. Lotte said, Wait. Then cardinal beetles began pouring out of the lavender bushes by the hundreds, a redand-black-spotted flood of fleeing insects, seemingly endless. They inundated the terrace, running in all directions.

Look at that, Lotte said. Just look at that.

In the middle of the night, long past midnight, maybe already in the grey of dawn, the Romanian went up the stairs from the terrace to the first floor in the yellow house, past his own room and up to the second floor, through Anna's room, into Alice's room. Conrad's room. Alice's room. He closed the door softly behind him. The room was dark because Alice had closed the shutters tight. In the dark the Romanian groped his way to Alice's bed. The narrow bed with the metal frame. Alice stretched her hand out to him; it was the most affectionate of gestures. Because she knew that this would be the most affectionate gesture, she guided her hand as explicitly as possible, explicitly for her and explicitly for the Romanian, whose hand was small and familiar. She couldn't see his face. He couldn't see hers. She took his hand with all the expressiveness she had. Drew him to her. The rest was rough and angry, unrestrained.

That afternoon they took a boat. Anna, Alice, and the Romanian. They had only a few days left, but no one cared. The lake remained dark blue, ice cold, sometimes misty, occasionally a clear view. Aggressive swans, ducks with four, five, six, or seven ducklings, the water always soft. Every hour the ferry went from west to east and back again, and the pebbles on the beach got hotter and hotter. That afternoon Anna wore a grey dress with green flowers, sandals with cork heels, her hair in a child's pigtail. Alice wore a white blouse and a lilac-coloured skirt. The
Romanian had on a light-coloured shirt and the torn jeans with traces of melon juice on the seams. The boy at the boat-rental place next to the Mussolini villa with the pretentious view of Monte Baldo and its cloud-enveloped peak felt he had to finish his apple and fling the core to the swans before he could hand over the oars for a boat. A flag hung limply in the shadow of his little boathouse, and the clanking of the chain with which the boats were tied together scared away the swans. The Romanian rowed the boat out of the little harbour, confidently and almost elegantly. Alice saw the boy raise his eyebrows before he sank back into his plastic chair. The Romanian rowed the boat far out, probably dangerously far out; there was no one there who could have told them anything about it, but they could clearly feel the current. A wind had come up, water splashed into the boat, they were all quite exhausted anyway. The Romanian ignored Anna's oblique references to their distance from shore, showing a casual indifference that didn't suit him.

Who'll go swimming?

Not me, Alice said.

With his back to Anna and Alice, the Romanian took off his shirt, then his jeans. Standing naked in the prow of the boat he bent his knees for a moment. Alice looked at him, his back, his arms. Narrow shoulders, slender neck. Bite marks, scratches. Black and blue marks all over. Then he jumped into the water, dived down, and was gone.

Good heavens, Anna said, raising her hand to her mouth; she was truly shocked. Good heavens. Did I do that?
An insect had drowned in the milky foam of Alice's
latte macchiato
on the terrace of the café in Salò. Alice had felt it on her tongue – very light, a multi-legged body concealed in the white foam. Gagging, she'd spat it out, sticking her tongue far out, had spat it back onto the spoon. What are you doing there? Anna asked, leaning forward, interested and sympathetic but disgusted at the same time.

Alice said, If it's a spider, I'll scream. It wasn't a spider. It was something else, maybe a cricket, or a cicada? Small, black, cute, with little bent legs and a shiny abdomen.
Il caldo, il tempo
, the waiter had said, pointing up into the sky, shrugging and removing the plate, the spoon, the foam and the little animal from the table. Didn't bring another coffee. Maybe I almost swallowed a cricket, a cicada, a head-cricket, Alice thought. What was the difference between them again? Conrad would surely have known. But Conrad was
morto
.
Lui è morto
. He was being taken to Germany by cargo carrier across the Alps, in July of all times.

Strange. Anna said, We didn't even get to know Conrad, the Romanian and I, we never even saw him. What was he like? What had he been like?

While … To think that while they had stopped at the petrol station, and while the Romanian was looking up into the sky at a falcon, an eagle, or a buzzard. While Alice was sliding open the top of the chest freezer, and Anna said the word
cornetto
, and the gas station attendant was drumming with his fingers on the counter and Lotte was sitting in the
car, unmoving behind the tinted windows, her profile outlined against the mountain, and Alice's hand was deep in the chest freezer, in slow motion tearing open a cardboard box full of ice-lollies, raspberry, lemon and sweet woodruff – What flavour is it? the Romanian had asked. And Alice had replied
Dolomiti
– Conrad had passed away. In a hot room at the end of a corridor with glittering light, his heart had at first fibrillated and then stopped beating, just like that, and no goodbye, that was all. While they paid, walked out into the dusty plaza in front of the petrol pumps, nettles and grass growing between the stones. Thinking about it. Over and over again. I can't tell you what Conrad was like. I can no longer tell you.

One afternoon Alice packed her suitcases, then sat down for a long time on the chair at Conrad's table, gazing at the guest book, finally took the pen and managed to draw a dash on the paper; even that was embarrassing. Drinking a last Aperol on the terrace with the red cushions, the cold-blooded lizards, the unbearably beautiful view of the landscape. The Romanian and his indifferent, unchanging politeness. Should I marry you now or what; but we're much too old to get married – Alice asked herself and came to no conclusion. Go for another swim. One last time. Sandals in hand, she walked to the little dock near the wall and the gate to the overgrown garden. When Alice, alone on the beach, undressed completely, and went cautiously into the water, tripping on the slippery stones, she remembered what Conrad had said about the lake, back then when he
invited her to come for a visit. He had said, the lake was always ice cold, she would have to force herself to go into the water. He had said, But you'll go into the water in spite of that. And you won't regret it. You'll never regret it.

What did he mean by that? And what did it mean for everything else? Alice's feet left the bottom; she dove down and swam out.

Margaret phoned saying she needed cigarettes and water. Otherwise nothing, but she really did need the cigarettes and the water. It was urgent.

What kind of cigarettes?

Those long, slender ones, for women; Slims. And carbonated water.

Nothing else, really?

No, really, nothing else. Thanks.

I'll be over in about an hour, Alice said. I'll hurry.

It was an afternoon in early summer. A Saturday. Actually Alice
had
been intending to do something else, nothing specific, just something else. It was also Raymond's day off.
I have to go now, she said to Raymond, and Raymond who was lying on the bed, reading, only nodded absent-mindedly and didn't ask any questions. She put on flat shoes and a light-coloured jacket. She didn't really need the jacket, didn't know when she'd be back, maybe late; it might be colder by then. She stood next to the bed, looking down at Raymond's bare back, at the band of tattooing on his left arm, decorations and words in indigo blue on his always-pale skin. She said, Raymond – he turned round – I'm leaving now.

He nodded. Don't come back too late. Give them my best wishes.

Alice put on her sunglasses before she stepped outside. She hadn't been out of the house all day. The street was teeming with people; she held her breath. Lots of people, sitting at long rows of tables under awnings or sun umbrellas beneath the heavy green trees. Talking to one another, without let-up. Nodding, talking, gesticulating people. Loud laughter. The wooden ship in the middle of the park was occupied by a cluster of children. Crying, screaming, overheated children. A nimbus of mothers sitting on benches surrounding the ship. Alice walked by, her hands in the pockets of her too-warm jacket; there were coins in the pockets, her keys, the cellphone, an old movie ticket, sweet wrappers. The sound of basketballs hitting the fence of the basketball court, a sound that, now that it was summertime, could sometimes be heard as early as six in the morning – at six a.m. somebody was already on the court tossing a ball into the basket
or against the fence, again and again. Sometimes it woke Alice up. Still tired but astonished at the morning light on the white walls of the room.

The way to Margaret's, to Margaret and Richard's, led past the flower stand in the Prenzlauer Allee station. The station hall was large, and there under its arched windows were flowers in plastic vases, an amphitheatre of flowers, in front of which, on a folding chair in the exact centre, sat the Vietnamese flower seller. Sitting there day in and day out. The hall was shadowy; the colours of the flowers were dark, the dark white of lilies, the dark pink of gerbera daisies, and dark iris purple. Chamomile. Snapdragons. Sunflowers. The Vietnamese flower seller was asleep. She slept the sleep of travellers; whenever her head would fall to one side, she would straighten up again with her eyes still closed. In her dreams, Alice thought, the trains come and go; it must be a constant vague noise. Alice stood there, undecided; waking up the flower seller was out of the question. Actually she didn't want to bring any flowers today, only water and cigarettes, nothing else. There was nothing else she could bring them.

The last time she visited Richard and Margaret she'd bought peonies at this same stand, having first thought about it for a long time: Seven peonies, please, and don't add anything. An uneven number, a superstition. Five were too few, and she didn't have enough money for nine. Richard didn't have a vase. Margaret, who was now staying with Richard all the time in his apartment and never far from his bed, had put the peonies into a milk bottle and pointed out
to Richard how beautiful they were. Richard said peonies were his favourite flowers. Alice believed him; he wouldn't have said it if she'd brought him narcissus or tulips. A coincidence. All three were pleased about it. How long ago was that? Two weeks. It was two weeks ago. Richard had got out of bed; they'd been able to sit in the living room together for an hour. At the oval table in front of a shelf full of books. Richard sat with his back to the books. He was wearing pyjamas and whenever Margaret asked him to, he drank from a glass of water. He was smoking slowly and carefully; too late to stop, it would have made no sense for him to give up smoking now. Alice sat facing him, Margaret between them. Margaret talked, crying and smiling through her tears. Richard didn't take his eyes off her. As if that were what he still had to do – to look at Margaret.

When she came back from this visit, Alice had asked Raymond, Would you rather die before me or after me? After you, I think, Raymond had said. It had taken a while before he could answer; he seemed to consider the question itself impossible. Why? He asked. He wasn't quite sure. And you?

She'd shaken her head and put her hand over his mouth. She couldn't answer him.

Alice crossed the intersection, obeying the signals; there were days when she felt she had to be careful, to be more cautious than usual. She couldn't say where that came from. Raymond, too, had days like that. Both of them did.

Take care of yourself.

And you take care too.

She waited for the light to turn green; then she walked on. On her left the tram. Overhead the elevated train, rumbling downward, underground. Cars stopped in choreographed rows, seemingly meaningful, following a synchronised set of rules. Beautiful light signals. Above it all, the pale sky. Alice took off her sunglasses and used her elbow to push open the door to the newsagent's. Barricades of plastic boxes full of sweets. Vampire teeth, white mice, liquorice snails, and behind them the shop's fat proprietor, feeble movements, breathing and rustling, a heavy animal in its cave. Drums containing lottery tickets. Boxes of chocolate bars, bags of sweets, chocolate surprise eggs. Information, advice, little blinking bulbs, announcements. You could put all this on exhibition, Raymond would say when he stood inside shops like this. Just as it is, transport it to a museum. Alice put some paper money on the little tray in the middle of everything and said, Two packs of Slims, please. It had been years since she last bought cigarettes, and her hands trembled. Two bottles of water? The fat newsagent pointed wordlessly to a shelf next to the counter, and Alice picked out two bottles of Spree Spring Water from among the seven varieties. Did Margaret want the water for herself or for Richard? And did it matter? She wasn't sure. It could all be very important or not important at all.

The bottles were plastic. Tinted blue. Spring water.

A bag?

Yes, please.

He pushed an orange-coloured bag across the counter, counted out the clinking change into the little tray, and withdrew behind the plastic boxes.

Even as she was standing there facing him she couldn't say any more what he actually looked like. Broken fingernails. The hem of his sweater frayed. The shop smelling of potting soil and wet paper. She said, Have a good day, said it just to hear how he would answer. He said, The same to you. Said it in an absolutely flat voice. Alice pulled open the door and, with the bag containing the two bottles and cigarette packs pressed to her chest, she turned left and walked down the street.