All Days Are Night (18 page)

Jill suggested a game to the boy, or offered to read him a story, but he shook his head and disappeared inside.
When Hubert returned, she asked him what Rolf had had to discuss with him.

Search me, said Hubert. It was something about reconciliation. I told him I couldn’t see us getting reconciled as I didn’t have a problem with him. Then we talked about Astrid. I wonder how much longer they’ll be together.

She sounded me out, said Jill. She wanted to know how long we’ve been together and how we got to know each other, all those sorts of things. I almost had the sense she was jealous.

Of course she’s jealous, said Hubert. What did you tell her?

That you’re happy, said Jill.

The two weeks with Lukas went by quickly. Jill was amazed how much time Hubert had for the boy. Often they went hiking, or in the evening they told her how they had spent the whole day damming a mountain stream or clambering around on some rocks. Sometimes they came into the club and visited her in her office or swam in the pool. When Hubert was teaching his course, Lukas played with the visiting children. As the only Swiss kid, he was quite a hit with his funny accent. On days that Jill had off, they went on trips together. Lately, there had been some sightings of the bear that was supposed to be in the area. Lukas often asked about it, he seemed to be at once afraid of it and fascinated by it. Every time he heard something rustle, the boy asked if it was the bear.

Sure, said Hubert, he’s coming after us.

Don’t frighten him, said Jill.

Lukas only calmed down once they were above the tree line. While Hubert and Lukas went scrambling over the rocks, Jill dropped off to sleep. When she opened her eyes, the sky overhead seemed almost black, although the sun was still shining. There was no sign of Hubert or Lukas, only sometimes she heard a laugh or shout in the distance. It seemed to her as though her accident had never happened. She was married with a child and had a perfectly normal life, like everyone else. The past years were an illusion, the life of somebody else.

That evening she put Lukas to bed for the first time. She told him off for skimping on brushing his teeth and watched as he slipped into his pajamas. Then she had to help him look for his teddy bear, and he wanted to hear all about the real bear again.

Have you seen him ever? he asked.

No, said Jill. He’s very shy, he likes to stay out of sight.

Doesn’t he have a family, then? asked the boy.

No, said Jill, I think he’s still a juvenile. He’s just exploring. He’s curious about the world. I think bears like to be by themselves.

I don’t, said Lukas.

I don’t either, said Jill. She kissed the boy on the forehead and called Hubert.

When Lukas was picked up at the end of two weeks by Astrid, Hubert seemed to be less affected than Jill. She had said goodbye to him after breakfast and gone to the office, but she was unable to concentrate on her
work. She stood by the window and looked out onto the grounds. We are all one big family here, her boss liked to say. For a week or two at a time they lived that illusion, on “
du
” terms, taking their meals together around big tables, playing sports and guessing games, flirting with each other. But on the day of departure, it all fell apart. At breakfast the guests were in a hurry, the parents were short with their children for not getting a move on, there was a line at reception, because they all wanted to pay their bill, and the lobby was full of islands of luggage on which the children sat like little castaways. Many went off without saying goodbye. At noon, there was a hush over the whole place, meanwhile the maids were working frantically upstairs, removing the traces of the departed. In the afternoon the next load of visitors arrived, and everything started all over again.

Jill went home earlier than usual. Hubert was sitting in the garden, sketching. When she went up to him, he shut the pad with a clack.

There, we’ve got our peace and quiet back again, he said. Would you like a glass of wine? He told her he’d had lunch with Astrid, and she had told him her relationship with Rolf was at a crisis. I don’t know what the problem is, he said, she didn’t want to say anything in front of Lukas, and just dropped hints. I think he wants children, and she doesn’t. He seems to be the conventional one in that relationship. An esoteric and a square.

Is it square to want children? asked Jill.

She’s just too old for him, said Hubert, I told her that all along.

And does Astrid want you back now? asked Jill.

So what if she does? said Hubert after a brief hesitation, as though the possibility had only just occurred to him.

The semester starts in a month, he said over breakfast. Jill looked at him and didn’t say anything. The college only needs me to be there a couple of days a week, he said, three at the most. The rest of the time I could spend here. What do you think?

She nodded. If that’s what you want.

Hubert would drive down on Wednesday evening and come back just after midnight on Friday, on the last train. When Jill picked him up at the station in the car, he was in a good mood, talking about the students, his time with Lukas, visits to galleries and cinemas. After the vacation, there were fewer guests at the hotel, and the painting course was suspended, but that left Hubert time to get on with his own work. When Jill asked him about it, he was evasive. He didn’t like talking about a current project, he said. In the evenings, he withdrew. He had set up a kind of studio in Jill’s old room upstairs. He would disappear into there while Jill read or watched TV. Around midnight she would knock on Hubert’s door. He stuck his head out, gave her a kiss, and said he’d be along in a minute. She undressed and brushed her teeth. She stood in front of the mirror for a long time waiting, but Hubert didn’t come.

In mid-September he said he needed to stay in the city for a while, the term was beginning, and there was lots of organizational stuff to take care of.

How long? asked Jill.

I can’t tell you yet, maybe a week or ten days.

Why didn’t you tell me sooner? she asked. That way I could have gotten used to the idea a bit.

At night she dreamed of Matthias for the first time in ages. They had a child together, a boy who looked like Lukas. In the morning she couldn’t remember any details, she was left with just a picture, a family photograph of her and Matthias in mountain scenery, and the boy between them.

Hubert phoned every other day. He didn’t have much to say for himself, and Jill didn’t know what to say either.

Things are the same, she said, will you be coming on Saturday?

Yes, he said, almost certainly.

You can come whenever you want, she said, but I’d just like to know first.

She felt worse after that call than before. She had taken Saturday off but still got up early. She spent more time than usual in her bath. She wasn’t a particularly gifted or enthusiastic cook, but she wanted to make a welcome feast for Hubert. The village butcher recommended the beef pot roast and explained how to prepare it. Back at home, she put the meat on to cook and laid the table and decorated it with the few remaining flowers she could find in the garden. When everything was ready, the phone rang. It was Hubert. He said he wouldn’t be coming today after all. He hadn’t been able to call her any earlier. Astrid wasn’t doing well, she needed him.

Are you with her now? she asked.

I need to go, he said.

Jill sat in front of the house, but it was cooler than she expected and she went back inside. She started to clean the house. When she took Hubert’s dirty clothes down to the laundry room, she sniffed them, and that settled her a bit. She tried to imagine what it would be like on her own again. In a few years she’d be fifty, and for the first time she had the sense that it was too late for certain things in her life.

She vacuumed the stairs. Outside Hubert’s workroom she hesitated. Since he had moved in there, she had hardly set foot in the place, she didn’t want to bother him, or pressure him. She switched off the vacuum and opened the door. The sudden silence unsettled her, it was like the silence of childhood seeping out of the room and wrapping her up. Jill was about to close the door when she changed her mind and sat down in the threadbare armchair in the corner. The room looked almost the way it had when she was a child. Hubert had left hardly any traces of his occupation, only he had cleared the table, and there were some piles of books, notebooks, and sketch pads on the floor. The ceiling lamp gave a weak yellowish light. She went over to the desk and opened a pad that was lying there. She picked up a pencil, as though she were going to sketch something herself. The pages of the book were covered with pencil cross-hatching. Some were so heavy that they formed shiny reflective surfaces, and you couldn’t see the individual lines anymore, still they had a spatial effect. Other pages seemed to be unfinished, they looked like dream landscapes, like maps, a juxtaposition of small crosshatched spaces going in different directions and forming unpredictable patterns with their occasional intersections. Jill
hadn’t a clue what to make of these drawings. Were they artworks or desperate attempts to kill time? As she leafed on, she saw that it was the block with the nude drawings Hubert had done of her the first time he had stayed the night here. Presumably they weren’t anything special, just quick sketches. Not one of them was intact, it looked as though Hubert had crossed them all out before he had embarked on the cross-hatching. Jill was suddenly convinced that he wouldn’t be back.

She started covering one of the sketches with her own hatchings, the one of her kneeling on the bed with her hands behind her back, as though chained. The pencil was too hard, so she took another one. She deleted the picture, as though burying her unprotected body under a layer of graphite, making a fossil that no one would ever discover.

It was almost midnight. Jill took off her socks and stepped out of the house barefoot. The air was cool, and the ground under her feet was cold. She walked down the road. A couple of years ago they had built a new bridge over the gorge, but she took the old way. The road down into the gorge was blocked off, in the spring floods there had been a landslide and the underpinnings needed to be secured. Jill scrambled over the barrier and walked past the machines that stood around like sleeping animals. There were lights on in some of the rooms in the cultural center, and the hotel was lit up as well. She crossed the meadow to the annex where the pool was. It had been rebuilt when the club took over the building. She peered
in through the big windows, but she couldn’t see anything except the glimmer of some light switches. She leaned against the cold glass and looked out at the starry sky. Someone must have opened a window, because there was music coming from the hotel. Today it was Captain Jack Sparrow’s turn again,
The Curse of the Black Pearl
. Jill was freezing. She remembered she had a spare jacket in her office. She went around the annex to the main entrance.

Sitting at reception was a young Greek boy who had started there this season and whose name Jill couldn’t seem to remember. He asked her if she was going to the open-air concert. She said she had just stepped in to collect something from her office. When she came down in her wool jacket and a pair of sandals she slopped around in at work, a couple of employees were standing in the hallway. They wore colorful clothes and looked as though they were in disguise. The men greeted Jill rambunctiously.

Are you coming to the open-air? asked Ursina.

She was one of the few who came from here, she could even speak Romansh, but she was down on the locals and seemed to prefer the hotel to the village.

I don’t know, said Jill, I just came in to pick something up.

Oh, come on, said the masseuse and put her arm around Jill. When did you last dance?

At reception a couple of the men were teasing the Greek boy, who was on night duty and who therefore couldn’t come with them. Outside a minibus drew up.

Marcos is driving, said Ursina. Jill was pulled along by the others and finally clambered into the bus.

They took the main road up the valley. Marcos had put on a CD, a tinny-sounding guitar with a melancholy woman’s voice. From the backseats the men complained — wasn’t there any other music? — but the driver ignored them. Jill, on the front seat, asked what the music was.

Fado, he said, from Portugal, Amália Rodrigues.

And what is she singing?

Marcos didn’t say anything, at first Jill thought he didn’t understand her question, but then she realized he was listening. When the guitar was playing on its own, he embarked on his halting translation.

What a strange way my heart has to live. Lonesome heart, independent heart, not for me to command. If you don’t know where you’re going, why do you want to run.

That’s nice, said Ursina.

Her voice was very near. Jill saw that she had craned forward to listen. Marcos didn’t say anything. Only when they turned off the main road after half an hour and followed a narrow little mountain road into a side valley, did he ask what sort of concert they were going to.

It’s a Goa party, said Gregor, a young cook, from the backseat. Trance, you know.

He explained the difference between the various techno forms to Marcos. Jill didn’t listen, she was so tired her eyes were falling shut. They passed a village, and a little later a spectrally illuminated campsite. There were torches stuck in the ground, big fires were burning, and some of the brightly colored tents were lit from inside. Marcos slowed to walking pace. In the headlights Jill saw strange figures walking up or coming down the mountain, some were moving as though dancing, others had
drooping shoulders. Finally they got to the entrance of the festival area. You couldn’t see the stage from there, but you could already hear the music, a monotonous
boom-boom-boom
. Marcos asked what time he should come back for them.

Tomorrow morning, Ursina said, laughing.

Someone said they would make it back on their own. There were shuttle buses. Suddenly everyone dispersed, only Ursina was left with Jill, and she took her hand and led her to the entrance.