The Woman Who Borrowed Memories: Selected Stories Page 23

  4. Method. Must make contact with X. Is this urgent? Or is J being melodramatic? Have a word with José, but be diplomatic.

  The fire burned well, and the room was soon hot.

  Viktoria decided since everyone here took a siesta in the middle of the day, she could do the same with a clean conscience. An excellent custom that should be introduced in Scandinavia.

  She paid José a visit at the café. She gave him her card and presented his wife with a box of chocolates originally meant for Elisabeth. While José served her coffee, she talked a little about the weather and the beauty of the landscape and asked him if he had any contact with the foreigners in the village.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “They keep to themselves,” he said. “Pensioners. Mostly women, you understand, they live longer.”

  “What do they do with themselves?”

  “They go to parties at each other’s houses,” said José with a grin.

  Viktoria mentioned that she had the name of one of the women, a Miss Smith, and that maybe she would call on her one day.

  “Really?” said José. “You actually mean it?” He turned to his wife, who was standing behind the counter listening: “Catalina, have you heard the news; the professor here is going to call on Miss Smith!”

  “God help her,” said Catalina. “She’ll never get into the house.”

  Viktoria had to climb a horribly long flight of steps to reach the building where Josephine lived right next door to X. When she got there, she sat down on a low wall with her Spanish phrasebook and waited. It was a very long time before she saw X come out of her house, lock the door, and stand still as if unsure which way to go. She had a shopping bag with her, so presumably was on her way to the shop. She was very small and didn’t look particularly dangerous, just gloomy. Her hair was gray and she had made no effort whatsoever to do it up. No sign of a knife. Finally she came towards Viktoria.

  “Excuse me,” said Viktoria. “I’m not feeling at all well. Where could I get a little water?”

  “There’s a pump in the square,” X answered, her eyes suspicious and very dark.

  “But I’m not sure I can make it that far. It’s the heat—I’m not used to it.”

  And so Viktoria got into the narrow little house where X lived. Now she really did feel ill, for she wasn’t used to telling lies.

  X placed a glass of water in front of her and went back to the door. After a while she asked if Viktoria was feeling better.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Viktoria truthfully. “I’m so sorry, you’ve been very kind, but couldn’t you sit down with me for a moment? I hope I haven’t got sunstroke . . .”

  X sat down on a chair near the door.

  “I’m not used to the heat,” Viktoria went on. “Do you know if anyone else in the colony has had sunstroke?”

  “No,” said X scornfully. “But if they had, it wouldn’t surprise me. Half the time they do nothing but sunbathe.”

  “And the other half?”

  “Parties. You’ll find out. They drink cocktails and gossip and jabber away about nothing at all. Another week and you’ll be right at the center of it, you’re just the sort they like.”

  “Dear me,” said Viktoria. “It sounds dreadful.”

  X put down her shopping bag and spoke with quiet intensity. “Yes, it is dreadful. They invade one deserted house after another and fix them up. All mod cons inside—but the outside has to look primitive and romantic. These people and their easy lives! They swarm like hornets with their cars and their lapdogs. Like a plague of locusts! I’ve been here from the start, twenty years. I’ve seen it all! They undermine everything.”

  “Like fig trees,” said Viktoria.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Fig trees. My goddaughter Elisabeth told me that fig trees have roots that spread a very long way and can destroy walls and roads, whatever. They crowd out everything else.”

  “Exactly,” said X. “They crowd out everything else. You just don’t know where you belong anymore.” She got up and stood waiting by the door.

  On her way home Viktoria tried to imagine what it must feel like to be a total outsider. This was not a new problem to her. Students excluded from the lives of their fellow students used to come and ask her what to do. Very disturbing, really complicated. She tore up her notes about The Woman with the Knife. But the case was by no means solved; it had just entered a new phase.

  Next morning Josephine arrived with all her dogs, and before she was even through the door burst out, “Professor, dear Professor Viktoria. I heard you’ve been to see her. What did she say about me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But she must have said something!”

  Viktoria patted the smallest, most neurotic dog and said, “I think she’s just terribly lonely.”

  “Is that all?” said Josephine, raising her voice. “She’s lonely—is that all you’ve found out? I could have told you that at the start. But why does she hate me in particular, that’s what I want to know!”

  “My dear Miss O’Sullivan,” said Viktoria, “calm down. I’m only just beginning this investigation.” And then she was angry with herself. Investigation, she thought, such a pretentious word. I’ve been reading too many murder mysteries . . . She went on quickly, “People get hold of the wrong end of the stick, you know, often for some very unimportant reason—say a disappointment—and then the problem just grows and grows till it’s out of control—”

  Josephine grew vehement. “Are you defending her? What are you trying to tell me? All right, she’s lonely! That’s not my fault! You promised—”

  “Yes I know, I promised. Sit down. How about a little whiskey?”

  “Maybe a small one,” said Josephine angrily. “But just a very small one. I’m on my way to the Wainwrights.”

  “They’re having a party?”

  “Yes, they’re having a party.”

  “Listen to me,” said Viktoria. “I’ve been looking for a motive and I think I’ve found one. She’s made you into some sort of symbol.”

  But Josephine wasn’t listening. She was talking about Lady Oldfield, who would very much like to invite the professor to her reception next Thursday, an intellectual gathering, just the inner circle. They were not all averse to enlarging the colony.

  Then invite X, thought Viktoria angrily. I want no part of their colony. They can enlarge it some other way.

  Suddenly Josephine stopped talking and stared at Viktoria. “What’s wrong?” she said. “Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you want to help me anymore?”

  “Of course I do. But try to understand. Miss Smith has serious problems—”

  “I see,” Josephine interrupted. “You’re defending her! You have to get it into your head—she’s dangerous! Don’t believe her. She’s a witch; she twists everything, turns black into white. I know her! I forbid you to see her.”

  Viktoria felt herself turning red in the face. She opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted again. “Yes, yes, I know what you’re going to say, but there’s no point in talking to her. Go and see the police if you want to help, or go to the mental hospital in town! She’s mad, she needs taking in hand!”

  One of the dogs started barking.

  “Miss O’Sullivan,” said Viktoria very deliberately, “perhaps we should return to the subject another time. You must excuse me. I have an important letter to write.”

  That was unfriendly, she thought. I let myself take offense, which wasn’t necessary. But who is this Josephine, hardly even middle aged, to jump all over me like this, forbidding me to do what I think is right! Nonsense. I have every right to be angry. I need to remember—there’s not as much difference as people think between the young and the old. One of them’s excluded, one of them’s trying to remain included, none of it’s going well. Mad, she says. Mad—needs taking in hand. There is more than one way of taking someone in hand.

  Dear Hilda,

  Here in your beautiful home, so many memo
ries come back to me from our travels in Scotland and Ireland so long ago. Do you remember the time we picked spring flowers somewhere near Galway and put them in a jam jar on the window ledge? The other day I found the first spring flowers by the roadside but they didn’t like . . .

  No. No good. Too sentimental. How ill is she really?

  Dear Hilda,

  It’s so peaceful and pleasant here . . .

  But now Hilda was going hazy again.

  We could have talked to each other more. Those trips weren’t any fun at all, but we could have discussed it and tried to figure out why things went wrong—was she inhibiting my freedom, my happy curiosity, or was it me who frightened her into helpless whining? Very interesting, actually.

  Maybe I’ll write to her a little later.

  Viktoria went and knocked on X’s door with no idea what she wanted to say. X let her in, silently, her face totally closed.

  “Good afternoon,” said Viktoria. “I had no real reason for coming. I just wanted to come.”

  “Ah, paying a call,” said X. “A social call, if I understand you correctly. Have you joined their colony?”

  “No. I think it suits me better to stay on the outside.”

  “Sit down. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “No, thank you, not today. Nothing.”

  After a long silence, X said, “And no conversation? Not a word? No crumb of comfort for the recluse?”

  “That word doesn’t suit you,” Viktoria said. “But you have every right to your solitude. Anyway, solitary people interest me. There are so many different ways of being solitary.”

  “I know just what you mean,” said X. “I know exactly what you’re going to say. Different kinds of solitude. Enforced solitude and voluntary solitude.”

  “Quite,” said Viktoria. “There’s no need to go into it further. But when people understand each other without speaking, it can often leave them with very little to talk about, don’t you think? I’ve had that experience, not often but once or twice. It felt good, a pleasant sort of silence.”

  Her hostess lit a table lamp. What am I doing, thought Viktoria. Am I being disloyal to Josephine? But all I want is to take this thing further, to explore, to understand in order to help.

  “Tell me something,” said X. “Are you a curious person?”

  “Yes, you might say that. Or, rather, I’m interested.”

  “In me?”

  “Certainly. In everything.”

  “Do you get the impression that I’m dangerous?”

  “No, not really.” Viktoria paused for a moment, then said, perhaps rashly, “Someone once gave me a pressure cooker. For making porridge, that sort of thing. It was dangerous and exploded. The inside pressure was apparently too great.”

  “Very likely,” said X. “All that proves is that you shouldn’t mess with appliances unless you know how they’re made. What did you do with it?”

  “What could I do? It was broken. Such a pity, such a fine appliance.”

  “There she goes again,” said X. “Opera. That’s all she has. I detest opera.”

  The music from next door was amazingly clear.

  “Do you like opera?”

  “Not particularly,” said Viktoria. “What I like best is New Orleans, and classic jazz. When I retired, my students gave me a stereo. I take good care of it.” Viktoria took out her cigarettes and looked enquiringly at X.

  “Feel free,” said her hostess, a little impatiently. Then there was silence.

  At last X spoke again. “Do you even know why you came to see me?”

  Viktoria didn’t answer.

  “You seem to be an honest sort of person. You’re naturally open. But you’ve come to the wrong place; you need to be careful. This is a dangerous place for people like you.”

  “What you mean is,” said Viktoria carefully, “that perhaps I’m too suggestible?”

  “More or less.”

  “And that I might find it hard to take a stand and be decisive?”

  “You’re very wise,” said X.

  Viktoria sighed, stubbed out her cigarette, and got to her feet.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said. “It’s a terrible climb up the hill to your house. But it’s always easy to get down again.”

  By now it was dusk. Viktoria walked over to the low wall at the edge of the village’s final ridge. There they were again, those lovely columns of blue smoke rising in the shadow of the mountain straight up into the windless evening air. They must be burning leaves and dry branches, the way they did at home in spring.

  Yes, I have to be careful, I have to know what I want and who I’m trying to protect. She was quite right. I’ll go home now and teach myself some Spanish. How do you say: “Excuse me, is there anyone who can help me with my laundry?”

  One evening Viktoria set off in a new direction, following her nose. The lane turned into a path that gradually disappeared into a stony landscape full of olive trees that seemed tremendously old. Dead branches still hung on the trees. Under the olives a flock of sheep were grazing—parallel dirty-yellow backs, bowed heads, the submissive posture of victims. She caught her foot in a plastic bag and saw she was in a kind of trash dump, the unavoidable outskirts of any human paradise. She felt irrationally depressed.

  At that exact moment the setting sun broke through a gap in the mountain chain and the twilit landscape was instantly transformed and revealed; the trees and the grazing sheep enveloped in a crimson haze, a sudden, beautiful vision of biblical mystery and power. Viktoria thought she had never seen anything so lovely. She remembered once a set designer saying, “My job is to paint with light, that’s all it is. The right light at the right time.” The sun moved quickly on, but before the colors could fade, Viktoria turned and walked slowly back to her house.

  Dear Hilda,

  I just want to say hello because I feel so happy this evening. Your Spanish landscape is so much more than I ever expected or dreamed of, and I dream more often and more powerfully than anyone knows. Couldn’t we spend a little time here together when you’re well again?

  I’m not sure we handled our trips together the way we might have, and I think it was mostly my fault. Trying to do and see everything, rushing here and there the way I did. I know better now.

  You know it’s possible just to be in a place, to look around until you actually see, differently, and then to talk about it, talk about anything at all and feel our way forward together. The young are always in too much of a hurry, don’t you think?

  Promise me we’ll try again. Please?

  A big hug from Viktoria

  On Sunday morning Viktoria woke up to bells—the distant admonishment of church bells. Maybe that’s a good idea, she thought. For once. But just as she was putting on her shoes, she caught sight of her hiking boots standing in a corner, and she thought some more. Such a beautiful morning. And it had really been unenterprising of her not to have discovered where the main road led, the big main road below the village. Church could wait for a cloudy day. So she pulled on her boots and packed a bag with a bottle of fruit juice, cigarettes, and her Guide for Tourists: Useful Phrases. If the expedition proved tiring it might be nice to lie on the grass in the shade of an orange tree and read.

  The morning was still cool and beautiful. On either side of the road were big orchards, their branches bowed to the ground with oranges and lemons, perfect Gardens of Eden—except that they were surrounded by fences. Inside, no one moved among the trees, where the grass grew tall and utterly untouched. When she came to a gate, it was locked. Viktoria thought that with a little effort she could probably slip quickly through the fence and creep under the branches as if into a green grotto and lie there hidden from the world, picking an orange now and then—and, of course, putting the peel in her pocket . . .

  A woman was walking toward her from the village, a woman in black. It was X.

  “Good morning!” called Viktoria. “Are you on your way into town? May I walk with you?�
��

  X stopped for a moment. “No,” she answered. “Not today.”

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Viktoria began, but X turned away and walked on down the valley. It was as if a black raven had sailed by in the sunshine. Viktoria was hurt; after all, they had had a very personal conversation in which X had definitely come out on top. She could have been a little more pleasant.

  Women, thought Viktoria, difficult at school from the very first class. Boys were easier; you knew where you stood with them. She sat down by the roadside, took out her bottle of juice and her Guide for Tourists, and started thinking about the road home, all uphill. It was getting too hot again now. It was always either icy cold or too hot.

  A car came driving down from the village and stopped and hooted; a door slammed open and out came Josephine with her dogs. She staggered and sat down laughing in the road. “Mrs. Viktoria!” shouted someone from inside the car. “Come with us to the fiesta! Carnival! Hurry up, they may have started already!” Josephine’s face looked even smaller framed between two plaits of her astonishingly red hair. She had a ribbon over her head and glass beads around her neck and, as far as Viktoria could judge, was meant to look like a Red Indian. There was a knife in her belt. She shouted, “You’re my prisoner, Professor!”

  Viktoria stood up and asked if it was a real carnival.

  “The biggest one all year,” Josephine assured her. “Everyone does just what they want, and to hell with everybody else, just footloose and fancy-free! Hurry up; we haven’t got all day! We stopped at your place but you weren’t there. This is Mabel and Ellen and Jackie. Here, have a tipple of this! We’re going to a party!”

  It was whiskey again. They drove down the hill at a dizzying speed. One of Josephine’s friends had started singing. Viktoria looked out anxiously for X; it wouldn’t do at all for X to see her with Josephine, in the bosom of the colony, deserting to the enemy camp. She crouched down and tried to make herself invisible, thinking bitterly, What do I mean, deserting? Which way? If Josephine had seen me walking down the road with X, what would she have thought? And anyway, does it really matter what they think?