47

Buying, writing and sending a card was hardly straightforward. Just choosing one, for starters. The local Bruna had seven revolving racks full of them. The shop was incredibly busy too; he had to deploy his crutches – ‘Careful, Josje, that man wants to get past!’ – to reach them. Everything had significance, she could read something into every picture. In the end it came down to a choice between a hippo and a dog. He pulled the card with the dog out of the rack, mainly because she’d never been crazy about pets and could misinterpret the hippo. A neutral card. He’d already started to pay when he remembered stamps and priority stickers.

The student. She had told him herself, very coolly. Here in this living room, on a Sunday evening. He’d just got back from a run and was about to shower. It had been over for ages, she said. It was the real reason she’d been fired. During his run, he’d smelt the change of seasons and looked forward to competing in drizzle. The autumn races. Still sweating and with his chest expanded, he had stood there in the living room. Her confession was matter-of-fact; he had listened calmly. Now he knew that there was something else she had kept quiet. They had spent a week avoiding each other, then she’d disappeared. Two days later, he noticed an empty spot in the living room. After doing a circuit of the house and discovering that other things were missing too, he went through her desk drawers and found a number of notes: Our ‘respected’ Translation Studies Lecturer screws around. She is in no way like her beloved Emily Dickinson. She is a heartless Bitch. He went looking for her. He visited his parents-in-law and drove to the university. In a corner he found one more note and then he knew for certain that they had been hung all over the building. In her office, which was empty but unlocked – trusting people, academics – he had finally imagined this student, a boy whose name he didn’t even know, who had probably been there in that very place, maybe with his jeans down around his ankles. That image got to him. Not an image of his wife, no, the boy. Without being fully aware of what he was doing, he had torn up a couple of books and hurled them under a desk. With a box of matches he’d found in a pen tray, he’d initiated a book-burning. When it got out of hand – he felt the heat of the flames on his face – he opened the door and shouted, ‘Fire!’ He was confused, definitely, but he wasn’t a pyromaniac.

He stared at the dog on the card for a long time. It wasn’t going to tell him what to write. A group of cyclists rode by, giggling girls, wobbling across the full breadth of the road, mobile phones at the ready. Ring-necked parakeets squawked in the small park on the edge of his neighbourhood. Being at home alone wasn’t unpleasant. There was a glass of red wine in front of him on the coffee table. He felt calmer, more at ease. From the Bruna, he’d hobbled to the flower stand, where he’d bought a large bunch of yellow tulips. Not Christmas but spring. The spring races were beautiful too; he’d have to concentrate on them now. He saw himself going out the door alone, returning alone, no hellos or goodbyes, no sighs. He’d already addressed the envelope and stuck two stamps on it; in the shop he hadn’t thought about the difference between domestic and European. Now he just had to write something. What did he want to say to her? If he was very honest, not much. ‘I’m coming,’ he wrote, with his name beneath it. He quickly slipped the card into the envelope and licked it shut. Then he drained the glass and called the policeman.