Eight

Mrs Jacobitz came into his room without knocking, which he thought ill-mannered. She looked round the room, no doubt checking to see that nothing had been broken or lost.

‘How was your first day at work?’

‘Very interesting,’ he said.

The widow sat on the bed, swinging her legs back and forward. There were holes in her stockings, some of which had been darned; but where there were no darns, Berg could see the thick blue veins protrude from her white flesh.

‘I can remember when my husband first started work. He came home from the front just after the first war. He left the house one morning with a brand new axe. A beautiful thing. Soft wood and a head of gleaming metal.’

Berg looked out of the window. He was in no mood to listen to the widow’s reminiscences, but he turned to look at her and smiled politely nevertheless.

‘When he came back his hands were sore and bleeding a bit. I had to bathe them in spirits.’

Berg nodded absently, still thinking about the scene with Lazlow. The depression had settled upon him heavily and even the exciting possibility that his work brought him into contact with classified information, even the thought that he was being watched, checked upon as a security risk, failed to arouse him from the mood. In the past when he had been depressed he had always gone to his mother who consoled him, who knew exactly how to soothe his various fits and moods, and who never failed him unless she were undergoing one of her own moments of anguish or groundless fears of approaching death.

Mrs Jacobitz got up from the bed and stood a foot or so in front of him. She put her hand out and touched his wrist.

‘We never had any children. We always meant to, but he would say wait—wait until I’m something better than a woodman, something my children can be proud of. But he was never anything better than a woodman in the end. And he was stupid enough to eat those toadstools. I wanted children. Very badly.’

Berg was slightly touched by this speech, which was delivered in a soft voice, almost a whisper. Any resentment he felt against the widow dissolved at once. And suddenly it was clear that it was on account of this tragic childlessness she had harboured her niece.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

The widow removed her hand and walked to the other side of the room. Whether she heard him express his sympathy he couldn’t tell, because she was examining a spot on the floor.

‘Is that cigarette ash?’ she asked. ‘Is it?’

Startled by the sudden change in her tone, Berg said, ‘It might be.’

‘Why don’t you use an ashtray? Would you treat your own home with such contempt?’

‘There isn’t an ashtray,’ he said.

‘People just don’t care for property that isn’t their own. Would you flick dirt over your own floor? Would you muddy up your own carpets? Haven’t you got any respect for the possessions of other people?’

Berg walked to the table. The rapidity of her questions staggered him. He opened his mouth to reply but the widow raised her hand to silence him.

‘Is that ash yours or is it not? If it isn’t yours then it must be someone else’s, and you know that you aren’t allowed visitors in your room.’

Berg sat down. ‘I didn’t know about that rule, I assure you. Not that I’ve had any visitors.’

Mrs Jacobitz stood at the door and cracked the bones in her fingers. ‘I don’t know. You come here from the capital with the manners of a pig. What do they teach you down there? They don’t teach good manners, whatever else they do.’

Berg fumbled for his cigarettes. How could she be so unreasonable, so changeable? Innocently he had spilled ash on the floor—it wasn’t a sin. ‘There isn’t an ashtray,’ he said. ‘If you supplied an ashtray——’

‘And another thing while we’re on the subject. You banged the front door going out this morning and again when you came back. You’ll break every pane of glass doing that. Is that what you want? Do you want to smash the glass?’

Berg did not attempt to answer her this time. She seemed not to listen in any case; further talk was futile. And on the rare occasion when she paid attention she completely misunderstood him. What more could he do but remain in total silence? If he could not communicate it wasn’t his fault, but hers—that she chose to ignore every point he made in his own defence. He closed his eyes: perhaps by doing so she would simply go away. He opened them again when he heard her turn the handle of the door.

‘Supper is at seven. Don’t be late.’

He heard her go slowly down the stairs. When at last there was silence he lay down on the bed. He badly needed a policy to deal with the widow and her idiosyncrasies if life was to be tolerable. Perhaps he could bring her a gift; perhaps he could try flattery at which he had never been very good because he hadn’t the trick of sounding sincere. What should he do? He smoked his cigarette and thought that if she were totally beyond reason then any sort of tactic was pointless: like trying to steer a sinking ship through a fog. Anyway, if the worst came to the worst he could find different accommodation. His room left a lot to be desired and even the cooking was deplorable. Bread fried in lard for breakfast!

He was still lying there, thinking of the widow, when Monika came into the room. He raised his head to look at her, relieved that Mrs Jacobitz had not returned.

‘I heard Vera through the wall. She was going on at you. I told you she was a bit mad.’

Monika moved closer to the bed and then sat down near him, her buttocks almost touching the soles of his feet. He sat up immediately.

‘The great thing is to agree with everything she says.’

‘I can assure you that I’ll simply ignore whatever she says,’ Berg answered. He lit another cigarette and let the smoke drift casually from his mouth. ‘She doesn’t worry me at all.’

Monika gathered up the end of the patchwork quilt and began to stroke it like the fur of an animal. ‘She can have a terrible effect on some people. I’ve known lodgers to leave within a week. I hope you won’t vanish so soon.’

Berg openly flicked his ash on the floor. He wondered what Monika did to pass the time during the day. Although she had said nothing, he assumed that she didn’t go out to work. But if she stayed at home, what did she do all the time? She was no longer wearing the black dress he had seen the day before: she had on a red skirt and a white blouse of a transparent material, through which he could see the folds of her flesh. A strong smell of scent rose from her, seeming strangely not to originate from any single point of her body but to come instead from every part of her. But that, he realised, was a ridiculous thought. Besides, what was he doing—staring at her skin, analysing her perfume? If he carried on like this he would soon begin to imagine her lying in the arms of her gipsy: another absurd idea. He walked across the room and dropped his cigarette from the window.

‘Do you work?’ he asked.

‘I sometimes do seasonal work, like harvesting. But this year I decided to help aunt Vera because you were arriving.’

‘Somehow I didn’t imagine you doing agricultural work.’

‘How did you imagine me?’

‘Possibly I thought you might be a typist.’

‘A typist! I can hardly even spell.’

Berg turned to look at her. She had crossed her legs and the skirt had risen to her thighs. She seemed unconscious of this, although she might well have been aware of the fact that he could see the tops of her legs only by looking in that direction. There was something about her that reminded him of—what? was it a whore? It was her openness, the way she seemed not to care about delicate things—like showing her thighs, like holding his arm as if they were on intimate terms, like entering his room and sitting on his bed. A whore, not a typist: that was how he imagined her, even if he could not say so.

‘Did you enjoy your first day at work?’

‘It was interesting and challenging,’ he said. Suddenly he wanted to tell her about the injustice of Lazlow’s reprimand, but he remained silent.

As if she had read his mind she said, ‘If you ever want to talk to me about anything, I’m always available.’

‘Talk to you about what?’ he asked, a little surpised.

‘Anything. Your life, what you hope for, love … Anything at all.’

Berg did not know what to say to this offer and it occurred to him that perhaps she used the word ‘talk’ euphemistically—just as a whore plying her trade might ask for a ‘match’. He sat at the table and drummed his fingers.

‘It’s very kind of you, but I don’t really want to talk to you or anyone else for that matter. I like to think of myself as independent.’ He clenched his hand to stop his fingers rattling against the table. In the silence that followed, he realised that she was thinking how pompous he had sounded. But what did that matter? He didn’t need to justify himself in front of her. Why had he fled the city and his mother, if not for independence? No, even if the remark seemed harsh, even if she took it as a snub, he would not withdraw it.

She was standing now by the bed, her arms at her side. Her mouth was open, but she said nothing. Berg went to the window. What was it about her presence that seemed stifling? Something more than the sound of her blouse against her skin and the smell of her perfume, something that seemed to come from within her and threaten him. He had never visited a whore but he imagined that the inside of a brothel would have the same suffocating effect upon him.

He turned round to look at her. She was standing with her legs apart, smiling, and it seemed to him—although he could not be certain—that the smile contained an element of pity for him. But it was surely for him to pity her, if there was to be pity at all. A woman of her age, deprived of her lover, living alone with an erratic aunt, conscious of her years and her fading attractions: a woman who came to his room as if to tempt him—surely such a woman was to be pitied?

‘I must help Vera with the supper,’ she said.

He watched her go from the room and then, when she had gone, he stared for a time at the door.