A couple of days after that phone call with Tom, Jasper Gwyn met Rebecca—the weather was mild, and it occurred to him to make the date in Regent’s Park, on that path where, in a sense, it had begun. He had brought the folder with the seven printed pages. He sat waiting on a bench with which he had a certain familiarity.
They hadn’t seen each other since that last light bulb, in the dark. Rebecca arrived, and they had to figure out what point to start over from.
“Sorry to be late. Someone committed suicide on the Underground.”
“Seriously?”
“No, I was late and that’s all. I’m sorry.”
She was wearing fishnet stockings. You could barely see them, under the long skirt. The ankles, and that was all. But they were fishnet. Jasper Gwyn also noticed rather spectacular earrings. She didn’t wear things like that when she handed over cell phones in Laundromats.
“Do you like Klarisa Rode?” he asked, pointing to the book that Rebecca was holding.
“Tremendously. It’s Tom who told me about her. She must have been an extraordinary woman. You know that none of her books were published while she was alive? She didn’t want them to be.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And for at least seventy years nothing more was known about them. They were rediscovered only about ten years ago. Have you read them?”
Jasper Gwyn hesitated a moment.
“No.”
“Too bad. You should.”
“You’ve read them all?”
“Well, there are just two. But, you know, in these cases stuff continues to come out of the drawers for years, so I’m confident.”
They laughed.
Jasper Gwyn kept staring at the book so Rebecca asked him, joking, if he had invited her there to talk about books.
“No, no, sorry,” said Jasper Gwyn.
He seemed to chase something out of his thoughts. “I asked to see you because I had this to give you,” he said.
He took the folder and gave it to her.
“It’s your portrait,” he said.
She made a move as if to take it, but Jasper Gwyn held on to it because he wanted to add something.
“Would you do me the kindness of reading it here, in front of me? Do you think it’s possible? It would be helpful to me.”
Rebecca took the folder.
“I stopped saying no to you a long time ago. Can I open it?”
“Yes.”
She did it slowly. She counted the pages. She ran her fingers over the first one, as if she were enjoying the texture of the paper.
“Have you let anyone else read it?”
“No.”
“I counted on that, thank you.”
She placed the pages on top of the closed folder.
“Shall I go ahead?” she asked.
“When you like.”
Around them were children running, dogs pulling in the direction of home, and old couples with an air of having escaped something terrifying. Their lives, probably.
Rebecca read slowly, with a mild concentration that Jasper Gwyn appreciated. A single expression on her face the whole time: just the hint of a smile, unmoving. When she finished one page she slid it under the others. Hesitating just an instant, while she was reading the first lines of the next page. When she reached the end she sat for a while, with the portrait in her hands, looking up at the park. Without saying anything she went back to the pages and began to skim them, stopping here and there, re-reading. Every so often she compressed her lips, as if something had pricked her, or grazed her. She put the pages in order, finally, and returned them to the folder. She closed it with the tie. It was still resting on her knees.
“How do you do it?” she asked. Her eyes were bright with tears.
Jasper Gwyn took back the folder, but gently, as if it were understood that it had to be like that.
Then they talked for a long time, and Jasper Gwyn was pleased to explain more things than he would have expected. Rebecca asked, but carefully, as if she were opening something fragile—or an unexpected letter. They talked at their own pace, and there was no longer anything else around them. Every so often, between one question and the next, came an empty silence, in which both measured how much they were willing to find out, or to explain, without losing the pleasure of a certain mystery, which they knew was indispensable. At a question more inquisitive than the others Jasper Gwyn smiled and answered with a gesture—the palm of a hand passing over Rebecca’s eyes, as when one says good night to a child.
“I’ll keep it all to myself,” Rebecca said at the end.
She couldn’t know that it wouldn’t be like that.