My Otto,
Little Otto is so good, so quiet. I think the force of my fear keeps him silent. It’s a shame, truly, that he will not be allowed to run and shout and cause a little mischief. I worry that, if we are here for too long, he will grow into a man unable to express himself or reveal his feelings or, perhaps, even know them in the first place. I pray this will not happen. I am forever shushing him, drilling silence into his bones so now he doesn’t even cry out when he’s hungry, he simply cries silent tears and, of course, I pick him up (though I am usually holding him anyway – he may also grow up being uncomfortably attached to his mother) and tend to him. But don’t worry, he’s okay, he’s not being deprived because of his silence, I am taking care of him, as best I can, though it just isn’t nearly as well as I would like, given …
His eyes are still blue, his hair black. He looks so like you that, sometimes, I am scared by it, I think you are a ghost or that you’ve crept up upon us without warning. Sometimes, I wake with him in my arms and, despite his tiny body, I – blurry-eyed and only half conscious – think that he is you. I confess at these times I cry, because he is not. Though, not for a second, would I wish him away, that I would take you in his place. I am selfish. I want you both. I will not swap one for the other. One day, we will all lay in bed together, me and my two Ottos, I will have you both in my arms and then all will be exactly as it should be. We wait for that day; we wait for you.
Ever Yours,
Marthe
They are sitting up in bed together, Clara leaning back against the headboard with her eyes closed, Pieter reading letters. He taps her gently on the arm. Clara opens her eyes.
‘When will you go?’
‘What? Oh …’ This is something she’s been trying not to think about. She’s been fending off her mother’s phone calls, along with her own doubts and fleeting desires to return to England, along with the very real need to tend to the shop. Clara hates, too, to think of the would-be letter writers and receivers who aren’t, because she isn’t where she should be.
‘It’s okay, no pressure,’ Pieter looks up from the paper he’s holding. ‘I don’t want to rush you; I’ll just need to—’
Clara turns to him. ‘Oh, God, you—do you want me to go home right now, you should have said’ – she slides her legs out of bed and stands between two piles of papers, searching the floor for clothes – ‘I know this is just a fling, I didn’t want to outstay my welcome, yes, I really should …’
‘What?’ Pieter puts down his paper. ‘Wait. Home?’
Clara picks her T-shirt off a nearby chair. ‘Right, you should have said something before.’
‘Home?’ Pieter says. ‘I wasn’t talking about home; I was talking about Herzogenbusch.’
‘Oh.’ Clara pokes her head out of the T-shirt with a sheepish smile. ‘Oh, right, that.’
‘Yes, exactly. I have something for you.’
‘Something else?’ Clara continues to smile, flushed with relief. ‘You already bought me a bike.’
‘True,’ Pieter says, reaching into the drawer of his bedside table. ‘But that doesn’t prohibit me from doing other things, does it?’
Clara shakes her head, stepping back to the bed.
Pieter removes a thin blue file and hands it to Clara who, sliding back under the bed sheets, takes it. She undoes the knot of string tying the file together, then, slowly, carefully, pulls back the blue cover to reveal a small stack of pages swathed in lines and lines of tiny black sentences.
‘What is it?’
‘Marthe’s letters. I translated them for you. I wrote them out, so you can read them yourself to Otto.’
‘Oh.’ Clara’s eyes fill and the desire to declare love rises again in her heart.
‘But I’ll just need a few days’ notice, to make sure I don’t have any appointments when you want to go.’
Clara puts her hand to her mouth.
‘And,’ Pieter adds, softly, ‘I don’t remember saying that this was just a fling – did you? Am I forgetting, in my old age, this important detail?’
Clara drops her hand. ‘I love you.’
Pieter leans towards her, smiling. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.’ He taps his left ear. ‘My hearing isn’t what it used to be.’
Clara grins. ‘I said, I love you.’
‘Ah, good. That’s what I hoped you’d said.’
Pieter shifts forward, until he has Clara in his arms and is kissing the tears, of relief and joy, that slide slowly down her cheeks.
‘I love you too,’ he whispers. ‘I love you too.’
Later that day, they go for a cycle ride. Clara almost crashes several times, whenever she takes her eyes off the road to glance over at Pieter and grin at him.
‘I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,’ she calls out. ‘At last! It’s glorious, it’s truly glorious!’
Pieter laughs. ‘Now you can officially say: it’s as easy as riding a bike.’
‘Yes,’ Clara calls, breaking away from him in a rush of speed. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
Still laughing, Pieter stands on his pedals and pushes after her. ‘Wait, go easy on me, I’m old and unfit, I might give myself a heart attack trying to catch up!’
He follows Clara, gliding behind in the stream of her scent and laughter, along the canals, through the winding streets until, at last, she stops outside a shop. Pieter looks up at the sign: De Posthumuswinkel. He dismounts and crosses the road with his bike to lock it against the railing with Clara’s.
‘Ah, so you brought me here. You promised lunch, but it was a trick.’
Clara shrugs. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I didn’t mean to, but I’m like a homing pigeon. And this place reminds me of my own little Letters, so I need to visit it every now and then …’
Pieter casts her an indulgent smile and then, as he takes her hand to cross the road again, he bites his lip. His grip on her hand loosens. Clara looks over at him.
‘Are you okay?’
Pieter nods.
‘Really?’
He shrugs. ‘I just wonder when you will want to go home. After all it is, as you say, your home and you miss it – your shop, your letters …’
Clara stops outside De Posthumuswinkel, shifting to let another couple of customers in through the door.
‘Well, I’ve been thinking about it, actually,’ she says, treading softly. ‘I just didn’t want to say anything yet, since I didn’t want to scare you off.’
‘Scare me off?’
‘Yes, I mean, you told me how you don’t like to commit, and—’
Pieter frowns. ‘I didn’t say that. I said I couldn’t have children and so I didn’t really have relationships either, but that’s not the same thing at all. Unless, of course, you do—’
‘No, I don’t,’ Clara says, a little too quickly, fixing her gaze at the pavement. ‘Anyway, that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about, it was something, something … I’ve been thinking, that it might be possible to close my shop in Cambridge and open one here. I could do the same thing. People could come in and write letters, I could walk the streets—’
‘—or cycle,’ Pieter suggests.
Clara shakes her head. ‘No, cycling is too quick. I wouldn’t have a chance to really see people. I need the chance to spot them.’ She smiles. ‘It’s how I spotted you, reading your letters by the light of your lamp.’
‘Then I’m glad you hadn’t learnt to ride before,’ Pieter says. ‘Or we might not be here right now.’
Clara nods. ‘So, what do you think?’ she asks, her heart beating fast, afraid that she’s moving too quickly, saying too much, too soon, that he’s about to say so, to let her down gently. ‘Of my idea?’
‘I think it’s wonderful,’ Pieter says. ‘I think I will be your best customer.’