He left the office and went out to the street. On the opposite corner a man was leaning against the wall of a house, reading a newspaper. He dropped the paper an inch or so and looked across at Berg for a second, before raising the paper again. For some reason, Berg had the odd idea that this man was watching him. He walked to the next corner and looked back and as he turned thought he saw a movement of the paper—as if the man had again been scrutinising him. But Berg could not be sure. If he were being watched, what reason could there be, unless it was mere curiosity. Or unless—an idea that came to him in a flash—unless he had been detailed to observe Berg’s movements, to check on him as a possible security risk. This idea, on reflection, was fatuous. A face behind a newspaper was so blatant as to be absurd: surely security people used more sophisticated techniques?

  On the next corner, Berg glanced back again. But by this time the man was nowhere to be seen. Berg turned off the main road and walked back towards the house. A deep depression that he was unable to shake off had fallen upon him.

  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.

  Nine

  He stared for a time at the door, wondering about the woman. It was possible, of course, that he had misjudged her entirely and that he mistook her friendliness for something else altogether. Or rather that the motives behind her apparent desire to befriend him were basically suspect. Did she, in fact, want him to make love to her?

  This question seemed to hang in his mind for some time, an obstacle that he could not think his way round. If she wanted him to make love to her—and it was pretty clear, he thought, from her behaviour that she did—then he would have to examine himself and his own desires thoroughly. What did he want? If she were to come to his room and offer herself, like some sacrifice, how would he react? He realised that he didn’t know the answer, that he couldn’t predict the outcome, that if the sacrifice were offered he wouldn’t know whether to accept or refuse. And if he accepted? What then?

  He looked out of the window and down into the street. Part of the trouble lay in his inexperience. Apart from his mother—and she could hardly be counted—he hadn’t known any women. At university his acquaintances had drifted from one love affair to the next, blindly, as if they were groping after something. To Berg, this was a puzzle: he had stood outside the carnival and looked on, conscious of the bewilderment of the participants, aware at the same time that he himself lacked whatever dynamism was needed to take part.

  Apart from his mother: but there had been nothing apart from his mother. For most of his life she had been the centre of his universe, if not the universe itself. Like some unwilling satellite he had circled her sick bed, her endless sick bed, not waiting for her to die but waiting for something in himself to snap—his mind, his nerve, his will: he could not name it, whatever it was. It had something to do with the women he had watched; women in cheap furs hustling their clients up dark staircases into wooden rooms, baring their purple thighs beneath a blind light-bulb. Whatever it was, it had something to do with this act, an act that he had witnessed a million times in his imagination.

  His mother was the obstacle to his life, the locked door that prevented his exit from the room to those other rooms where he could detect the faint sound of laughter. The rooms beyond that he wanted badly to enter—while he waited for that particular something to snap. Having snapped, he could no longer be imprisoned in that unending round of prescriptions and tablets, demands and whims, in that sick imagination.

  His mother: his only relationship with a woman.

  He smoked a cigarette and looked round the room. He could not even decide if he found Monika attractive: partly because he could not find in himself any response to her, as if that faculty for response had been numbed, or worse still, deadened. He imagined that she had had many lovers, perhaps even here, in this room: perhaps on that very bed. A whole procession of men, lodgers like himself, that she had tried as though to find one to take the gipsy’s place. He could see her on the bed, waiting for him to move towards her, calling his name softly: Berg, Berg.

  What could he do? What was expected of him?

  He looked at the unfamiliar room. Compared with what he had been used to, it was the drabbest place he had ever seen. Even its shadows seemed uncompromising, stark, without texture. He lay down and closed his eyes: at least the room was his and not his mother’s.

  Ten

  For supper that evening they had the cold remains of yesterday’s stew, which made Berg indignant. It wasn’t as if he was a charity case living off the widow’s good intentions, in which circumstances cold stew might have been justifiable. He was paying money to live and eat in the house and he expected to get what he paid for; and he certainly hadn’t paid for cold leftovers. Besides, the bread was stale and his coffee cup cracked. He was about to say something about this when Monika spoke.

  ‘There’s a film in the cinema you might like to see.’

  Berg wondered if she was recommending the film for its own sake, or whether she wanted to accompany him.

  ‘I’m sure Mr Berg has already seen it,’ the widow said. ‘They take such a long time to reach us up here.’

  ‘It’s about the war,’ Monika said.

  The widow asked: ‘Which war? The last one?’

  ‘What does it matter?’ Monika said. ‘I think it’s nice just to sit in the dark, regardless of what film’s showing.’

  ‘I don’t know if war films have any lasting benefits.’ The widow dipped her fingers in a glass of water and dried them on her apron. She began to crack the bones, just as someone might smack his lips appreciatively after a good meal.

  ‘Benefits,’ Monika said. ‘It’s the chance to be transported for a few hours, that’s all. It’s got nothing to do with benefits.’ She turned to look at Berg. ‘Would you like to see the film?’

  Berg experienced a sour taste in his mouth as the meal returned to him. There was a moment of nausea, during which he felt he would be forced to rush from the room and vomit. He glanced at his plate, at the black lumps of beef, thick with hard fat.

  ‘Well?’ Monika asked. ‘Would you like to go?’

  The sickness rising in him, Berg could only blink. To open his mouth would be disastrous. He pushed the plate away and raised a hand to his lips.

  ‘Can’t you see he doesn’t want to go?’ the widow said. ‘Who wants to see war films anyway?’

  Berg wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. He noticed that Monika was leaning on her elbows, the tips of her breasts touching the surface of the table. For a moment, he saw what they would be like naked.

  ‘I don’t feel very well,’ he said.

  ‘Then an evening at the cinema will cure you,’ Monika said.

  The thought of sitting beside her in the dark did not appeal to him: in the darkness, he would have no protection against her. What if she seized his hand? if she placed her head on his shoulder? if she tried to kiss him? He could hardly object without causing a scene.

  ‘Perhaps some other evening,’ he said. ‘I don’t think sitting in a stuffy cinema will make me feel any better.’

  ‘Tomorrow then, if you’re feeling better,’ Monika said, and Berg thought he detected a note of disappointment in her voice. She was staring at him, accusingly, reproaching him for refusing her. He looked down at the table. Again, he found himself looking at the remains of his supper, a sight so disgusting that he felt obliged to speak. He cleared his throat, not knowing what he was going to say.

  ‘I’d like to say something, but I want to assure you, Mrs Jacobitz, that I don’t mean to give offence. Tonight’s meal was … well, perfectly disgusting. In fact, I’ve never tasted anything so bad in my whole life. It might be the custom in this part of the country to serve the remains of the previous day’s supper, but I’m not used to it. And since I’m paying money to live here, I think I’m entitled to better.’

 

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