To the Back of Beyond(11)

In the east the moon was rising, a dark orange disk looming very close. The higher it climbed, the smaller it seemed to get. At the same time its illumination grew stronger, and before long, a milky shimmer lay over the whole landscape. Thomas was too tired to be able to go on. He lay down in the grass and rolled himself up like a kid. It wasn’t cold, but the damp got into his clothes. He thought of home, of Astrid and the sleeping children, who already seemed to be so far away, it was as though he had been gone for weeks.



The children came home from school a little after four, first Ella and a little after her Konrad, who tended to dawdle. Ella was already sitting at the living-room table doing her homework when he walked into the kitchen and mutely hugged his mother. Astrid liked those moments when he was as affectionate as he’d been as a small child. In spite of that, she freed herself from his hug and asked him if he had any homework. I’m hungry. Then eat an apple, she said, and called into the living room, Do you want one, Ella? She cut up two apples in slices, put them on two little plates, and handed Konrad one, taking the other to Ella. She looked over Ella’s shoulder and read the opening lines of the piece she was writing in her exercise book. Something that happened during my holidays, was the title, but Ella was writing about the stray dogs she had seen on the beach. One of the dogs was very sweet and terribly affectionate. I don’t know what breed he was. My father said he’s a mungrel, which are the best kind of dogs, because they’re a bit of everything. I badly wanted to take him home with us, but my mother said we weren’t allowed to take dogs across the border.

One of the many untruths she had recourse to every day with the children, thought Astrid. At lunch, she had claimed that Thomas was eating with a client, and the children didn’t even ask, as though they had failed to notice that their mother’s explanations were contradictory. They had been unusually quiet, in fact, almost somehow inhibited. Astrid took an apple slice off Ella’s plate and put it in her mouth. Hey, said Ella, that’s mine. Mongrel has an o in it, said Astrid, the first vowel.

While she got dinner ready, she thought she wouldn’t be able to fob the children off with such threadbare versions for much longer. But what was she going to say to them instead? Your father has disappeared? And anything beyond that? She herself didn’t know what had happened. Surely nothing had befallen him. He just had to go, leave. Maybe that was the explanation. He didn’t have another woman, hadn’t embezzled any money, hadn’t run up debts he was unable to repay. He hadn’t done himself an injury, he had simply walked away. It was an urge she had felt herself. When Ella was very young and colicky, and hadn’t slept through a single night, when she stayed up screaming for hours, and Astrid was tired to the point of exhaustion, she had sometimes walked out of the house, leaving the baby all alone for half an hour or even an hour sometimes. She had gone to the station and sat down on a bench on a platform and just taken deep breaths. A train arrived, people got on and off. Astrid stood up, walked toward the train. The doors closed, the train moved off, and Astrid sat down again. Then she imagined coming home, it was silent, ghostly silent. Finally she had gone home, and Ella was still screaming, red-faced with exertion, and Astrid had picked her up out of her crib, and carried her around the house, and whispered to her until she calmed down a little. Astrid had never said a word to Thomas about these escapades; she was ashamed of them. Maybe he had such fantasies of flight as well, and needed time alone to collect himself in the din of their normal day. The policeman was surely right, Thomas would come back soon, and they would resume their previous life, only a little unsettled by the knowledge that there was nothing natural or inevitable about it, and that sometime one or other of them might get lost for a while or even forever.

For once, the children set the table uncomplainingly. Over dinner, they were silent again. Finally Astrid said, Your father’s gone away, I have no idea where he is or when he’ll come back, but I’m sure he won’t stay away for much longer. Is he dead then? asked Ella. Astrid looked at her in alarm. No, of course he isn’t, how could you say that? Ella jumped up from the table and ran away. Astrid followed her upstairs and found her rolled up on her bed, crying. She lay down behind her and wrapped her in her arms and said, I’m quite sure your papa’s fine. He just needed some time by himself after the holiday. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. Quite sure. Ella didn’t say anything, but she seemed to calm down gradually. After a while, Astrid said, I’d better go downstairs and see what Konrad is up to. Are you all right now? Ella nodded.

Konrad was still sitting at the table, on his plate was a piece of bread that he had cut up into little cubes. Why did Papa go away? he asked. Astrid sat down beside him and laid her hand on his shoulder. Sometimes people just want to be by themselves. You’re like that sometimes too, remember? When you lock yourself up in your room. Now finish your dinner. Can I play my computer game then? asked Konrad.



It was daybreak when Thomas awoke. The moon was high, but it didn’t shed much light in the brightening sky. The group of trees that Thomas had seen as an outline the previous night were just a few sick specimens with leafless crowns, their trunks a tangle of ivy. A sweetish smell hung in the air.

Thomas’s clothes were sodden, but he didn’t feel cold. He rubbed his hands on the damp grass and wiped the sleep from his eyes. Then he picked up his bundle and headed on in a southerly direction. There was no one around anywhere, and he walked along field tracks, always mindful not to lose his bearings.