To the Back of Beyond(33)

Once, he was picked up by the police. He had attracted their attention by walking along the highway in the rain. The patrol car had drawn up alongside him, and the officer in the front passenger seat, who resembled Patrick, asked him if everything was all right and asked to see his ID. But Thomas’s name was no longer on the wanted files, for everyone bar Astrid his case was closed.

She didn’t talk to anyone about her fantasies, not because she was afraid they would think she was crazy but because she wanted to keep these scenes to herself, not share them with anyone else. She thought that Thomas was probably alive for Ella and Konrad as well. She had no other explanation for the fact that the children never wanted to talk about their father, and would either go quiet or else run away if Astrid so much as mentioned him. They never wanted to accompany her to the cemetery to tend his grave. The more time passed, the less she believed he was actually there. She felt like a swindler, a cheat, going to tend an empty grave.

She had uprooted a few blown primroses and dropped them in the compost. As she planted fresh heather, she heard Thomas’s voice as though he were standing directly behind her: Don’t bother with that, he said, that’s no good to either of us. Come along. She stood up and left the cemetery, went out onto the street. Only when she reached the station did it dawn on her that this was her childhood village, that the barrier had not yet been replaced by an underpass, that the storehouse that burned down one night was still standing, and so was the old villa next to the post office, with the tangled garden. When Thomas told people about how they had first met, Astrid would always claim that she couldn’t remember, but now she saw the scene distinctly in front of her. It was spring, she had started on her apprenticeship just a few weeks before, and she wasn’t used to the long working days yet. She was in the back room, unpacking the new orders, when the bell rang. Her boss had stepped out to get something, so Astrid went out to serve whoever it was. In the middle of the store — as though he wanted not to get too close to the books — stood a young man, barely older than she was. He went up to the desk and said he was looking for the civil law book and the part about the Code of Obligations. We’d have to order that for you, said Astrid. The boss had briefly walked her through the catalogue of books in print, but she didn’t really know her way around it, and it took her a while before she found it, and filled in an order form. She could feel Thomas looking at her, and every time she looked up he was smiling at her and nodding encouragingly. She asked him for his name and address. And then he asked her for hers. Astrid in Wonderland, he said. No, she said, you’re thinking of Alice. Oh, right, he said, I never read it. Me neither, said Astrid, and laughed. But you’d rather read law books anyway, she said, serious things. I won’t read that either, he said, I just need it for the trainee school. What books do you read? The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, said Astrid. What’s that about? Everything under the sun, she said and laughed again. It’s a family history over three generations. It’s not a book men would like. So what would she recommend for him? asked Thomas. She stepped out from behind the desk, and while she led him up to one of the shelves, she played the bookseller. She felt foolish, dancing about in front of him, pulling books off the shelves and telling him the plots, but she couldn’t help herself. In the end, Thomas bought a book, one of the Maigrets that she recommended, after he had told her he liked books with a bit of excitement to them. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he was just buying it for her sake. Once you’ve read it, will you come and tell me how you liked it?



Thomas spent the winter in the Gotthard area. For the first few days he was put up by a Capuchin monk who was in charge of two small parishes down in the valley. He was a kindly man and very busy. He asked no questions and helped Thomas find work with a carpenter in the village. Thomas wasn’t especially good with his hands, but the carpenter had a large order to fill from a nearby ski resort and was glad of the cheap labor. Thomas found lodgings with an old widow, who let a couple of rooms to long-term tenants. The house was at the bottom of a narrow valley and got practically no sun in the winter. The poorly lit rooms never got properly warm and had a sour dusty smell. The other tenants were a retiree and a young teaching assistant who was just doing her final bit of in-post training. By the time Thomas got off work, it would be dark already, and when he walked into the sitting room and turned on the light, the retiree would often be there. The first time, Thomas thought he must have woken him, but then he noticed that the old fellow liked to sit in the dark fully awake, as though hiding or lying in wait for something or someone. Thomas showered, then he would take a stroll through the village or go up to his room until it was dinnertime. The widow was very parsimonious, forever reminding Thomas to turn off the lights when he left a room, or to switch off the heat at night. In the room beside his was the young teacher, who had introduced herself to him simply as Priska. Over dinner she talked animatedly about her pupils and colleagues. Sometimes the widow would put in, What was the name of that teacher who would let the kids go five minutes early, or, Is the headmaster’s wife still in charge of the library? Then she would inform them that one woman was the daughter of the stationmaster who lived in the yellow house at the end of the village, that his wife was the baker’s sister and had MS, that the teacher’s brother had studied in the seminary in Lucerne but had gotten married and was now working in an advertising agency in Zurich, endless tangled family histories that Thomas instantly got lost in and was left with the impression that everyone here was related by blood or marriage or both. Sometimes the widow would talk about her gifted son, who worked in finance and was living in London. She spoke in raptures about him and his achievements and his huge salary, but Thomas couldn’t help feeling she would have liked it better if he had stayed in the village and led a modest life close by.