“It was still very nice, though.”
Sometimes, I reflect, you don’t need much at all to turn a feeling of anguish into relief. I don’t feel like I’m free from all my worries, but what I do feel all of a sudden is a sense of optimism. The hope that we’ll get to the bottom of this and that things will take a turn for the better.
“Yes,” I say, returning her smile. “It was wonderful.”
“I want to go outside, get some fresh air. Can we go for a walk?”
An image appears in my mind’s eye. Joanna and I, strolling through the small park all wrapped up in our jackets, in a tight embrace, heads tilted toward each other …
“I’d love to.”
Our walk ends up taking quite a long time. We don’t talk much, nor do we walk in a tight embrace, but our hands keep touching. Again and again they brush against each other, as if by accident, and a gentle shudder goes through my body every time.
Joanna suddenly stops and looks at me when we’ve almost reached the house again. “Would you give me your number?”
I’m confused for a second. “Yes of course, I … I thought you had it but … yes.”
“Not, not until now. But I should have it, right?”
A short while later we’re sitting in the living room, on the couch. The look Joanna is giving me no longer contains the suspicion of the past few days, when it seemed that she was trying to read me, decipher my thoughts.
“Tell me about us again, please?”
“Yes, I’d love to,” I say, and take her hand.
“What would you like to know?”
“Everything,” she answers. “I’d like to know everything.”
21
It’s already dark by the time we finish talking. Only now do I realize that I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast; my stomach is making itself heard, gently but insistently. “How about we cook something together?” I turn to Erik and trace the contours of his face with my finger. Foreign yet at the same time strangely familiar. And gradually becoming more and more so. “You wanted to, remember, yesterday.”
He smiles. “I still want to.”
The way he looks at me when I touch him. There’s so much emotion in it, and it’s increasingly spilling over to me. Is that a good thing? Is it careless?
The fact is, I no longer want to be asking myself these questions. Now that I no longer see Erik as an acute threat. I’ve become aware of how attractive he is, this man who I’m getting to know bit by bit. The man who is there for me night and day. Who hasn’t let my memory loss scare him away.
And who kisses like …
“Why are you laughing?” He takes my face between his hands, carefully, without touching the bruised parts.
“I’m not telling you.”
His mouth on mine again, his tongue, gentle at first, then enticing, then insistent. I playfully bite his lower lip. “I’m hungry.”
“I can see that.” He smiles, takes my hand, and pulls me into the kitchen. “Let’s see. We’d better leave the shrimp, but what would you say to turkey skewers? With that special tomato salad you make? We’ve got everything we need.”
Just the thought of it makes my hunger grow twofold. “Sounds wonderful.”
He takes all the ingredients out of the cupboard. “I’ll do the meat, you do the vegetables. That’s how we usually do it, do you remember?” I can see that he regrets the last three words even as he’s still saying them. I shake my head. “No. Unfortunately not. But that sounds like a good plan.”
His eyes are trained on the worktop; the fridge is still open behind him. “Usually,” he repeats. “Unless it was steak, you’re better at that.”
I can see how desperately he wants to be able to share these memories with me, but as hard as I try, the images just won’t come into my mind.
“Probably because I always made them on the barbecue with my father, since I was a young child,” I say. That memory is there, crystal clear. Daddy and his beloved, gigantic sirloin steaks.
“OK then.” Erik gets the skewers from the drawer and begins to cut the turkey fillet into even pieces.
I wash the tomatoes under hot water. Nothing tastes worse than ice-cold tomato salad.
Erik hums as he works, a melody which I don’t recognize at first. With a bit of imagination, though, it kind of sounds like “Strangers in the Night.” Singing along under my breath, I pull the knife out of the wooden block. I don’t need to exert much pressure, it glides through the tomatoes as though they were butter. Perfect, fine, wafer-thin slices. Red and juicy.
It’s easy and fun. In just a short time I’ve already cut five tomatoes into slices and pushed them into the salad bowl, without the white fleshy part with the seeds breaking away.
The bottles of olive oil and white balsamic vinegar are standing there at the ready, but … the onions are missing. I hope I still have some in the fridge, at least one; one would be enough. All I need to do is get it, but I can’t pull my eyes away from the tomatoes in the bowl. From that red color.
I feel so light, inside. I feel like humming and singing and almost like dancing. All the pressure from the past few days is gone; it’s faded away. No more worries. No more thoughts.
And then, suddenly, there’s a silvery arc, so beautiful, like a curved bolt of lightning shooting up into the sky, one I’ve created with a single, smooth movement.
There’s a pause, for the duration of half a breath. And then … falling, plummeting, jabbing. Like I was a falcon swooping down, with a clear target, one I don’t want to miss at any cost.
The spot on his back, not far from the spine, beneath the shoulder blade. At last.
Time slows, almost standing still. I see the knife going downward, looking at it both with joy, the like of which I’ve rarely felt before, and with a fear which almost makes me lose my mind.
Part of me wants to stop the movement, but the rest of me is stronger. It wants to see the knife plunging into Erik’s back, not just once, but again and again.
At that moment Erik turns his head; his eyes widen, he moves his body to the side and the knife catches his right upper arm, raised in self-defense.
Red. Glistening, flowing red.
For a few seconds I stare in fascination at the stain which starts to spread on the sleeve of Erik’s shirt; only then do I begin to understand what just happened.
What I did.
No, please no, please …
It is me who screams, not him. I let the knife fall on the worktop, this knife which has been haunting my thoughts for days, the knife which I just used to stab Erik. Just like that.
“My God … I’m so—I’m so sorry!” I take a step toward him, but he flinches away. With an expression that I’ve never seen in his eyes before. Full of disbelief, horror, and disappointment which pains me all the way to my soul.
Then, in just a few seconds, all of that is gone. It turns into the opposite. I try to go over to him again.