Dissonance (22 page)

A few moments later Luise was standing over him. ‘I'm not riding back up this hill,' she said.

He sat up, looking for his bike, up-ended a few metres away against a tree. ‘Did you see what happened?' he asked.

‘Well?'

‘I nearly hit that tree. I could've been killed.'

She smiled.

‘Jesus.'

‘Big tough Digger. Come on.'

Then he heard singing: a pair of men's voices twisted together like barbed wire, filling the warm, early afternoon air with solid melody.

‘What's that?' he asked Luise, but she just shrugged.

He stood up, approached a blackberry hedge, found a gap and squeezed through. ‘Come on,' he said.

He emerged onto a raised mound overlooking a freshly ploughed paddock. Two men wearing nothing but long pants and workboots were digging an irrigation ditch with long-handled shovels. There was also a pair of boys – thirteen or fourteen, wearing shorts and brown shirts with
Landdienst
cuff titles – bucketing water that ran down rivulets back into the ditch. The water was making mud and both the men and boys were having trouble clearing it.

Erwin sat down on the mound. Luise sat beside him. ‘What a great melody,' he said, thinking, hearing it sung (to the words of the poet Keil) by the flawed hero of his new opera. ‘Raskolnikov,' he said.

‘Who?' she asked.

But he was already getting his sketchbook out. He opened it to a new page, ruled up a few long staves and listened; then he started scribbling notes on the stave. He could tell the key and that it was a simple sixteen-bar melody. He drew the notes, bar lines and accidentals, the tempos and even an approximation of the words.

Here is the linden tree

Broken by axes

And here are the stone blocks

Their faces chiselled clean …

Luise looked over his shoulder. ‘What's that for?' she asked.

‘My opera,' he replied.

‘
… here are the stone blocks?
'

‘Trust me,' he said, smiling. ‘Wait.'

He left his sketchbook behind and ran towards the men and boys, waving his hands in the air, calling to them. He arrived and shook their hands, squeezed their shoulders, took a spade and started helping.

Luise couldn't believe what she was seeing. ‘Erwin.'

As Erwin worked the others stood back and watched him. They talked among themselves, laughed and encouraged him with applause and more song. After a few minutes he stopped and took off his towelling shirt. Then he was back into it, thrusting at the wet, sloppy soil, dropping it on the grass where it quickly dried in the sun.

After about ten minutes he'd had enough. He returned the spade, shook their hands and ran back to Luise.

‘Fun?' she asked, smiling at him, trying not to look at his flat, white, freckled chest, contoured with shallow valleys and strong, bony ridges glistening with sweat.

‘Fantastic,' he replied. ‘I never get to do anything like that any more. Too much piano, not enough work.'

The four were looking up at him, at his blue towelling pants, his wild, curly hair, flattened back across his head with wide, strong hands.

‘There's a pool up there,' one of them called, pointing, and Erwin waved. He grabbed his knapsack and took Luise's hand. ‘Come on, before I cool down,' he said.

They followed a path along the side of the mound. It snaked its way through a copse of birch, under fences, through a clearing and into a dark, cold forest of oak trees.

‘It's nature day,' Erwin called out, but his voice faded.

‘Is this the right way?' Luise asked.

‘
The forces on each side were very large
,' Erwin intoned, looking at her eerily. ‘
The battle was one of the greatest ever fought in Norway.
' Then he picked up a branch and charged towards a distant darkness. Soon he was gone.

‘Erwin, come back,' she called.

Silence: an owl, the sound of a tree being felled, twigs breaking under her feet. ‘Erwin, this isn't funny.'

The trees were giant speckled mushrooms, sheltering her from light, colour and smell. The air was musty, cold, heavy, capturing and amplifying the smallest sounds.

‘That's it, I'm going back,' she called. ‘Erwin?' Then she turned around but there were just more steel-girder trunks, a profusion of branches marrying together in the canopy and a soft layer of leaf litter three inches deep.

‘Erwin, please …'

He emerged from the trees with his stick. ‘My name is Ofeig, son of Einar, son of Olvir the Babyman.' He stopped and looked her over. ‘You'll do,' he said, gagging her with his shirt, picking her up and running back into the cover of trees.

‘Stop it,' she said, pushing him away, half-screaming, half-laughing.

Erwin lifted his legs as he ran. ‘I am Grettir,' he said, ‘and you are my Asny.'

‘Put me down … where are we going?'

‘For a swim.'

But they never made it that far. Erwin tripped on a half-buried root that was growing across the forest floor. It wasn't much of a fall, just a gentle
hmph
as their lungs emptied and their bodies came to rest on the soft, grey carpet. ‘I am the brother of Oleif the Broad and Thormod Shaft,' he explained.

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘Have you got that out of your system?' she asked.

He moved his body over hers. ‘What do you think?' he replied.

‘You're no Grettir,' she said.

‘I could be.'

‘You're still a child.'

‘Sixteen? If these were the wars of Onund – '

‘They're not.'

‘If …'

And then he kissed her – at first on the cheek, then the mouth, taking her head in his hands and twisting it gently. ‘See,' he said. ‘I'm a Viking at last.'

She almost laughed.

He kissed her again. He was aching to keep going. For a moment he wondered whether he should ask, or explain what he had in mind, but there didn't seem any point. She had her hand in his loose towelling pants, feeling his legs, eventually tugging at his cord as he worked at her shirt.

‘We shouldn't,' he said, suddenly not so brave, feeling his body making its own choices.

One of his legs slipped between hers and he relaxed. He used his thumb to guide himself and then allowed her to lead him further towards the unknown.

He kept his head down. All he could see were her hands clutching the leaf litter – small, delicate hands holding the side of his piano as she reached for a high note in Schubert's
Wanderer
. He noticed her chest, pushed up, covered in a trail of saliva; her carotid artery pumping fast and blue; her architectural features covered in small, silver drops of sweat; her stomach and her hips; wide, white open stretches of leg.

He rolled off and they lay naked in the leaf litter. They talked for a few minutes and then started again. He rolled on top of her, and off, and then again, until he wondered if they'd ever be able to stop.

Then they heard voices. Three boys wearing brown shirts with HJ armbands, black shorts and leather belts with cross-straps appeared in the mid-distance. They carried their socks in their boots and each had a towel over his shoulder.

They were hot too, in a hurry to get to the waterhole. They started running and Luise grabbed her clothes, stood up and scampered behind a tree. Erwin wasn't fast enough to avoid being seen. He covered his body with his loose clothes and greeted the boys.

‘Who are you?' one of them asked, stopping in front of him.

‘I'm from Hamburg,' Erwin explained.

‘Have you got a girl?' another one asked.

Luise looked from behind the tree. ‘Go away,' she said.

The three of them smiled.

‘What have you been doing?' the smallest of them asked.

‘Go away,' she repeated.

‘What about us?' the first boy said.

‘You wouldn't know what to do.'

‘No?' he replied. ‘I've been fucking my cousin since she was twelve.'

‘Go away,' Luise repeated.

‘Come on,' the small boy said. ‘I can do it ten different ways.' They all laughed.

Erwin stepped forward, still covering himself. ‘Are you fellas gonna leave, or am I gonna make you?'

They could see that he was tall, and muscular, and that hair was thick and black below his stomach.

‘Come on,' the small boy said. ‘Let them finish.'

And they were gone.

Erwin and Luise sat on the forest floor, but this time to talk, to dress themselves, to hold each other as they kissed, and to stroke each other's face. As the sun dropped, cutting through high branches in a show of broken light, they walked to the waterhole – a dam with deep sides, muddy water and a tyre suspended from a rope attached to a branch that grew out across the water. The three boys were swimming naked in the water like small, grey herring. They climbed the banks and dived in as Erwin and Luise watched from behind bushes. Then Luise walked out, grabbed their clothes from the ground and said, ‘Who's got the big mouth now?'

They boys trod water or rested on submerged ledges.

‘What sort of girl are you?' one of them asked. ‘You should be home, helping your mother.'

‘No fear of that,' Erwin said, stripping off and jumping in. He came up for air, flattened his hair and said, ‘This is Asny. She sings for the gods.'

‘She sings for you,' the eldest dared, coming out of the water, standing in front of Luise with his hand extended. ‘My uniform, please?'

Luise looked him over. ‘Yes, you look better with it on.'

He took the clothes, found his own shirt and shorts and threw the rest in the water. The other boys took the wet clothes and tried to put them on. One of them gave up trying and dashed from the water, finding refuge behind rocks. The youngest boy soon joined him.

A few minutes later they were all gone. Luise sat on the edge of the pool as Erwin carefully walked along the oak branch that grew out across the water.

‘Careful,' she said.

Erwin stood up and took a moment to be sure of his balance. ‘I used to do this all the time,' he managed.

He could remember driving home from school with his mother, seeing kids out for an afternoon swim – slipping and falling in the water, laughing, climbing out and doing it all again. ‘There was this story,' he said to Luise, sitting down on the branch. ‘Apparently this girl had hung herself with her stockings, from a long branch, like this one. So we'd all climb to the end of the branch and pretend we were going to kill ourselves.'

‘That's morbid,' Luise said, kicking her feet in the warm water.

‘Apparently her spirit lived in the water, and if you did this, pretended, she'd drag you under and drown you.'

Although he didn't mention that the closest he'd ever got to the waterhole was Greenock Road, and the cab of their Dodge truck.

‘Someone did drown there,' he explained. ‘There was a cross beside the water.'

But she just grinned.

‘It's time to end it all,' he said, standing up. ‘Goodbye world, I have loved you, and hated you.' He jumped. He disappeared beneath the water and eventually the swell settled.

‘Erwin,' Luise whispered.

Two minutes. Three.

‘Erwin. You're not going to fool me again.'

She climbed down to the edge of the water and looked in.

‘Joke's over,' she called.

Silence.

‘Erwin.'

He reached up, grabbed her and pulled her in.

‘I've been to the Underworld,' he explained. ‘She's there … the girl, and she still has a stocking around her neck.'

He was still watching the kids in the dam off Greenock Road, pretending to hang themselves, to die, to rise up and out of the water like ghosts. As his mother said, ‘Some parents just don't care.'

Luise and Erwin swam together – embracing, separating, drifting apart and returning.

Some mornings it began before he was even awake. Madge came into his room while he was still in a dream. She opened his wardrobe and hung up freshly ironed shirts and pants and closed the small door noisily. ‘You sleep,' she said, opening and closing drawers, picking up his towelling clothes and folding them, adjusting combs, brushes and cologne on his dresser, standing at the window looking out through the blinds.

‘Mum …'

‘What?'

She picked up his towelling pants. ‘What's this?' she asked.

Erwin turned over and looked at her. He squinted. ‘Grass,' he said. ‘I had a fall.'

‘Ah … and here?'

He sat up in bed, wiping sleep from his eyes, sighing. ‘I don't know. We were sitting in a forest. Dirt. Pine needles. What does it matter?'

‘This won't come out.'

‘So? They're play clothes.' He got out of bed, left his room, went into the kitchen and filled the kettle. She followed him. ‘It looks like you were wrestling,' she said.

‘Mum.' He lit a flame under the kettle. Then he made his way to the bathroom. She was still following him. He closed the door but she stood listening.

‘I would make you another set, but towels are so ­expensive.'

‘Those are fine,' he said.

‘If you could just be careful – '

‘Mum! Can't I have a pee in peace?'

She heard his stream dribble, and then stop. She heard the toilet flush and the tap splutter to life. She heard the pipes rattle and then chug rhythmically like her old Dodge truck.

Something was not quite right; he was preoccupied. Only part of him had come home – the rest was in apartment 2E, sleeping next to her, waking, kissing her, whispering into her ear, laughing, holding her, rolling in the sheets, making her breakfast, staring into her eyes as they shared coffee.

As they copulated. Yes, that was it, she guessed. It had started: the beginning of the end. And all because she'd been too permissive. Soft. Because she'd lost sight of their goal.