The American Girl (51 page)

He understood she was playing a part and my God my God how he regretted seducing her. This girl was deeply unhappy, she was desperate, she needed help.

“You miss her?” he asked, more as a teacher, a fatherly protector than as a half-naked lover who had slept with Lolita on the sofa in his own sole breadwinner’s home (among all the toys).

“She grafted a love of clothes and fabric of high quality into me.”

Grafted
. It was a word worthy of a crossword solver and in the moment she had spoken it she understood from exactly which direction in her head it had flown. From the Doris direction, and now it was dangerous.

She stepped on a child’s ball on the floor and it released a shriek that in no way crushed the mood but did stir additional stupidities in her head. She had to get away.

“Come on. Do you want that book or not? But first you have to come along and give advice.”

That was it: he asked the right questions. And that was what was wrong. That he was some kind of human. Not even some kind. But she could not stand it. And he could not either; he was too aware of the situation, which was fundamentally wrong. Oh, if only they had started talking about the children and the ball and the loss and how it is not the easiest thing to replace a biological parent, that would have been a normal conversation. And from there they could have moved on to her parents’ divorce (because that was what they had done, gotten divorced? Had she not said that? He could not say, he was ashamed to say he had a poor memory of what she had told him) and so on and so forth. But it was not like that, now they were going to the bookstore to buy a book as a present for him, which was called
Thérèse
.

He followed her to the store like a dog. Not because of the book, but because the whole thing needed to be rounded off in some dignified way. As luck would have it they skipped the clothing store. She seemed to forget all of that when they came out into the fresh air and he got started with his story.

They went straight to the bookstore. He hated her. His head was filling with half-formulated discomfort in the presence of her upper-class manners, her arrogance, her depraved childhood in contrast to . . . him. All of that which had been the subject of a thousand million classics but which still had its attractive force.

Ein Mann
who wants.

Ein
poor
Mann
in the big world.

On the glitter scene: she was an unscrupulous Lolita who pulled the clean young man into the dirt despite the fact that on the outside it looked like just the opposite.

And it would be the “secret” with the story. Yawn. Very exciting.

But in order to have something to talk about while they were walking to the bookstore he told her about the plot in the novel she was going to buy him. It was called
Thérèse
in other words and it was a French classic of the best sort. It was about a woman who tried to poison her nasty husband—and he was nasty, that was also clear beyond a shadow of a doubt. He caught her red-handed and carried out a punishment for her. He left her alone in the estate where they had lived together, in the woods—she hated living in the woods—starving, alone, no one was allowed to speak with her or touch her. When she had made amends, just before she faded away, died, he came back to the estate, held out his hand to her, and took her back to the big city where she always wanted to go, gave her her freedom, which she always wanted, and a reliable income. They went their separate ways at a café in the big city, in a peculiar mood that was characterized
by if not direct friendship, then by a new, mutual respect for one another.

“You can’t run away from guilt,” said the lover. “It must be atoned for.

“Atoning is not talking,” he continued. “Atoning is doing. Action.”

“But how, Doris?” Sandra asked inside. A sticky white snow was falling. The wind was cold, almost icy. And such a pain inside her, you could almost touch it.

They had walked past the clothing store and were standing outside the bookstore.

She turned toward him, on the great glitter scene, but now it was private, and fastened her eyes on him and said, “May I ask you something? Why are you telling me all of that ahead of time? If you tell the plot before then there isn’t any excitement left. Why should I read it then? Why should I?”

But he did not answer. He ignored her. And then they were inside the bookstore. Just there, when she and everything were at their worst, she had understood that she would not be able to carry out the play or the game or whatever it should be called, to the end.

She was in the process of stopping. And a few minutes later, by the shelf with miserable classics. In the extremely well-sorted bookstore, which happened to be the only one in the big city by the sea at this time, she stopped altogether.

In other words, it would be wrong to say she had grown tired of her role. In reality, it would have been most flattering to say so, for all parties. But the truth was, and it was what she had properly been reminded of on the street when he was walking and carrying on about the plot of that book, that she could not pull it off. She could not play the role until the end. She absolutely loved the role itself. My God, how easy it would have been
to walk on the street and through life with her overage lover, play out the whole Lolita role, or what it was now called.

But that is not what she was. She was just a little girl. A small child in the world.

She could not. Her legs turned to jelly on the glitter scene.

Poor poor Sandra.

And in the bookstore, by the French classics, she was suddenly standing and stammering like a child.

“Go away! I don’t want to see you anymore!”

And it had not been the slightest bit erotic. Or any game. Just nasty, the awkwardness.

“Stop pursuing me! Stop harassing me!”

It was not a child acting, but a real one. A child with all her faults and shortcomings, with her egoism, her altruism, her lovability, her weakness, and her strength. Her confidence and her vulnerability.

A child whom no normal adult would ever dream of relating erotically to.

And he was no abnormal adult. It was not actually the child in her who had brought something in him to life.

He stood there in the crowd and understood everything. Pushed his way through the people toward the register, away from her. Paid for the book himself and left. Quickly, quickly, away from there. She was left standing by the French classics. And she cried.

A young girl’s tears. Big tears rolled silently down her cheeks.

He stopped working as a teacher at the French School. He wrote a letter to her in which he asked her for forgiveness.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

She wrote an essay that she thought about giving to him as a farewell present. It was never finished. It was about a game called the American Girl.

It was
La fille américaine
, in French.

But at the same time she wanted to forget all of it instantly. She obliterated it from her memory, everything—

But otherwise it could not be seen on her. Otherwise she carried on like before. Stayed at the French School where she took her final exams the following year.

It was exactly that letter, the sorry-sorry-sorry-sorry letter from her second lover, which she was standing and tearing into small, small pieces at the edge of the pool when the Islander and his young, new wife Kenny returned to the house in the darker part after weeks at sea and a hasty wedding in the Panama Canal.

Inget Herrman’s cigarette butts were still floating on the surface of the pool.

Tearing the paper to bits, after having made airplanes out of them.

And Kenny, Dad’s new wife, a few days later: pulled in cigarette butts and pieces of paper with the pool rake . . . In a shapeless clump of all sorts of crap. “What’s this? Love letters?”

And smiled her bright smile, not exactly innocent, but open, bright.

And then you could not say it like it was. “I wish her all the happiness in the world, she hasn’t had an easy time of it,” said Inget Herrman, Kenny’s sister.

The Islander had during the previous years sat in the rec room and been bored. And while he had been bored he had been thinking. And thinking. While he was thinking something started growing inside his head. It was a boat. Over time he began seeing it more clearly in his head. It was a sailboat. Little by little other details also appeared: length, width, height over the waterline, the like. A sea dog, truly.

And on the stern was its name. The boat was called, not surprisingly,
Freedom
.

Only then did the Islander understand that it was just a daydream.
Freedom
. Who would want a boat called Freedom? The Islander had enough humor left when it came to himself that he knew to laugh when everything became all too clear.

And the Islander had laughed. “Ho ho ho.” Laughed so that the ice clinked in the almost empty mixed drink glass that he stretched toward Inget Herrman or, when Inget was not there, toward his little daughter who finally grew up during these years. She had taken the glass and refilled it.

Handed him the glass again and taken the opportunity to turn down the volume on the stereo system; it sometimes happened that the Islander turned the volume up so loud during lonely moments that it crackled from inside the speakers. He had taken the glass and turned the music up again; he needed it to accompany his dreams. The dreams were, of course, despite the fact that they were for the time being only dreams, rather pleasant to find yourself in, and the music also served the purpose of acting as a solid wall against all the trespassing from the outside. From everything, enough, outside. From Inget Herrman, from everything with the girl, from everything!

Sometimes Sandra sat down there in the rec room with him, in the same extreme inactivity. Sipping at a glass, and she really had not had anything against the music but this happened to be the theme from
Spartacus
, a melody that in the Islander’s world was the equivalent of the signature tune of
The Onedin Line
, the only series he watched on television. It was about, surprise surprise, a family of shipowners and an unmarried captain who travels around on the seven seas.

And no, Sandra really had not had the energy to follow along on all of these developments and the music, it was really the b-o-t-t-o-m.

But the Islander had closed his eyes again. Of course. It was still there. The sailboat. “Interesting,” he thought, “fascinating.” And turned the music up like a wall around it.

During that time the girl had left, gone up the stairs, up to the first floor. Up to her room, to kill time, do her own things. A car had driven up on the drive. Inget Herrman had run up the steps and come in from the rain outside.

“I think I’m going to start sailing again,” the Islander had carefully said to Inget Herrman while she poured her first drink.

“Weren’t we just on the water?” Inget Herrman asked and had a hard time concealing her irritation, but had still done her best because this was sensitive territory, this she knew.

At sea. The Islander had not favored Inget Herrman with an answer, just muttered something barely audible. “You’re a lovely woman, Inget, but . . .” he had said to her once. It was just like that. She was a lovely woman, as wonderful as could be (the Islander had thought in a sudden moment of generosity), but she was not a suitable partner. Not for him anyway.

And so one day he had just been gone. Out on the seven seas again. And when he returned home he had his young, new girl-wife with him. The one who was Inget Herrman’s sister: Kenny, born de Wire.

They had met sometime over the summer. On the Aegean Sea. Kenny had had a position as crew on one of the two sailboats that the Islander’s little business rented out to people who wanted to travel on private sailboats among the islands. The Islander himself was the captain on one of the boats. To begin with not on the one where Kenny was crew, but on the other.

It was in a harbor. The Islander saved Kenny from drowning. She fell in the sea next to the jetty where the boat she was working on was moored next to the boat the Islander was the captain on, and was seized with panic in the water. She could certainly swim, but not very well, and the Islander, realizing the severity of the situation, jumped in after her and got her up on his boat. This according to legend, as it was told when the newlywed couple came home to the house in the darker part of the woods. The
legend was important, would be important, so that there would be something real between the Islander and Kenny.

Without any further ado they had gotten married a few weeks after the event. The Islander sent a message home about everything after the wedding was over, just before the pair returned to the house in the darker part of the woods.

“This is, uh, Kenny,” the Islander said, introducing “the young ladies,” or whatever they were called, to each other and adding, rather pricelessly, “You might know each other.”

“We’ve seen each other,” Kenny said brightly and untroubled. She was sunburned and had long, light hair and white clothes. You, Sandra determined, truly had a desire to be in her company.

It was the charisma that Kenny had always had. Also back then, ages ago, the summers while Doris was still alive and Sandra and she had hung around her sister Inget Herrman in the Women’s House while Kenny held court for the sea urchins in the Glass House on the Second Cape.

With Inget Herrman, who would continue to be a “good friend,” especially to Sandra, the Islander more or less swore he had not known they were siblings. “Not until it was too late. After all she’s . . . It went so quickly. Bam. And I was a captured man. Try and understand, Inget Herrman. You’re a lovely woman, Inget Herrman, but . . .”

That was almost the worst, thought Sandra, who was eavesdropping on the telephone line. You’re a lovely woman, Inget Herrman, but . . .

“I understand you,” Inget Herrman said in a definitely sober tone of voice. “Kenny is special. Kenny is a
man’s woman
. Take good care of her. She hasn’t had it easy.”