To the Back of Beyond(6)

While she got dinner ready, she listened to the evening news. Everything was the same as always, the calm voice of the newsreader, the crises dotted around the globe, the political intrigues, the triumphs and disappointments of athletes. Astrid set the table and called the children, who were sitting in front of the TV and only came when they heard a threatening note in her voice. Now Ella finally asked after her father, and Astrid repeated her lie, which cost her less difficulty; it was as though it had acquired some truth from being repeated. She was making herself Thomas’s accomplice, it felt as though she was joined with him in some secret conspiracy. Papa had to go somewhere for a few days, he left very early this morning, that’s why he couldn’t say goodbye to you. Did he take the car? asked Ella. Astrid looked at her in astonishment, and said, Do you know, I don’t know. I don’t think so.

After she had put the kids to bed, she pulled on a sweater and a raincoat and went out into the garage. The car was there. Then she sat down on the bench outside, where, just twenty-four hours ago, she had sat with Thomas. The rain had stopped, but the temperature had dropped by twenty degrees from the day before, and she could feel the damp wooden bench through her jeans. She tried to reconstruct the evening. They had read the paper, she was given the living section and Thomas had the financial pages. Konrad had called, and she had gone inside to comfort him. He had asked her one of those questions whose only point was to detain her. She had spoken to him briefly and then kissed him good night. After that she had started to unpack the suitcases. She knelt down on the floor. When she got up, she felt giddy, and only then realized she was totally exhausted. She carried the dirty clothes down to the basement, went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth quickly, and got undressed for bed. She went into the bedroom in her underwear and took out a nightgown from the wardrobe. It was as though the fresh clean smell of it made her even more tired. Only when she was lying in bed did it occur to her that she hadn’t said good night to Thomas, but he was bound to be up any moment. She couldn’t even say for sure whether Thomas had come to bed at all that night or not. She had shaken out the duvet right after getting up, the way she always did. Later, she had come upon the newspaper and the wineglasses outside the house and carried them in, tipped out the end of wine where a few fruit flies had drowned, and rinsed the glasses, quickly scanned the parts of the paper she hadn’t got around to reading the night before, and then put them with the rest of the recycling.

Astrid got up and walked to the garden gate. Without opening it, she looked up and down the street. Even though it wasn’t yet dark, there was no one around. Most of the houses were inhabited by elderly people who she knew by sight, nothing more. She thought of going to look for Thomas, but she could hardly leave the children on their own, least of all at this time of day. For a long time she remained standing by the gate indecisively, then she went back inside. She picked up the phone, hesitated, called the police number, then set down the receiver. What would the police be able to do at this time of night? She would call them first thing in the morning. The idea of talking to someone else about Thomas’s disappearance soothed her; even so, she lay in bed awake for a long time.



Thomas felt stunned when he woke up. It was only four in the afternoon, he thought he must have been asleep for longer. The thicket of pines turned out to have been a perfect hiding place, no one could have been there for years. But hiding wasn’t any use to him now. He couldn’t stay in the woods much longer; he wasn’t hungry yet, but he was racked by thirst. He got up, brushed the pine needles off his clothes, and headed out of the woods.

The landscape here was on a bigger scale, the farms and pieces of forest were larger, the farmhouses no longer scattered but formed into little hamlets. For the first time Thomas had a long view, saw a series of hills in the distance, and beyond them in the haze the outline of real mountains. Dark clouds had drawn up, and Thomas put his best foot forward. The way was all downhill and he made rapid progress. He still didn’t dare to walk along the roads, and took field tracks that involved him in frequent detours and doglegs. He was still worried about being found, he was only about fifteen minutes by car away from home, and he had customers who lived in these parts who would surely have spoken to him if he had run into them. They would have slowed to a stop alongside him and asked him where he was going and if he didn’t want a lift. Later, they would remember where he had been when they met him, and what he had said.

It started to rain. The rain took a while to get heavier, and by the time Thomas started looking for shelter, he was already soaked. He didn’t have a jacket, only the thin woolen sweater he had worn out of the house last night. His hair was plastered against his head, and he was shivering. He worried about catching cold. He walked on through the hilly landscape and got to a big wood. The trees, though, afforded barely any protection against the rain, and he didn’t stop for long. As he emerged from the wood, he saw below him a slightly larger village than the ones he had so far passed. In the center around the church were some old half-timber buildings, while on the periphery were small light-industrial premises and apartment blocks. One slope was totally covered with identical sterile single-family housing. Right at the edge of the development was a large building with a gabled roof that looked like a hotel but seemed to be empty. The shutters were down over the windows, and the car park at the back was empty. The property was ringed by a high hedge. Maybe, Thomas thought, he could find shelter there until the rain stopped and it got dark. At least it should be easy to get in there, and to disappear again, if there did turn out to be someone home.