Peter Stamm - Unformed Landscape

Kathrine stood all alone on the dock. It was snowing gently. She didn’t have money for a taxi, so she started to walk past the warehouses into the village. There were lights on in the windows of the houses. Kathrine passed the new hotel, the furniture store, and the shop for ship’s electronics. She passed the police station, the old people’s home, and the town hall. She stopped for a moment in the square in front of the post office. She looked back at the town hall and thought, if someone somewhere in the world has logged onto the village Webcam, they’ll see me standing here. She was just a shadow, three or four dots high.

The door to the Elvekrog opened, and Kathrine heard laughter and singing. As she walked past the bar, she saw Helge standing on the street. He was reeling slightly, and fussing with his Harley. Kathrine stopped, and he turned and looked at her glassily. Hey, she said, how are you doing? Helge laughed. You didn’t stick with him any longer than you did with me, he said, the woman’s got no patience. You’re a bad wife, but a good woman, he said. Oh, we had a good time. He turned and got on his motorbike, without starting it. Beauty of the night, said Kathrine softly, and then, louder, be careful, you shouldn’t ride your bike when you’re drunk. Helge laughed to himself, but he didn’t say anything, and she went on her way. When she reached her mother’s house, she heard the rattle of Helge’s bike. She had a key, and her mother had a sound sleep.

The house smelled oddly familiar yet strange to her. Kathrine set her suitcase down in the hall, and went to the nursery, the room that had once been hers, and was now Randy’s, when he was there. He was there, in bed, asleep. She watched him for a little while, and then she sat down on the little chair that had once been hers. The room looked small to her, everything looked small, the bed, the chair, the table, which had formerly been red, and which she had painted sky-blue. In some places, she could see the red again, and in some even the bare, gray wood. On the table were some yogurt cartons that were decorated with scraps of material and fur, and that probably had some significance for Randy, or for his schoolteacher. People, animals, houses, thought Kathrine, I’m sure they will have had something or other in mind.

The blinds were down, only the night-light shone in its socket, a little pinkish glow. Randy had always been afraid of the dark, even as a very little baby.

The pinkish light made his face look oddly stiff. What if he’s dead, thought Kathrine. But his chest rose and fell slowly. Kathrine had never thought about it, but now she thought that she didn’t want anything to happen to Randy.

Kathrine slept on the sofa in the living room. Her mother didn’t wake her in the morning. When she got up, it was nine o’clock, Randy was at school, and her mother had done the shopping and made coffee. She said, you sleepyhead, you’re sleeping through half the Lord’s day. As she had always said, when Kathrine hadn’t wanted to get up. She said a coffee in the morning will take away your worry and troubles. She said, there’s supposed to be more snow on the way. And where have you been all this time?

“It feels much longer to me,” said Kathrine. “It was only three weeks.”

She had gone on a trip, she said, gone south. And that Thomas had lied to her. The letter had been his family’s revenge. Is it not true then? No, it’s not true.

“You always were an honest child.”

“I spent a night with Morten.”

That wasn’t right of her, said her mother. Thomas had stopped… But her mother didn’t want to know. He stopped sleeping with me. A marriage is a marriage. Then should Kathrine have stayed with Helge? You have to do what you think is right. I don’t want to get involved in your life. Thank you.

But it wasn’t an argument. Kathrine’s mother didn’t argue. She stood in the doorway, saying, Lordy, girl, the things you get up to, and then she went into the kitchen. Your things, she called out, are in the garage. Thomas brought them back.

“I’m going out.”

“Will you be back for lunch?”

“Maybe.”

It was snowing. Kathrine had always loved snow, and she loved it even more when fresh snow was falling. She walked through the village. The old women who were standing outside the fishermen’s refuge with their Zimmer frames greeted her. The office workers came out of the town hall to drink Svanhild’s coffee. Morten wasn’t among them. Kathrine asked after him. He had taken the day off, presumably he’d skied out to the lighthouse. He’d been talking about doing that. He had bought some satellite navigation gear, and said he was going to try it out.

“What if it doesn’t work?” said Kathrine.

His colleagues laughed and shrugged their shoulders. “He knows the way.”

Kathrine went to the school. Even from a distance she could see the neon light outside the big classroom windows. The windows were stuck with brightly colored paper flowers that the children had made. Kathrine looked in at the window. She saw Randy sitting at one of the front desks. She was surprised. She had always imagined him as sitting at the back. He had a book in his hand, and was moving his lips. She could tell what a struggle it was for him to read. He was bending down over the book. His little body was all tensed up. Then the teacher went up to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and said something to him. Perhaps Randy did have something the matter with his eyes. The teacher had once made some reference to that, but Kathrine had never had the time to take him to the oculist at Kirkenes. Now she had the time.

She went up the steps and into the school. The smell of the stairway reminded her of her own school days, her fear of gym, of the other children, of her father, if she got bad marks. She remembered the mandarin oranges they stuck little candles in at Christmastime, and the teacher, who read stories aloud on Saturday mornings, about Stone Age children, and sometimes fairy tales. Kathrine went up to the door of Randy’s classroom. She heard the voice of the teacher, and of one of the little girls:

Flowers red and white and blue

Blooming on the pasture green.

So that I may see them all,

I will walk right over them.

Right through the meadow.

But no, I had better not,

Because all those pretty flowers

Would be crushed and squashed…

Kathrine left the school again. They all come through here, she thought. But when it’s over it’s over. Now he’s learning the same rhymes as we used to learn. What is my baby doing? What is my little deer doing? Now I’ll come to you once more, and then never again. A fairy tale, which one? Little brother and little sister. She had told it to Randy once. About the spring that whispers, who drinks from me will turn into a deer. Who drinks from me will turn into a deer. And then the little brother drinks from it, and so he turns into a deer. All afternoon, Randy was a deer, right until supper, when Kathrine told him deer don’t get to eat ambrosia-creamed rice.

Kathrine walked to the cemetery. It was snowing harder now. The houses all had lights on inside them, and some of the windows still had Christmas decorations up, straw stars, and strings of fairy lights, and lit-up plastic Santa Claus masks. They hadn’t had those when she was little. There were lanterns lit in the cemetery. You couldn’t see the individual tombstones under the snow, but Kathrine knew where her father lay. Her footsteps were the only ones to be seen. From a distance, she heard the school bell, and then the shouts and yells of the children as they ran home. Kathrine saw one or two from Randy’s class walking up the hill. The children greeted her as she passed them on her way to the main street.