Richard House - The Kills

‘I heard it.’ He locks the car doors once they are out. ‘I could hear it when I was working, but this one time I could see it.’

Rike, ahead of him, smiling also.

They buy baskets and fill them with oranges and grapefruit. Rike decides that these will be gifts for people in her building. She hasn’t met them yet and feels that it is about time to say hello, see who everyone is.

‘I’ve decided not to worry,’ she announces, walking between the bins of fruit. The grapes look good, tight bunches, sweet, fat, still a little dusty. ‘I’m not going to worry about Mattaus. He’s big enough to look after himself. I’m not responsible. I’m not going to worry about what happens after the summer.’ She leans forward. ‘I’ve even been thinking I might stay. I could find a place of my own and I could teach. I don’t think it’s what I want to do, but it will buy me time until I can decide.’

Heading south now they cut through the groves and the orchards. Of a sudden they give way, the treeline stops, the groves stop, and give abruptly to a savage white plate. They both squint at the salt flats. The fierce brightness sparks about them, the sky peeled a flat burnished blue, an impossible colour. Tomas pushes back his sunglasses, takes the soft curve of the road, which somehow seems to be a kind of expression, a leaning glide, and Rike smiles without reserve. This is, she says, incredible.

‘Isn’t this something?’ she asks him, sincere and insistent. ‘Really something to see.’

The sea lies on either side of the salt flat; a drying lake with a fine furred pink line. Rike explains about the flamingos, repeats Henning’s facts, which again are questions about the birds and how surprising it is that of all places they should end up here.

The heat draws a wind off the gulf, and as they drive Rike is grateful for the cooler air.

* * *

On the beach she lugs the backpack in both arms insisting that Tomas doesn’t need to help. She kneels as she unpacks it, happy with the job. The sand is fine, with no wind to disturb it. Tomas looks about but there’s no shade. While it’s warm, there isn’t any real heat to the sun. A loose line of people sit and face the sea. Some stand at the shoreline, hands on hips, and look out at a bare horizon.

The first thing she finds in the backpack is a book, a thin hardback without a cover. She holds it up and says that Isa must have slipped it in. ‘I deliberately didn’t pack it.’ After a quick search she finds only the food and drinks she had packed herself.

* * *

He watches her read. Is too tired to think it through. It never occurs to him, although he notices how her head gives a small jolt — nothing more than a pulse, a beat, a kind of double-take. She sits more upright, turns the pages, looks through, flicks ahead, and at each page seems more confused.

He asks what is it, and she answers nothing. She doesn’t, and this is noticeable, look up. Not once.

And then he realizes. She’s reading Finn Cullman’s book.

The change in mood is significant. He can’t quite describe the difference, but he can read the register — she scowls hard at the paper. It’s the same day, no doubt about it, the same blue sky front and back, the same stretch of sea, calm and placid. The same flat plate of white land, of sand a good mile or so on either side. But Rike has hardened.

He never imagined that he would be present when it happened.

When he swims she doesn’t join him. She tilts her book and looks up, appears to examine him.

Ten metres out and he can still stand with the water level at his chest. He tastes salt, remembers how pleasurable it is to swim in the sea, and how surprising it is to be so buoyant. It’s a good temperature, a good colour. Rike, back on the beach, knees raised, together, book slanted down, head up and looking out, her expression still one of concern.

Tomas turns away from the land, swims at a steady pace directly out, with Limassol on his left, the beach immediately behind him. He wants to know exactly what is disturbing her, which element gave him away? He can’t understand her stillness. He draws thirty strokes in one burst, but still, when he stops, finds the sea no deeper, only Rike is smaller. He bounces on his toes and looks up. It isn’t Rike he’s looking at. In fact, there isn’t anyone directly in front of him.

He steadies himself in the water, allows his legs to fall back and floats on his stomach facing the land, a slight strain to keep his head upright, consciously drawing in breath. She isn’t on the beach, not directly in front of him.

Tomas takes a few strokes back, he keeps the pace deliberately slow. How, here, and at this point, could anything go wrong?

She isn’t in the water either. Looking away, toward the military base, he doesn’t see her. But further down the beach, where the umbrellas start, he thinks he sees her, but isn’t entirely sure. There’s a girl, what looks to be a girl, further up, speaking with a family, and yes, she appears to have a backpack.

He swims back now, faster, but not hurried. He walks out at a stride. His clothes are still folded beside his towel, and where Rike sat are the contents of the backpack, set carefully aside.

With his towel over his shoulder he walks toward the umbrellas. The first group, two adults, two children, appear to be in a hurry. A woman with big sunglasses, a canary-yellow swimming costume, pink shoulders and thighs, glowers in Tomas’s direction as she walks away. Rike steps quickly over the sand, not looking at him. The woman, Rike, and two boys make a slightly chaotic path to the line of cars parked on the shoulder of the beach.

As Tomas draws nearer they break into a run, in response he starts to jog. The mother opens the doors, and throws her bags into the trunk. They have left their umbrella tilted in the sand. Tomas reaches it, nothing but sand and footprints.

When he reaches the car the woman is pushing her children inside and telling them to hurry.

‘She doesn’t want to speak with you. You better stay where you are.’

Rike, in the back seat, sits with her head bent forward, a penitent, a doubter, her hair covering her face. She isn’t dressed either, is still in her swimsuit, he can see her shoulders. She won’t look up.

‘I’m serious. You don’t come any closer!’

Tomas stands in front of the car.

‘Rike? Rike?’

‘Just keep where you are.’ The woman holds the driver’s door open, as if this is an adequate shield.

‘Rike. Can you get out of the car?’ Tomas steadies his voice to sound reasoned, in control, as if this is something that has happened to them before. As if this is some kind of episode. ‘I need to take her home.’ He smiles at the woman, a wan and patient smile. A man who has suffered because his girlfriend, his wife, his sister is irrational. And now a softer, cajoling, ‘Rike, are you coming with me?’

‘I said, stay where you are.’

‘Rike?’ Tomas slaps his hands to his side, draws his towel from his shoulder. As he walks to the side of the car, Rike instinctively turns away.

The woman, now seated, starts the motor and as she reverses, clumsy and unsteady, he can see an element of panic. Tomas can touch the car. He tries to open the door, but the car is moving, the door is locked. The two children, one in the back seat beside Rike, the other in the front, both look at him, both uncertain of what is happening. As the car lurches forward and begins to pick up pace, Rike looks at him, a long and low look, a face so sucked of joy that as he runs after the car, he’s certain that she has discovered that everything he has told her is a lie. Everything is stolen. This realization, right at this moment, must be blossoming within her. Who is Tomas Berens? She has to be thinking this. Why has he done this?