Ivan Vladislavić - The Folly

“We’re back where we started. . but let’s not pretend that things are the same.”

“Words, words, words,” said Mrs, misunderstanding him. “Let’s not pretend at all. It doesn’t suit us. Let’s just get on with our lives.”

“Fine by me.”

“Shame. You’ll get over it. One day we’ll look back on all this and discover that we can laugh about it.”

“I can laugh about it already.” He produced a hollow belly-laugh as proof.

“Me too. Now eat your egg before it gets cold.”

“He was walking up and down all day like a vacuum cleaner,” Mrs told Mr that evening when he came in from work. “First he picked up all his bits and pieces, and he put some of them into his suitcase and he put the rest on a pile. Then he broke the big bits he didn’t want into smaller bits and burned them. The smell! He dug a big hole with that spade you lent him, which he never had the decency to return, and he buried all the bits that wouldn’t burn. Everything fitted. But he tamped it down anyway with a wooden post, and then he threw the post over the hedge. He filled in the hole with the ashes and the sand he’d dug out to begin with. He beat the sand down, so that it was flat and smooth. He sprinkled more sand and small stones. Then he walked backwards, from one end to the other, brushing the earth with a branch and sowing handfuls of twigs no larger than ladyfingers. When he was finished there was no sign of him left.”“He’s still there,” said Mr, wiping a porthole in the misted glass. “No he’s not. He left long ago.”

Mr and Mrs thought there would be something about him on the news, but they were mistaken.

“It’s too early.”

“It’s too late.”

The sun sank. Nieuwenhuizen looked at the wall and at the house. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but even as the sun dropped behind the Malgases’ roof, the suns in their wall sent out a host of lack-lustre rays, which got longer and longer, so that they appeared to be rising.

Nieuwenhuizen picked up the portmanteau and found his way to the edge of the plot. He sat on the verge, in the fallen darkness, holding up one finger, looking down the street.