We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [176]
"Don't look at me like that," she said. She took his hand and held it against her cheek affectionately. "It doesn't matter."
Leaning against the kitchen table, she stretched her hands out to him as if to pull him toward her. He turned his face away, but his body gave in to her invitation. He felt it once again, his unmentionable old man's erection. He hated himself as he tore at her dress to get it up around her hips. He entered her again, but this time he quickly grew limp and slid out. He'd forgotten all about the boy, then suddenly remembered him and realized how rash and irresponsible their frantic coupling had been.
But she kept holding him close. He hadn't hit her this time, but he tore himself away with a violent movement. He didn't know what they wanted from each other, and he told her so.
"Nothing good will come of this." She didn't reply, but rested her head against his chest in a kind of deaf-and-dumb surrender, which only increased his anger. "Do you hear?" he said, shaking her.
Her head lolled as if she were barely conscious. Then they heard the boy at the door and quickly let go. Knud Erik carried the milk pail into the kitchen and put in on the table.
It seemed to Albert that the boy's manner was guarded, but soon he realized that the awkwardness was his own. They'd walked down to the harbor and rowed the length of its entrance before he returned to his familiar ease. He'd imagined that he might need to explain his long absence, but the boy didn't ask about it. Instead he sat on the thwart and showed off his rowing skills, his face red with eagerness and exertion.
Albert suspected that the mother had used her son's distress as a pretext for coming to see him. If only he could keep the two emotions separate—love of the son and fascination with the mother. But she wouldn't leave him alone. Who had started it? Should he be honest enough to admit that it wasn't her, but something in him, that had ruptured his tranquility? And what was that? Desire? Or the memory of desire? Was it longing for that part of life he'd failed to grasp before, which was now reoffering itself a final time, in the shape of Klara Friis?
Whatever it was made no difference now. He couldn't endanger his bond with the boy. But how was he to stop it?
Klara and Albert didn't speak much, and when they did it was mostly about everyday matters, as if they'd known each other a long time, and all the important things had already been said. He thought that perhaps they had little to say to each other. In the beginning there'd been a coziness to their silent companionship at the dining table or over a cup of coffee, the four of them. Now their meetings were filled with a tense, electric impatience while they waited to be alone, without the boy.
Little Edith toddled around the floor and spoke her first words. He was always uncomfortable when she yanked at his trouser leg and looked up at him expectantly. He would lift her onto his knee and bounce her up and down. But his face stayed rigid and he didn't know what to say to her. Gallopy, gallopy, he supposed. But he remained silent.
"Daddy," she said one day.
He looked over at Klara, who smiled, embarrassed.
"I don't know where she got that from. It's not from me."
Did language grow in a child like milk teeth? Was Daddy a natural part of her budding vocabulary?
He stopped bouncing her. No more gallopy, gallopy. He looked sternly at the child in front of him. "No," he said. "Not Daddy. Albert."
Edith began to cry.
No intimacy ever developed between them. They never spent a whole night in each other's company; indeed, they never even lay naked together, exhausted in a moment of tender calm after lovemaking. On the contrary, their encounters were always hectic and semi-hostile. Every time he held her, his chest became a battlefield: he was filled with reluctance,