I had only stood there a few minutes when I heard footsteps from the other end of the bridge. My mood grew no less hostile when I saw who it was. It was my brother Albert. I cursed at myself: I should know better, I thought, Albert has always had a nose for accidents. I looked away, stiffly ignoring him when he came over and stood right beside me.
Down on the freeway, the rescue team had taken a few steps back with their cutting torches, and the ambulance crew began lifting the driver from the vehicle. I saw a woman lifted out and put on a stretcher. There was not a drop of blood anywhere; her clothes were coated with a dull, wet film. Her face and hair were white as a sheet or a statue. I started whistling. It soothed me. I could tell that it made Albert uncomfortable, but that didn’t stop me from doing it. I whistled the same theme as before, a splendid piece, it gave me air, gave me an unaccustomed strength, an unaccustomed feeling of freedom. Meanwhile, I stared at the milk gushing out onto the road, and at the rescue workers who now stood smoking, their welder’s goggles pushed up on their foreheads, wet, completely soaked with milk and rain.
—I know that piece, Albert said suddenly. It’s Mozart.
I immediately stopped whistling.
—No, I said.
Albert waited for me to be more specific, but I had nothing more to say. It was apparently impossible to keep anything for yourself in this world.
Then he changed the subject:
—It doesn’t look good, eh.
The last of the ambulances drove off under a sky of gloomy, blue-black clouds.
—But they’re in God’s hands, he continued. That’s a consolation.
—Do you still believe in that crap?
The words rushed from me.
—Yes, Olaf, I do. Even you are in God’s hands, whether you want to be or not.
I stared out over at the freeway and tried to control myself.
—Tell me, he went on calmly. Don’t you hope for a life after this?
The water dripped from my nose like a tap. My coat was heavy with rain, but I barely felt it.
—No, I said. I’m hoping for a place to be alone. A grave, for example.
Albert put a hand on my shoulder.
—You’re all too proud, Olaf, that’s no good.
I removed his hand from my shoulder.
—You don’t know me, I said.
Then I walked away.
Fling
They drove in silence. Martin glanced at Anne, who looked out the window at the countryside. Her hair was a little blonder at the tips, she was suntanned, and he could see light traces of salt on her skin. Close by the fields flitted past, farther away they formed patterns of yellow and green. He gazed at the car’s clock and then at the road again.
They were driving back to the city.
Martin slowed down and signaled for a left turn.
—There’s something I’d like to show you, he said.
They turned onto a narrow country road that led between hills. Martin smiled and stared at the road, Anne looked at Martin, then at the clock.
The rye-covered hills rose up on both sides and forced the road into large, winding turns. Anne put a hand on the back of Martin’s seat then let it drift up his neck and into his hair, which was stiff from the salt.
After a few miles the hills disappeared from the road, and a flat area of fields and small orchards spread out before them. They drove over a creek, past a cornfield, a pine farm.