The Apartment A Novel(6)

The fish sandwich makes me feel better immediately. I throw the packaging into a bin, wipe my mouth and hands with a napkin and throw that into the bin. Then I take a drink of water. Okay, I say. Okay, says Saskia. She leads us to the left, onto a short, narrow street with a lot of closed-down old shops. The foot or two of sidewalk separating the buildings from the road is not wide enough for both of us, or either of us, in fact, so we walk on the road, which is white and soft and thick with snow. I used to live near here, and take this street to the café, says Saskia; we’re very near the university. At that moment a car appears behind us and honks. It’s a polite honk, a short honk, just to let us know it’s there. And that’s when I first realize that the wind is howling. You cannot even hear cars that are a few feet behind you. Saskia steps out of the way and I file behind her. The car goes by, an old silver Mercedes driven by a man with huge silver hair. My face is wet and feels hard because it’s so numb. I move alongside Saskia again. She has her arms crossed and walks with her head pointed down. The road is ascending. The Mercedes, ahead of us, is sliding all over the place.

I was thinking about taking some language courses, I say. Saskia contemplates this by looking up, lifting her chin. This is what she does when she contemplates something. That’s a good idea, she says. Would you like me to help you find one? I say, Hmm, and I nod my head, because I cannot say no without feeling rude and I cannot say yes without embarrassment. I’m embarrassed that she’s doing all the favours and I offer nothing in return. I sense this doesn’t bother her, and she knows I have nothing to offer. Nothing in the way of assistance, anyway. Nothing in the way of information, or a practicality. I alleviate a kind of loneliness in her, perhaps. I give her somebody else to fret about. Or she is simply being hospitable. Or all of these things.

She stops to examine a building. For a moment she says nothing. Her arms stay crossed. She blinks a lot, because snowflakes are getting into her eyes. This place, she says, used to be famous. Yes? I say. I examine it with her. Its windows are boarded up. The stone façade is rain-stained, but that makes it like every other building on the street. Maybe it’s another one, says Saskia. She scans up and down the street, looking slightly bewildered. There used to be a famous little book press on this street, she says. They published lots of anarchist novels. The publisher was jailed. But that was a hundred years ago. Then it became a famous bookshop. Sort of famous. It was where people went when they wanted to pretend to be anarchists. When did it close? I ask. When I was very young, she says. Not enough people wanted to pretend to be anarchists. We stand for ten seconds longer, and then she says, But I can’t remember which building it was.

We continue up the hill, walking side-by-side. The road leads to a stairway that zigzags up a ridge, then opens onto a wide platform with a sculpture on it, something abstract and large, two curved shapes, one stacked on top of the other. What’s it supposed to be? I ask. It is a memorial for massacred Jews, she says. That is a mother embracing the corpse of a child. After about thirty seconds, during which we kneel to get a look at the child, we continue onward. There’s another short stairway at the other end of the platform. It’s not far now, she says. At the top of the stairway we find ourselves on another small grey street. The street is empty of vehicles or people. There’s a light in a window not far from us. A door opens, and suddenly there is a lot of noise, and an orange light. A couple steps out, the door closes behind them and the sound dissolves and the light disappears. And now I can hear the couple speaking, but I don’t understand what they’re saying. The woman is catching the snow in her mittens. That’s the café, says Saskia. She looks both ways and starts to cross the street. The surface is slippery, and Saskia throws her arms out for balance when she nearly slips. I take her arm and we help each other cross. The street is so narrow that the surface probably never sees direct sunlight in winter. I don’t recognize the street. It seems strange that I have walked so many hours in this city and still don’t recognize places. I tend to begin my walks in places I know – I never fling myself completely into unfamiliarity – and move outward slowly, turning this way and that, and try to find my way back. I almost always do. Then I find a new point of origin and do it all over again. I also like shortcuts, so I test tiny alleyways that wind away from bigger streets. I open gates. I crawl under small archways that appear to lead nowhere, but often take you to interesting spots. I walk through sleepy private gardens and grounds. The stairs and the memorial and now the café – I get a lot of pleasure out of the secrecy of this city. This is something Saskia and I have in common.