and trying to calm it was a knee-jerk reaction. “It’s just a business thing. Some funds I need to arrange. I’ll be back by Monday.”
How had they ended up like this? He suddenly recalled with great intensity that Saturday in May more than ten years ago when he had watched Keld walk her up the aisle. She had been fairytale pretty, in a stunningly simple white dress, pink and white rosebuds in her hair. He knew at once that the bouquet he had chosen was much too big and garish, but it hadn’t mattered. He was just a few minutes away from hearing her say “I do.” For an instant, his gaze caught Keld’s, and he thought he saw a welcome and an appreciation there. Father-in-law. I’ll take care of her, he silently promised the tall, smiling man. And in his mind added two promises that weren’t in the marriage vows: he would give her anything she wanted, and he would protect her against everything that was evil in the world.
That is still what I want, he thought, tossing his passport into the Zürich case. Whatever the price.
SOMETIMES, JUČAS HAD a dream about a family. There was a mother and a father and two children, a boy and a girl. Usually, they would be at the dinner table, eating a meal the mother had cooked for them. They lived in a house with a garden, and in the garden there were apple trees and raspberries. The people were smiling, so that one could tell they were happy.
He himself was outside the house, looking in. But there was always the feeling that any minute now they would catch sight of him, and the father would open the door, smiling even wider, and say: “There you are! Come in, come in.”
JUČAS HAD NO idea who they were. Nor could he always remember what they looked like. But when he woke, it would be with a feeling of muddled nostalgia and expectation that would stay with him all day like a tightness in his chest.
Lately he had dreamed the dream a lot. He blamed it on Barbara. She always wanted to talk about how it was going to be—him and her, and the little house just outside Krakow, close enough that her mother would need to take only one bus, and yet far enough away for them to have a bit of privacy. And there would be children. Of course. Because that was what Barbara wanted: children.
The day before it was to happen, they had celebrated. Everything was done, everything ready. The car was packed, all preparations were in place. The only thing that could stop them now was if the bitch suddenly changed her pattern. And even if she did, all they had to do was wait another week.
“Let’s go to the country,” said Barbara. “Let’s go find someplace where we can lie in the grass and be alone together.”
At first he refused on the grounds that it was best not to alter one’s own pattern. People remembered. Only as long as one did what one always did would one remain relatively invisible. But then he realized this might be his last day in Lithuania ever, if everything went according to plan. And he didn’t really feel like spending that day selling security systems to middle-range businessmen in Vilnius.
He called the client he was due to see and canceled, telling them the company would be sending someone Monday or Tuesday instead. Barbara called in sick with “the flu.” It would be Monday before anyone at Klimka’s realized they had been playing hooky at the same time, and by then it wouldn’t matter.
They drove out to Lake Didžiulis. Once, this had been a holiday camp for Pioneer children. Now it was a scout camp instead, and on an ordinary school day at the end of August, the whole place was completely deserted. Jučas parked the Mitsubishi in the shade beneath some pines, hoping the car wouldn’t be an oven when they returned. Barbara got out, stretching so that her white shirt slid up to reveal a bit of tanned stomach. That was enough to make his cock twitch. He had never known a woman who could arouse him as quickly as Barbara. He had never known anyone like her, period. He still wondered why on earth she had picked someone like him. They stayed clear of the wooden huts, which in any case looked rather sad and dilapidated. Instead they followed the path