I went downstairs.
The door to the guest room was ajar, and I stopped in the entryway, to listen to the quiet voices of the two women upstairs. Then I went in. Antje’s travel bag was wide open on the floor, the handle still with the airline tag on it with the flight number and the code for Munich. Next to it were her leggings and T-shirt, and a tattered paperback of a Simenon thriller, La chambre bleue. I reached inside the bag and pushed a few garments to the side. Underneath was a tangle of lacy underwear, a clear plastic duty-free bag, sealed, from the Marseilles airport containing a bottle of Swedish vodka, and a charger for a cell phone. At the very bottom of the bag was a sketchbook. I took it out and leafed through it. It was empty.
In the guest bathroom was Antje’s toiletry bag, overflowing with little bottles and tubes. I read the names of the products, creams and powders, tar shampoo and toothpaste for sensitive teeth and contact lens cleaner, aspirin and antacid tablets.
I went over to the window of the guest room, pulled up the blinds, and looked out into the fog, which was thicker than on previous days. Everything seemed very intensely there to me. I had the feeling that everything was possible for me just then, I could walk out of the house and never come back. It was a feeling at once liberating and frightening.
I put on a coat and went outside. The drive, which I’d swept only yesterday, was once again littered with fallen leaves. I walked down the street, slowly and aimlessly. I remembered the last time I had had this menacing feeling of freedom. It was the morning after the first night with Ivona, when I stood in front of the student hall and the birds were singing so incredibly loudly, and I had the feeling of being terribly grown up and having my life in my own hands. I felt as though I’d spent years going through a tunnel, and had finally come out the other side, and was now standing on a wide plain, able to walk in any direction.
The street stopped in a dead end. There was a big pasture there, with a couple of cows grazing on it, behind some electrified fence. When I stopped in front of the wire, one of the cows raised her head and looked briefly in my direction. She took a step toward me, then seemed to reconsider and went back to grazing. In the distance, I heard the sound of a leaf blower and some church bells striking ten.
I heard steps, and turned around. It was Antje. She came up beside me, looking at the cows. They’re not so easy to draw, you know, she said after a while, especially their rear ends. I asked her where Sonia was. Antje didn’t answer. You wanted to tell me the rest of your story, she said. Come on then, I said, and I turned around, it’s easier to talk while walking. Antje slipped her arm through mine, and we walked down the street in the direction of the city center. I told her about the beginning of the crisis. It was the first time the business wasn’t improving. Maybe that was the thing that discouraged me the most. It had been difficult before, but we always had an end in view, which we managed to reach sooner or later. Three years ago, for the first time I had the sense that things could only get worse. Presumably that’s when I started thinking about Ivona again. By chance I saw her picture in one of Sonia’s photo albums, a photograph of a party, where she was only barely recognizable.
I pulled out my wallet and showed Antje the picture. That was my objective. I had to find Ivona. I don’t know what I thought would happen if I did.
It wasn’t easy to get hold of Ivona’s address. Her name wasn’t in the phone book, and at the Polish Consulate I was told that if Ivona wasn’t registered, they wouldn’t be able to help me. The agency leasing the house where she had lived before had never heard of her, presumably she had been on a sublease then. Finally I called the Polish mission. The woman I spoke to asked me to come by.
The mission was housed in an anonymous-looking office building. I rang the bell, and a pleasant-looking woman of about fifty