The Weekend Read Online Free Page A

was a corner room; from one window Ilse could look out onto the oak and behind it a barn, from the other onto the gate.
    The day after the funeral two lawyers came from Jan’s office to Ulla’s house. It was afternoon; the children were waiting for dinner and running noisily through the house. The older lawyer introduced himself as the senior partner of the office, the younger as the colleague with whom Jan had worked particularly closely. Ulla recognized them both; they had paid their respects to her the previous day, and the younger man had once come to pick up Jan
.
    “We spoke on the phone to the police in France. They didn’t find the files your husband had just been working on in the car. Would you forgive us for asking whether the files are here?”
    “I’ll have a look this evening.”
    But that wasn’t enough for the two men. It was a matter of urgency, said the younger man, but she mustn’t go to any trouble, he knew the way, and he
slipped past her and up the stairs. The older man asked her to bear with them and apologized and followed the younger man into Jan’s study. Ulla wanted to go with them, but the twins were arguing, and the water was boiling. She forgot the lawyers. When she was sitting with the children at the dinner table, they emerged from Jan’s study. Their arms were full of files, but no, they hadn’t found the files for which they had come
.
    The phone call came the same evening. Ulla had put the children to bed and was sitting at the kitchen table, too exhausted to feel pain or grief. She just wanted to lie down and go to sleep, and not wake up again in a new normality until several weeks or months had passed. But she didn’t have the strength to get up, climb the stairs to the bedroom and go to bed. And she answered the telephone only because it was mounted on the wall in such a way that she could pick up the receiver without getting to her feet. “Hello?”
    No one answered. Then she heard the caller breathing, and it was his breath. She knew it very well, and she loved it, loved the pauses in their telephone conversations, when he was wordlessly close to her with his breath. “Jan,” she said. “Jan, say something—where are you, what’s going on?” But he didn’t speak, and when after anxious waiting she said, “Jan!” again, he hung up
.
    She sat there as if anesthetized. She was sure she hadn’t been mistaken. She was sure that she must have been mistaken. She had seen Jan lying in the coffin. Jan
.
    Two days later she received the autopsy report in the mail. Name, sex, date and place of birth, body measurements and physical features—she had problems with the French text only when the incisions and results were described. She fetched the dictionary and went to work, even though the account of each incision caused her pain. When she was finished, she read the whole text all the way through again. Only now did she think of the sweatshirt and jeans in which Jan had lain on the table in front of the doctor. He had driven to the office in his suit that day. And, the police had written in their report, he had been found in his suit in the car
.
    She went to their shared wardrobe. She knew his clothes, even his jeans, his T-shirts and sweatshirts. Nothing was missing—as if it mattered. She called the undertakers. Somewhat surprised, they told her that her husband, when he was brought back from France, had been wearing a crumpled suit. She had been asked if she wanted to have it—didn’t she remember?
    The same evening, when the children were asleep, Ulla rang Ilse. She couldn’t bear being on her own anymore. Ilse came dutifully. She and Ulla were not close friends. But if Ulla was lonely and desperate enough to seek comfort from her, then Ilse would give what she could
.
    Ulla didn’t want comfort. She had put a suit of armor around her pain. She wanted to fight. She was sure that an ugly game was being played, and she wasn’t prepared to take it. Who was behind it?