Astrid and Veronika by Olsson Linda

Author:Olsson, Linda
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2011-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

22

. . . for the day is you,

and the light is you,

the sun is you,

and the spring is you,

and the beautiful, beautiful,

awaiting life is you!

Veronika

But I still dream about the sea. My enemy. I dream about my enemy, not my love. I dream about the infinite expanse shimmering in all shades of blue and green, from blackest navy over unfathomable depths, to bright emerald where the land below comes closer to the surface.

It lay below me as the plane began its descent over New Zealand and it seemed to last for ever. If I blinked I could have missed the tiny sliver of land just risen from the depths. New Zealand. Aotearoa. But I didn’t blink; my eyes were wide open. I felt blank, newly awakened and washed clean, like the windblown land below. I had taken a step off a cliff, not knowing where and how I would land. I pressed my forehead against the window as the plane descended and the land drew closer.

It was early morning and the airport processing was swift. I walked through customs, pushing my luggage trolley, my eyes scanning the wall of faces of the crowd waiting on the other side. But it was he who found me. I felt his hands on my shoulders before I saw him. Then he turned me to face him and held me, and we stood still, an island in the stream of travellers passing by, until an Asian man behind us discreetly asked us to move aside. I looked at James, took in his entire presence: the faded baseball cap over hair that seemed longer and curlier than before, the worn white T-shirt, scruffy shorts, his tanned feet in rubber jandals. His face, where my eyes searched every detail, touching the skin, following the eyebrows, the contours of his lips. Comparing with the stored images. And it all returned to me. Starting as the smallest stirring somewhere deep inside my body, a warmth that spread and reached my limbs, my fingertips, then my lips. My smile felt like laughter.

We walked out into the intense brightness. Thin white clouds stretched across an infinite sky and a fresh wind pushed us along.

We drove towards Auckland. I looked at the passing landscape without registering details. James talked and his left hand pointed out the window, returning to my right knee between each swift movement. I looked at his profile, his hand on the steering wheel, his bare feet on the floor. He looked so perfectly at home, at one with his clothes, his car, the landscape. I realised he was home. And suddenly I became acutely aware of being shrouded in the old world. Out of place, with my winter pale skin, my heavy dark clothes. My body even smelled wrong. Old, tired and out of place in this intensely bright, newly created world where a fresh wind blew and the air had no smell.

We went straight to his mother’s house in St Mary’s Bay. As we stopped, I looked at the house.

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