Everything Like Before by Kjell Askildsen

Author:Kjell Askildsen [Askildsen, Kjell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2021-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

The Joker

One Saturday evening in late November I was at home alone with Lucy. I was sitting in the chair by the window, she was at the dining table playing patience, she’d been playing it constantly of late, I didn’t know why but figured perhaps she was worried about something. It’s so hot, she said, could you open the window a little. I agreed that it was rather warm, and moreover unseasonably mild out, so I opened it. The window faced the back garden and a small copse and I stood for a few moments listening to the rain falling softly. Maybe that was the reason, the soft rainfall and the silence, in any case what can occasionally occur did occur: that great emptiness descended, as though the very meaninglessness of existence creeps inside and unfolds within like an endless bare landscape. You can close it now, Lucy said, even though I was still standing looking out. I’m going to take a little walk, I said. Now? she said. I closed the window. Just a short stroll, I said. She continued playing patience without looking up. I went into the hall and put on the raincoat and sou’wester I usually only wear while gardening in bad weather. Maybe that’s the reason I went out to the garden instead of onto the road. I walked right to the end, where we grew winter cabbage and there was a short bench without a backrest that had been there since Lucy inherited the house. I sat in the rain and darkness looking up at the light from the windows, but due to the downward slope of the garden I couldn’t see Lucy, just the ceiling and the topmost part of the walls. After a while it grew too chilly to sit still; I got to my feet, intending to climb over the fence, walk through the copse and out onto the road by the post office. But on reaching the fence I turned, and that was when I saw Lucy’s shadow on the inside wall and a small part of the ceiling, and I couldn’t understand how that could be, where a light that could cause her shadow to fall there could be coming from. I climbed up onto the fence where it was possible to hold on to the bottom branch of a large oak tree; I balanced on the fence, stood up straight, and saw Lucy by the table, a candle burning in front of her, holding something in one hand that was also aflame, although it was impossible to see what. Then the flame went out, and Lucy stood up; as she did so it was as though the entire room fell into shadow. The next moment she’d disappeared from view. I waited a while but she didn’t return. I jumped down on the other side of the fence and went into the copse, I wondered what she had burned, I felt hoodwinked, I know that’s exactly how I felt because I pondered the thought, even wondered where the expression ‘hoodwinked’ came from.

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