I thought of Adriaan, it occurred to me that this was the world he had inhabited with Gaby. They would have circulated through this room with ease, I was sure that between them they would have known most of the people in attendance, in some ways it was their world even more than it was Jana’s. I felt a rush of fear crowd into me. I was not of this place. I had an image of Adriaan, together with Gaby again, for a moment it was as if they were there in the room. Around us, lines were forming. Shall we? Eline asked gently, as if aware of my distraction. I like the look of that Clara Peeters.
She indicated a display of cheeses and said with a laugh, I think our dinner will consist of cheese and bread, the fish and lobster have already been depleted. It was true, happy diners were now sitting down at the banquet tables, their plates heavy with food. Servers circulated with pitchers of wine, everything had been thought of. We joined the line and then reached through the frame to cut slices of cheese. Eline took an apple and some other fruit from another display, It is wonderfully executed, she murmured as she bit into a peach and surveyed the scene. If you look, the lighting has been adjusted to mimic the paintings. She gestured to the lighting rig above. Even the wreckage is somehow funny and interesting, you never get to see the paintings in this state.
A while later, Jana joined us. She sat down in the chair next to me and slipped her heels off. What a night, she said. She sounded tired, the words a little ambiguous, the evening might have been a success or a disaster in her eyes. Eline said, It’s wonderful, you must be very pleased. Jana leaned forward eagerly. What did you think of the exhibition? she asked. Eline reached for Jana’s hands and grasped them in her own, It’s a triumph. There was a great deal of kindness in her voice, and although I did not doubt the sincerity of her words, I could see she was aware of how much they meant to Jana. Jana nodded as if relieved, and a little later Eline stood up and said that she needed to go. It was such a pleasure to meet you, she said to me, and although the words were mere convention, I again felt she meant them. Can we meet again? she said, and Jana immediately said that she would put us in touch.
Eline smiled and said good night. As she watched her go, Jana yawned, the crowd was beginning to disperse and it was as if she had officially clocked off, she reached for her glass of wine. Isn’t she lovely? Did you like her? she asked. Very much, I said. How did you meet?
She was in front of my building.
What do you mean?
Her brother was the man who was attacked—you remember, in that mugging last month.
I looked at her, startled.
She didn’t tell you? Jana drank from her glass. That’s how we met, she was standing in front of the apartment building, maybe one week after the attack. It was so clear she didn’t belong there, I thought she was lost, or I don’t know what, but for some reason I stopped and asked if she was okay. She looked at me and then she burst into tears. We went to the café around the corner and she told me what had happened, that her brother had been attacked and beaten while in the neighborhood, that he had been hospitalized for over a week.
Jana reached over and squeezed my hand, her manner warm and affectionate. You know, I’m sorry not to have been in touch. The exhibition has taken up all my time.
But he’s fine? I asked. Her brother?
Eline’s brother? I think so, she said with a shrug. Although I don’t think there’s been much progress in the case. He can’t remember anything. He doesn’t even know why he was in the neighborhood, or what he came there to do. It’s a total mystery.
A waiter was moving through what remained of the crowd, distributing plates of seedcake. Jana took two plates and handed me one. She began eating, she must have been very hungry. How is Adriaan? she asked between bites. She wasn’t looking at me as she spoke, but there was nothing false about the casual way in which she asked the question, she was too tired to be self-conscious. I thought he was very nice, she said, and her manner was so matter-of-fact that I wondered if I had imagined it all, the complicity and the flirtation. He seemed kind. Which is a rarity. She took another bite and then looked at me. Don’t you think? I nodded. I didn’t say anything further. But I believed her words to be true. Later that evening, I sent Adriaan a message, I asked when he would return, and then I asked how things were with Gaby, where things stood with his marriage.
11.
Adriaan did not reply to the message. A day passed, and after I reached for my phone yet again in the hopes of having received a reply, I lowered it and looked around me. I had been living in Adriaan’s apartment for over a month and yet I had changed almost nothing inside it. I realized I had been trying to occupy the apartment in as discreet a manner as possible, as if to illustrate to Adriaan upon his return how easily I would slip into the fabric of his life, how little disturbance I would cause. To understand this was humiliating. I was a woman waiting for a lover, dressed in obscene lingerie, body arrayed on the bed in a pose of hopeful seduction.