She was unsure whether sleep was an
option. Martine would not be back from Stavanger until tomorrow.
Thérèse Laflamme double checked the locks on the doors and peeked
from the edge of the curtains. The winds had not abated. A large
puddle rippled as if ghostly fingers raked its surface. A few small
branches were down. Leaves levitated and swirled beneath the
fractured scudding clouds. She had tried to calm herself by drinking
green tea and listening to Martine's cd's of a local music group, The
Kings of Convenience, a soft and soothing acoustic music, but it
was all too unsettling.
The day had initially appeared to be
one of no consequence, just another day of new experiences in Bergen.
The city, freshly born with its light mist clearing by mid-morning, had found Thérèse making her way down its narrow streets, over
cobblestones and past windows of unknown lives, to the post office to
buy stamps and mail her letter to Jerome. Two older ladies, arm and
arm, kerchiefs and handbags their fashionable defence against the
rising winds, had greeted her with 'god morgen' and she had returned
the simple phrase with a smile. She had found everyone so
friendly. At the post office, she had browsed the delightful stamps
for sale, and was surprised by the dual language, English and
Norwegian, stamp information booklets. The classic Post horn stamps
were colourful, a nursing stamp was interesting, and a stamp with the
musician Sondre Lerche was a surprise, but she wished the Edvard
Munch stamps advertised for the new year had been available. The
stamps promised details from Munch's Self-portrait, the
Madonna, and The Scream,
stamps that would have been ideal to slip inside the letter for
Jerome, stamps he could paste into one of his sketch book journals as
souvenirs. Who knows, she had thought, perhaps she would still be in
Bergen when they were issued. Her future was undetermined. Her life,
day by day.
After
asking the clerk, 'kva kostar denne?' she provided the required
currency and watched as her letter was stamped and tossed with
others, adrift on their silent passages around the world, or down the
street. Out of her hands. She had made her way over to the Café
Aura for a cappuccino and a
brownie, relaxing with a local arts paper and the Bergens
Tidende in her continued efforts
to learn the language by sight and reference.
Only with hindsight
did she now think it odd that she kept seeing the same youngish
couple during her morning of errands and wanderings. She had taken
them for tourists. Bergen was a small enough city that such
coincidences were understandable. The couple had entered the café
after she had settled at a window seat. The man wore a leather coat
that seemed, for a reason she couldn't understand, dated in both
style and colour. They had taken a table in the corner and she
couldn't hear what language they spoke. The man had gone out to have
a cigarette and talk on his cell phone and other than that, she had
paid little attention to them.
When
she left the café, she had walked down and over past the old train
station to the beautiful public library on Stromgaten and spent about
an hour browsing the stacks and perusing the journals and enjoying
the comfortable and attractive communal space filled with natural
light. It was near the reference desk at the library that she again
had caught sight of the couple. They had seemed oblivious to
her and never made eye contact as they fingered the library
pamphlets. When she left the library and walked around to the
shopping centre for some groceries, she had spotted them in Rimi
buying coffee and bananas. That was the last time she had seen them
before making her way home along the pedestrian path beside the Lille
Lungegardsvannet with its sea gulls gliding in the brisk winds, and
then catching a taxi up to Martine's three storey stone home with its back to the mountain.
She
didn't mind walking down, but the trek up with a few bags was too
much. The winding narrow streets reminded her of parts of upper
Westmount. Martine's home, passed down to her from her Father's
side, with its pointed pedimented second floor windows and stone
facings also reminded Thérèse of older buildings in Montreal, quite
anomalous, surrounded as it was, by the predominantly clapboard buildings of
various colours. It was from one of these Renaissance Revival
windows that Thérèse looked down upon the narrow street below, and
the lights of the city beyond.
When she had
arrived home, everything was quite normal. Nothing had been
disturbed. It was only after her lunch that she had discovered
something was missing. Her flash drive in the the chipped porcelain
cup at the window desk was gone. The flash drive with all of David
Ashemore's files. She had checked the drawers of the desk, and then
broadened her search to the rest of the house. Nothing. This
unexpected disturbance had left her exhausted and her head literally
reeling with nervous fear. She had begun to question whether she had
indeed tossed it in the cold North Sea, a question which her mind
must have brought up to release the pressure of the possible truth
that someone had been in the house while she was being monitored by
the young couple on her morning pedestrian excursions. They must have
searched meticulously, carefully, probably with tightly gloved hands.
Completely the reverse of so many film depictions where a character
arrives home to discover their room a shambles and the object of
their search taken. The manner of the lifting of the flash drive
revealed to her that they were extremely intelligent, logical,
methodical and precise.
She paced back and
forth in the living room wondering what to do. It was 11:45 p. m. in
Bergen, so it was six hours behind in Montreal. Mr. Roquebrune might
still be at his office. She had resisted the desire to phone him, not
wanting to disturb his busy life with her unsettling experience, but
she now searched her notebook with all her contacts and dialed the
long-distance number. Tuesday, she thought, did he stay late on
Tuesdays? The answering machine picked up on the third ring. “Vous
avez bien fait le numéro pour l'office de Wormwood & Verdigris,
s'il vous plait, laisser un message après la tonalité. You have
reached the number of Wormwood & Verdigris, please leave a message
after the tone.” It was not what she wanted to hear, but the
voice of Claire, the secretary, was reassuring. She then
decided to call Jerome. It was necessary to break her paltry attempts
at secrecy and make contact. She heard the phone, his phone,
ring in his apartment. It continued to ring as her thoughts of
unease mounted. One, two, three, four. Ten. Twelve. Fourteen. She
hung up, frustrated and upset. Why wasn't his answering machine
working? What had happened?
If they had only
wanted the files, then she should be safe she told herself. Their
methods didn't reflect a tendency towards violent resolutions. What
could be gained for them? But then, she had knowledge of the
information, the facts as related by David Ashemore. And, she had
made a copy in code and sequestered it in her old apartment. A fail-safe in case anything happened to her. What if they searched that?
Was an innocent renter now under their eyes as well? And what of the
original files and journals in the vault of Wormwood &
Verdigris? Have they too been taken? She would have to phone Mr.
Roquebrune at his home, disturb his evening.
Paranoia had
stripped the day of her harmonious pleasures; the discordant note of
the continued sightings of the young couple had ended in a crescendo
of twelve tone abstraction. It was as if her day had been picked up
and dropped like a mirror, the shattered pieces reflecting sordid
portentous illusions. Her thoughts began to merge with those of David
Ashemore's, his isolating experiences reflected in hers. She realized
that her perspective had been forever changed by reading his
journals. There had been occasions when she remembered details of a
situation and realized that she had transferred them into her own
memories. She had told Martine a story of seeing someone on the Metro
in Montreal, a diminutive young woman struggling with her very large
double bass, and realized it was not her memory, but that of David's, a transference that had steeled her self-possession, hardened her
resolve to disentangle the facts from her subjectivity. And yet, here
she was, faltering with the unfathomable, the inconceivable, grasping
at window curtains as if they were the sails of a ship in distress.
© ralph patrick mackay
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