LITMIR.BIZ

       3

      It was a quarter past five in the morning and it was raining. Martin Beck took more time brushing his teeth than usual to get rid of the taste of lead in his mouth.

      He buttoned his collar, tied his tie and looked listlessly at his face in the mirror. He shrugged his shoulders and went out into the hall, continued on through the living room, glanced longingly at the half-finished model of the training ship, Danmark, on which he had worked until the late hours the night before, and went into the kitchen.

      He moved quietly and softly, partly from habit and partly not to wake the children.

      He sat down at the kitchen table.

      ‘Hasn't the newspaper come yet?’ he said.

      ‘It never comes before six,’ his wife answered.

      It was completely light outside but overcast. The daylight in the kitchen was grey and soupy. His wife hadn't turned on the lights. She called that saving.

      He opened his mouth but closed it again without saying anything. There would only be an argument and this wasn't the moment for it. Instead he drummed slowly with his fingers on the formica table top. He looked at the empty cup with its blue rose pattern and a chip in the rim and a brown crack down from the notch. That cup had hung on for almost the duration of their marriage. More than ten years. She rarely broke anything, in any case not irreparably. The odd part of it was that the children were the same.

      Could such qualities be inherited? He didn't know.

      She took the coffee pot from the stove and filled his cup. He stopped drumming on the table.

      ‘Don't you want a sandwich?’ she asked.

      He drank carefully with small gulps. He was sitting slightly round-shouldered at the end of the table.

      ‘You really ought to eat something,’ she insisted.

      ‘You know I can't eat in the morning.’

      ‘You ought to in any case,’ she said. ‘Especially you, with your stomach.’

      He rubbed his fingers over his cheek and felt some places he'd missed with his razor. He drank some coffee.

      ‘I can make some toast,’ she suggested.

      Five minutes later he placed his cup on the saucer, moved it away without a sound, and looked up at his wife.

      She had on a fluffy red bathrobe over a nylon nightgown and she sat with her elbows on the table, supporting her chin with her hands. She was blonde, with fair skin and round, slightly popping eyes. She usually darkened her eyebrows but they had paled during the summer and were now nearly as light as her hair. She was a few years older than he and in spite of the fact that she had gained a good deal of weight in the last few years, the skin on her throat was beginning to sag a little.

      She had given up her job in an architect's office when their daughter was born twelve years ago and since then had not thought about working again. When the boy started school, Martin Beck had suggested she look for some part-time work, but she had figured it would hardly pay. Besides, she was comfortable with her own nature and pleased with her role as a housewife.

      ‘Oh, yes,’ thought Martin Beck and got up. He placed the blue-painted stool under the table quietly and stood by the window looking out at the drizzle.

      Down below the parking place and lawn, the highway lay smooth and empty. Not many windows were lit in the apartments on the hill behind the subway station. A few seagulls circled under the low, grey sky. Otherwise there was not another living thing to be seen.

      ‘Where are you going?’ she said.

      ‘Motala.’

      ‘Will you be gone long?’

      ‘I don't know.’

      ‘Is it that girl?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Do you think you'll be gone long?’

      ‘I don't know any more about it than you do. Only what I've seen in the newspapers.’

      ‘Why do you have to take the train?’

      ‘The others took off yesterday. I wasn't supposed to go along.’

      ‘They'll drive with you, of course, as usual?’

      He took a patient breath and gazed outside. The rain was letting up.

      ‘Where will you stay?’

      ‘The City Hotel.’

      ‘Who will be with you?’

      ‘Kollberg and Melander. They went yesterday.’

      ‘By car?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And you have to sit and get shaken up on the train?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Behind him he heard her washing the cup with the chip in the rim and the blue roses.

      ‘I have to pay the electric bill and also Little One's riding lessons this week.’

      ‘Don't you have enough money for that?’

      ‘I don't want to take it out of the bank, you know that.’

      ‘No, of course not.’

      He took his wallet out of his inner pocket and looked into it. Took out a 50 crown note, looked at it, put it back and placed the wallet back in his pocket.

      ‘I hate to draw out money,’ she said. ‘It's the beginning of the end

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