“You understand, we called to ask how the child was getting along in the new school year, we called morning and night, and all we ever got was the answering machine talking about a vacation, but the vacation was supposed to have been over, wasn’t it, we knew the dates, so what were we supposed to think? We were getting worried, it was awful! So, well, one day, I said, ‘All right, if they’re still there, then let’s go pay them a visit out at their vacation house, we can discover the region, it will be an adventure for us, and at the same time we’ll find out why Herman and the boy aren’t at school.’ We took the train, eight hours, and here we are—we got in just this morning. But really now, you could have told us. I mean we’re happy to be here, but still, that wasn’t right of you, yes, Rose is going to hear from me. And then the storm came, we wanted to take a taxi to the village but they told us no one would travel on the roads today, we’d have to wait till tomorrow or the day after. Infuriating! We had to come to the inn, get a room; you can imagine how thrilled we were to be stuck here in L., but evidently there’s no other way. What a place, it’s incredible, it’s appalling…”
Now the mother seemed deeply frightened. She squeezed her jacket collar shut with an anxious hand.
“Herman, you said the sky was always blue here.”
“It is, until the thirty-first of August, but then…”
“How can people live… And this city, Herman, it’s just a lot of hideous apartment buildings, all thrown up any old way.”
“The war,” said Herman.
“Oh yes, the war.”
The father’s demeanor turned grave and pious. An infinite sadness descended over the dimly lit sitting room. The mother cocked her head and seemed to be listening for the sound of the long-ago bombs.
“We never had to go through that back home,” she said. “No, we never lacked for anything, did we?”
“We have no right to complain,” answered the father.
They fell silent, downcast. Herman was afraid the conversation might come back to Rose and the child. And what was he supposed to do with these two old people tomorrow?
“And this weather, these gray skies, is that because of the war too?” the mother asked in a quavering voice, staring into the distance.
Just then Métilde walked past the glass door. Herman didn’t have the courage to stand up and go to her and calmly explain what was happening, but he sensed that by letting Métilde go away hurt and angry he was losing his one chance to get back to the village.
They sat for a long time, all three of them silent and gloomy, as if benumbed by the old, musty smell of the shabbily furnished sitting room, and Herman found himself thinking this was the whole reason the parents were there: to bear witness—with their brightly colored athletic shoes, the cool, dark skin of their faces—to the very singular desolation visited in the fall on this once ravaged patch of the provinces. But this is where Herman wanted to stay. Suddenly he couldn’t bear the thought of being away from the village any longer. And, unable to decide if it would be better for the parents to see Rose and the child or not, he told himself he would do everything he could to take them, come what may, and then they could draw whatever conclusions they liked—what could Herman change about what had happened?
“Let’s see if we can go,” he said abruptly. “Yes, let’s try right now.”
“What about the storm?” said the mother, clutching her thin jacket.
“Well, what about it?” the father said irritably, already on his feet. “He’s offering to take you to your daughter. Come on, he knows what he’s doing, we’re strangers here, we don’t know anything, do we?”
At the front desk, Herman asked for a taxi. It was so cold he could hardly move his lips.
“No taxi driver’s going to go out in this weather,” said the woman.
“I’m begging you,” Herman whispered.
He leaned as far over the counter as he could and brought his exhausted but resolute eyes very close to hers.
“Find one. I’m begging you.”
Behind him, Rose’s mother cried, “Yes, yes, let’s get out of this city!” as if, thought Herman, the war was still raging in L.
They went back to wait in the sitting room, the father nervously patting his knees, the mother saying over and over that she wasn’t going to spend a single night in L., her lips going blue from the cold.
“All right, your taxi’s here,” the desk clerk came to say.
In a murmur, she added: “It’s the worst taxi in L.”
Herman tried to pick up his in-laws’ suitcase, but his frail arms wouldn’t let him, and the father, disturbed, remarked:
“You’re in sad shape, my boy.”
But he himself nearly collapsed when he unwarily strode through the hotel’s front door and the rain hit him square in the chest. They piled into the car as best they could.
“It’ll cost extra today, understand?” asked the driver.
He turned to them, his face fat and purple, and they saw that he had no nose. Rose’s mother let out a little cry. Then, embarrassed, she put her face to the window and pretended to study the street.
“Whatever you like,” Herman said quietly.
Resigned, he realized the man was drunk. The taxi reeked of wine. Slowly they drove out of L., the car already rocking and lurching in the wind.
“How ugly, how horrible this city is,” the mother whispered; on the brink of tears, Herman thought.
The driver had heard her, and he raised one index finger high. Now they were out on the dark highway, driving so slowly that Herman was sure his liquefaction would be complete long before they got to the village.
The driver half turned around toward them, showing his perfectly flat profile, feverish, and told them:
“Yes, but you didn’t know L. the way it was back in my day, long ago, it was beautiful, take my word for it, I was born there, I grew up there, before the war, it was a different place then, you should have seen it, old timber-framed houses, half-timbers, all leaning and crooked, then the war, the bombs, the fires, and then in the middle of all that off goes my nose, it was shrapnel, a chunk of my cheek blown away, and my whole nose along with it, ‘Have you seen your nose? Where did your nose go?’ I’ve been hearing that for the past fifty years, in every café in L., ‘So-and-so has your nose in his pocket, my house is built on your nose,’ that’s perfectly possible, the rubble, it was in there, buried somewhere, my nose is somewhere in the ground under L., in its walls, I think about that all the time, you understand, I talk to it, I call out to it, I see it, it’s poking out between two bricks, or when I’m walking downtown there it is stuck between two paving stones, that’s my nose, and that, right, how can you ever forgive that, how can you forgive…”
As he spoke, he slapped his face just above his mouth over and over again.
“Ha ha!” snickered Rose’s father.
He looked at Herman and made a gesture like he was twisting his nose, to signify that the driver was drunk.
“Ha ha,” murmured Herman.
Then the car slowed to a stop; the driver cursed, pounded the wheel.
“There we go, she’s died on us!” he cried.