Read Stillness of the Sea for Free Online Page A

more than once, if it would have been better for him not to know everything, because this would have left him free to love her without questioning his love. He would never have learnt about all that, had he not wanted to know so much.
    He often imagined Ana and himself going to the airport to collect her father. She can hardly wait for the doors to slide back at last and then, among the other passengers, her father steps out, suitcase in hand. She spreads her arms wide, like a small child, only now her father doesn’t have to crouch; he only puts the suitcase down and, as she throws her arms around his neck, he places his hand on the back of her head and presses it against his chest. While they hug each other, her father looks around, spots him standing a little bit away and looks him over, without hostility. He doesn’t understand when Ana says something to her father. Then her father holds out his hand and says, “Ana told me a lot about you. She is very happy.”
    The darkness seems to reflect his feelings. How long has he been standing here? Hours? Days? Weeks?Nothing moves. And he asks himself whether one can be sure that life continues in the dark. Were he not aware of his breathing and heartbeat, no other signs would show that life carries on. The dark is a lake, not a river. Memories come back at night, but at a cost. Once a strangulated cry had woken him and, at the moment of waking, he was uncertain whether he had truly heard it or only dreamt it. He was in her room, Ana lay next to him, she was restless and breathing heavily; when he put his hand on her stomach, her body twitched sharply, but his touch had obviously calmed her, as afterwards she went back into a deep sleep. Had she often been lying at his side, full of anguish, while he failed to notice?
    He opens the window. One gust and the cold air takes charge of the room. He lies down on the bed and pulls the duvet up to his chin. The light summery curtains are flapping in the darkness and stirring pages of the newspaper on the table.
    He gropes for the lamp on his bedside table, finds the string-pull, puts the light on, throws the duvet back and observes his feet, moves his toes a little. “I like slim men,” she once said, “and I like your eyes, you have beautiful hands with slim fingers, I like them and I like your lips. You look good.” She lets her fingertips glide over his body, from his forehead down along the ridge of his nose over his lips, over his chin, over his Adam’s apple, down in a straight line across the centre of his chest and his belly, lingering with one finger in his navel, avoiding the thicket of hair and moving onto his left leg, onwards across his kneecap all the way to the tip of his big toe; while her fingers were on their journey, he kept his eyes closed and wished he were three, four metres tall.
    She used to say that people who don’t drink fear life, because the idea of letting themselves go scares them. Then she would light a cigarette. He would think, Such wonderful lips, not too full, not too thin, perfectly curved! They were sitting in her kitchen. On the table, she had placed two glasses and an unlabelled bottle. He could guess what was in it. She explained to him that its name was derived from the Slav word for damson, šljiva , and that it came in two shades, pale or golden. To warm up quickly in winter, people heated it with sugar and drank it hot.
    “You don’t know this? What kind of Croat are you?” She raised her glass and toasted him. “ Živeli . That’s what we say – Let’s live.”
    “Shivily,” he said.
    She laughed.
    This was the only word with a familiar ring to it. He had no idea, though, that it had anything to do with “living”. He had thought it just meant “cheers!”
    Let’s live. Then it was an imperative, but it could also be a plea. Uttered in a different tone of voice or in another situation, that word changes its meaning. He can’t help thinking of Šimić and on how, in his