Grey Moon
Chapter eight
Two Weeks
Notebook. Day 156.
Stefan is different this morning. I don’t know if it’s the driving or something else. Twelve hours yesterday, six hundred and forty-two kilometres for seventy. He didn’t move when I got up. When he woke he sat a while looking at the field before he opened the door.
For fifteen years he has said it first, at the foot of every hill: „Wir sind nicht aus Zucker.“ This morning he didn’t. I said it, to start him. He said, “No. We’re not.” He didn’t say it back.
I drove. He didn’t offer and I didn’t ask. He knew these roads better than I did, from the cycling years, and he didn’t say a word about them.
Notebook. Day 156 — kept in the car.
07:50 — out. Odometer 84,754. Tank under a quarter. North, west of the river — A35 for Strasbourg, then Calais.
08:35 — Sélestat. Péage open, barriers up, no one in the booths. Everyone drives through now.
09:20 — more cars stopped on the shoulder than moving on the road. Left where they ran dry, doors shut.
10:05 — Strasbourg ring, light. A van passed us well over the limit, six or seven young people in it, mattresses roped to the roof, going the other way — south and west.
10:40 — Brumath services: chain station, dark, no power to the pumps. Didn’t stop. Nothing since the village yesterday.
11:10 — Stefan hasn’t touched the water. It’s where I wedged it this morning. His hands aren’t right — not shaking, not still. Eyes shut, not asleep.
It came to him past Brumath, watching Stefan’s hands. This wasn’t what had taken Lena. Lena went the slow way — economical, quieter by degrees, eating when it was put in front of her. This was faster and it was physical: the hands, sweat at the hairline in a cold car, Stefan folding inward by the hour. Not the moon. Something that had run out.
He’d had Stefan in the wrong column since the autumn.
“How long have you been without medication?”
Stefan didn’t open his eyes. It was a long time before he answered. “Almost two weeks.”
There was a pharmacy at the next junction, green cross dark, and another past it. There was no next question. No counter between here and Calais where a man could give a name and be handed back the thing that held him.
He kept right and watched the fuel.
Notebook. Day 156 — kept in the car.
11:40 — warning light.
12:05 — past Saverne the engine died. Coasted to the verge.
Odometer 84,891. Out — the same as the ones we passed all morning. Doors shut.
Notebook. Day 156.
We left the car on the verge. Stefan would try the houses up ahead for a car that still ran, a person, anything, and I’d go back to the services. We’d meet at the car.
I said it to his back. „Wir sind nicht aus Zucker.“ This morning he had only agreed. This time he didn’t answer. He walked steadily, didn’t turn, and where the road dipped he went out of sight.
Then I walked the other way.
Notebook. Day 156 — kept in the car.
14:30 — back at the car. Services dry, shop stripped. S. not back.
16:00 — not back.
16:40 — walked up to the houses. Four of them, dark, doors open, no one. Called from the yards. No answer, no sign he’d been there.
18:10 — back at the car. Dark. Not back.
21:00 — not back.
Notebook. Day 157.
He didn’t come back in the night. I kept the dome light on until the battery warned, in case he came to the road in the dark and missed the car. He didn’t come.
I won’t write that he’s dead. I don’t know that. I know he had two weeks of nothing in him, and that he walked up a road toward four empty houses and didn’t come back.
The jar is behind the seat. I gave the beetle the soft part this morning. That was Ana’s instruction.