‘I took the card. It would have seemed a bit odd to refuse it, now that they had made me their confidante. For I’d been the one who had asked if there was something wrong with the man... It had been something completely intuitive, that question. My reptilian brain must have had a reflex action...
‘I turned the card over and read: Andreas Falkenland, photographer. Then, without comment, I put it in my handbag.’
A wave of fog drifts over me as again I hear Rebecca say his full name... Andreas, my friend... An anxiety that is close to a sense of queasiness takes me unawares. My cerebrum begins to reflect: why?
She shrugs her shoulders and says in a low voice:
‘His address was in a block of flats on Gothersgade. This block of flats.’
‘Andreas lives two floors above me.’
‘Yes...’
‘When I saw you hesitating down there, I thought you might summon up some courage if we talked?’
‘I had no idea that Andreas had been in Barcelona. It’s ages since I’ve seen him. And Irene, too, for that matter. It takes me by surprise that Irene had followed him like a close girlfriend, even though I’m aware that they know each other.
Rebecca’s gaze fixes mine.
‘Now I really want to meet this Andreas Falkenland, but when I tried to ring the buzzer I quite rightly had my doubts, as you saw... The fact that I’m sitting here in your apartment, with someone I don’t know at all, is something I understand even less than my impulse to meet him.
‘When I got the visiting card on the plane, the woman said he wanted to photograph me. And he’s not just any photographer, she added...
‘But you must know him very well, since you live in the same block of flats?’
‘Yes, I know Andreas.’
Rebecca sends me a big smile, which I can’t possibly not return. A warm radiance wafts from her.
translated from Danish by David McDuff
Star Without Land
Star Without Land - 2
Star Without Land - 3
Star Without Land - 4
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