Maybe This Time Read Free

on a stone. It hurt, but at least I regained my footing. I stood still, relieved to have solid ground beneath my feet again. Gradually I freed myself from the slimy strands. I placed one foot in front of the other and finally arrived at my neighbours’ jetty. For a long time I stayed in the water, waiting to see if the two of them had noticed me. But everything remained quiet. I sat down on the lowest step and gazed at the mass of vegetation that had entrapped me. The waves my thrashing had set off beat against the wooden posts. I noticed a rubber duck tied to one of them with a string. The duck kept bobbing up to the surface, bumping into the post and disappearing underwater again. Finally I had reached the place that had exerted such a powerful pull over me. I climbed the steps and stood on the jetty. But I no longer felt any desire to sit on either of the chairs and I made my way home through the gardens.
    I had had enough of it all now, and for a long time I was cured of the craving to creep under my neighbours’ skin. But at night, in dreams, I kept swimming over to them.
    After one such night I went down to the jetty. The previous tenant was sitting on the steps. He seemed to have been expecting me. Or perhaps, he simply took my presence for granted. It was hard to tell. He looked over at my neighbours, as if oblivious of me. After sitting next to him for a while, I stood up and went back into the house.
    From that day on, I didn’t return to the jetty. It had become his space, and with each day it became more completely his.
    He sat there in my place and I watched him from the house. I didn’t take my eyes off him. I saw how he stared over at them as they stared into the water. Then I, too, looked at them. Every day, every night, always, until now.

Two Ways
of Leaving
     
     

     

 
     
    She didn’t go the usual way. She walked more calmly and slowly than she normally did on her way home from work. He followed her. She went in and out of shops. She browsed and asked the shop assistants to show her a dress. Or she took one herself from the rail, held it up in front of a mirror, and disappeared into a changing room or behind a curtain.
    In a café, she smoked a cigarette, then another, and sat musing for a while, not paying any attention to the other customers. She searched in her handbag and took out a letter that she placed on the table in front of her. She glanced over it, then read it again and again from the beginning. She put it back in her bag, stood up and left the café. She strolled on from one shop window to the next, a jeweller’s, then a bookshop. She entered the bookshop and left it with one more carrier bag. She paused in front of a café, then walked on. In a children’s clothing shop, she fingered the fabric of a little shirt and of a jacket and trousers. She moved on, then came back, only to turn again and continue on her way.
    In the market she walked past the stalls and stands, trying the fruit. She greeted others and was greeted in return, picking up one apple after another or an orange, sniffing it, and putting it back. She bought vegetables and flowers and chatted with the stall-holders.
    In the neighbouring park, she sat on a bench under one of the trees and watched the chess players , the couples lying on the grass, the children feeding the ducks and the elderly people from the home nearby. She held the letter in her lap, wrote something, then crossed it out and ripped the letter up with a smile.
    Ducks swam towards her, hoping to be fed, but she didn’t notice them. She strolled across a footbridge , then past a row of houses on the other side of the stream. She stopped at one house with a garden . She put her bags down to catch a better view through the shrubbery.
    There were children playing in the garden. She watched them for a while before ringing the bell. Then she looked at her watch and moved on quickly and with determination.
    She came to a colourful area, with renovated