The Last Weynfeldt Read Free

put on clean pajamas. As he did every night. He owned fourteen pairs of pajamas, all tailored by his shirtmaker, all with monograms: six light-blue ones for the even days, six blue-and-white striped for the odd days and two for Sundays—one of the small quirks he allowed himself, providing his life with a little luxury and a little regularity. He believed that regularity prolonged life.
    There was also the opposing theory: regularity makes each day indistinguishable, and the more events and habits are repeated, the more the days resemble each other and the years too. Till your whole life feels like one single year.
    Weynfeldt didn’t believe this. If you do the same things more often, go to the same places and meet the same people, the differences become subtler each time. And if the differences are subtler then time passes unnoticed. Someone you see every month instead of every year never appears to age. And you never appear to age to them.
    Repetition slows down the passage of time. Weynfeldt was absolutely convinced of this. Change might make life more eventful, but it undoubtedly made it shorter too.
    He returned to his bedroom. Lorena was lying in the same position, on top of the duvet. He looked at her. She was very slim, a delicate build, almost too thin. Above her groin to the right was a small tattoo, perhaps a Chinese character. Her belly button was pierced, and it sparkled—a cut stone, glittering as Weynfeldt walked to the wardrobe to fetch another duvet. He lay down next to Lorena and covered them both.
    â€œWhat about fucking?” she asked, drowsy.
    â€œTomorrow,” he said. “If you still want to.”
    â€œOkay.”
    He turned the bedside lamp off.
    She reached her hand out and let it fall on his chest, flat and lifeless. Her breathing soon became softer and regular.
    Well done, Adrian , Weynfeldt thought, as he fell asleep.
    Keep them talking. That was how they did it in the films Weynfeldt had seen, when police officers tried to stop people committing suicide. Or when mediators talked to kidnappers. Distracting them from carrying out their plan was half the battle. But he couldn’t think of anything to say. Like those dreams when you need to run but can’t move from the spot, he stood there, facing a woman about to kill herself, and said nothing.
    Like the time nearly thirty years ago when Daphne had said, “I’m leaving now.” He hadn’t even been able to say Please don’t go , or No! Not even the one syllable, No . And she’d wanted him to say something; he’d sensed that. She had stood there with her suitcase and given him the chance to stop her.
    Daphne was an exchange student at his university. He’d met her at an art history seminar. Everyone had fallen for her; why she’d picked him he would never know. When she returned to England he went with her, defying his parents’ objections—his father despairing, his mother enraged. They rented a small apartment in Chelsea and spent a year there, a year which grew happier in Weynfeldt’s memory with every year that followed.
    He had never really understood why it ended. An argument, a slight tear in the fabric, a case of unfounded jealousy; he couldn’t reconstruct it, no matter how hard he tried. But he knew they’d still be together today if he’d managed to utter one single syllable.
    He’d had to watch, speechless and immobile, as she left. Not resolute or angry, but despondent and hesitant. As if she were waiting till the last moment for him to stop her.
    She had said she would have her things picked up in a few days. When they were still there a week later he started to get his hopes up. After ten days he called her parents. They told him that two days after she left him, she had been in a car crash. She had died on the spot.
    Adrian saw the fists gripping the balustrade loosen their grip, the knuckles returning to the shade of the surrounding hands.