IN DEPTH INTO THE LAKE

IN DEPTH INTO THE LAKE

In the water of the lake, of a transparent green,  even if not a clear green___almost dark, instead___the white clouds of a blue, serene sky moved lightly, swaying slightly. The fronds of the fir trees wavered slightly, all around the edge, into the water….

At that time, early in the morning, there was no boat to sail the lake, not even fishing boats.

The people coming for a picnic on the lawn, those who would jump into the lake, and the swimmers, they all would arrive later. The lake was exactly as Alice remembered it .

Even though it had been twenty-four years since that day she had been here for the last time.

A long time had gone by from that day of August____it was the thirteenth of August, it was a Wednesday___and Alice was no longer young.

Standing on the lake shore she had pushed her hands deeper into her jacket’s pockets, digging with her fingers, with her snails in the bottom of her pockets, as if looking for something, as if she were looking for a little object, a little thing____like a button or a brooch____that she had lost.

But Alice did not have to look for any object in her pockets, where she perhaps was rummaging in search of… time. Was it possible that all those years had passed? Where had all time of so many years gone to end?

Alice heard a sound which sounded like a creaking of a somewhat rusty clock. It seemed to her this creaking were coming from the depth of the lake. She, going more close the lake, bent her head

to look down into the lake. Suddenly a whirlwind _____and she saw only black.

“ Oh, are you feeling bad?”An old male voice asked, while Alice, who had raised up her head, continued to see only dark. “ It’s nothing…a dizziness…but it’s passing” she said.

An old man, looking at her vey attentively, was standing in front of her. The old man, with a black cap on his head, was pushing a trolley carrying plastic bags…..inside which there was probably rubbish, that he intended to throw in the lake.

“ But look…I seem to know you….eh…yes, but sure I know you…..You must be….ah, you remind me someone….someone….ah, damnation , I cannot remember who…..you understand…at my age”

The old man said, taking his cap off and scratching his head, while he continued to stare, to scrutinize intently her face. “ I am Alice B…..I lived here in the village, in those which then were called the Red Houses” Alice said, continuing not to recognize the old man, an unknown at all for her. “ Ah, but listen! You are the little Alice, the Carlotta’s daughter….ah, I and your mother were very good friends….I’m Johnny, the miller’s son, don’t you remember of me?”

Alice kept on looking his very old face….without being able to find anything known in it.

“ Oh, but it is been a long time since you disappeared….it is been a long time since nobody knew anything about you….Even your mother, at least people kept on saying, didn’t know anything about you since you disappeared that summer…a lot of years ago…eh…more than twenty years passed from that summer….when Chris D., too, who had recently married Clara M., disappeared…Eh…eh….people said that you two had run away together….yeah, they also said that you were both dead…..indeed that you and Chris   had been killed….Ah, but I can see that at least you are still alive “

Ouch, now the old Johnny would surely ask her about Chris D., the other one who disappeared from the village in that distant summer. Alice felt sick just thinking about it. Instinctively, unwittingly, she looked again into the lake. 

“ You and Clara M. were friends, if I am not wrong in remembering…..Did you really run away with her husband?” , Johnny asked, looking at her with his pointed gaze, which shot out like an arrow from his sunken eyes. “ But at all I didn’t escape with Chris D., whom I hardly knew …..I know nothing about him” Alice said, but her voice started trembling as she uttered the last words: I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HIM____She didn’t feel like adding that it wasn’t true that she and Clara had been friends. Yeah, they were girls of the same age, they both lived in the same little town….It happened that they were both at the same show, at the same meeting…..that’s all, not that they were friends.

“ Clara also went away almost a year ago. They say she moved to a Northern city……Did you happen to see, to meet her again during these years? The old man asked.

“ No, I didn’t see anyone from the village since I left” Alice said, thoughtful, while her gaze came back to rest on the lake, as if irresistibly attracted by the water mirror.

She was careful to avoid to tell the old man that she too knew that Clara was no longer there.

Sure that she, Alice, couldn’t consider herself a friend of Clara. She and Clara Had Known eache other, then they had happened to meet often, but friends had never been. Tet that night of many years ago, a hot summer night___it was August___she had found herself doing something for Clara That she wouldn’t have done for a friend.  That night….had gone to her and, crying, she had asked her help.  Clara had killed her husband, Chris, who beat her, who mistreated her, and now she had to made his body disappear, since she absolutely didn’t want to end up in jail. Clara needed her help to do it. And Alice had helped her.  They had thrown Chris’s body into the lake, where not a few people had disappeared. Alice did not know why she had agreed to help Clara, to become such an accomplice in her crime. She had been wondering why during all those years, she would be wondering for the rest of her life. She knew that she would never see Clara again, to whom she would nevertheless feel connected for all her life.

That Chris’s body had disappeared, sunk the abysmal deepts of the lake, that was all that mattered.