NOVEL WORKSHOP
Woman on the Side of the Road
14 The Woman Who Came from Nowhere
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He began to feel very sleepy. The road lay like a straight line ahead.
He awoke abruptly. Far ahead thought he saw something. A dot. The dot grew and became a human being. A human standing upright on the side of the road with her back to him.
She just stood there, and he slowed down and stopped right next to her. He opened the window on the right and looked at her. She stood with her eyes fixed far in front of her.
“Hey,” he said, “hey are you okay?”
At first, he thought she had not heard what he said. But then she abruptly turned her face towards him.
It was such a moment he would remember, maybe forever, he thought. He saw a seemingly exhausted, helpless, flat face. But in her eyes he meant just that moment to see a special glow, an intensity that told of pride, of hidden strength.
In retrospect, he thought about what he had observed there. What was present in this face, which one so seldom encounters? Was it solely suffering and despair that lay in this gaze, was it rebellion, or what was it? Later, when he thought back on this episode, this encounter with the unknown woman, there was one word that came to his mind: Beauty, the beauty of the face, the beauty of a moment, the human beauty. And the vibrant power of the seemingly stiff, pale, exhausted face.
He had looked at her and thought that she was a person who was far down, deep inside herself, perhaps protected from the world, but not completely. There was something in this face, a glimpse of something powerful, a hidden strength he could sense, and this indefinable beauty in her face just as she lifted her face towards him.
His first feeling was that she was so incredibly beautiful, but she was beautiful in a very special way. In a way, he felt he was attracted to her. She radiated something indefinable.
The next thing he thought was that she was dragged, tired in the face, seemed quite exhausted. Someone who has been through great trials, a human being who has been through something difficult.
He thought about how incredibly beautiful people are. Everyone has something that attracts the viewer’s eye. They smile or they do not smile. But they attract the eye. Not just young, great people who are beautiful just because they are young. Not beauty before age, or age before beauty. So exciting just to observe a face, a human being. So incredibly beautiful, and exciting. Not the beautiful actor faces in the movies. Not the standard beautiful faces in advertising. This was a different kind of beauty.
He was a little unsure of how many long moments he was sitting like this waiting for her to talk. She said nothing, just stood silent and looked past him through the car window. He drove a few meters forward and out to the side. Stopped the engine, got out and walked around the car.
He stood in front of her and opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out of his mouth. He only saw her eyes. He looked into a pair of eyes that said something he could not quite grasp.
“Hey,” he said, “come here, sit down.”
She did not respond.
“Listen,” he said, “you can trust me. I’m not dangerous. I want to help you; you have to believe in me.”
While they were standing there, he heard a sound. An engine sound like from a car that came driving in the opposite direction. He turned and looked behind him. He tried to assess how far away the oncoming car was. He turned back and saw that she was gone. Suddenly she was just gone! He felt the panic begin to seep in over him. He wondered what was happening. Did he have hallucinations? What was this?
He walked around the car and saw that she was standing there, partly hidden from the passing car. He walked over to her, hesitating. Then he went forward and opened the passenger door.
“Sit down, it’s okay.”
He tried to read her face, but could not see anything in it. Her face was stiff, frozen.
“I want to help you. I want to — yes, I’m going to take care of you.”
He stopped. Nodded to her.
“Come on, sit in here.”
She did as he said. Went to the open car door, sat in the passenger seat.
He started the engine and turned out onto the road. He glared at her, but she sat motionless, as if far away, in another land.
The next hour he drove at a steady pace. The road surface was good and he could maintain a reasonably high speed. He looked at her at regular intervals. Most of the time she sat completely still, with her eyes closed, as far as he could see.
— Did she sleep? Maybe exhausted after walking for several hours on the country road.
“Where are you going?” he asked, looking at her.
“I mean — where were you going?” he repeated.
No reaction at first, but then she just lifted her shoulders.
“Where are you from?”
She answered in the same way.
He thought: “No. It does not work. Can just as well wait.”
