Waiting for Wednesday Read Online Free PDF Page B

wait. It is difficult to help but I
know about you. I know that when you are sad you lie in your very hot bath for
hours.’
    ‘Well, not for
hours
,’
said Frieda. ‘But where is my bath? I was just about to get into it.’
    ‘Your bath is gone away,’ said
Josef. ‘While you were with your friend, Sasha, me and my friend, Stefan, we take
your bath away and we take it to the dump. It was a bad plastic bath, and it was small,
not good for lying in.’
    ‘It was very good for lying in,’
said Frieda.
    ‘No,’ said Josef, firmly.
‘It is gone. I have great luck. I work on a house in Islington. He spends much,
much money. He cut everything out of the house and throw it in four skips and then put
new things in. He is throwing out many beautiful things but the most beautiful thing is
a big iron bath. I see the bath and I think of you. It is perfect.’
    Frieda looked more carefully at the
bathroom. Where the bath had once stood, the wall and floor were now exposed. There were
cracked tiles, bare floorboards, a gaping pipe. Josef himself was covered in dust, his
dark hair speckled with it. ‘Josef, you should have asked me.’
    Josef spread his arms helplessly. ‘If
I had asked you, you would have said no.’
    ‘Which is why you should have asked
me.’
    Josef made a gesture, palm upwards.
‘Frieda, you protect all other people and sometimes you get hurt from that. Whatyou must do is let other people help you.’ He looked at
Frieda more closely. ‘Why are you holding your pen like that?’
    Frieda glanced down. She was still holding
the pen in her fist, like a dagger. ‘I thought there was a burglar,’ she
said. Once more she made herself take a deep breath. It had been well meant, she told
herself. ‘So, how long will it take to put my old bath back just the way it
was?’
    Josef looked thoughtful. ‘That is
problem,’ he said. ‘When we took the bath from the wall and the pipe and the
brackets, there were big cracks from that. That bath was just all crap. And, anyway, it
is now at the dump.’
    ‘This is probably some sort of crime,
what you’ve done, but anyway, what happens now?’
    ‘The beautiful bath is now in the
workshop of another friend called Klaus. That is no problem. But here …’ He
gestured with his wrench at the damage and gave a sigh. ‘That is
problem.’
    ‘What do you mean a problem?’
said Frieda. ‘
You
did it.’
    ‘No, no,’ said Josef.
‘This is …’ He said something in his own language. It sounded
contemptuous. ‘The pipe connecting here is very bad. Very bad.’
    ‘It always worked fine.’
    ‘It was just being lucky. One movement
of the bath and …’ He made an eloquent gesture signifying a chaotic and
destructive flood. ‘I will put a proper pipe here and make the wall good and tiles
on the floor. It will be my gift to you and you will have a bath that will be your place
to be happy.’
    ‘When?’ said Frieda.
    ‘I will do what must be done,’
said Josef.
    ‘Yes, but when will you do
it?’
    ‘It will be a few days. Only a very
few.’
    ‘I was going to have a bath now. All
the way home I had anidea in my head of having it and what it was
going to be like and how much I needed it.’
    ‘It will be worth the waiting
for.’
My very dearest Frieda, I’m
sitting in my office, thinking of you. Whatever I do, whoever I meet, I think of
you. I can give a lecture, and all the time I’m talking, the words coming
quite fluently from me, part of my mind is occupied with you. I can hold a
conversation, cut up an onion, walk across Brooklyn Bridge, and you’re there.
It’s like an ache that won’t go away, and that I do not want to go away.
I was going to say I haven’t felt like this since I was a teenager, but I
never felt like this as a teenager! I ask myself why I’m here, when my
life’s work is to make you happy. I can hear you say that happiness
isn’t the point, that you don’t know the meaning of the word – but I
know the meaning of the