The Silent Land, page 20
‘All the candles are gone,’ he said with a sheepish grin, like a man trying to make light of a difficult situation.
She sat up immediately and looked for signs of the men – telltale burning embers in the dark, movement of any kind. There was none. She looked up at the open sky. The stars were locked in a frozen cascade, twinkling in their billion-fold, an army of semi-immortal deities. She gasped, her breath congealing in the icy air.
Then there was that howl again, followed by three crisp barks, and as she looked across the snow she saw a dog running towards them. Jake scrambled to his feet. ‘It’s Sadie!’ he cried. ‘She’s come back!’
The dog bulleted towards Jake and he ran to meet her. Sadie leapt up to greet him, tail thrashing, whimpering, licking his face. They rolled together in the snow. ‘It’s Sadie,’ Jake called to Zoe. ‘Can you believe she came back?’
Zoe watched as the dog’s enthusiasm quietened. Jake sat on the snow as she snuffled in his ear. It almost seemed to Zoe that the two of them were having a conversation. Sadie stretched her neck and pointed her moist snout at the moon as Jake scratched her between the ears. She snuffled in his ear again.
He stopped stroking her and became still.
The dog snuffled in his ear a third time. Jake’s head fell forwards. He became still, his hand placed flat on Sadie’s flank. They stayed that way for some time and Zoe thought something must be wrong, but after a while Jake became reanimated, stroking the dog’s flank and tickling the sweet spot behind her ears. Eventually he got up and led the dog over to Zoe.
Sadie came and flung herself flat on the snow next to Zoe. But when she looked up at Jake, his face was wet with tears.
‘What is it?’
He shook his head, then lowered himself beside Zoe and hugged her and kissed her neck.
‘Jake?’
‘Sadie explained it all to me.’
‘It?’
‘Yes. She told me everything.’
‘What did she tell you?’
‘Well, she’s a dog and of course she can’t explain everything but somehow she made me understand some things. And I’m going to tell you, but it’s going to make me cry, my darling.’
She held his face in her hands. Fat tears, snow-reflecting crystals, were already streaking his face. Sadie, wagging her tail, shuffled up to him and licked away his tears. He laughed, stroking her.
‘You see, we cheated death.’
‘We did?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does that mean we’re safe?’
‘We were always safe. But we cheated death, and because we couldn’t let each other go we found some extra time.’
‘No.’
‘Yes. We found some extra time. The dream of the present moment was interrupted for us. We’re watching all of this through the seams between life and death.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Our love. It gave us extra time. It cheated death.’
‘But that’s a good thing. Isn’t it? Isn’t that a good thing, Jake?’
‘Yes. Yes it is.’
There came from somewhere in the mountains a tiny shivering sound, faint and distant, at that moment almost indiscernible, but though they didn’t know it yet, they both surely heard it.
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No. I don’t think I like what you’re saying.’
‘Because you know what’s coming?’
‘No.’
‘Yes. It’s because you know what’s coming. Listen to that.’
A steady, rhythmic rattle, like crushed ice shaken in a cocktail glass, or perhaps like the wheezing of an old steam train climbing a gradient, sounded out of the far distance.
‘What’s that, Jake?’
‘You know what it is.’
‘No. I don’t. I don’t want to know.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s all good. It’s all good.’
‘How can it be good?’
‘I’m keeping you here. I thought I was keeping you warm, but I’ve been keeping you here. Our love. Keeping us.’
‘We’ll be all right here. We’ve done fine so far. The baby.’
‘No. It’s already passing. We cheated death, but just for a little while.’
The rhythmic rattle, a kind of hissing in the sharp, cold air, was drawing closer. And then she recognised the sound.
‘You’re abandoning me, Jake? You’re leaving me here?’
‘Listen to me. Everything we are we have built from every thing we have done together. If we drank a glass of wine and we said it tasted like this or that, then that’s how it tasted. One has to help remember it for the other.’
The sound was growing now and was accompanied by a kind of drumming in the earth, under the snow. The drumming was the sound of hooves and the rattle was the shiver of harness bells.
‘No. Please don’t leave me here.’
‘Everything, our whole lives, has been a series of delights and griefs that are gone for ever; gone unless we remember them for each other.’
The shiver of the harness bells was louder now, and the great black horse they adorned appeared out of the dark, its vast sweating flanks gleaming, its breath rising and billowing in the freezing air, its huge red plume, red like wine caught in a jewelled cup or like blood in a silver chalice, shaking before it and cutting a swathe through the brittle air.
‘You can’t abandon me on the snow! You’re not going to. You’re not.’
‘I’m top banana today, my darlin’ girl, and there’s only a seat for one of us.’
‘No. I’m not having it, Jake.’
‘All you have to do is refuse to forget.’
She grabbed at his lapels and hung on to him with a ferocious grip. ‘This is not going to happen.’
‘You know how to do that, don’t you, Zoe? You know how to refuse to forget?’ He floated his index finger over her gripping arms and touched her lightly in the middle of her forehead. ‘You just keep this eye open. And you’ll see me everywhere. Just everywhere.’
He pulled away from her.
The giant black horse and sledge approached at pace, taking a track that curved away from them both. Jake turned and started taking long, purposeful strides towards the horse, aiming to intercept its path.
‘Jake!’ she screamed and scrambled to her feet, stunned, incredulous to see him walking away from her.
But it didn’t stop him. He proceeded on his steady determined way across the snow. Already the horse was slowing as it made the slope. Jake had already covered a few paces before Zoe set off after him, running. But she had no strength. Jake was heading to intercept the horse, but even though he was only walking steadily towards it and she was running, it was Zoe who was falling back. She ran faster, but the irrational distance between them only increased instead of shortened. She fell and got up again, running, slipping on the snow, her feet going from under her.
For a moment it seemed that Jake might not catch the horse; but then as he approached the animal and the awe-inspiring vapours rising from its flanks, it seemed to slow deliberately, to break its trot to a brisk walk; and in that break Jake marched up to the sledge, finding a step up onto the footboard, and from there he scrambled into the safe pocket of the black leather upholstery. The horse tossed its head and recovered its trot again, picking up speed as it found a flat track.
Still Zoe ran after them, screaming at Jake, trying to make pace. For a moment she even drew abreast of the giant sledge, reaching as she ran, but the footboard seemed to climb away from her as she scrambled alongside, and the door to the carriage loomed above her outstretched fingers. The sledge seemed to swell in size until the footboard was well out of reach, or until she was impossibly small. She fell on her knees in the snow, crying after Jake.
Sadie, keeping pace with the sledge, stopped and stole a look back at her. Then the dog bulleted across the snow to follow her master, quickly catching up with the sledge before both it and the horse disappeared into the swirling darkness.
16
Zoe was numb with shock and cold. It had never occurred to her that Jake would abandon her. As she looked around her she could see nothing but a wide expanse of snow with the mountain slope on one side and dark pools of pine trees on the other. The town, and whatever comforts or resources it had previously offered, had gone. She understood that she was alone in this place, and pregnant.
She retreated to the flickering embers of the fire, but it only served to remind her how bone-numbingly cold she was. There were only a half-dozen or so logs remaining, the very last of the supply. She picked up one of the logs but it felt light and insubstantial in her hands, and when she put it onto the embers it flared and caught unnaturally. She huddled over the flame, feeling weak, drawing the duvet around her shoulders, shuddering with the pain of a cold that scraped crystal fingers across her beating heart.
She stared up at the stars in the winter sky. They had never in her life looked so multiple, so incalculable. The stars did not look down upon her. They seemed almost to turn away, with disinterested hard energy.
The log burning on the fire split and fell apart. She put another two on the flame and watched them burn rapidly. Time was racing, hunting for its correct velocity. The logs burned out like wads of paper. She put the very last of the wood on the fire, almost with a dedication to find out what would happen in this fleeting existence when they were all gone, when all resources were gone. She knew she could not survive this cold. She stroked her belly and watched the logs burn.
Death would come; a real death, oblivion. But she wondered if even that could take away the sting of loneliness she felt from Jake’s betrayal.
She sensed her mind closing down as the last log turned to embers. But then she saw them. Figures coming towards her out of the snow. Shapes, shadows, approaching her. They were roughly human, no more than silhouettes against the star-lit snow. Some of them had trumpets. One put his mouth to the trumpet and gave a long, low blast. Others had silver whistles and began to blow on them. More trumpets sounded. They were circling, moving in towards her.
So this was how she was to be taken. Perhaps they were demons coming for her. Amid the trumpets and the whistle-blowing she heard them shouting until they were all raising their voices. They were closing in.
These beings were led by the figures she had seen waiting outside the hotel. Men in black garb, their mouths partially wound in scarves. The smoking men. They were still smoking now. It was as if they had waited for the last embers of the last log to burn out before they began to throw down their cigarettes and approach her.
She had no strength to resist as they reached out for her, clawing at her. A sleepy paralysis took her over. If she was to be carried off to hell in this way she had no fight left. She thought only of Jake, and of the baby growing inside her.
17
I am a long way down. And yet I see it from above. White drifts of six-pointed crystals of tender, tender snow. The crystals interlock and make a wall. If I can get through the wall. If I can get through.
Then the crystals change and start to run past my eyes like complex machine code on a grey computer screen. No, it’s DNA. Strings of DNA running by, swimming by. No, it’s complex mathematical formulae, tiny numerals spinning before my eyes. Now it’s white cotton seed borne by a breeze, but in incredible slo-mo. It’s a tiny current, an eddy in Time. There: it’s snowflakes again.
Just snowflakes.
The snowflakes are in my ears, in my mouth, in my nose, like cocaine. I tried it once. You can keep it for your mother: it’s not a patch on where being in love can get you. The blood in my veins is frozen but it sings of love.
I can hear the sword of an angel scything through the air. Whop, whop, whop. Oh come. I can feel the vibration in the earth, the disturbance of air currents, the icy terror in the blade, the vestigial fire in my blood.
It’s very nice. I can let go.
I can fall into a place thronged with people. Their voices are a pleasing babble, and the air from their many mouths rises and cushions me as I fall gently among them. Many people come and go. I recognise some of them. There are two women standing by the desk. I somehow know them. I know their language. I know what they are talking about. A man walks by me and winks. Trying it on. I smell his cologne. Three uniformed women work behind a broad desk, busy dealing with people. One is young, with her hair scraped back and tied in a pretty ponytail. She presses a phone to her ear. Her older colleague has hair the colour of fire. She wears black-framed spectacles. She is processing a credit card. Another colleague talks to a man in a grey suit, struggling to hear what he has to say because the place is loud with excited chatter. People wait in a line by the desk, checking in, checking out.
I see the concierge, in his smart maroon and grey livery. He sees me and raises his eyebrows at me. He waves. I seem to recognise him. He waves at me again, beckoning me forwards across the busy lobby. But I can’t move. The concierge whispers something to another man before he picks up an envelope from his blond-wood desk. ‘Madam!’ he says to me. ‘Madam!’ He waves the envelope at me.
It’s not for me, I want to say.
I am afraid of the concierge. His bald head is illuminated by the strong lights overhead. There is a bloom of sweat on his shiny brow. He makes his way towards me through the people thronging the lobby. ‘Madam!’ he says again.
I pluck up courage and in a clear voice I say, ‘But it’s not for me.’
‘But madam,’ says the concierge, closing in on me with a smile, placing the envelope in my hand, ‘it is indeed for you, madam.’ He stands there, the sweet smile still upon his lips, as if waiting for me to open the envelope.
I am afraid to open it. But with trembling fingers I tear it open and I reach inside. But there is nothing. Or not exactly nothing, but what there is is nothing more than a card. It is a kind of Tarot card, but not like any Tarot card I know. It depicts a tree. The words at the bottom say ‘L’arbre de Vie’. Tree of life, I know. But it is not like any tree of life I have seen. It is more like a Christmas tree, decorated with curious objects and impossible fruit.
I look up at the concierge because I want to say, ‘What does this mean?’ But the concierge has gone. All of them, everyone, everything. All are gone.
18
Zoe opened her eyes to a white expanse. She felt the silk and honey of warmth in her veins. An odour of disinfectant. A brightly illuminated room. The white expanse was that of cotton sheets and a pillowcase.
There was a nurse looking at her. They blinked at each other. The nurse walked away quickly and returned within seconds with another woman, this one in a doctor’s white coat.
The woman bent over her. ‘Zoe?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘You know what happened?’ She spoke with a strong French accent.
‘Avalanche.’
‘Yes.’
‘My husband?’
The doctor sat on the bed and took her hand. ‘We didn’t find him yet. We only got you just in time. I’m so sorry.’
Zoe tilted back her head and opened her mouth in a silent wail and let the bitter salt tears flow over her face. The doctor waited patiently for the sobbing and convulsions to subside. But they didn’t. She said some words to the nurse in French and the nurse produced a medical syringe which she handed to the doctor.
‘No,’ Zoe said, ‘no. I don’t want to go back to sleep. I don’t want that.’
The doctor nodded. She put the syringe into a dish. ‘As you wish. If you want it, you tell me.’
Zoe looked around her at the room. Both the doctor and the nurse stared at her, as if they were waiting for her to say something.
‘You might not think this,’ the doctor said, ‘but you have been very lucky. Very lucky. You were at the door of death. Do you know that you are pregnant?’
Zoe nodded.
‘The baby seems to be fine,’ the doctor said. ‘We’ll watch that.’
Zoe felt choked. Huge sobs were trying to fight their way out of her, but she pushed them down.
‘How do you feel? I mean, physically?’
Zoe shook her head. Her grief was physical.
‘Apart from a few bruises I didn’t find anything,’ the doctor said. ‘This bloodshot in your eyes will go after a while. It’s from the pressure of the snow, weighing on you.’
She struggled to speak. ‘Can I see?’
The doctor asked the nurse to find her a mirror.
Zoe held up the mirror. The whites of her eyes had indeed been turned all red. It was the way Jake had looked.
‘It will pass. You just need to rest. You have a lot of things to think about.’ The doctor stood up. ‘Look, there’s a man outside. He’s the one who found you. He dug you out of the snow. He would like to speak with you and he’s been waiting outside since you were brought in. But if you’re not up to it I can send him away. He can come back later.’
‘No, please let him come in.’
The doctor nodded to the nurse, who went out of the room. After a few minutes she returned with an elderly gentleman, his leathery, tanned face wreathed with lines. His grey hair was shaved close to his skull. He had a miraculously thin and close-trimmed moustache. There was a smile on his lips but his eyes glittered with sympathy for her grief, like sunlight on frost.
It was perfectly natural that Zoe should hold out her arms to embrace the stranger who had saved her. The doctor drew back so that he could lean across the bed and accept her embrace. ‘Vous bénisse! Vous bénisse!’ he said.
He reeked of tobacco.
‘Thank you thank you thank you.’
He stood back and spoke to her in French, not appearing to care if Zoe could understand. The doctor translated. ‘He says you are the third person he has dug out of the snow, but you were the one he had the least hope for.’
