The Silent Land, page 9
‘You’re going to have to pour me another glass. Does it still taste of nothing to you?’
‘No – it tastes of all the things you say, it really does. It really, really does. Don’t you think that’s odd?
‘Everything is odd here.’
‘No, I mean the way it only tastes of something after we’ve talked about it. And I had no idea you knew so much about wine.’
‘I don’t. I was making it up. At least I think I was. The point is that here, we can tell our own story. The story of what happens. We don’t have to let other people tell us the story and— Did you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’
Jake was on his feet and striding across to the window. ‘I swear I heard a dog bark.’
‘A dog?’
‘Yes, a dog. I heard it bark. Really clear, with an echo across the snow.’
She joined him at the window. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’
‘I wasn’t imagining it.’
‘I’m not saying you did.’
‘I know you’re not saying I did. When I say I’m not imagining things, I’m talking to myself.’
‘I can’t see anything out there.’
‘There was a dog. Or at least there was a bark. I’m going out to look.’
She shrugged and let him go and she sat by the fire and waited. She took another sip of the cardinal’s red robe. The fire burned in the hearth without a crackle: clean, orange flames, like fingers reaching from under the curve of the log, cradling it, almost lovingly, as it burned. She turned from the fire, looked out, and saw Jake trudging through the snow.
After a while he came back. ‘Nothing,’ he said in a depressed voice.
‘Well.’
‘I could have sworn.’
‘Drink some more wine.’
They finished off the bottle of red wine. Now it tasted of many wonderful things.
‘It would be good,’ he said.
‘What would?’
‘If there was a dog.’
She held his hand in hers. ‘Do you think we’ll ever get over that? The sadness? The regret?’
He drained his glass and placed it on the table. ‘Let’s go and have some fun.’
They went up the drag lift onto a long easy run and skied down backwards together all the way. They took a steep red run and came down carving precision turns, she trying to keep in his tracks exactly, and then reversing the order. They found their way into the snowboarding park and rode a few jumps. Their skiing seemed to have improved disproportionately to the time they had spent on the skis. Zoe said skiers always remember themselves as performing better than they had in reality; Jake agreed but said he could never remember being this good. The skiing was by no means effortless, but their technical proficiency was a surprise to both of them.
The snowboard park had a control station with a sound system for broadcasting through speakers wired across the slopes. Jake found a Jimi Hendrix CD, cranked up the volume and they spent the rest of the afternoon tearing around the snowboard park, running the half-pipes and quarter-pipes, leaping the spines and tabletops. They’d both started out as snowboarders but had moved over to skis in favour of speed.
After a couple of hours the light started to fade. Jake wanted to leave the music running, but Zoe made him turn it off. She said she liked to hear the sound of the moon and the stars over the snow and it seemed so right at the time that he didn’t question it. They let their skis glide them back to their hotel.
As they arrived at the bottom of the slope, a dog barked, clearly in the cold. The bark seemed to hang in the icy air.
‘I heard it that time, Jake!’
‘Over there. Near the trees.’
‘There it is!’
At the foot of the ski slope was a thin clump of trees dividing two nursery runs. A medium-sized black dog sat back on its haunches, muzzle pointing up, its front paws between its hind legs. It barked again; and the bark ricocheted to them through the cold dusk air. The dog licked its lips and its red tongue flashed in the chiaroscuro of the declining light.
Jake whistled to the dog. ‘C’m here, c’m here.’
The dog rose, its tail wagging; though it seemed reluctant to approach. Jake pushed on his skis and glided nearer to the dog, whistling, calling it. The dog barked again.
Jake stopped and stepped out of his bindings. He took two steps towards the dog and then he stopped dead. ‘Oh my God,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ Zoe came up behind him. The dog was still wagging its tail, looking happy. ‘Come on, boy,’ Zoe called.
‘It isn’t a boy,’ he said. ‘It’s a bitch. It’s my dog. It’s Sadie.’
Sadie was the dog that Jake had grown up with. He’d had her from a pup and she had died when he was eighteen, some years before he’d met Zoe.
The dog, as if triggered by the name, flung herself across at Jake, yelping and wagging her tail. Almost delirious in her happiness at finding Jake, as she jumped up at him she left yellow spots of piss in the snow. Jake fell to his knees hugging the dog, letting her lick his face.
‘What’s going on?’ Zoe asked.
‘It’s my dog it’s my dog it’s my dog!’ Jake was laughing and crying simultaneously. ‘I haven’t seen her in years and years, and I missed her, and she’s back.’ With his knees deep in the snow and the dog licking the tears from his face, he looked up at Zoe, smiling. ‘She’s back.’
Zoe squatted down by the dog and her husband. ‘Jake … are you sure it’s your dog?’
‘Sadie, meet Zoe. Zoe, meet Sadie. I can’t believe this day! I can’t!’
The dog licked Zoe’s face, and then went back to Jake. Zoe wanted to share in the happiness, but she didn’t believe it. Though she was thrilled to see this new sign of life, she was not a dog lover and had no experience of canines.
‘Jake, how can you be certain it’s your dog?’
Jake laughed. ‘Can you hear that, Sadie? Can you hear that? Darling, if you have a dog, you know it when you see it again. You know it.’
‘Okay. It just … looks like a lot of dogs to me.’
‘Listen to her, Sadie! She says you look like any ol’ dog! Sweetheart, if I didn’t see you in years and years I’d still know you. It’s the same thing.’
‘Okay. I just … you’re not fooling yourself because you want her to be Sadie, right?’
‘Here! Without looking, I know she has a scar in the inside fold of her left ear. She got a nasty cut from some barbed wire one time. Come over here.’ He held the dog still and pulled back her ear. Zoe peered hard at the pink fleshy exposed part of the inside of the ear. It was true there was a little scar there. Or perhaps it was a shadow. Maybe it was a scar, she thought.
‘Phew!’
‘This is so wonderful,’ Jake said. He got up out of the snow and hugged his wife. ‘Come on, let’s take her back to the hotel.’
With the dog trotting happily at Jake’s heels, they all made their way back to the hotel.
‘Do you think the management allow dogs?’ Zoe said.
Now they didn’t even bother leaving their equipment in the ski lockers; they just left everything in the carpeted lobby, along with their skis boots, gauntlets and coats. Jake went through to the kitchen to find something for the dog. He glanced at the steak still gleaming fresh on the block with the chopped vegetables; then he decided against.
‘No old steak for you, Sadie!’
Instead he walked into the freezer and took a steak from the rack. He defrosted it in the microwave and fried it in a skillet. He let it cool before putting it on a plate and offering it to the dog. Sadie wagged her tail and licked her lips, but she turned her nose up at the steak.
‘No good, girl? What they been feeding you on here?’ He wondered why Sadie wasn’t eating. Any dog would devour a piece of steak regardless of its state of hunger. Jake hunkered down and grabbed Sadie’s head just behind each flappy pouch of an ear. He wanted to smell her breath to see what she’d been eating. Thinking he was playing, Sadie licked him. He got a blast of her breath but it smelled of nothing. He tried to remember the smell of a dog’s breath.
Fishy, he thought, even when she hadn’t been eating fish; and mealy, like biscuit; and earthy like the soil after rain; and like yellow meadow grass; and pond-water; and … stop. He told himself to stop. He told himself to stop because this process of remembering made him bring to mind all the things he would never scent or savour ever again in his life other than in memory; and even though memory could restore them momentarily, that thought was bitter-sweet.
He grabbed the dog again, and she licked him, and this time he scented on her warm breath all the things he had just remembered. He walked out of the kitchen and the dog followed him.
He found Zoe in their hotel room.
‘Can we have Sadie in the room with us?’
‘I’d welcome Sadie’s fleas if she had some right now. It’s just great to see another living thing.’
‘Well, I guess she’s another dead thing, actually. I mean, I buried her, in the back garden, years ago. Buried her under a plum tree that had never fruited. Next season and ever after there was tons of fruit on that tree.’
‘Nutrients.’
‘Or a way of coming back to say hello? Shall I tell you something? I didn’t cry when my dad died, but I blubbed like a baby when I buried Sadie. Does that make me a bad person?’
‘A bad person?’
‘I felt more for my dog. Some people would say there’s something wrong there.’
‘You didn’t care much for what “some people” said when you were alive. Why would you now you’re dead? Heck, it doesn’t feel right saying that, but you know what I mean. Your father never showed affection. That’s what you told me.’
He went to the window and looked out at the darkness creeping over the unimpeachable white that lay on the ground like marzipan on a wedding cake. ‘Cold as the snow. Food on the table, clothes on your back, a serviceable education and never a hug. Never once.’
‘A different generation, Jake.’ ‘Well, they got that wrong. If I had a kid I’d—’
‘You’d what?’
He turned back to the dog. ‘Come here, girl!’
Zoe almost framed a word. But couldn’t.
That evening, before preparing for bed, Jake set a blanket down for Sadie so that she could make her den against the wall. Sadie threw herself on the blanket as if she’d always slept there. She lay with her head between her front paws, looking up at them with button eyes. Jake went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. As Zoe pulled back the duvet cover, something happened.
The lights dimmed for a moment, flickered and went out. After a couple of seconds of darkness, they blinked back on again.
Jake came out of the bathroom, holding his toothbrush. ‘What was that?’
‘The lights went out.’
‘I know that. What I mean is why?’
Zoe just stared at him.
‘Did they go out all over the resort?’
‘No idea.’
‘Do you think it was just our room? Or just our hotel?’
She shook her head.
‘I wonder what it means,’ he said.
Sadie was up on all fours, gazing at him. She barked, once.
‘Does it have to mean anything?’ Zoe asked.
Jake went to the window. ‘The lights are still on out there.’
‘Come to bed.’
‘I wonder what happened.’
‘Come to bed.’
7
In the morning Zoe got out of bed, slipped on her towelling robe and went off in search of breakfast. She wanted to make things as normal as possible for Jake, and a tray of toast, bacon, coffee and juice with a flower filched from the lobby might just do the trick. And that was something: the fresh flowers in their crystal vases seemed in no more danger of wilting than the food in the kitchen. She padded down the carpeted hall and summoned the lift.
The lift door opened and when she pressed the button for the ground floor the chime echoed around her. She’d thought hard about how to make things normal. It was the only way to hang on to sanity. She wanted to hit the ski slopes again. Jake seemed more concerned than she was about the terms of their existence. He’d wondered out loud if they were scheduled to be in this place for eternity. If they were, he’d said, there might be a few more things they would like to do besides skiing.
Zoe had agreed to that. She was just wondering what those ‘few more things’ might be exactly, in a ski resort, when the lift arrived at the lobby and the doors opened. Zoe gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth.
The lobby was filled with people. They were noisy, animated, chattering and they thronged the reception area. They were mostly dressed in ski gear, but there were others, too, waiting in line at the reception desk, shuffling forwards with suitcases.
Zoe stepped into the throng, still with her hand pressed to her mouth. Behind the desk, three receptionists in smart hotel uniforms were dealing with the new arrivals, looking slightly harassed. One young receptionist, her hair scraped back into a ponytail, pressed a telephone receiver to one ear and held the palm of her free hand against the other. An older woman with copper hair and black-framed spectacles was meanwhile processing a credit card from one of the new arrivals waiting in line. A third was straining to hear what her manager, a thin man in a grey suit, was trying to tell her above the din and commotion in the lobby. Everyone seemed to be talking at once.
Outside the plate-glass doors of the hotel a modern bus arrived. Zoe heard the sneeze of its air brakes as it halted abruptly and parked up. The door opened and the bus began to decant more new arrivals into the hotel.
Elsewhere the concierge Zoe recognised from the day of their arrival was busy with a customer. He leaned on a lectern-like desk of blond wood set aside from the reception, scribbling rapidly on a sheet of yellow paper. His maroon and grey hotel livery shone softly and his bald head reflected the bright overhead lights. A bloom of sweat had appeared on his brow.
Zoe was distracted from the concierge when a man walked past her and gave her a lascivious wink. She caught a whiff of the man’s cologne and remembered that she was in the middle of all these people wearing only her towelling robe. She clutched at the robe and tightened the belt. People around her chattered in spirited French, but two women in ski gear nearer to the busy reception spoke in English. She overheard the word ‘avalanche’.
She stepped towards the English women.
‘Excuse me,’ Zoe said, interrupting them, ‘did I hear you say there has been another avalanche?’
The first woman turned to her. Her face was flushed, as if she herself had just returned from the mountain slopes. She had the smile-lines of middle age around her eyes. She nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, first thing this morning.’
‘But is this another avalanche? A fresh one?’
The woman didn’t get the opportunity to reply because the young receptionist with the ponytail and the scraped-back hair called both women over to her. Zoe was left waiting, hugging her robe to herself.
The people crowding the lobby didn’t seem frightened in any way. Rather they appeared to be excited. Zoe turned to see the new holidaymakers stepping off the bus outside. As she gazed across the lobby, the bald-headed concierge looked up from his papers and instantly spotted her. He raised his eyebrows at her, quizzically.
But Zoe’s next thought was: I have to tell Jake! I have to tell him!
She skipped back to the lift. It was waiting, open. She hopped inside, flapped at the button and rode it up to her floor. She was giggling. When the lift chime announced her arrival she tried to push open the doors in her haste to get out. She ran down the corridor and hammered hard on the door. ‘Jake! Jake!’
There was a grunt and after a few moments he came to the door. He was naked. He yawned like a bear. Sadie was behind him wagging her tail, wanting to slip past him. ‘Where’s the fire?’
‘Get dressed. Come quick. Leave Sadie there. No, just put a robe on! Quick. You won’t believe this! You won’t believe it, Jake!’
She was laughing so hard now she was almost convulsing. Jake slipped on his white robe and followed her down the corridor. She grabbed his hand. He wanted to know what the hell was happening.
‘Wait and see! Wait and see!’
They got into the lift and pressed the button to go down. Jake blinked at her. She grabbed his face and kissed him hard, slipping her tongue in his mouth. She wanted to stop all his talking and show him the miracle that had happened. The lift arrived in the lobby and the doors opened. Zoe pushed Jake forwards into the lobby and stepped out behind him.
There was only silence.
Nothing and no one. Just as before.
Zoe stopped in her tracks. She stammered something incomprehensible, shaking her head. Then she leapt towards the reception desk, casting around. She looked hard through the plate-glass doors and beyond where the bus full of newcomers had parked. She looked at the concierge’s desk. She checked behind the reception desk, where the three women had been working. Then she turned and raced pell-mell outside, through the glass doors and out into the snow.
All was quiet. Everywhere was deserted. There was only the white, white snow of the silent land.
Jake came out after her.
She looked up and down the road. She looked for wheel tracks that the bus might have left behind. There were none.
‘Can’t be. Can’t be.’
‘What happened?’ Jake asked.
She ignored him, shouldering him aside to re-enter the hotel.
Back in the lobby, she looked all around for some practical proof that things might have changed; for any tiny forensic scrap of evidence that all those people had really been there, in the flesh and not just in her imagination. She fingered the corners of the concierge’s blond-wood desk.
‘Come on,’ Jake said. He was waiting patiently for an explanation.
‘There were people, Jake. Dozens of them. Chattering away. New people coming in with their suitcases—’
‘When?’
‘Just now! Minutes ago. That’s what I rushed up to tell you. Some were talking about an avalanche. One man leered at me.’
