The Other Language(77)

Quantum Theory


I

Most probably Sonia’s phone was lying somewhere in the gully amid the debris and the shards of glass; therefore she hadn’t been able to contact anybody yet. Being incommunicado had actually been an advantage, allowing her a stretch of time, which she badly needed in order to adjust to the new scenario. Ever since the previous afternoon, when the stranger had appeared in her rearview mirror on the side of the road, an unexpected stillness had descended upon her, as though every familiar aspect of her life had suddenly come to a halt. This unusual pause, despite the equatorial heat, had a likeness to snow falling and padded footfalls. All that had seemed so pressing till then—the background buzz of her anxiety, the phone calls and e-mails that needed to be attended to, plus the heat, the headache, the mild sense of frustration that had been following her around like a sniffing dog for days—had dissipated, leaving only a vast, immaculate expanse in front of her. It was as though suddenly a curtain had lifted on an endless space that unrolled into the future. A promise.



They had been feeling quite jittery because of the proximity of their bodies in the front seat. As the car lurched and bounced on the rocky track, their hips, thighs and shoulders had kept making contact. She remembered how one moment there was music—something good, though she couldn’t remember the name of the band—and the next came a deafening bang. It was like a sudden explosion, which, hours later, still rang in her ears. What followed was a suspension that seemed to stretch forever, during which Sonia had time to realize that the car’s wheels were no longer on the ground, that they were actually falling off the parapet of the bridge, and that those seconds might be the last of her life. There was no room for fear, since the surprise that she should be dying like that, and moreover that she would be dying in the company of a stranger, was so overwhelming. Possibly because of all the vodka she had drunk, the only thought that had flashed through her mind during the car’s slow-motioned flight was that their lives must have always been entangled and were clearly meant to end together. The thought seemed beautiful and somehow pure. Then, as they tumbled down the ravine and rolled over, she heard branches snapping and breaking. What followed was an eerie silence, except for the crickets that went on undisturbed through the clear night. The headlights illuminated a thick cloud of reddish dust that gently fluttered above, and slowly descended, giving the scene the aspect of a science fiction film, in which an alien spaceship lands in a clearing of a forest. The engine stopped, the headlights died, everything went quiet. The sequence of events had its own rhythm and beauty. The music, the bang, the silence, then just the crickets.

Life/?death/?life again, but quieter.

It was hard to figure out exactly where they’d fallen (a riverbed, a ravine?) and the position they were in (where was the sky? where the passenger door?), because the car had landed on its side. For a handful of seconds she heard nothing inside the car. Then she felt his hand touch her ankle in the dark.

They whispered, quickly, economically.

Are you okay? Yes, and you? Yes. Good.



He helped her out of the car from the shattered windshield. They eased through the broken glass, nimbly finding their way without getting a single scratch. Outside, there were stars and a sliver of moon peeking from behind the trees. She smelled something green and fresh rising from the broken branches. Eucalyptus.

He took her hand.

“Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Let’s go then.”

“Go where?”

“To the hospital. It isn’t too far from here. We can walk there. They’ll give us painkillers or something.”

At the time, in the confusion of the moment, it seemed a perfectly logical thing to do, to walk barefoot in the bush (her right shoe was missing) in the middle of the night, leaving the car on its side like a dead elephant in the gully and thinking nothing of it.

“What about animals?” she said.

“What animals?”

“I don’t know. Anything dangerous.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that now.”

He put a finger under her chin and lifted her head just slightly, like one does to a child.

“We’re going to be all right. Just follow me, okay?”

So they climbed out of the canyon and got back onto the road. He took her hand and held it tightly. The gesture startled her. They didn’t talk much, so intent were they to experience the warmth of their hands, finally free to touch. They didn’t seem to be frightened or surprised that they should be alive and unscathed on top of it. More than anything they felt euphoric that they should be together in this predicament.

“It’s a beautiful night,” she said dreamily.

He nodded and gave her a light squeeze on the fingers.

“We are still drunk, right?” she asked.

“We most certainly are.”

The crash had finally splintered all pretense of formality between them, like a bomb annihilating what was left of barriers and trenches, accelerating the process of their coming together. The accident, more than all the alcohol they’d been drinking, had finally earned them an intimacy. After all, their bodies had been rolling together in the air, bouncing and dancing in the front seat in what had felt like slow motion—like bodies of astronauts in space, she thought—and had reemerged from the wreck intact. At this point they both felt they were allowed to be quiet and give a rest to the exhausting flirting they’d been engaged in, up until they had fallen off the road.