To the Back of Beyond(14)
Astrid thought of the men going to the bar after practice was finished, and turning up at home half drunk, dropping their sweaty gear on the floor, and creeping into bed beside their sleeping wives.
She walked home. Before she disappeared inside, she hesitated briefly, glanced at the bench, where the newspaper still lay and the half-empty wineglass stood. She left them both outside, as though that were a way of keeping time from moving forward. She didn’t turn a light on. She imagined Thomas was already in bed, waiting for her. She slid under the cover next to him. What kept you? he asked with an amused tone, pulled her to him and started kissing her. He put his hand on her breast, let it slide down onto her belly, under her nightie, and between her legs. She thought of him on top of her, could feel his weight and his forceful movements, heard his breathing, his groaning. She came, and then started to cry. She didn’t want to sleep, she was afraid of waking up, of another day where Thomas would be even farther from her.
It was almost midday when Thomas awoke. The sky was overcast, the wind had got up. He was cold and felt exposed in his nakedness. Even though his things were still wet, he put them on. It took him a moment to get his bearings, then he walked on by the side of the stream until he came to a narrow valley that headed due south. He followed an asphalt road, climbing steadily, first through trees, then through steep pastureland. The stream was flowing far below in a narrow gully, its distant rushing only feeble now. The smell again was of newly mown grass.
After a while, the valley widened out into a depression, the road divided, went past a group of houses, and was reunited at an isolated cheesery with an adjacent pigsty. The stink of the pigs reminded Thomas of human feces.
At the edge of the wood stood a cross, the ornamental flower bed at the foot of which was like a fresh grave. From a little horsepond, a gray heron flew up with languid wingbeats.
The farmhouses were cladded with wooden shingles, some of them painted in pastel colors. In front of one of them was a little vegetable patch, with beans, fennel, kohlrabi, and beetroot, and tomato vines in an improvised greenhouse of lathes and plastic sheeting. The plastic was rattling away in the stiff gale that was blowing down the slope out of the west. An earthenware pot with a withered hydrangea lay on its side on the ground. Next to the front door, some baby clothes were hanging out to dry, one window was half open but there was no sign of anyone. The entire valley felt abandoned, only once Thomas saw a woman wearing rough work clothes walking across a pasture, apparently looking for something. But before he reached her, she had gotten into an ancient Volvo parked at a passing place and driven off.
A path left the road and led even more steeply up the right side of the valley, past walnut and apple trees. Everything hereabouts looked crooked. There were no straight lines anywhere by which he could orient himself, and he felt mildly giddy. Eventually the path crested a hill, and then led on through pastures with a few dirty cows grazing in them. Everywhere spurge sprouted up in thick bundles. Farther on, where the grass was shorter, he saw the first autumn crocuses. Beside the edge of the pasture was a small cowshed. The ceiling was so low that Thomas was unable to stand upright, and the floor was so dungy that it couldn’t have been cleaned for several days. Beside the cowshed was a lean-to, where a couple of bales of hay were stored, along with some tools and fencing materials. He would have been able to hole up here, but he had nothing left to eat and had to go on.
The gale up on the top was even stronger than in the valley. The path seemed to be one that not many people walked; in spots there were only scant marks in the grass to indicate where to go. Cowpats were everywhere, and swarms of large rust-colored flies flew up from them at Thomas’s approach.
Finally he reached the highest point. For the first time he was afforded a view of dark wooded hills to the south. In the distance he could make out a section of a lake, and beyond that, in the haze, further chains of hills. As he descended, Thomas had the feeling that something had fallen away from him, a repression, a pain. He stepped out powerfully. At a forest hut, he looked at signposts pointing him in different ways. None of the place-names meant anything to him, so he crossed the woods, still heading south. The terrain grew steeper. Thomas slithered down the incline through neglected second-growth pine and beech that was mostly ineffectual against thorny scrub. Suddenly his foot was in midair, he only just managed to hold on to one of the young saplings. His pulse raced, and he felt a surge of warmth throughout his body. Breathing hard, he pulled himself back up to solid ground. He was angry with himself for being so stupid. The rocks below were not precipitous, but even if he just turned his ankle somewhere, it would be days or even weeks before anyone found him here. Painfully he clambered back, and then crossed the slope at a less steep incline.
Near the bottom of the ravine, he struck a path that went parallel to the crest, and that seemed to be coming from nowhere and going nowhere. A black moth fluttered around his head, and since Thomas didn’t have a clue where he was, he just decided to follow it. He thought about fairy tales in which animals helped people who had once been kind to them—tossing a fish back into the sea, kissing a frog, nursing a wounded deer back to health. He himself had always found animals alien, inscrutable, and a little frightening.
In the middle of the wooded slope, surrounded by low scrub, stood a tiny wooden huntsman’s shelter. The outside walls had skulls and antlers mounted on them. A rough picnic table and benches had half rotted away, and mushrooms were sprouting from the damp wood. Only a fountain next to the entrance was plashing away merrily to itself and gave the place some feeling of welcome. Thomas drank some water, and then walked on to the bottom of the wooded ravine. The ground became clayey, and the air took on a heavy smell. The narrow footpath that followed the stream downhill was undermined, even completely washed away in places, certainly no one could have walked this way for a long time.