To the Back of Beyond(19)

Astrid took the children through the city. They walked into every restaurant and looked around, asked after Thomas in the few hotels, but there was no trace of him. In the station was a big hiking map, a dense web of green lines going in every direction, roads and trails, bus and train lines. It was almost ten hours since Thomas had made his purchases, by now he could be anywhere. If she hadn’t had the children with her, Astrid might have set off on her own to look. It had started raining gently, as the manager had predicted. The children complained, they were hungry and tired. What would you say to a pizza? asked Astrid. The children were jubilant, as though they had already forgotten what they were here to do.



Thomas had the disquieting feeling that all this had been laid on for him, that the people in the village were actors who were merely waiting for him to come by, to assume their roles and speak their lines. It was an artificial world, a model construction under an expansive blue sky. The sun was shining, the houses gleaming in the morning light. An old lady and an old gentleman, both with dogs, stood by the side of the road talking about the weather; a woman going past on her bicycle called out a greeting to them; schoolchildren were practicing long jumps on the playing field; on the kindergarten playground smaller children were fizzing around. Thomas passed through the village, simultaneously extra and onlooker. Cars crawled past at walking speed, a sales assistant was cleaning the window of a leather goods store, two workmen exchanged banter with her. A young mother leaned over the baby carriage and spoke soothingly to her infant. The words and gestures seemed as exaggerated as those of amateur performers in a village theatrical.

Thomas asked a young man in suit and briefcase if he knew a sports shop, and had him show him the way. The shopping center was on the main road, not far from the station. It seemed not to have been open for very long, some of the premises were still unfinished, which only added to Thomas’s sense of moving about on a stage.

After days out of doors, even the lofty mall felt constricting, but Thomas enjoyed the fixed temperature, the bluish neon, and the simple artificial smells of shoes and textiles. Here was a limited world with no surprises and no dangers. A young shop assistant addressed him. He said he was just having a look around. While he gathered up the things he needed, he kept on seeing her. She was filling shelves, giving instructions to a colleague, serving a customer, who seemed to take forever before deciding on a pair of sneakers. The assistant radiated a kind of bustling happiness that suited this unreal place to a tee. As he paid, she asked him with a routine show of interest if he was planning a hike. I thought I’d go to the mountains, said Thomas, and after a brief pause for thought, as though he was reassuring himself, again, yes, the mountains. But the sales assistant was busy removing the security tabs from his purchases and seemed not to be listening. He looked at her hands, which looked older than her conservatively made-up face, the nails carefully manicured and lacquered; she wasn’t wearing a ring. Her hands brought him around to her. He felt almost certain that she had no husband, no lover, at the most a cat. He imagined her going home after work to her little apartment in one of the gigantic blocks he had seen at the edge of town. Surely her apartment would be just as tidy as this store, the town, the whole area. She would take a shower, fix herself a salad, keep the radio on while she ate. What would she say if he asked her if she had anything planned for tonight? He thought of finding refuge in her place. While she took her shower, he would be camped in the kitchen listening to the sounds from the bathroom. She would emerge in a kimono, with her hair wrapped up in a towel, take some food out of the fridge, get her dinner ready. He sat there in silence, watching her eat. He sat next to her in front of the TV, and later, when she went to bed, he of course slipped in under the sheets beside her. While she was at work the next day, he would be in the apartment waiting for her to come home. Until one day he moved on, now a long way from home in time as well as distance. Cash or credit, she asked. Credit, said Thomas.

At a cash machine he withdrew a thousand francs. In the supermarket next to the sports store he bought a large bottle of water and as much food as he could fit into his rucksack, things that were nutritious and would keep: biscuits and chocolate, salami, hard cheese, rye bread in slices, dried fruit and nuts, and — after a moment’s hesitation — a small bottle of inexpensive brandy. Then he went to the shopping center’s restroom and got changed. He dumped his old stuff in a trash can.

Thomas felt happy to be leaving the town. Ideally, he would have been walking out at night, but he hadn’t been able to find a place to spend the day unobserved. At least he looked like a legitimate hiker now, suitably dressed, with heavy boots and a rucksack. But his new equipment weighed him down, and he made slower headway than previously. He followed the yellow footpath signs under the motorway and then across the flatland to the next place, a farming village, at whose edges dozens of new buildings stood among barns and cow pastures. These buildings looked as though they had fallen from the sky, an enemy invasion from more urban zones. Ahead he saw a slightly elevated col and far at the back jagged rocks, but the footpath followed a little road that zigzagged up the side of the slope. The higher Thomas climbed, the more he saw of the densely settled flatland below. Ringed by mountain chains it had the appearance of a gigantic arena. In the distance he could see the lake, and beyond it a further array of villages, woods, and hills, the autobahn and the railway line. Again, he was put in mind of a scale model, a papier-maché landscape, sprinkled with artificial green and dotted about with little houses and trees from catalogues.