To the Back of Beyond(23)
She left the phone on the dining-room table, went up to the bedroom, and lay down on the bed. It was as though the conversation had taken time to have its full effect, like a medication that first had to be absorbed into the bloodstream and then distributed throughout the body. After she had lain there perfectly still for a quarter of an hour, she finally started to cry violently and uncontrollably. Even when she heard the front door and Ella’s surly hello, she couldn’t stop. Mama, where are you? called Ella. Shortly afterward she came to the bedroom. Astrid turned away from her onto her front, and, still crying, buried her face in the pillow.
She must have fallen asleep like that. When she woke up, Ella was standing in the doorway, with the policeman next to her and Konrad behind them. The children were talking softly to her: Mama, are you awake? Mama, what’s the matter? How are you feeling? Ella touched her. Konrad lay down on the bed and pressed himself against her. His small, warm body. But Astrid couldn’t stand to be touched; she turned away again and didn’t say a word. Come on, kids, she heard Patrick saying quietly, and then footsteps, and then later Patrick’s calming voice and the voices of the children from the living room. The light in the room was beginning to go when she got up. Without turning on the light, she stopped and listened by the open bedroom door. A childhood memory of being ill and delirious, somewhere between sleeping and waking. The TV was going, the wacky voices of cartoon figures. She sneaked into the bathroom and washed her face in cold water. Then she went back to bed.
There was a ring at the door. The bedroom was almost completely dark, what little light there was came from the streetlamp outside. Astrid heard the cheerful voice of Manuela in the hall, and the glee of the children, because each of the few times she came to see them, she brought useless presents. How Patrick could have presumed to call Thomas’s sister, with whom Astrid had never gotten along. Presumably her name was the only one that occurred to the kids. Who could look after them and mind their mother? Didn’t she have any girlfriends? Any relations? Someone who lived locally, if possible?
There was a knock on the bedroom door. Patrick came in and stood sheepishly next to Astrid’s bed. I need to go now, he said, but your sister-in-law’s come. She said she could stay the night and look after you and the children until you’re feeling better. He said he was sorry they hadn’t managed to find Thomas. Astrid shook her head and thanked him for his help. Don’t tell her I’m still awake, she whispered. I just told her the bare minimum, he said. He stood there a moment longer, and then went away.
Later on, Astrid could hear the voices of Manuela and the children. All of them seemed to be making an effort to keep it down. Astrid heard steps on the stairs, the toilet flush, a softly sung lullaby, then laughing and whispering and another round of steps on the stairs. She shut her eyes. Just after, she sensed the door opening and shutting—it happened in complete silence, but she could feel the change in the space, which seemed to expand and then contract again.
For the first time since Thomas had set off, he woke rested and full of pep. The rain had stopped, but the sun hadn’t yet peeped around the tall mountain sides, and the air felt damp and cold. In the morning light, the clear gray and green planes of the landscape looked almost painted. After breakfasting on bread and dried fruit, Thomas packed his things and set off. The path was even steeper now than it had been the day before, and Thomas soon lapsed into the slow swaying gait he had gotten used to in the mountains and could keep up for hour after hour. The wood came to an end and vegetation grew scarcer. The meadows were full of thistles, the edge of the path was sown with rampion and snow gentians, and tiny ferns sprouted from splits in the rock. All the way he could hear the rushing of the stream, but once the path turned past a big boulder, it was suddenly perfectly quiet. Thomas could hear nothing but the scraping of his soles on the gravelly ground and his breathing, which had adapted to his stride pattern. He felt suddenly present as never before; it was as though he had no past and no future. There was only this day and this path on which he was slowly making his way up the mountain. Once, a marmot whistled, and Thomas stopped and scanned the mountainside like a huntsman, but he could see no sign of the animal.
On reaching the level of the pass, he sat down on a rock and took off his shoes and socks to rub his feet a little. He had sweated during the climb, now he froze in the cold wind and pulled on his jacket, which he had worn tied around his waist. He ate bread and dried beef and a few squares of chocolate.
Ahead of him, the land fell away in a wide valley, pointing first south then curving to the west. Beyond loomed a massive dome of rock, a flat ridge that looked utterly ill at ease among the snowy peaks and bare as though it came from another world. In the sunlight splitting the clouds the formation took on a silvery glitter, almost white, which intensified his sense that heaven was closer than earth. Thomas felt a strange excitement as he set off.
He had to go down a long way and lost a lot of altitude. Grazing cattle had left deep holes in the claggy soil, which had filled with water, a tangle of seeming paths that led nowhere. To Thomas’s right the valley was edged by a long line of rock, the grass under the cliff face was littered with scree, and from time to time he could hear the dry clack of a falling stone.
Thomas had seen the highland croft from a long way off. On the pastures around the hut and shed there were goats grazing, a few horses, and a couple of donkeys. As he got closer, he saw an old woman, who was sitting on a wooden bench on a knoll, looking across at the silvery rock formation with a telescope. He was afraid he might give her a start, so he hailed her from a long way off, but she reacted perfectly calmly, as though she had spotted him long ago and was only waiting for him to get there. She set down the telescope on the bench at her side, and with a friendly voice returned his greeting. He asked her about the rock. Our summer grazing is over there. Is there even grass up there? asked Thomas. The old woman nodded. Yes, behind the rock. But the karst is full of holes and splits. They were now both looking over at the gray rock. Almost every year a sheep or cow falls to its death, said the woman. This summer we’ve been lucky so far, with no accidents. And please God it’ll stay that way. She said her family were on their way down from the alp tomorrow. They had originally meant to stay a week longer, but the forecast was for snow. They talked about the rainy summer and that the local weatherman had predicted a cold winter. The content of the conversation seemed not really to be the point, it was just about breaking the silence in this solitary landscape. Finally, Thomas took his leave. The old woman thanked him, he didn’t know what for, and picked up her telescope again.