To the Back of Beyond(27)

It was very quiet, only when Thomas was quite a long way up, he could hear dogs barking and cowbells far below, and when he turned to look, he saw a great herd of goats and cows being driven in the direction of the pass. Bringing up the rear were two horses with packsaddles piled high. Thomas sat down on a rock until the column had passed around a promontory, and silence returned.

As he climbed and climbed, he had a sense of going backward in time. Flowers that had withered at the altitude of the pass were in full bloom up here, some hadn’t even opened yet. The flatter the terrain, the more difficult the going became. The cracked and furrowed limestone karst resembled a petrified sea. All over the broken rock were cracks, some of them measuring several yards in width and depth. In other places there were gentle slopes that suddenly fell away or culminated in narrow ridges and crests that Thomas had to cross on all fours. The sharp rocks scratched his hands and cut into his knees.

Progress was exhausting, and Thomas was forced to stop repeatedly to catch his breath, but he wanted to get on and waited until it was afternoon before taking a break to eat. The sky was now thickly clouded, and the light so uncertain that it no longer cast a shadow. When he got up to move on, he no longer knew which way he had come. He tried to orient himself by the panorama, but the peaks all looked the same, stacked one behind the other in every direction. He chose one and decided to keep heading toward it until he encountered a path. He was now totally concentrated on the terrain, every step, every handhold, as though he were in slow motion. He was trapped in a labyrinth of rock, but the vague fear he felt was not so much to do with that as with the thought that even if he should find a path, he would still be lost.

The cloud layer had come down and obscured the peaks. A cold wind chased scraps of mist across the plateau. The rocks seemed to be a little less fissured here, and Thomas stepped out, he needed to find a path before the fog closed in and made orientation impossible. He quivered even before he was aware of the crash, a wild fluttering and at the same moment something gray beside his foot, a panic movement. He pulled his foot back, lost his balance, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a gray bird fly away, before, overbalancing, he spun around and a crevasse opened before him. He rowed with his arms fumbling for support. For a moment he had the sensation of flying.



That morning, for the first time, Astrid became aware that Thomas was with her all along. Whatever she was doing, she had felt his eye on her, with every decision his agreement or disapproval. In the course of the last few days she had often felt as though she were acting for him, he the director telling her what to do, with one of those looks he had occasionally sent her way and that over the years she had learned to read. He had tolerated her behavior with the policeman with a smile; he had never been one for jealousy and had taken Astrid’s occasional flirting with other men with an amused tolerance or a plain indifference that had offended her. He had always been certain of her, more than she of him, even though she would have been unable to come up with any grounds for doubting him. Maybe, she thought, her love was less strong than his, maybe her doubts regarding him were actually doubts of her own love.

Sometimes she felt he was far away, then he was standing behind her, and so close that she had the sensation of feeling the warmth of his body. She withstood the temptation to turn around and look for him. What shall I do? she asked him. Do you want me to look for you? Shall I follow you? Is it that you’re waiting for me somewhere? Or shall I pretend nothing has happened? Do you need time? How much time? He didn’t answer. Now even Manuela would have been welcome to Astrid with her clichés and her cheap comfort, but she had left last night, after telling herself a dozen times that her sister-in-law was doing better now, and that she would get through and no longer needed her help.

Astrid got up and went out onto the landing. There was the plastic bag with Thomas’s clothes and shoes that the police had found in the shopping mall and delivered during the course of the day, while Astrid had been in the mountains looking for him. She felt the officials were making fun of her. Look, this is what’s left of your husband, a crumpled shirt and a filthy pair of pants. Thus far, Thomas’s disappearance had been in some way abstract, his absence not really different than when he’d been away at work or at his handball practice sessions. These discarded things were the first physical proof that he had taken himself out of their life together, that he would not return, and, naked as a newborn, had embarked on a new life alone. Astrid stuffed the old shoes and clothes into the trash, where Thomas had left them. But that wasn’t enough. Though it was only half full, she took the bag out of the trash can, knotted it up, and carried it across to the school building, where the waste container stood. The idea that it would be picked up next week and put in the furnace along with the other stuff had something liberating about it.

The children were still asleep when she got back. Normally, she let them lie in on weekends, but she still felt the sense of being abandoned that she’d had when she woke up, so she went up to be with them. She slipped into bed with Ella and spooned with her. Her daughter’s hair tickled her nose. Did you have a good sleep? she whispered. Ella yawned and stretched, and turned out of Astrid’s embrace onto her back. Even though the girl tended to take after Thomas more, Astrid recognized herself in the movement. She lay there in the narrow bed and stretched luxuriously. The sky outside was cloudy, no one was about to send her out into the fresh air. Two days of lounging around in bed or on the sofa, reading and watching TV. Then she remembered her father, and her mother. She tried to think of something else, a book she’d read, plans she’d made with a girlfriend. Buying an old farmhouse with stables, keeping horses and chickens and rabbits, and having a lot of cats and a dog. Then they would live together, just the two of them, and do something amazing—she didn’t have any precise idea of what it would be, but the whole world would love and admire her for it. Then from downstairs she heard her mother’s voice, Get up, come along, you’ll be late for school. But it was Saturday. And she hadn’t had to go to school for years and years now. Ella turned away from Astrid, and pressed against her. What shall we do? asked Astrid. What about getting a dog? replied Ella.