To the Back of Beyond(36)
She lay in the dark, with a smile on her face at the thought of that first night with Thomas. The mixture of tenderness and force with which he explored and took her. It had still taken quite some time after that before they became a couple.
Thomas got up early and packed his rucksack. He didn’t have many more possessions than two months ago, when he moved in. The widow was already up and about, reading the local paper in the kitchen. Thomas said he needed to be moving on. She made difficulties, said he should have told her sooner, she couldn’t find another tenant at the drop of a hat. She looked reproachfully at him. He suggested paying half of next week’s rent, and she finally accepted his offer, though not without complaining again about the difficulties he was creating by suddenly moving out. In the end, she offered him coffee — perhaps she hoped to hear why he was going. He declined, paid her, and left.
The carpenter wasn’t pleased about his leaving either. He praised Thomas’s work and application and even offered him a raise. What will you be going on to? he asked, once he’d accepted that he couldn’t change Thomas’s mind. I need to be moving on, said Thomas.
The distance that took less than fifteen minutes in the carpenter’s car took him more than two hours on foot. The footpath was covered in snow, so he was obliged to walk along the highway, which switchbacked up the narrow coulee and kept plunging into galleries and tunnels. In some places there was no sidewalk, and Thomas was forced to press himself against the side of the tunnel as a hooting tourist bus swept past him. Shortly after Thomas had emerged from the last gallery, and the upland valley opened out in front of him, a police patrol car drew up alongside him. The officer in the front passenger seat wound down the window and asked if everything was all right. Not exactly hiking weather, he said, and asked to see his ID. He gave it a cursory look and wished him a nice day.
For the rest of the winter, Thomas was employed as kitchen assistant in a restaurant where he was also given accommodations. The chef, an Israeli man who had married the daughter of the owner and later took over the business, paid him accordingly, though he upped his wages as Thomas took on more demanding tasks from week to week. You might have made a chef, you know, said David. Sometimes Thomas could feel himself under observation, but his boss’s motivation seemed to be less curiosity than simple liking. Then David told him about his early time in this area, how difficult it was to establish himself and get used to the people, the landscape, and the weather. He and his wife had two boys, a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, who often hung around the kitchens or the restaurant. Then it was Thomas’s turn to watch David and marvel at his tender, almost motherly way with the boys.
By the time the ski season wound down in April and the number of visitors declined, Thomas had managed to put away a bit of money. David asked him what his plans were. Thomas said he thought he would cross the Gotthard Pass and continue south.
The highway service had been working on removing snow for several weeks now, but the pass wouldn’t be open until Pentecost at the earliest. Thomas spent a couple of rainy days waiting, for the most part in his room. The day it brightened up, he set off. David had prepared an elaborate lunch, and he and his wife and even the boys had embraced him outside the restaurant when he left, quite as though he were family.
Shortly before the turnoff to the pass there was a little wayside chapel. Here is the parting of the ways, friend, which way will you take? it said over the entrance. Do you want to go to the Eternal City? Down to Holy Colonia on the German Rhine, or westward to the Franks? After months in one place, Thomas felt the high of being on the road again, the anticipation of a future that was not prescribed and that could, with every step, be altered.
The pastures in the valley were green already, but not far above the village the pass road was barred. The higher he climbed, the more snow he came upon, first only in hollows and on the shady side of valleys, but farther up it was an unbroken sheet. While it had been raining for the past few days in the valley, up here the road that had been cleared was snowed shut again. A little way before the head of the pass, Thomas encountered workmen who were just eating lunch in the sun, beside great gouged-out piles of snow. He asked them about the state of the path, and they warned him about one spot where a retaining board had worked loose, that wasn’t yet shored up. They seemed unsurprised to see a hiker. Maybe there were a lot like himself, thought Thomas, maybe he was one element of a brotherhood of wanderers spread over the five continents. He thought about the migrations of animals, the movements of birds and fish from continent to continent, movement all over the world. It struck him as a more natural mode of being than settlement in one place.
The road ran along between walls of snow that were several yards high. On the slopes he kept seeing the traces of avalanches, in some places the hard icy chunks had almost made it down as far as the road.
At the head of the pass a strong cold wind was blowing. The sky was a deep blue, and Thomas could feel the burning warmth of the sun in his face. He spread out his coat on the snow and sat down to eat. He was looking south, the view ringed by a blaze of light.
By now, Astrid had to reckon up the time when someone asked her how long it was that Thomas had been dead. He went away two years ago, she would say, or three years, or six years. But she still wore her wedding ring, the phone book contained both their names, and when she was called upon to define her legal status, she would always check married. Each time, without asking, the tax official would change her entry to widowed, a word that Astrid could no more get used to than fatherless for the children.