Karel tips the wineglass one way, then the other. Then he says, The first night she was gone I went to a bar and met a student of mine. I took her home. We used Marja’s bed, and I left it messy for her to find.
He smiles, in a sick way.
He says, I didn’t do this to make Marja confront me. I know men who cheat for that reason—not just sex, you know, but because there’s something wrong, something they can’t name, and so they force their wives to name it for them. But this is not why I did it. I did it to hurt her.
He glances at me, just for a second. Now we are divorcing, he says. So I suppose I did.
I don’t blame you, I say.
I don’t feel guilty, Ani. Saddened, yes. But to feel bad for Marja I have to think back many years.
What he says disturbs me, but I don’t want to tell him why.
I don’t want to tell him how sometimes I lie in the bathtub while Jozef is gone and imagine him coming home from a solo to find us killed. He returns with that calm in him, the Zen thing he says he feels, and then he opens the door to blood and corpses.
You see, my ghost will say to him, you were not the only one in danger.
I tell Karel, Terrible thoughts come and go. We cannot help ourselves.
You’re a saint, Anica.
I think: Would a saint wish her husband an accident in the mountains? Because sometimes I do. I love Jozef, I do. But sometimes the thought rises in me that if he would only die, I would be free of this love. That I can suffer widowhood—I am prepared for it, after all—but not this torture, year after year. I wish for the avalanche to come, for the rope to part, and not only so I can live my life but so I can be right, so I can say that all this suffering and worry was for a reason.
Karel puts his hands over mine, and his thumb curls under to stroke my palm. His fingertips are soft; his hand feels like Stane’s, like mine. This gesture, this picture of the two hands, must be painful for him, because he stares for a while out the window, even though it is the darkest part of the night.
But he does not remove his hands.
Jozef’s a good man, Karel says.
I say, When he isn’t climbing, there’s no one better.
Karel’s thumb keeps making its little circle. I think of the softness of his palms on the bare skin of my belly, sliding along the inside of my thigh.
Karel says, I admire him. Not just because he can do something I can’t. I know one thing for certain about Jozef: he would never cheat on you. His vows are his vows.
But he does, I say, my throat catching. At least another woman wouldn’t kill him. I would rather him have affairs.
This is self-pity, but Karel is kind enough not to say so. Unburdening himself seems to have made him calm, light. He has a little smile.
He says, I have always tried to tell myself that Jozef is an artist, that what he does makes the world bigger, the way a painting does. Or maybe he is like an astronaut. I suppose when I think about it. I would rather the moon have been walked on, than not.
I tell myself the same things, I say, but what do the astronaut’s wives and brothers think, when the rocket goes up?
I imagine, Karel says squeezing my hand, they are like us. Helpless in who they love.
He lifts my hand with his and kisses the backs of my fingers.
I could stop him here. The gesture, we could tell ourselves, was sweet and consoling, nothing more. But I uncurl my thumb and brush it across Karel’s lips, and he kisses it, too.
There, I have done it—for the first time in my marriage I have made an advance toward another man.
I am not angry at Karel, but all the same I pull my hand away, amazed at myself. It drops to the tabletop like someone else’s. Karel’s face changes from tender to shocked. I can almost see his mind retreating from what he has done. I am no adoring student, no silly girl drunk in a bar. I am his brother’s wife.
I cannot apologize enough, he says, and leaves the room.
I sit at the table for a long while. My hand is flat on the table. I can still feel his touch on my hand, like water evaporating off my skin, leaving only a tingle behind.
FOR A LONG TIME after I retreat to bed, I wait for the sounds of Karel leaving, for the rumble of his car retreating down the road. I won’t blame him if he goes. Will I try to stop him? Tell him it was a mistake? Just because we imagine something does not mean it has to happen. But as I tell myself this I imagine rising up and slipping into Karel’s room. I kneel beside his bed and whisper his name, and then tell him, Tonight, I would like to feel safe.
But that is self-pity, too. Sleeping with my brother-in-law might do many things, but it would never make me safer. There is no safety in the love I have. I knew from the very beginning, when I told myself Jozef was an artist, too.
For the first few weeks I knew him, Jozef never told me he climbed. I saw he was muscular, I knew from his tanned skin he liked to be outside, but he told me he worked construction, pouring cement—and this explained why his hands were so rough, too. He was very good at asking me questions then, and not so good at answering them, but I thought this was because he was shy. I was used to men pulling at my clothes the moment we were alone (and in truth I liked it) but Jozef had not even kissed me yet. At heart I was a romantic girl, and so his shyness built itself in my head. I imagined all kinds of histories for him while we drank our coffees, while I held his rough hands in the darkness of cinemas.
But then one night, as we walked together, not too far from the university, he said, in an offhand way, that we were near his flat. I asked to see it, and his eyes grew big. He said it was a mess, that there was nothing in it worth seeing anyway.
But I felt bold that night—I told him it was time we saw one another’s flats, and held his eyes after I said it.
Jozef took me up a long flight of steps, where the lights were bad, the floors and walls stained. As I climbed I thought about how little I knew of him, how seedy this place was, how I might be walking into danger. I followed his trim shape past the flickering bare bulbs on the landings, and listened to him jingle his keys, and I felt a thrill.
But that was the girl I was then.
When he unlocked the door and turned on the lights, I didn’t understand at first what I saw. His flat was an attic room, with a sloped ceiling. A very small place. And all the walls and the ceiling were covered in naked plywood, and jutting everywhere from the wood were small, oddly shaped protrusions, in many different colors. Here and there, hanging from clips, were straps, loops of rope, collections of odd metal implements and tools. In one corner was a weight bench, and in the center of the floor was a mattress and a grimy tangle of sheets. It all smelled strongly of wood and sweat. I had never seen a climbing wall—I could only think that Jozef was a pervert, a sadist. My stomach did loops.
But Jozef looked chagrined, and said, Now you know my secret.
What is all this? I asked him.
He looked at me strangely.
I am a climber, he said. A mountaineer. My brother and I climb in the Himalayas. I train here. He smiled. These are my rocks.
I walked into the room and touched the walls, the plywood and the smooth nylon straps, the knobby holds. Some were rough and felt like stone; some seemed polished down by use.
I said, Why didn’t you tell me?
He looked at his feet, and said, Women are sometimes strange about it. I like you, and didn’t want anything to change between us. It was stupid of me.
I wish you’d told me.
He blushed, and said, I know. I’ve been a coward.
I liked that he blushed.
I asked, Are you afraid of me?
He nodded and then looked me in the eye.
You put me in knots, he said.
Jozef, I told him, I can’t see how a man who climbs mountains can be afraid of a woman.
His face clouded. On a mountain, I know what I’m doing.
I kissed him. Our kiss didn’t last long, but it could have; the moment I moved to him I
saw his eyes soften, and I knew he would kiss me for as long as I let him, that he didn’t want to be shy anymore. I put my hands on his chest and was shocked at the feel of him. Even muscular men have a bit of softness. Jozef didn’t; under his shirt was warm stone.
Show me something, I said. Show me how you climb.
He blushed. I don’t practice in front of people. My brother, but not—
Not a girl? I said, still giddy from the kiss. Well, this is your punishment for keeping a secret. You owe me another one.
I’m not dressed for it, he said. This is my nice shirt and pants.
He meant it honestly enough, and I laughed. I went to him and unbuttoned his shirt and slid it from him. His eyes went wide, but he did not stop me. His chest and arms were almost frightening. They still are. His muscles are so distinct, he sometimes looks like a man without skin. I touched his shoulders and he shivered.
He was very rare, I thought, and maybe then I fell in love with him.
You can unbutton your own trousers, I said to him.
I’ll change in the bathroom.
A few minutes later, dressed only in spandex shorts, he climbed for me. He climbed a wall in two or three quick moves, his arms lifting him like he weighed nothing, like all that muscle was only a shell filled with feathers.
The ceiling, I said, when he was on the ground again.
He wasn’t even flushed.
All right, he said. But you have to keep the mattress under me.
He climbed from the lowest part of the ceiling to the highest, his back rippling near the level of my chin. I scooted the mattress along with my foot. And I could not take my eyes from him. Watching him was like seeing pornography; his movements were strangely intimate. The muscles in his neck and face strained. He made small grunts and moans. A bright lamp in the corner threw odd shadows, and his shoulders began to gleam with sweat.
And he was good. You do not have to understand the particulars of an art to know when an artist performs well. I knew, watching Jozef, that his artistry surpassed mine by orders of magnitude.
He defied gravity, just because I asked him to do it—and when he dropped off the last hold onto the floor, I was ready to make love to him, I was ready to do anything he asked.
His soul had lifted, too—when he turned to me, in an instant before he grew embarrassed and flushed again, I saw triumph, I saw passion. A muscle in his chest pulsed with blood, and it was all I could do not to press my lips against him there, to feel that fluttering, that life under my tongue.
You should take me out again, I said to him. Tomorrow night.
He smiled at me, slyly, and buttoned his shirt across his chest.
III.
The sun is up high outside the bedroom window. For a while I lie still, trying to remember the night before, and when I must have slept. I hear laughter from the kitchen—Stane’s—and Karel’s deep voice answering. And I remember, with a flood of shame.
And, still, disappointment underneath it all.
I cannot hide from them. I put on my robe and walk into the living room, my feet numb on the cold wood floors. Stane and Karel are looking at the laptop in the kitchen. The whole house smells of coffee and bacon; Karel has been cooking what he knows to cook.
Good morning, lazy, Stane says giggling.
Aren’t we clever, I say and ruffle his hair.
Karel glances up from the computer and says, Coffee’s on. He gives me a brief look—like a dog that is sorry for something and expects to be hit.
Any news? I ask.
Papa’s almost at the top, Stane says. The line’s only this far away. He holds his thumb and forefinger apart.
The weather’s good, Karel says. He should make it.
Well, that’s good. I sit down; I have no idea what else to say.
Now that I am with them, we eat breakfast, though the clock says it is almost noon. Again I feel that strange disconnect—I eat strips of bacon, and thousands of kilometers away my husband is struggling up the headwall of Shipton’s Peak. He is, right now, doing what no one in the world has ever done. He writes his name in history as I sip my coffee.
I was thinking, Karel says, that after lunch we could all go for a walk. I’ve wanted to take a look at the Roman wall. I have Stane’s support for this plan, don’t I?
He does, Stane says eagerly. Can we go?
This sounds like a grand idea to me, too—far better than sitting inside the house waiting for the phone to ring. And I am grateful to the point of tears that Karel is still here, that he is trying to pretend we did not do what we did.
I shower and dress after breakfast, and I dawdle in the house for a moment while Stane and Karel wait for me in the yard. This is when I decide to forget the cell phone. The weather outside is beautiful, and, one way or another, I would like to be in that world, not inside my head, imagining asphyxiation, frostbite, a four-kilometer drop.
Then we walk. Across the valley the sun turns the limestone Alps from gray to a warm blond, and down lower the blankets of pine are rich and green. The river at the valley floor is not so much a color as a collection of lights and reflections of the land. We stay close alongside the Roman wall, which is really not much to see—it is mostly low and crumbling, with occasional tall pillars, overhung by trees, in places collapsed by growing roots.
Stane ranges ahead of Karel and me, like a shepherd dog looping around to see that his flock is safe, before returning to scout the road ahead. He has a bagful of his toy men with him, what looks like a whole regiment, and whenever he returns he has one or another clutched in his fist. He talks to them, sometimes.
Karel walks next to me with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, looking from side to side across the valley—anywhere but at me. His face is perfectly composed, and this is how I know he is still troubled. Our footsteps rasp too loud, maybe because Stane is now too far ahead of us to make much noise—or maybe because Karel and I have not yet said ten words to each other.
I feel sixteen again, walking with a boy and not knowing whether to take his hand.
No. I feel twenty, waking hungover in a man’s bed and wondering how I am to make my exit.
But this is not right either. Maybe it is time to say to myself what is true: that I am a married woman of thirty-two who has come close to her first affair, who wants maybe to fall in love with another man. That it feels like nothing else feels. I blush. A strange gravity keeps pulling Karel and I to each other. Every once in a while our hips bump, and we quickly move apart.
I try to think about Jozef, the difficulties of the summit headwall. Right now he is almost certainly in agony, gasping, starving—a hair’s width from his death. And whether he has reached the top, or is still struggling up—even if he is on the way down—he is thinking, surely, of me, of Stane. I will pull myself to you with my hands. This is happening, right now, out to the east beyond the curve of the earth.
Then we are next to an opening in the wall, one that leads upward, to a trail.
I am not in control of my words. I say to Karel, We should go through. That path goes up to a nice meadow. From there you can see most of the valley.
Karel thinks for longer than he should. He says, All right.
I call Stane back. He arrives out of breath. I tell him we’re going up to the meadow.
He surprises me, though, by asking if he can stay down by the road.
I brought my men, he says. I want to play down here.
You don’t want to come up with us?
He shrugs and looks off into the distance. This gesture he has learned from his father. I cannot imagine what plans he really has—or maybe he doesn’t have any; maybe he is just tired of hearing grown-ups speak of art and Romans. If he and I were by ourselves, I might tell him to come anyway. But the guilty joy rises up in me, knowing Karel and I will be alone. Stane plays by himself in the woods all the time, he’ll be fine—this is what I tell myself.
We won’t be long, I say. Don’t go too far from the path here, okay?
Sure, Mama.
The walk up to the meadow takes only ten minutes or so. The path between the trees is shaded and cool, and I am pleased to find that my worries recede here a little, as they always have. I love the pine forests in the summer, the thick padding of fallen dry needles under my feet, the clean smell. Here and there chunks of rock break out of the humus, like mountains in bud, patched by moss. Several of them are marred by chalk marks—where Jozef works on holds and problems. I have helped him before, making sure a mat is always positioned beneath him. Lately Stane comes out here to help him, too.
Karel’s face is less clouded; he appreciates this place, even if his gravity won’t let him say so.
And then we are in the meadow. It is on a slope, and at the upper end of it we stop and lean against a rock and look out over our swath of valley. The river curves and gleams. Our house is just visible off to the left, the sun winking from a skylight. The highest peak across the valley has caught a wisp of cloud in the corrie just beneath its summit—from here it seems no larger than the house, but it must be a hundred meters wide. Jozef has said the mountains make their own weather, that sometimes it will rain up there when all the rest of the valley is in bright dry light. The earth and the sky turn independently of each other, Jozef says, and they sometimes grind and catch. As I think this a breeze picks up and the trees on the slope beneath us hiss and sway. The same air my husband climbs in.
But this is not true. Jozef is climbing at 8,000 meters. We are at 1,200 meters now. I look above the peaks of the Alps, into the deep clear blue. My husband is a madman, halfway to space.
I shift on the rock and my hand brushes Karel’s.
This is beautiful, I say. Isn’t it?
Listen, Karel says, abruptly enough that he has to cough after saying it. Listen, Ani. I think today I’ll go back home.
The thought fills me with even more sadness than I would have guessed. He says these words, and the valley seems less beautiful, the blue of the sky heavier.
We're in Trouble Page 8
