by Tim Parks
Vince, old chap! Welcome back. Not before time. Are you coming up for coffee?
No, actually, I’m still here, Col, I’m still in Italy. There’s been a bit of an emergency I’m afraid. Accident.
Colin Dyers began the inevitable mix of concern and cautious questioning. Not Louise?
Vince hasn’t had a hangover for more than a decade. Explaining the situation, he was aware that he didn’t sound his normal self. Thank God for that, Dyers said. Though actually we were rather counting on your being here. The older man’s voice was rich with catarrh. He was conventional and astute. That was very kind of you to, er, stay on for the young woman. I was the only one with my own car, Vince said. There was a slight, significant pause. Paul has been collating the figures from the States, Dyers said. There are a couple of urgent questions to be addressed.
Then Vince was aware of how absolutely unlike himself this behaviour must seem from the point of view of his colleague. Not so much the staying behind, but he could easily have phoned Dyers or one of the other directors on Sunday. He had their numbers. He could have warned them at once. He could have presented himself as extremely concerned about this delayed return, about all the many problems one had to deal with at this time of year. I should be asking who is handling what, sounding worried that I’m not personally in charge. Listen, Col, I can make it to an internet point, he said, if you want to send me some stuff to look at. And I’ll have the phone on twenty—four hours a day now. I had trouble finding a car charger.
When do you think you’ll actually be back, Dyers asked. There were strict rules of course about what could be committed to e—mail and phone conversations. Vince hesitated. He had stretched his sleeping bag on the car seat so as not to have to sit on the scorching material. The charger was plugged in. The heat trembled round his head. A fly was buzzing against the windscreen. Next Monday, he said. At the latest. You are well yourself, though, aren’t you? Dyers asked. I’ve had a wonderful holiday, Colin. Wonderful. Just the break I needed. That’s great, Dyers said. He would be sitting at a desk stacked with tasks and reports. At least one other person would be in the room awaiting his attention, one other phone—line is on hold and as he speaks the man’s eye will be ranging constantly over the constantly incoming e—mail. Vince said: Listen, Colin, just give me this week. Trust me, okay. I won’t let you down. Dyers immediately responded. We’ll expect you next Monday, Vince. Back with us.
In the chalet, Vince opened the two windows and lay on the bed. His head aches. There was no way to shade out the light. He had left the phone to charge in the car. Closing his eyes, it suddenly occurred to him that there was an obvious purpose to this empty week. I must think about Gloria. I must give time to it. Real time. Not the few confused minutes before falling asleep. I must go at it as a task, a job.
For seven silent hours then, Vince lay on the bed in the chalet and told himself the story of his marriage. He remembered first meetings, holidays. He tried to list presents, to recall decisions, the cars they had owned, her father’s death, the miscarriage after Louise. He remembered Gloria’s sporting achievements, her body, her brusque but loving ways. She was loving, he thought, despite the austere, hurried meals, despite the Saturday morning cleaning. He remembered a way she had of dressing too lightly, of insisting they sleep with the window open, he remembered her fortitude when the first company he worked for had failed and there were mortgage payments and her father was ill. She had been solid then. She was never frightened of life. He remembered her laugh, her loud raucous laugh. She was taken from me, he said to himself at last, before there was time to understand, before I could prepare. I didn’t sit by her bed. Perhaps it was a love story, he decided. In its own way. He tried to remember Christmases and dinners and discussions about Louise, about schools. He felt better. He stood up and switched on the radio. There was a small digital set on the counter. He brought it back to the bed and lay down again. The problem is not the past, he decided, but what to do next. He was surprised by this sudden clarity. What a strange night last night! He pressed the search button looking for a station in English. Reception wasn’t good. The mountains no doubt. I haven’t eaten for twenty—four hours, he thought. He remembered Roland trying to break his piece of stale bread. At last a woman’s stern voice was talking about Iraq, about an election, an international disagreement, a plot to kill someone. Gloria would listen to two or three news bulletins one right after the other. Vince had always thought there was something disturbing about this attachment to chronicle. To return to the Berlin summit, the woman was saying— her accent was American— the three men who have chained themselves to the railing outside the Reichstag, now claim to have a bomb that they will explode if the police try to remove them. Vince got up, went out to the car, turned on the phone and texted a message to his daughter. Thinking of you, he wrote. It was lovely to be on holiday together.
SELF–RESCUE
Was it possible though? In the same internet café where he had bought the whisky, Vince studied a photo on the Guardian website. He has written to all his closest colleagues apologising for his absence, giving generic instructions, promising that he will be in the office on Saturday morning and will work through the weekend. The three men are wearing masks. Willing to Die to Wake Up the World, is the headline. Their spokesman speaks three languages fluently. No one knows who they are. The police have cleared the area. How can they sleep? Vince wonders. Or piss or shit? The masks are bags of white linen with holes for eyes and mouth. A strategy to prevent the police putting pressure on them through relatives, the article surmises. The temperature is in the mid—thirties. They are in full sunlight. Vince recognises the Reichstag with its pompous monu—mentality. He has visited the city more than once. But what he is looking at very closely is the exposed wrist of one of the men where it is handcuffed to the railing. This man seems to have a familiar build. Or perhaps not. He presses the ‘back’ button to return to the Waterworld site where Mandy has already posted four sets of twenty pictures. The quality is good. Here you are folks! she has written. Our mythical Community Experience! Vince searches for one of Clive and clicks to enlarge. The instructor is photographed face—on in his yellow boat, paddle held across his blue buoyancy aid. It’s a fine face, lit up somehow, the eyes glinting, the beard giving an impression of vigour, a secretive smile playing round the lips. Vince tries to find some distinguishing mark on the exposed wrist and forearm, but it’s hopeless. A tattoo or a scar would do it. The red boat just poking into the background must be Michela’s, he thinks. Or my own perhaps. He glances at one or two of the other pictures. Although there is loud music in the café, it’s strange the silence that gathers around these images. Max doffing his straw hat. Caroline balancing the singing hamster on her head. Vince returns to the Guardian. He checks all related articles. They have the latest figures on global warming, speed of temperature rise, glacier retreat. There is a map predicting flooding, shaded in different colours to suggest possible dates. Holland gone mid—century. The Po valley gone. World in state of denial, a psychologist writes, like a party on a riverboat drifting towards Niagara. Odd he used that metaphor. Can it really be Clive? Vince goes back to the photo. The three men have small coloured backpacks. Ready to blow themselves up, is the caption.
Vince checks his mail again, then spends the day repeating last Thursday’s walk up on the glacier. He takes the chair—lift above Sand in Taufers, finds the path, bends his back to it. He has put on his walking shoes. Making the trip alone, he gradually becomes aware, all around him, of the same silence that emanated from those photographs, the silence of voices that are no longer there. All my life has a kind of silence to it, he reflects, these days. He remembers Clive’s uncomfortable apology to Adam. It’s a noisy silence. I don’t think I can get through the whole summer like this, Michela had said. Vince stops to straighten his shoulders and look around. He had imagined she was referring to the heat. I didn’t pay attention. Same with Gloria. And it’s hot again now on the stee
p slope. The views are awesome. The peaks rise up one after another, quivering, immense and blue, but mainly bereft of snow. Perhaps we can feel a new tenderness for the landscape, now that we know we are killing it. Further down the valley there are cowbells clanging. Every time an animal moves, tiny, far below, a bell clangs in Vince’s mind. It must drive them mad. And across the wide air that separates him from a further slope comes the tinkle of children laughing. Some party or other. Vince listens, he picks out the distant figures. This is the silence of the mountains. Does Michela know what is happening? he wonders. How will she react? There were a hundred thousand, the Guardian said, at Sunday’s demonstration. It won’t be Clive.
Long before he reached the top, Vince was aware of speeding up, of marching more purposefully. He wants to get to Katrin Hofstetter’s death marker. On the way, he has seen three or four other memorials. Why didn’t I see them last time? Now he comes across a small iron cross driven into a boulder and the name of a young man, Karl Langer. There’s no photo, but a plastic rose has been fixed to the cross with a piece of wire. It’s the girl’s photo that draws me. Vince is aware that he has become hypersensitive to everything, and aware that it won’t last. I should enjoy it, this intensity.
The high ridge where the glacier begins is a strange mix of heat and cold. The sun is burning his forehead and the grainy ice freezing his feet. Then he can’t find the photo where he thought it must be. It’s irritating. He stands aside to let a group of German hikers pass in the opposite direction. Only four days and I’ve forgotten. Grüss Gott,a stout woman says. Grüss Gott. Eventually he finds the memorial twenty yards further on, facing west from a low wall of rock. 1999 she died. The thirty—first of August. How strange. And what a little miracle of technology to seal a photo so well it can survive the winter blizzards, the summer sun! The face is not quite as he remembered it. She’s prettier, happier, the hair wavier, brushed forward on one shoulder. Katrin Hofstetter: 19.1.1979—3i.8.i999.Vince imagines her eyes staring west into the sunset when the world around is all desert, when hikers no longer pass by, the planet is quite dead, and for the first time it occurs to him that those men chained to the railing in Berlin are not, perhaps, completely mad. Dyers and Hilson and the others will be in some committee meeting now. Much of the money the bank deals with is oil money. Inevitably. Glancing round to check that the path is quiet, Vince takes out his wallet, removes an ID photo of his wife and, without looking at it, lets it drop into the glassy crack between glacial ice and rock wall beneath the little memorial. In company, the dead may visit him less often.
Driving back, below the gorge at the entry to Sand in Taufers, he stopped the car at the sign ‘Rafting Center’ to the left of the road. In a small closed yard stood rack after rack of wetsuits and life—jackets. A tall, blonde man was loading gear into the back of a van. Do you know of any kayak guides I could contact? Vince spoke clearly and slowly in English. Not for myself, he explained. There was a group who already had their own instructors, but they might need a guide to show them round the local rivers. An expression of caution and recognition crossed the young face. You are with the English people, right? The girl who is nearly … He made a comic, choking expression. Right, Vince said. My name is Gerhard. The young man reached out a damp hand. She is okay? I helped to pull her out of the water. Very pretty girl. Vince gave his name. How much would a guide cost? he asked. It occurred to him now that there might be some local resentment of the English canoe group moving in like this on their pitch. We could have to talk about that, Gerhard said. I could have to see who is … who can help. Okay. Vince explained that he would only know on Thursday if their own guide could come or not. Then the work would be from Sunday onwards. I’ll call you Friday morning. Gerhard gave him the Rafting Center’s pamphlet, with a phone number.
The protestors have set a deadline of Wednesday evening at six o’clock, the radio said. Tomorrow. Vince listened stretched on the bed. It was early evening. There is one demand: a commitment to reduce greenhouse—gas emissions in line with Kyoto. Outside the open door of the chalet, the campsite sounds reminded him of the previous week: the singing, the shouts of children playing, radios, the occasional drumming. A diplomat who spoke in some unrecognisable tongue was translated as saying that his country would never be seen to reward terrorism. They were calling it terrorism. You have to keep a clear head, said an American. Vince was struck by the idea that the men at the railing might have very clear heads. As they saw it. Certainly they were keeping their nerve, despite the heat. How clearly I saw everything as the boat tipped down into the rapid. The image is sharper in his mind than any photo. What does clarity mean exactly? All those years doing the accounts, how clear—headed I was! How blind. Police spokesmen said they were taking the bomb threat very seriously. Vince looked at his watch. I could go and have a drink with Roland again, he thought, and get thoroughly muddled. Instead he fell asleep easily and early and woke in the night to hear the radio crackling voicelessly and feel the cool air drifting in through the open door. I didn’t even close the door. Returning from the bathrooms, he was aware that his mind felt peculiarly healthy and purposeful, but without quite knowing what the purpose was. Caught yourself smiling, he muttered.
On the Wednesday morning he drove down to Bruneck, stopping at Geiss to check the bus timetable. He had put a change of dry clothes in the car. If someone like himself, he thought, could paddle the easy section of the lower Aurino on his own, then, in the event, there would be no guide required until the Monday.
Arriving at the hospital, he found the ward sister and asked her if she could tell Fraulein Donati he was here and would she be willing to see him. About five minutes later Michela appeared in the corridor, belting up the towelled robe he had brought her three days before. What are you doing here? she asked. I thought you’d gone. The bruise on her cheek has drained to yellow. She is standing very straight. Vince only shrugged. We can talk in the garden, she said brusquely.
Turning, she walked away so quickly he had to hurry to catch up. Her sandals slapped down two flights of stairs, along a corridor and out into a courtyard with five or six benches. I told you not to bother, she repeated over her shoulder. That’s why I sent the nurse to ask if you were willing to see me, Vince answered. Michela went to a bench in the shade and curled herself up right in the corner, arms folded, knees drawn in under them. But Vince could sense she was better now. Her body had a quick feminine lightness as she moved. You look well, he said. Not because I want to, she told him.
He waited. The so—called garden was just a few square yards of lawn and shrubs with a near life—size Madonna, carved in wood, on a pedestal in the middle. Has Clive been in touch? she asked. No. He sat uncomfortably with his hands on his knees. Again it was fearfully hot. He was sweat—ing. Actually, I was wondering if either you or he had mobiles, you know, it might be useful. He hates them, the girl said. What do you need to call us for anyway? Vince let it pass. Also, I thought you might need some money, but I couldn’t find a wallet or anything, in the chalet. I don’t have one, she told him. Clive left some money for me with the doctor.
Vince was surprised at this level of dependence. Again he waited. He wasn’t going to tell her anything, if she didn’t know. Eventually she said: They’re letting me out tomorrow morning.
So you’ll be there when Clive gets back.
Right.
Casually, he asked: You don’t know if he had any special plans for while he was in Berlin?
No. At once she was more alert. Why?
Oh, I just wondered what on earth these demonstrators could actually get up to for four whole days.
She relaxed. If it’s like other things I’ve been to, there’ll be a kind of alternative conference in some abandoned warehouse or other.
Catching a smile in her voice, Vince turned to look at her. A soft irony was playing round her lips. He raised his eyebrows. Quite unexpectedly, she reached across the bench and took his bandaged hand. Is it bad? Vince couldn’t hid
e from himself a sudden flutter of excitement. Just a couple of stitches. He didn’t say he was planning to take out a boat this afternoon. So why haven’t you gone back? she repeated. I wasn’t very nice when you came last time, was I? Vince bit his lip, cast about. I promised Clive I would stay. Then I thought, you know, I might as well take advantage of the chalet for a couple of days. He wasn’t so much lying as speaking at random. You’re sad, aren’t you? she told him. He hesitated. Not especially. Yes you are. One night I was sitting outside, behind the kitchen tent, and I saw you walking to the bathrooms. Really late. You had your shoulders bent— she sat forward and mimicked, cruelly, her face comically gloomy— like you were carrying something that wasn’t there. Something pretty heavy. Oh, that’s just old age, Vince said. He had expected to talk about her problems, not his. She laughed. Not true, you’re sad. Why not admit it? Your wife died, didn’t she? That’s right, he acknowledged. The girl was looking at him. Did you love her?
Vince was unprepared for such a direct question. Yes. I did, he said. Of course I loved her. Poor fingers, she muttered. She was still holding his hand. And did she love you?
Yes. Listen …
You do know there was a nasty story going round?
Vince turned and looked straight at her. He pulled his hand away. She shrugged her shoulders, pursed her lips. She had done it deliberately. Her eyes are glinting. But he won’t rise to it. Speaking very quietly, he asks: So what have you been up to these last couple of days?
Nothing. Lots of neural tests and scans and things.
Results?
Apparently I could be an athlete.
Great.
She didn’t reply. She still has a mocking smile in her eyes. I suppose, Vince tried after a moment or two, the hospital must get pretty boring when you’re not really ill. I mean, people must end up watching the TV and listening to the news the whole time.
