The Mountain

by Paul Yoon

She approaches the bartender and shares a name, asks if he knew the family. He shakes his head and wipes the bar. As she crosses the room again, around Koldo and Camille who are still dancing, she pictures a young woman moving east across a country for a man and for children. Mama, the future nurse at a Belgian hospital. Papa the horse breeder who was traveling through here, selling horses. She sees her brother again reaching for her through the open window, waking her with the smell of the lake on his arms. The abandoned church they used to explore together, climbing the stones, though she can’t remember now where that was.

  And who are these people she has come here with? She sits beside Oliver, this man casually drinking his wine, and recognizes that her life these past four years has been moments with strangers. Or perhaps it always was. What terrifies her is that she doesn’t know if this makes up a life. She says this to Oliver, surprised by her own openness. She is unsure if she says it the way she wants to in English, whether it sounds like something else but it seems to her like the only honest thing she has said in years.

  Oliver stubs out his cigarette. He tells her he saw Ella once on a ferryboat on the Hudson River. She didn’t want to be recognized, so she was wearing a long-brimmed felt hat that fluttered in the wind. He says: The bird comes, swoops down, thinks the hat’s food, snatches it with its claws, and away it goes, this blue hat, Ella’s hat, high above the river, into the valley.

  He finishes his wine and pours more. She likes that he is calling the great singer by only her first name. She likes the intimacy of it.

  I swear, he says. Even the sound of surprise in her voice sounded like song.

  So he is from New York. There is this, something she knows about him. A river. A ferryboat. The small scar across his nose, the origin of which could be as plain as a branch or as romantic as a novel.

  Karine asks if he wants to dance. Oliver laughs.

  Not at all, he says.

  If he was at all curious about her he no longer shows it. He drinks more wine and smokes. The innkeeper flips over the record. As the music plays again, Oliver is gone somewhere in a far room in his mind.

  She leans into his shoulder, smelling the sourness of his shirt collar. Only this. She watches the other two, who are like trees in a lazy wind. She feels everyone’s exhaustion along with her own and she wonders for how long these three strangers have been in France. Her wrist itches again. She wonders what it is.

  She asks about the scar. Ella Fitzgerald sings.

   •

  She shares a room with Camille. Camille pays for it. They are on the top floor and have each taken a narrow bed. Their feet face the window. Camille, drunk, shares some dirty French jokes, pleased to be speaking in her native language. She doesn’t wait for Karine to laugh. She laughs on her own and the room fills with her sleepiness.

  Karine turns to her side and asks if they are really aid workers. Camille laughs again. She doesn’t say anything for a while. She kicks away the covers and stares up at the nighttime ceiling.

  She says, more quietly now, We’re looking for the American’s brother.

  Brother?

  Well, I guess he was already found. We’re going to identify the remains. Well, no. I already identified them. I’m taking Oliver so he can bring his brother home. Though it won’t happen the way he imagines. The body. It’s in bad shape. I’m sorry. I laugh when I’m drunk.

  She covers her mouth and lies still again, her body pale as snow. In the silence, Karine drifts, holding on to some fragment, some memory, the old noises of the inn. She is back at the hospital searching. She is in a wheelchair. She finds Oliver’s brother half buried in trash, his eyes gone.

  She wakes from this, splashes water on her face, and leaves early. She follows the street away from the town. A house light is on. She wonders if it is the boy but it is a man asleep on a rocking chair, his spectacles hooked over a finger and dangling close to the floor.

  She keeps walking. The street curves up a slope and she enters a valley. In the high distance, near the ridge, she catches the smoke from a fire. She thinks she can make out a rooftop there but she is unsure. She follows the road, farther into the valley, reaching a long field where there is a stone cottage. It appears to be the only structure breaking the distance. She spots a well. A tree out front. If there had been flowers they are gone but the house appears to have survived.

  Karine sits down at the edge of the field, facing the distant property, waiting for movement. She has no idea if this is the place. The morning comes and spreads over the grass. She plucks a blade and chews on it. When nothing happens Karine makes her way across. It is colder here than in the town, windier. As she passes the tree she reaches up to touch a branch.

  There is a bench with a bucket near the front door. The door cracked open. A few windows broken. She stays outside at first, circling the perimeter. She goes around the main house and gazes out at the field beyond where there is a wrecked airplane, one of its wings in the air and the other snapped into pieces in the grass. The painted flag on the tail is visible though she doesn’t know what country it belongs to. When she heads down she is careful not to touch it as though the metal is still hot.

  And then she does, stepping up onto the wing and peering down into the cockpit. The control panel and even the seat have been stripped and taken, scavenged for the black market. She can smell the faint trace of something burned. She gets back down and leans on the wing. She looks around, at the flat landscape, then up at the far mountain where there is smoke again.

  She stays on the wing for a while and then heads back up, entering the cottage, to the dusty furniture, the long kitchen table, teacups. Pillows. An oil painting hangs tilted on the wall. There are also leaves piled up everywhere. An eggshell from a hatched bird. The smell of past seasons. Each corner like some abandoned story.

  She wanders the corridors. She checks the rooms. In the first she finds long scratch marks. She bends down, spreads her hands, matches her fingers with the lines. Beside these lie a set of wind chimes. She picks it up and holds it to the light. It is as though a storm had picked it up from the tree outside, or from her mind, and carried it in.

  She approaches the last room. She slides open the door. She stops. Holds her breath as she stumbles back. Her hands tremble. She grips them and breathes through her mouth. She looks in again.

  In the far corner there is a figure on his knees. His head is bowed. The sun is falling on the old jumpsuit he is wearing, his hair nearly gone, the discolored, shriveled skin of his neck. She covers her nose with the sleeve of her shirt and goes closer. She turns to face him. As she does she feels a touch on her shoulder and screams.

  Mierda, Koldo says, pinching his nose, looking down at the corpse.

  He wraps his arms around her. He covers her eyes. She lets him, leaning into him as he brings her out. He brings her out to the bench where she vomits into the bucket. Bile and wine slosh in the tin. Koldo holds back her hair.

  Come on, he says, in French. Let’s go.

  Karine shakes her head. She spits. No.

  We’re leaving soon, he says. You can come.

  No, she says.

  He stands in front of her. He is looking at the years of grief contained in her face and her body.

  Come with us, he says, and his voice grows softer.

  When she doesn’t answer Koldo lights a cigarette, gives it to her, and lights one for himself. He stands there thinking. He checks his watch. He examines the door of the cottage, tries to shut it. He looks through the broken windows.

  You have your bag? Your rations?

  Yes.

  He takes off his beret and puts it on her head.

  Then I’ll come back. After. Keep your head warm.

  He walks toward the tree where he has parked his car. The engine is still running. He circles the tree, accelerates out toward the main road, and is gone.

   •

  Karine returns to the last room. She sits beside the pilot. She doesn’t know what to do. She
stays in the room as though it will tell her. He managed to take his helmet off. It is there, beside him, like the replica of a planet.

  She is afraid to touch him. But she does, holding his remaining hand, the brittle dark skin, wondering what happened. She lifts the body, shocked by its lightness. She pulls it out of the room, down the corridor, and out of the house. She takes a shovel from the shed and digs. She digs behind the cottage, facing the airplane. She digs as deep as she can, until she can no longer feel her arms, and she buries him. She stumbles back inside the cottage and sleeps.

   •

  She sleeps a full day. She sleeps on the bench by the kitchen table, forgetting that there are beds in the rooms. When she wakes it is late afternoon. She wakes scratching her wrist. She looks out the window and wonders if she imagined the smoke rising from the valley ridge.

  From the bag she pulls out the music sheet. She unfolds it on the kitchen table, beside the pocket mirror. The playing cards she places on a shelf.

  Then she cleans the house. Or as best as she can. She finds a broom and sweeps. She collects the leaves and the eggshell and the broken bits of wood and all the years that have accumulated in pieces and brings them outside. She hangs the wind chimes. She ignores her hunger as her body slips into the rhythm of cleaning the house, the ease of it, so she keeps working.

  She will have to find a way to cover the windows. In the shed she finds seeds and a wheelbarrow. Ceramic pots. A bicycle with flat tires. Ignoring the tires, she practices riding it, luxuriating in the movement. She circles the tree. The wind chimes clatter and clang as she hits them. She goes back to clean the cottage some more and then rides the bicycle again until the day starts to end.

  Even in the cold she washes her clothes in the bucket outside. She has nothing to wear, so she doesn’t wear anything. She watches her breath leave her in bursts. The road. She thinks about a map she once owned and wonders if it is still at the hospital. Whether the circle she drew points to where she is now or whether she was wrong, whether she is now somewhere else. She wrings water out of the clothes that were never hers. The water cools the itching in her arm. It keeps her awake. Clear.

  In the kitchen she finds a rusted bread knife. She balances the mirror on the table and begins to cut her hair. She cuts it until it is the length of her chin. She stares at the face as though it isn’t a reflection but someone else by a window. She smiles.

  Waiting for the clothes to dry, wrapped up in a blanket, Karine eats a C ration. The strange paste of food and biscuits and chocolate. It all tastes like nothing to her. She eats another, opening cabinets and drawers filled with utensils, plates, bowls, listening to things clatter, echo, and doing it again to hear the sounds once more.

  Her second night in this new place. When she is done she goes back and forth from the well to the bathtub inside until it is half full and then boils as much as she can on the stove. She climbs in, bringing the mirror and the knife in case she needs to cut her hair some more. She lowers her head, submerges herself. A shadow passes overhead. She rises, quickly, looks around. She can hear the water dripping from her hair. Then the cooing of the bird that has slipped in from the door that won’t stay closed. The bird settles on a ceiling beam near her, tilts its head, flies away again.

  She thinks of the pilot. Who he was. If someone is looking for him.

  Karine pours more water into the tub. She brings the mirror toward her and searches her own face for some part of her family, unwilling to admit that there are days when she cannot remember them.

  The bird flies in again. The wind blows the door wide open and from the tub she has a view of the tree. The night.

  She tries to recall the last time she felt this kind of silence. The last time she was this alone. She scratches her wrist. She wonders what it is. She is no longer sure what to do anymore. Where to go. How to be. She presses down on the skin. She is startled by some piece of bone or shard that is loose in there, under the skin. She picks up the bread knife and presses the tip against her wrist. She presses until her skin breaks and in the nighttime she sees the slim, new river along her arm, the way it follows her wrist and swirls into the water. The cool sting. The heat. She inserts the tip of her finger into the incision and begins to search for whatever is there. She pushes down.

  But there is nothing there. Another gust of wind. She hears the hinges of the door. She looks down at her finger inside her wrist and the blood coming out and the water now all dark and she shouts and begins to cry. She keeps shouting and crying as she reaches for the towel. She wraps her wrist and holds it hard. The burn and the pulse of it dizzies her. She gags. She thinks she is going to pass out. With her teeth she ties a knot as tightly as she can, and then it is done and she lowers her arms into the water.

  She breathes. She calms. Through the door a light appears high in the valley. It is where she saw smoke yesterday. It is a window, perhaps. Or still a fire. She lies in the tub, holding her wrist, and stays up with it.

   •

  The morning is bright and clear. She finds another towel, cleans the wound, and wraps her wrist again. Even though there is no one else, she does this in the corner, hidden from view. She passes the tub but avoids looking at the water that is still there. She puts on her clean clothes. She drinks what is left of the kettle water.

  She wonders what she will do today. As she steps outside a man appears on the valley road. He is walking with a casual slowness and when he is closer she can spot the basket he is carrying and the rifle slung over his shoulder. He turns into the field, approaching the tree, and she lifts a hand for shade and sees it is not a man but the boy she saw out the window at the inn. She makes her way toward him, and they meet under the tree.

  The boy lifts the basket toward her, grinning like a sailor who is visiting a port.

  Is there morphine? Karine says.

  What?

  Morphine.

  No. Are you hurt?

  No.

  He eyes her wrist.

  What happened there? he says.

  Kitchen accident, she says. What happened there?

  He blushes. He hides his hand that is missing a thumb.

  I can still shoot, the boy says.

  They haven’t moved from the tree. He has pale hair and is wearing rubber boots and a hunting jacket too large for him. He hits the wind chimes and they listen.

  Are you maquis?

  What?

  He points to the beret she is wearing.

  No, she says, and takes it off.

  Karine introduces herself. They shake hands.

  His name is Luc. He is eleven. He lives up there, he says, and points to where she saw the window and the fire.

  Are you alone? she asks.

  He shrugs. Sometimes, he says, but doesn’t elaborate. You live here? Now?

  She thinks about how to respond to this. She says, Yes.

  So you found him? the boy says, and gestures toward the corner window of the cottage.

  Yes, she says. I found him.

  We saw the plane, the boy says. We saw it spin and go down. And then we saw him. He went in there. He never came out.

  Luc doesn’t say who he saw it with. He has grown silent. She looks across at the far field and imagines the trajectory of the pilot, his exit and his crawl as he holds his chest, which is crushed, and makes his way toward the house, unaware that he is already dead.

  Luc sits down. He lifts the cloth that has been covering the basket. The boy has carried a dozen eggs, bread, cheese, and a jar of preserves. A bottle of wine. She lowers herself, careful of the pain in her arm.

  You sit down like an old man, the boy says, and she laughs.

  It hurts to laugh. He tears off the heel of the bread and throws it to her.

  She settles under the tree with him and together they eat. She can hear him chewing. The heaviness of the rifle as he lowers it beside him.

  Were there ever flowers in those fields? Karine asks.

  I think so, the boy says, chewing
with his mouth open. I don’t know. I’m sorry. There are things I can’t remember.

  He taps his head and frowns. She tells him it is okay.

  You must be tired, she says. From the walk.

  I’m tired, Luc says.

  He stops eating and lies down in the grass. He is still shy about his missing thumb and makes a fist to hide the wound. He shuts his eyes.

  You can stay here if you want, Karine says.

  Okay, he says.

  I mean, you don’t have to go back up there. If you don’t want to.

  I can stay?

  You can stay.

  And what will I do?

  Do you know how to play cards? she says.

  He has not opened his eyes. The shadow of the wind chimes are moving over him.

  No, Luc says. I don’t think so. No.

  Then we’ll play cards.

  And then?

  We’ll rest. We’ll sleep and we’ll eat. We’ll stop and we’ll wait. We’ll get better. We’ll start again.

  We’ll get better? he says.

  Yes.

  And we’ll wait?

  We’ll wait.

  For someone?

  Yes.

  Someone will come?

  Someone will come, Karine says, and leans back against the tree.

  She watches the boy’s chest rise and fall. She hears him breathing. She hears the bending branches and then the sound of a small, bright thing overhead, crossing.

  GALICIA

  Antje came to Spain three years ago. She worked as a hotel maid in San Sebastián, where she met Mathis and married him. He was a manager at the hotel. He was eight years older. She was twenty-four and had left Germany after her mother died. Her mother had been in Kabul, serving as an engineer in the Bundeswehr. Antje had never traveled abroad before.

   •

  Mathis lived in a bungalow in the hills. It was a single room with a small backyard and a partial view of the coast. Every morning he went for a run and then they went to work together at the hotel. It was on La Concha Bay and ten stories tall. Each room had a balcony, a large flat-screen television, and seashells in a glass bowl by the bed.