He didn’t go swimming as he thought he would. Feeling unexpectedly tired, he took a quick shower to wash the scent of the owl room off, and went to bed. As soon as he lay still beneath the soft duvet, his two eastern-bred cats snuggled close, while their warmth and purring accompanied him to sleep. His dreams were filled with owls, but they were unable to fly, and ran across a dark forest floor on bare human feet.
7
HE CARRIED THE TRIPOD AND CAMERA BAG TO the fifth floor, and from there followed a windowed hallway to the staircase that led to the top level. That high up the night and the mist, which had been constant the whole spring and summer, cloaked the view of the park below. The formlessness that filled the glass was how he imagined being blind must feel. Not a complete darkness, but the absence of visual cues, a non-seeing. It made him want to turn toward the wall behind him instead, whose textures looked like clouds ought to, full of whorls and shapes and imaginary patterns.
Kaye arrived, smiling, carrying two paper cups with cardboard lids.
“Sorry I’m late,” the assistant professor said. “Thought we could both be in need of the true fuel of our civilization.” Kaye held one of the cups out to him, the scent of coffee rising with the steam. “I have packets of sweetener and non-dairy cream if you need it.”
“Thank you, no, this is perfect,” he said, took the cup, and shouldered the bag and tripod.
They continued upstairs to the sixth floor, through the hissing low pressure of the owl room’s outer doors, to the blue light of the cloakroom, where they placed the coffee cups on the shoe racks while they changed into protective coveralls. He also wrapped shoe covers around the legs of the tripod. Kaye unlocked the door to the mouse room, the owl room, and the experiment room.
He put the tripod down and adjusted its legs. In the bag he had brought two short-distance and one low-light lens, along with the camera body and a remote timer.
“Looking good,” Kaye said. “These images are the last things we need for a couple of new publications. As you probably know, in academia it’s ‘publish or perish.’”
“So I’ve heard,” he said, scuffing away some wood wool with the tip of his shoe to make certain the legs were standing directly on the floor.
“Please take your time,” the assistant professor said. “There’s no rush. I’ll let the owl in when you’re done and we’ll run the experiment right away.”
“Anything in particular I should keep in mind?” he said, picking up his cup of coffee and looking at Kaye.
“Stand still as long as the owl is here,” Kaye said. “The sounds I play will distract it so it shouldn’t notice you. But if it does, don’t panic. I’ll keep an eye through the window. Oh, and put the camera on silent mode. It does have one?”
He nodded. “No problem.”
“Good,” Kaye said. “I’ll wake up the computers.” The assistant professor vanished through the slim door to the recording room.
The small soundproofed space with its paper mountains and cut-out trees was filled with the scent of wood wool and bird droppings. The silence in it was dense, compressed, he could even hear his own pulse. He chose one of the short-distance lenses from the bag and screwed it onto the housing, switched the camera on, removed the lens cap, and toggled the camera’s
shutter sound to mute. Then he pointed the camera at the tree and set the range so the whole room would be in focus since he didn’t know where the owl would land. He switched the camera remote on and took a few test shots of the tree to adjust for the range and the light conditions. Finally, he set the camera to high speed photography and to capture several consecutive images with each click on the remote. When everything was done, he stepped into the corner behind the tripod, timer in hand, and squatted in the wood wool.
Kaye nodded at him through the window and exited. The assistant professor returned with a mouse box, which he carried into the monitor room, then left again. When Kaye next opened the door, a medium-sized brown and black owl was perched on his gloved right hand. Kaye moved quickly to the tree and held the owl close to one of the upper branches. After a moment’s hesitation, the bird stepped over to the tree and settled. Kaye walked calmly but swiftly back to the monitor room and closed the door.
He waited and breathed. The owl was sitting with its back to him, but he nevertheless took a few shots of it. Then a deep, almost inaudible tone played somewhere close to the blue-padded ceiling. The owl reared up and spread its wings, which seemed to reach from one side of the small room to the other, flew to where the sound had emitted, before it banked and returned to the tree. Next, a higher pitched note appeared. The owl located the source of the new sound almost immediately. The tone after that had a similar pitch, but was played at an almost inaudible volume, yet clearly recognizable to the owl. Then the sound turned very sharp and high, almost painfully so. The next ones that followed must have been outside of his auditory range, because the bird lifted in a different direction twice without him hearing anything. Then came a few more tones, one medium pitched and loud, another low and quiet, almost like a rumble, which the owl located immediately and accurately. Finally, the door to the monitor room opened slightly and something rustled in the thick wood wool on the floor. The owl immediately took to its wings, as before in complete silence. He pressed the remote several times. Something bounced a few times in the shavings, then the owl returned to the barren tree with the catch secured in its talons and started to consume the mouse. Afterward, the bird moved its head from side to side a few times and adjusted its wings.
Kaye returned from the monitor room, glove on hand, and held it close to the owl’s feet. There were no traces of the mouse left, not even tufts of fur in the wood wool. The owl turned its head a bit before it stepped onto Kaye’s hand, talons sinking into the leather. The assistant professor stroked the soft, wide chest with one finger while keeping his gaze on the bird. The owl rolled its eyes and hooted. Then Kaye carried it back to the owl cages.
“How did it go?” Kaye said upon returning.
“I think it went very well,” he said. “I took several pictures but will only know how they turned out when I’ve looked at them on a screen.”
Kaye nodded. “Good,” he said. “I have more owl species to photograph, but there’s no point in doing that before we know how these are. Give me a call or text when you know.”
“I will,” he said.
“Are you in a hurry?”
“Not particularly. Just have to pack everything up.”
“Give me a few minutes and I’ll follow you outside. With the pictures coming along I need to finish the articles, so no more experiments tonight.”
“Certainly,” he said.
Kaye returned to the recording room and the lights went on inside.
He switched off the remote and the camera, returned the lens and the body to the bag, pulled the tripod’s legs up, and folded them together. Through the glass he saw Kaye sip coffee while typing on one of the keyboards. After a few minutes the assistant professor returned, switched off the lamp in the monitor room, and locked the door.
“Ready to leave?”
He nodded.
They drove in silence as they had done the night before. The streets were empty and a chilly, lingering drizzle gave the street lights halos. All sounds were thick and distant, as if they were still in the soundproofed bird room. He could see the honeycomb towers shining in the distance, but they didn’t seem to come any closer. Kaye continued along streets flanked by gabled houses with old-fashioned bay windows and carved door frames. Thick but neat hedgerows delineated the gardens from each other and the pavement outside. At a wooden house painted a bright orange-brown color, with black window frames and slim finials spearing the air from the roof, Kaye stopped the car. A low wrought-iron gate barred the short pathway from the pavement to the orange door, where a massive monkey puzzle tree loomed.
“Want to come in for a coffee?” Kaye asked.
He did.
8
INSIDE WAS A CLOAKROOM WHERE A DOOR WITH A frosted window barred the way to the rest of the house. The small space was held in a warm orange color, similar to the exterior of the house, but a shade less intense. One side of the cloakroom was draped with jackets and coats. He spotted at least two down parkas, a navy-blue blazer, a black leather jacket, and a pair of hardshell ski pants with suspenders. When he tried to hang his own coat on top of one of the parkas, both fell off the hook. He quickly lifted the clothes back in place, hoping Kaye hadn’t noticed. Below the outer garments stood a row of footwear: several mountain boots, a pair of tall rubber wellingtons, a couple of sneakers, loafers, the rest hidden behind a leather bag with shoulder strap, a canvas sports bag, and a red eighty-liter backpack. He removed his shoes and placed them with the other footwear.
The hall beyond the second door looked more like an old woman’s house than that of a young academic. The hardwood floor had darkened with age and multiple applications of varnish, its many eyes large and black. Four open doors with thickly painted paneling and carved frames led out of the square central space. A narrow set of stairs ascended to the second floor, its wall covered with black and white images hung in dark frames, old photographs of relatives, he assumed. Among the pictures were also framed certificates and awards, like a display of achievements for the ancestors. At the bottom of the stairs stood a circular mahogany table covered with a round lace doily and an antique porcelain lamp painted with flax flowers.
“This used to be my grandparents’ house,” Kaye said. “I’ve been meaning to redecorate, but there never seems to be enough time. The living room and kitchen are a bit more this century, I promise.”
He smiled. “Wait a few more years and this’ll be trendy again.”
Kaye laughed. “Want a drink?”
“Just some water, thanks,” he said, hoping it wouldn’t unnerve Kaye since his original invitation had included coffee.
“All right,” Kaye said, hesitated for a moment, then turned and vanished through the door at the opposite end of the hall. “The living room’s to the right, please make yourself at home!”
“Thank you,” he said. He relished exploring new spaces, whether private or public, inhabited or abandoned. In the past, when he glimpsed from outside apartments or houses that were either too bare and lonely-looking, or crowded with old-fashioned, outdated furniture like here, he yearned to stand inside those rooms, to see and experience what whoever lived there did. He had even considered breaking into certain buildings for a closer look at what he could tantalizingly glimpse from outside. But in the end the obvious risks were too high for the possible reward, and he steered his tastes over to abandoned industrial places instead. Those were like open secrets, accessible if one only looked hard enough, and were often more interesting and beautiful than buildings that were still inhabited and maintained.
He nevertheless didn’t want to miss the opportunity to look around in the old house before Kaye returned from the kitchen. He wanted to know more about the assistant professor without having to give away something about himself. Although he despised the self-aggrandizement of social media, he had searched for Kaye online. But except for a few websites at various research institutions which listed Kaye’s academic credentials and publications, the assistant professor seemed to have as small an internet presence as he himself did.
The living room faced the back garden, where a rotary clothes line turned slowly in the darkness. The grass stood thick and tall from neglect and mild autumn weather. A low boxwood hedge separated the garden from the property behind it, another patch of lawn with another old house in the middle, this one in sky-blue stucco with white windows and doors. A black three-seat leather sofa stood against the window, holding a pile of laundry, clean from the crinkled look of it: t-shirts, socks, rumpled jeans and chinos, some underwear. In front of the sofa stood a blond oak table, covered in books and magazines, with even more stacked on the shelf beneath the top.
Opposite the window was a large shelf filled with books, ranging from small paperbacks at the top to hardbound volumes in the middle and large atlases at the bottom. Scattered on the shelves were carved figurines that looked tribal, framed butterflies and beetles, postcards from a rainforest and a polar landscape, a miniature head-mounted camera, a pair of pliers, a ring with several keys, and a flashlight. There was no TV, no DVD player, no music system, not even a radio. In the corner by the door stood a massive wood stove on an unpolished granite plate. The brass firewood holder next to it was three-quarters full of logs and the set of wrought iron spade and brush next to it were gray with soot. The doorway led to the kitchen, which he only glimpsed as a narrow space lined with cupboards.
The second door in the hall led to a dining room facing the front garden and the street. By the large bay window stood a dining table with eight chairs, made from a shiny burgundy wood he guessed was mahogany, carved into graceful legs and rails. Behind the table was a cabinet of the same material and design, its glass panes opaque with age. On the wall opposite the bay window hung a large oil painting with a frame as broad as his hand, carved into garlands and ribbons, the gilding having darkened with time. The canvas displayed a wetland devoured by black, roiling clouds that most of all resembled the front of a sandstorm. The sliver of sky above it looked like it was on fire. The bog itself lay in darkness, with the silhouettes of only a few trees and bushes visible. At first the painting reminded him of the tempests on Mars that could engulf the whole planet in dust, but with a sudden and irrational unease, he recognized the marsh as that which surrounded his apartment.
When Kaye appeared from the kitchen, he was sitting on the sofa next to the pile of laundry. The assistant professor put two steaming mugs of coffee down on the table, handle-less, with a geometric pattern along the rim. It reminded him of clayware he had seen in countries along the old trade route to the eastern continent, now impassable because of unrest and civil war. He was surprised, Kaye seemed so dedicated to his work he’d expected thermos mugs with the university’s coat of arms.
“I made you some coffee anyway,” Kaye said. “It’s a chilly evening.”
“Thanks,” he said and smiled. The cup warmed his hands comfortably.
“Please ignore the mess.” Kaye grinned, gathered up the pile of laundry, put it on the floor, and sat down.
He lifted the cup and inhaled the aromatic fragrance of the liquid. Refraining from blowing on it, he took a small sip. “It’s good,” he said, “but this will keep me awake all night.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Kaye said and leaned very close.
At first the kiss was soft, but as he responded, it became more insistent. His pulse pounded in his ears and the rest of the world vanished in a rush of touch and scent and pleasure.
After that there were more evenings in the owl room, more coffee, and more nights in the old house. He didn’t ask Kaye home and the assistant professor never invited himself there, perhaps for fear of being rejected. From the furtive glances Michael sent him when he thought he wasn’t looking, he knew Michael suspected there was someone else. But from the unfamiliar scents on Michael and the lack of text messages, he also thought there was someone else with him. At least he hoped so, for his own bad conscience, but he never asked Michael.
He wondered what would happen when he was done photographing the owls. Would he see Kaye again, or would they quietly part ways? Was there even now an unspoken but definite agreement that when the job was done, that was it, or was there an expectation about something more, something longer lasting? Kaye didn’t really seem interested in that, or he probably would have been more insistent. Or maybe the assistant professor was just busy and preoccupied with his work, as his house indicated. His own expectations were even harder to catch, like water in his hands, so he pushed the questions away till later.
At Kaye’s there were images of friends, colleagues, grinning from university campuses and surfing beaches and mountain tops, and what looked like siblings, parents, grand
parents, and other relatives, as well as a single photo of a blond man and a small child with the assistant professor. The man and Kaye looked like more than friends, seemed a family, but the print was unframed and dusty and lay on top of a pile of books on ecology and population dynamics on the floor in Kaye’s bedroom. He didn’t ask about the photo or any of the other mementos the house was filled with.
Once Kaye saw an image from the abandoned sanatorium he had explored last summer, of a rusted surgical table, pale stuffing bubbling out of rips and tears in the cushions, the broad foot speckled with corrosion and half covered in sand and leaves.
“What’s this?” Kaye said and leaned closer to the screen.
It was too late to close the laptop, and if he did, the professor would probably just become more curious. He had to go with the questions.
“It’s from the old sanatorium up north,” he said. “Have you been there?”
Kaye shook his head. “No, but I’ve heard about it. Hasn’t it been closed for decades?”
He nodded. “By the look of it.”
“Did you take this?” Kaye said.
He nodded again.
“How did you get in?”
“Through the front door,” he said. “It’s fairly open.”
“Fairly?” Kaye said, looked at him and laughed.
He smirked, but inside he was squirming at being asked about a place which felt so private.
“Does everything there look as ruined as this?”
“More or less.”
“Did you go alone?”
“I did that time,” he said. He didn’t want Kaye to think he was a loner.
“Wasn’t that risky?” Kaye said. “In such an old building far away from everywhere else?”
Not Dark Yet Page 4
