Heinrich walked to the hotel. The door of the hotel was locked. He tugged on the door. Through the glass, he could see that nobody was inside the small lobby, not one guest or employee. What met Heinrich’s eye were a wooden bench, a stretch of muddy carpet, a collection of boots and shoes, the window of a small interior office, a pay phone attached to a wall, and, facing the phone, a stiff chair on metal legs. At the very back, four steps led up and out of sight. He banged on the door.
The wind blew in off the ice-clogged sea. His back to the frigid waters, he stared through the door’s glass pane and waited. A heavy man wrapped in a large white apron came slowly hurrying until the width of him filled Heinrich’s view. The door swung open and Heinrich stepped into the warmth.
“You want a room? Something to eat? A shower? What is it you want?”
The man had a soft face, clouded by worry. The pouches of loose, delicate skin under his eyes spoke of exhaustion. Heinrich swung his backpack off his shoulders. He wanted everything—a bed, hot water, food. He was about to ask the price but the man in the apron took a cigarette from his breast pocket, tapped the tight paper tube of tobacco on the back of his soft, pale hand, and continued to speak, a raw irritability rushing his words.
“I don’t want to be rude. I am not a rude man. But I am upstairs cooking, and now I am down here with you, and I can’t be in two places at once, not even I can do that. So you tell me. What is it you want?”
“I would like a room for tonight, and what is the price, please?”
The price shocked Heinrich. It was more than twice what he’d paid in Frobisher Bay. From the bottom of his pack he pulled out his wallet and counted the necessary sum.
“Tabarnak!” the man swore. “Where did you get those?”
The man in the apron lifted one of Heinrich’s bills to the light. It was a fifty.
“At the bank. In Ottawa.”
“I haven’t seen one of these since twenty, twenty-five years. Maybe thirty years? But you don’t remember that far back, you weren’t born. Could be you found this somewhere?”
“I’m sorry? I don’t understand.”
Heinrich found the man’s accent difficult to decipher. What was he saying about the money? Was he accusing him of theft or of counterfeit?
“Twenty years, thirty, that’s how old these are, and you say you got them from the bank? How long ago was that? I take these to the bank, they will say to me: ‘Go visit a collector of antiques or use them, peut-être, to blow your nose.”
“I’m sorry. I do not understand. There is a problem with my money? In Frobisher Bay, two weeks ago, I paid for my room, my money was good, nobody told me I must return it to the bank.”
“Nobody told you? Maybe you were handing out something else? Maybe someone had a bit to drink in Iqaluit? How should I know? All I know is that these dollars, a museum can use them, not me. I can’t use them. Frobisher Bay, Frobisher Bay—nobody told you, the name it changed since seven years to Iqaluit?”
“Please, this is the only money I have. Is there a bank here, where I can exchange them?”
“You think I am inventing a little game?” The man in the apron opened the drawer of the cash register, took out a fifty, and slapped it on the counter; its design was markedly different from that of the bill in Heinrich’s hand.
“Please, I believe you,” Heinrich insisted, articulating carefully, hoping to calm the man, and to calm himself as well. “This is all I have, I have no other way to pay you for a room, or food, or anything else. But once I go to a bank. Is there a bank?”
The man in the apron put away the fifty-dollar bill that he’d taken from the drawer of his till. Then he took one of Heinrich’s fifties and slid him some change in the newer currency across the counter.
“I am upstairs cooking. If I am not cooking, there is no lunch; and you have just paid for your lunch. Your room, she will cost you more. There is a bank machine in the Northern Store. You can go there, after lunch. The bank machine will still be there, after lunch. I am putting you in room fourteen. You will use the shower at the end of the hall, past the kitchen, please. There is one shower for men and one for women, and you will use the men’s shower, please. I don’t want any trouble.”
His large hand placed a key on the counter. With a nod of his heavy head, he indicated the four steps leading out of sight at the back of the lobby.
“You will climb those steps, and up there, past the freezer, you will turn left. The door to your room, number fourteen, you will see it right away. Your name, please?”
Heinrich gave his name. “Do you need my passport?” he asked.
“I don’t need your passport. I have my own.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t forget to take your boots off. Lunch will be at one o’clock, if there is any lunch. Am I cooking? Do you see me cooking? No, I am standing here talking with you, while my soup . . . Maudit, quelle vie, des piasses d’y a trente ans, on aura tout vu . . .”21
The key turned easily in door number fourteen, and Heinrich stepped into a room not much larger than a closet. Nailed to the blank wall facing the bed hung a calendar, advertising snowmobiles. It had the year wrong: 2010. The snowmobiles looked sleek and powerful. They were likely more reliable than the distracted person who, in doing the layout of the calendar, had leapt thirty years into the future. Or perhaps the error was intentional—a joke, a form of French Canadian humor? Possibly the reaction of the man in the apron to Heinrich’s money was part of this same joke? The logic behind it all would become clear once Heinrich took a shower.
The bedroom’s one window did not give onto the sea, but offered a view of the vinyl-sided house across the road. The room’s vista also included an empty oil drum, a wooden sled, and a brilliant patch of blue sky.
Heinrich opened his pack and reached deep down. At the very bottom he’d saved a clean shirt, underwear, and socks, all tightly rolled together and crammed into a plastic bag. The bag was gone. He emptied his pack onto the bed, and the missing bag reappeared. He smoothed and spread out the T-shirt. He admired the socks and clean underwear.
In a few minutes, he’d walk down the hall, strip, and stand naked under a shower of hot water; hot water would hurl itself at his skin. He’d arrived at the end of his journey; he’d returned to civilization. He sat on the soft hotel bed and tried to picture the valley he’d just left. Already, the river and mountains were losing their precision. Only in the sore and swollen joints of his knees, in the fissured tips of his fingers, in the cracked skin of his lips did the valley and mountains feel fully present. His memory was hard at work, favoring certain images, ordering these, layering them, creating contrasts and connections, combining sounds, attributing smells. Not until this task of sorting and of assigning meaning was complete would the terrain through which he’d walked stop hanging in limbo, neither forgotten nor retrievable, capable of expressing itself only in the movements and aches of his body.
In the bathroom, tiles and taps confronted him; also, two sinks and a toilet, two shower stalls. As there was nobody else in the room, Heinrich undressed slowly. He turned on the water, adjusted the temperature until it was as hot as he could bear. The heat pummeled his shoulders and neck; he stepped a few inches forward and the intensity of it struck his lower back.
The hot water removed the relentless effort of the past weeks; it took away his fear of high winds, of cold and violent rain; with a washcloth he scrubbed from his skin the trembling, exuberant purple of fireweed and the milky green flow of the Weasel River; he cleansed his chest of the anticipation of fast-moving currents that might grab and hold him under. The shower cleaned him indiscriminately. The need to wait until such a time as he could cross a river safely was washed from his body, along with the grit from between his toes and the soreness in his calves; he could not choose what to keep and what to lose: patience was removed as well as fear. The jets of water cleansed his skin of mudflats and of the granular surface of the Turner Glacier; the heat dissolved set
rhythms that his movements had acquired—the repeated bending and reaching in order to unfasten the numerous clips on his pack, and the continual stuffing and compressing of clothing and food into the pack’s interior.
When he could clean nothing more from his body he stepped out of the shower, refreshed and emptied. It had been a necessary emptying. Later the valley would reenter him, but first this hotel was making itself known, and he felt ready to receive it.
Past the kitchen, through the lounge and dining room, down a short flight of steps, past the freezer, around the corner he went, and came once more to room fourteen—his room. He slipped the key into the lock and the door opened easily.
He dropped his dirty clothes on the floor, then hung his damp towel over the back of the chair beside the bed. He took the wall calendar down from its nail. AURORA SNOWMOBILES, IQALUIT.
No mention of Frobisher Bay, instead the Inuit name for the town, the name that the man in the apron had used. Iqaluit. A rumbling sound, escaping from his stomach, reminded him that he was hungry. He returned the calendar to its place on the wall, left his room, and headed for the dining room.
Already, the men who spent their long days dredging and expanding the harbor had come in and were eating, their laughter and talk reverberating under the room’s low ceiling. Heinrich spotted an empty chair.
“This is not taken?”
A rawboned young man looked up from cleaning his bowl with a piece of bread. He used the edge of his napkin to wipe the soup from his moustache. His wide smile revealed tightly packed teeth. He gestured for Heinrich to sit down, and Heinrich did so. A woman wearing heavy-rimmed glasses appeared at their table and served them each a plate of char.
“Bertrand,” the lanky young workman announced, and he thrust out his hand, which Heinrich shook with deliberate vigor.
“Heinrich,” said Heinrich.
They spoke between mouthfuls of the succulent fish.
“Chicoutimi, Québec. That’s my hometown. And you? You are from Germany?”
“Yes. I come from a small place. Not so big like Munich or Frankfurt. A town for making beer.”
A picture window ran the length of the dining room’s western wall. Outdoors, the sea was gently rocking its cargo of ice.
“You are working on the pier?”
Bertrand nodded. “It’s a big job. They spend lots of money for this, the government.”
“The man in the apron.”
“Pierre?”
“I don’t know his name. He runs the hotel, I think, and he does the cooking. Has he ever told you your money is no good, it is too old?”
Bertrand lowered his fork, a roar of laughter rising from his chest.
“That my money is no good?” His words exploded. “My money, I tell you what Monsieur Pierre, he do with my money, he put it in his pocket. You tell him, if he don’t want yours, if your money is too old for him, he can give it to me! Eille, Pierre, tu m’entends, Pierre?” Bertrand, twisting in his chair, called in the direction of the kitchen, his voice traveling over the heads of the assembled men, most of them bent to the task of eating. “Eille, Monsieur Pierre . . .”
Pierre came from the kitchen, balancing two plates of fish, and paused long enough to see who was calling him.
“Oui, Monsieur Boisvert,” he answered. “Et, qu’estce que je peux faire pour vous? My soup, it’s not to your taste? Et mon excellent poisson non plus? Maudit!”
“Ta soupe, Monsieur Pierre . . .” Bertrand began. But already, Pierre had set down the two plates and disappeared back into the kitchen.
“The food is very good,” Heinrich remarked.
He gazed around the room, his eyes surveying the walls. Somewhere, there must be a calendar, he thought, but he could see none.
“Eh oui. Pour ça, oui. Vous avez raison. Nobody cooks like Monsieur Pierre. I been all over the North. You don’t get meals better, not even in Chicoutimi. What Monsieur Pierre says, well, you can’t always believe, you gotta remember he’s a joker, but his cooking, you know it will be more than good, always.”
At the back of the room sat a television set with its sound turned off, mute images parading across a screen far larger than any television screen Heinrich had ever seen. At least I know what it is, he thought. Perhaps the news will come on, and even though I won’t be able to hear anything, a date will appear. He shifted his attention from Bertrand Boisvert to the figures on the screen.
Dressed in a pale blue suit, a stout man, smiling, was leading a young couple through an apartment. He paused to open a closet door. He pointed joyfully at a light fixture, then swept his arm in an expansive gesture. Across the bottom of the screen in bright letters glided the words: Via Luigi Pirandello, 19, followed by a price. No year or month. Again, the address and price slid by, as the salesman ushered his clients out onto a tiny balcony. From there the camera swooped down, took in cars, cafés, and shops, circled a fountain, followed a pigeon up into the azure sky. Rome? Heinrich wondered. Milan? Without warning Italy was gone, replaced by a long-legged woman with an exceptionally prominent chin, leading a new, more sober couple through a different apartment. 56 Rue Descartes flashed across the screen and a price. France had ousted Italy. Paris, City of Light, or one of its many suburbs? Still no month or year. Discouraged, Heinrich redirected his attention to his table companion, who was once more wiping his plate with a piece of bread.
“Do you have this in Germany, the real-estate shows?” Bertrand asked.
“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen one.”
“Paris, London, Rome, they are good for some people. Me, I choose Lisbon.”
“Can you tell me, please, what year it is?”
Heinrich knew how strange his question must sound, but he couldn’t wait any longer. Bertrand Boisvert looked him in the eye.
“What year it is?” Bertrand echoed.
“Yes, please, what year?”
“2010.”
“2010?”
Bertrand laughed, and Heinrich tried to laugh with him, but his heart was racing and his mouth felt dry.
“You wanted, maybe, that last year should go on forever?”
He could feel Bertrand Boisvert’s eyes studying him with open curiosity.
The voices of the hotel guests, in cacophonous unity, twisted and moved through the room like a cloud of birds. Birds, thought Heinrich, reveal the sky for what it is. The shifting shape of their flight shows that the sky is not flat, just as voices rising and falling in the confines of a room reveal time for what it is, a gathering and parting of movements seeking direction and shape.
These thoughts did not comfort him. They did nothing to alleviate his confusion and fear. “2010” continued to reverberate in his ear, a future year pronounced into immediate existence by Bertrand Boisvert.
There must be some misunderstanding, Heinrich told himself. Perhaps Bertrand Boisvert knows about the calendar in my room and he’s pulling my leg? Does every room have a calendar with the same mistake? Or have I been singled out? Singled out for what? The girl at the parks office couldn’t find me in her files, inside her typewriter that was not a typewriter. Already while I was hiking my sense of time felt off-kilter. Did I really meet Hearne? I saw my grandfather toss his shoes into the river. I thought it was all happening because of my solitude, and the shifting rocks and melting ice. I thought that once I left the valley I’d stop witnessing strange scenes, and time would unfold as usual. Am I not hearing correctly? Not seeing properly? I expected that everything would settle into place, once I was less alone. Am I less alone? For Bertrand, time appears to be flowing quite predictably. Can he see what is happening to me? Does it show?
Heinrich excused himself and got up from the table, pushing back his chair more violently than he’d intended. He hurried from the dining room and down the hall to the safety and privacy of his room.
He sat on the bed, facing the terrible wall calendar, and questioned himself further. He tried to slow his breathing and to follow each of his thoughts
through to a logical outcome. How could thirty years have possibly elapsed while he’d hiked to the Turner Glacier and back? He’d have run out of food. He’d now be fifty years old. What year was it in Germany? Could his father be eighty-two? Was Karl still alive? And Helene? And Inge? How was he to replace his passport?
“Aurora Snowmobiles: The Best Buys in Iqaluit,” the calendar promised. His head throbbed and his throat felt constricted. He grabbed the calendar from the wall and tore it into pieces. By doing so, he achieved nothing. Questions, reproductive as flies, buzzed and proliferated inside his head. Though seated, he felt he was losing his balance.
I must call Jeremy, he decided, and he stood up. I’ll return Jeremy’s tent to him and his cooking pots and stove. He started looking around the room for Jeremy’s pots. The contents of his knapsack lay in two heaps, one heap on the floor and the other on the bed. He rummaged in the heap on the bed, felt his camera, and extracted it. The familiar object lay in his hands. If I call Jeremy, he’ll tell me to relax. “Take it easy, man.” He won’t take what I say seriously. There’s no point calling him. Instead, I must photograph every detail. If I photograph what is happening, later I will have evidence.
Clutching his camera, he ran from the room, his feet pounding along the corridor. Outside, he stepped into the sun’s brilliance and the wind’s strength. Behind the hotel, sheltered somewhat from the wind, he tugged off his hiking boots and socks. He photographed his bare feet and the rock beneath his feet. He rolled up his pants and shot his knees. If he’d not been scared that someone might come around the corner, he would have undressed completely and shot every inch of himself. He lifted his shirt and photographed his navel. The skin on his stomach and chest had neither loosened nor wrinkled. His body looked thinner but no older than when he’d started his long walk. His socks he stuffed into his boots, and his boots he tied together and hung around his neck. His hands were now fully free to operate the camera, and he ran.
The Search for Heinrich Schlögel Page 12
