The Silent Land

9

They hesitated in the doorway of the hotel, equipped for going out onto the mountain slopes, but afraid. The world—the shadow world, the world of death, of dying, had changed again. The implication that the crisp, white, wide-open, snow-deep slopes were populated reconfigured everything.

Jake barred Zoe’s path with an arm across the doorway. ‘I think I know what’s happened,’ he said. ‘I think I get it. On the morning of the avalanche, there must have been others. Other people who were killed in the avalanche.’

‘And?’

‘I think you saw one of them last night. There’s no other explanation. The same for the man on the phone. If we weren’t the only ones to die at that moment then there would be others, here. Caught here. Just like us.’

‘You mean they’re coming for us, Jake? I don’t want them to come for us.’

‘There’s no need to be afraid. What if it’s just one man, desperately trying to contact us? Imagine how lonely it would be to be here alone.’

‘But what would he want? What will they want? What will they look like?’

‘They’ll look like us, of course.’

‘You don’t know that. Maybe some of them were horribly disfigured in the avalanche.’

‘Were we disfigured?’

‘No. But I thought about it. What if we can see each other as we were, not as we are?’

Jake shuddered. ‘Just don’t go there. You’ve got no reason to think they will look any different from us. Look, the weather is changing.’

He pointed at the clouds in the distance, coiled above the white peaks of the far-off range of mountains to the east. It was an unsubtle attempt at distracting her, but one she accepted gratefully; at least for the moment. Oyster-grey and coral-pink clouds were advancing like an army of aerial wraiths, an army tangled on the impaling snowy horns and bull-necks of the alpine range. But they were supported by reinforcements, fanning out south and north. The pink and grey clouds shimmered with a luminescence both stunning and scaring.

‘Red sky in the morning,’ Zoe said, and neither wanted to complete a rhyme that completed itself. ‘What do we do?’

‘We carry on as we have been doing,’ Jake said. ‘If we encounter someone we just behave as we normally would. But I want you to consider that you may—just may, don’t get mad—have hallucinated that man, or even the phone call, just as you hallucinated those people in the lobby. Otherwise you have to be open to the possibility of encountering someone.’

She went to speak but he waved his open palms at her. ‘Peace.’

Though Zoe had of course already considered the possibility of hallucination, the notion was of little comfort. Their basic existence in that place seemed like one giant hallucination, so how were they supposed to feel about hallucinatory bubbles inside the hallucinatory bubble? They were still too new to this place to know the currency. If they could remember the savour, the smell, the touch of all earthly sensations, and in the act of memory make them real, then maybe they could manifest other thoughts. This world, this death that was so like a dream and yet so unlike a dream, could be full of possibilities. Perhaps in wanting help to come, Zoe had manifested help. There was no way of knowing if her desire for help was greater than her fear of it.

‘Do we go looking for them?’

‘I don’t want to do that.’ Jake said. ‘I don’t want to go looking for something when I don’t even know if it’s there.’

‘Or if we don’t know what it is.’

Jake blinked his bloodshot eyes. They were giving each other lots of space. Their conversations were all the time shrinking in length but expanding in implication. Sometimes Zoe had to ask herself if Jake had actually spoken out loud or had just thought something that she had picked up. Intersubjectivity. Their thoughts were locking together like hexagonal snow crystals.

One of the hotel flags slapped against its tall mast, quite suddenly.

‘Bad weather is coming in,’ Jake said. ‘Let’s ski while we can. If there’s anyone out there, we’ll deal with it.’

The sun was strong and the sky was blue, but a queer blue like a mass of interlocking blue beads, as if it were comprised of pixels. There was an extra chill and a lifting breeze. The thought crossed Jake’s mind that later the authorities might close the lifts; then he remembered that there were no authorities other than themselves.

They made their way to the Cadet chairlift to get to the western extreme of the slopes. The Cadet was a modern and speedy apparatus offering a pull-down canopy with a Perspex windshield. They stood side by side in the track and dropped together into the seat. Jake put a protective arm around Zoe as they ascended.

‘Okay?’

‘Yeah. Think so.’

The fresh breeze on the mountain was scythe-sharp. Zoe shivered, so Jake tugged down the canopy. The windscreen was smeared and crazed; it was difficult to see anything through it, but at least it stopped the wind from biting. Zoe had wanted to scan the slopes. Look for other skiers. But she said nothing.

The chairlift moved forwards in a steady glide, rocking and rumbling slightly at each pylon. The canopy had reduced the sound of the motion to a hiss, though the wind murmured around it like something smoothing its Perspex curves, restlessly searching for a crack or purchase hole for slender fingers.

Jake stared dead ahead through the dirty canopy. He seemed absorbed in his own thoughts. He had less reason to be shaken by the events of the previous evening, she suspected, since he’d neither seen the intruder nor heard the telephone ring out. She understood him well enough to know that he wouldn’t write her off as silly or neurotic; but then neither of them knew anything about the true flora and fauna of this place.

If this really were death, or some version of an afterlife, then why should it not be populated? Even in the few days that they’d been here she’d made herself adapt very quickly to the idea that they were alone together; and even to try to see that it might be something poetic and wonderful, an elevation of existence rather than a diminishing. It was like a personal Eden, or an anti-Eden. They were an end-of-days couple, not naked in a garden but wrapped in layers in a snow-covered landscape where there were no more apples on the trees and women would no longer have to take the blame, because the old lie had been covered over by snow. But if this were anti-Eden, she had been given strong evidence for the existence of an anti-serpent.

She hoped that the man she had glimpsed in the doorway of their hotel room, and the man on the other end of the telephone, was not the Devil. Zoe shifted in her seat and Jake stirred from his daze. The canopied chairlift rumbled over another pylon.

‘Was that our first run down, or our second?’ Jake asked at the bottom of the slope.

‘This morning? It was our second.’

‘I’m losing track.’

She knew what he meant. The snow was so soft and forgiving that it received the skis into itself and it was possible to drop down the mountain in a state of lost consciousness. At one point she looked back up the gradient and calculated that she had skied for three kilometres without any of it registering. It was a pocket of blackness in the white-out. As if she’d gone to sleep. A little death, inside this death.

She didn’t discuss this with Jake.

They had become more adventurous, careless even, wandering off-piste through trees, connecting pistes by negotiating silver streams and the jagged,rotten-coloured teeth of rocks. They continued to test the boundaries of their enclosed world, and no matter which point of the compass they followed, they were always, always delivered back to the environs of Saint-Bernard-en-Haut.

It was when they were in the middle of a clump of pine and spruce still heavy with snow, slowly steering a way between the dark trunks, when they stopped at a frozen stream. The ice stream was like a thin, twisted bolt of silk, mysterious and beautiful in the fairy-tale darkness under the snow-laden boughs of the trees. Jake stopped, listening.

‘What is it?’

‘Shhh. Silence.’

True silence. The freezing of all sound. It wasn’t possible, in the modern world, to listen to the sound of true silence. Perhaps not even in the ancient world either: there was wind in the desert; insects in the depths of the forest; wave activity in the middle of the ocean. Nature did not tolerate silence. Only death accepted silence; and there was silence here.

But not even here, Zoe thought. Because when it gets this silent you can hear your blood in your veins. There is no silence. And anyway, right at that moment she was hearing another sound. It took a moment to understand what it was. It was the sound of the snow. The massive machinery of something infinitesimal. Billions upon billions of individual snow crystals comprising one blanket of snow were in the process of unlocking.

It was the snow singing to her.

Her heart beat in terror and rapture. She was about to open her mouth to speak when she heard, far off, a dog barking.

‘Did you hear that?’ Jake said.

‘Is it Sadie?’

He nodded. ‘It has to be! Which direction?’

They listened again.

Then Zoe heard it again. A single bark. She moved closer to the ice stream and stooped down by the frozen watercourse. ‘I know it’s crazy but the sound seemed to come from the stream. Is that possible? Can frozen water carry sound? I mean, if Sadie were up the mountain, could the sound of her bark be conducted by the ice? Do you know anything about that?’

‘Maybe,’ Jake said, his voice full of doubt. ‘If a vinyl record or a CD can—why not?’

Zoe listened again to the ice. From there, in the arrested flow and turn and gyre of the stream, came another sound. Human voices, brief, calling.

She stood upright.

‘What is it?’ Jake said.

‘I want to get out of here.’

‘But—’

‘I have to get out of the trees. Right now.’

She didn’t wait for him. She turned her skis down the gradient and slipped between the dark, dry trunks of spruce, made a spinning turn around a rock and dropped through the woods until the growth thinned and she was able to pop out of the trees onto the piste.

There she waited until Jake caught up with her a minute later.

‘Sorry. I panicked.’

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’ve been panicking since day one. I’m still panicking now. I’m just better at hiding it than you are.’

‘I heard voices.’

‘Human voices?’

She nodded.

‘Oh my Christ.’

‘They were carried by the ice. No question. No doubt about it.’

‘And the dog?’

‘The same.’

He pushed his skis between hers and embraced her. ‘Come on. If we traverse this slope we can get down to La Chamade. Have a drink of something.’

‘Have a drink that doesn’t taste of anything.’

‘I’ll remember it for you.’

La Chamade was almost exactly how they had left it. The wall on the slope side was split and banked with snow. The main entrance was buried so they went in by the rear door. Debris and broken glass littered the floor. Jake kicked a path through with his heavy ski boot and went over to the fire.

It had burned down. It was mostly just soft grey ash, but it was still glowing.

‘It’s still warm. After all this time, it’s still warm.’

He kneeled in front of the embers in the hearth and blew gently. He found some strips of bark to make kindling, laid them over the embers and blew again. Small flames licked at the corners of the bark, and caught. He laid more sticks over the fire and within moments the same fire was alive again.

‘Well, that’s something,’ he said, nodding at his own work.

‘What?’

‘It means time is running, but at a different speed from… our speed.’

‘Time is running.’

They drank, vodka this time because Jake said it didn’t taste of anything anyway. He became morose. Zoe thought it was because the bark of the dog had made him sad all over again. He started to throw back the vodka like it was water. She asked him not to, but he said he wasn’t drunk, and it seemed to be true, that it had no effect on him.

He shivered, quite suddenly. He looked at her, and the light from outside the window played on his still-bloodshot eyes, and for a moment they looked like watery gems. ‘Oh. That’s the first time since it happened,’ he said, ‘that I’ve felt the cold.’

She wished he hadn’t said it. ‘Come on. Let’s get moving. I think that wind is picking up outside. Maybe that’s what you felt.’

‘Maybe.’

She pulled on her gauntlets and crunched across some of the broken glass to the rear of the restaurant. But he didn’t follow. She turned to see him pouring cognac across the wooden surface of the bar. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Experiment.’

He opened four more bottles of liquor and doused the entire area behind the bar. She watched with fascination as he stepped over to the fire and plucked out a log that was burning at one end. He tossed the flaming log onto the bar and it immediately ignited the alcohol. The flames made an almost sedate path along the bar until they lit the larger pools of liquor. Within a few moments there was a serious blaze going on behind the bar.

‘Let’s go.’

They stood off at fifty metres watching the blaze take hold of the wooden restaurant. Thick black smoke spiralled from the roof.

‘Did your experiment prove anything?’ she asked, leaning on her ski poles and watching the smoke rise. The wind whipping in from the east was fanning the flames beautifully. Black smoke whorled in the air, dancing over the roof like a djinn liberated from an oil lamp, or from the prison of a perfect white landscape.

‘Yes.’

‘Are we going to stay here and watch it burn?’

‘No need for that. We can go back to the hotel now.’

‘Do you think death is making us both a bit crazy?’

‘Yes.’

‘You go first,’ she said. ‘I’ll follow.’

By the time they got back to the hotel the bad weather coming in had been heralded by the advance force of a strong, scything wind. It flapped at the flags on the poles outside the hotel. It gusted along the streets and herded loose snow into drifts. They had a discussion about whether to go and shut down all the chairlifts they had set in motion. Jake said that was senseless. Zoe said that the wind might damage them, and if that happened they might not be available for them to use.

‘It won’t matter. I somehow feel that we haven’t much longer anyway.’

‘Why say that? Why?’

The wind snapped at the flags, threatening to tear them from their proud poles. Jake said nothing and walked indoors. Zoe followed, holding her belly.

She followed him into the kitchen. He walked up to the stainless steel worktop and stood before the chopped meat and vegetables that had remained there since the day of the first avalanche. The pink meat was greying at the edges. It had developed an opalescent sheen. The sliced vegetables were looking a little wilted. Celery had begun to brown where the knife had stripped it so neatly. Peppers had given up the lustre of their outer skins. Carrots were shedding their vivid orange pigment, whitening.

Jake leaned in close to the slices of beef. He sniffed. His nose twitched.

‘Let’s clear this crap away,’ Zoe said.

Jake put out an arm to stop her. ‘Leave it all there. It’s our only clock.’

But Zoe didn’t like what she was hearing. She turned on her heels and went back to their room.

Outside, the wind had turned into a gale. It swooped and moaned and howled around the gables and the eaves of the hotel; mournful, grieving, as if unable to rest in its search for something lost, something that had to be evened out. They watched from the window. A flag had been ripped from the pole and had wrapped itself around a nearby lamp post. An advertising hoarding was blown down flat.

To escape the sounds of the wind they retreated to the spa and turned up the dials on the sauna. They undressed and swam while they waited for the sauna to heat. Zoe thought the water was a degree or two cooler, but chose to say nothing. When the sauna was ready they stepped, dripping, into the pine cabin. Jake ladled water onto the imitation coals.

They sat back, falling into a trance.

‘If only we could do something. If only we could act to change our situation,’ said Zoe.

‘We’ve been through this. All we can do is exist. For as long as we are allowed.’

Zoe stroked her belly again. The steam rose from the coals. She thought the sauna cabin was getting too hot. ‘It’s enough,’ she said.

‘I’m not even sweating,’ Jake complained.

‘No, but I am.’ She took the ladle from his hand and hid it behind her back. ‘I have something to tell you.’

‘I don’t want to hear it.’

‘Why not? You have to hear it.’

‘Nope. There’s a curve in your voice that tells me it’s not something I want to hear. In these circumstances, whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.’

‘You have to hear it. If you love me, you have to.’ ‘You think that people who love each other should tell each other everything?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Why is that ridiculous, fucker? Whenever I disagree with you it’s “ridiculous”. Do you know you’re just as maddening dead as you were alive? Death hasn’t helped you along one bit.’

‘You done?’

‘Mostly.’

‘You want to hear why it’s ridiculous? Because two people in love don’t make a hive mind. Neither should they want to be a hive mind, to think the same, to know the same. It’s about being separate and still loving each other, being distinct from each other. One is the violin string, one is the bow.’

‘God help us.’

‘Take it in turns, but that’s how it should be.’

‘Jake: do you have secrets from me?’

‘I hope so. And I hope you have some secrets from me.’

‘Well, this one can’t stay a secret.’

‘Come on, then. Let’s have it.’

She was about to tell him of the baby growing inside her when the lights flickered and went out. They were left in total darkness in the steam cabin. They waited for a few moments to see if the power would reappear like last time. It didn’t. They carefully negotiated their way out of the sauna and across the side of the swimming pool. There was just enough moonlight reflected from the snowy exterior for them to see by.

‘Is it the wind?’ Zoe said. ‘Maybe it brought the power cables down.’

Jake handed her clothes to her without answering.

They made their way back through the darkness of the hotel reception. Jake knew where to put his hands on candles from the restaurant. He made Zoe wait until he returned with a fistful of candles, holding one lighted before him. He led the way back to their room.

Outside the gale had reached a ferocious pitch but the village was well built for storms. They couldn’t see any signs of power cables torn down. They left candles burning by the bedside and climbed into bed, holding each other while the wind gulped and sighed and moaned around the eaves. Zoe said she could hear voices in the wind, men’s voices shouting. Jake kissed her and hugged her and told her to go to sleep.

Jake could swing wildly from sage to soldier to husband to schoolboy and with breathtaking rapidity. It was one of the reasons why she loved him. They had sex but for some reason he was too gentle with her. After he ejaculated inside her, he laughed; and then immediately burst into tears. He was like a drunk. She held him as his huge sobs subsided, and he drifted off to sleep.

In the middle of the night he woke her. She was groggy, but he was shaking her shoulder. ‘Wake up, Zoe—I figured it out.’

She opened her eyes. The lights were on in the room, though the candles were still burning. ‘Oh, the power came back.’

Jake looked over his shoulder and up at the lights, as if distracted, or as if he hadn’t noticed. ‘Oh. Yes. But I worked it out. I know where we are. We’re at the place where the laws of physics and the laws of dreaming meet.’

‘What?’

‘Exactly that. I woke up and realised it.’

She pulled him back to the bed, closer to her. ‘Go back to sleep, darling. Back to sleep.’

‘Yes.’

He did so instantly. She got out of the bed to switch off the electric lights. An almost full moon had emerged from behind the clouds to shine waxy, brilliant light onto the snow outside. It reminded her of her father. She lay there looking at the moon, as if it had secrets, as if it had knowledge.