James Church - The Man with the Baltic Stare

I decided to sit at the table and relax for a while after he left. The restaurant was on a corner not far from the subway. That meant a steady stream of people passed by. Watching people relaxed me. It also kept me alert. That was the only thing I missed all those years living on the mountain, watching people. I like trees, but they don’t move much.

Years ago, in Pakistan, I had learned something special about observing people. Pakistan was not something I wanted to remember. I was young and had been on an operation there that went badly. After racing away through the crowds and the dust and the awful heat, I had rested in the shade of a walnut tree, sweating from exertion and sick with fear.

“You are not well,” a quavering voice came from the other side of the tree. “That disturbs the harmony of this place.”

“How about water?” I said. “Anything around here?”

“Sit in the shade a moment.”

A minute later, a gnarled old man slid over beside me. He held out several leaves. “These will slake your thirst,” he said. “They’ll also calm you down.”

I didn’t bother to ask what the leaves were. My mood was such that if they killed me, so much the better. Just then, a woman walked by, the pale scarf over her head flowing behind.

“Did you see?” asked the gnarled man.

The shade had deepened; it had become a being separate from the tree, something different from a mere shadow. I could feel myself relaxing.

“There is a trail of existence that follows everyone, threads of life that people spin out and leave behind wherever they go,” said the old man. “Threads cross all the time. Threads cross and cross again-time and place, if in no other way-even when the people appear unaware of each other. That girl who walked by, did you see the thread?”

“You have a few more of those leaves?”

“You’ve had enough. Listen to me.” His voice became musical. “No one pays much attention to others around them unless the overlap happens again. Sometimes, people miss each other only by a few seconds, yet they are connected. Sometimes place is the reason for the overlap, but time is not. Sometimes the overlap is purposeful, other times happenstance. The threads are there, no matter. When they glow, they are one destiny.” He put his hand on my forehead. “Cooler now?”

I sat at the restaurant table, looking out the window. The threads stretched in all directions, shimmering in the afternoon sun, as unthreatening and deeply peaceful as the longest sleep. Maybe the threads were reality and people were merely the vessels containing their existence. A woman walked by. Something made me pay attention. She was dressed plainly, no fancy coat, no fancy shoes, no fancy scarf. I watched the thread. It glowed slightly as it crossed the one Li had left behind.

When the mountain rumbled, it was usually on Thursdays around noon. Living alone, you pick up patterns pretty quickly. At first I thought it might be a passing train. The tracks were a distance away, but when I hiked to the top of my mountain, a couple of hundred meters above my house, I could see the rail line that went all the way to the Amnok River. There were rarely trains on Thursday, but the rumbling went on anyway.

I wasn’t supposed to see anyone without permission, but it didn’t take long for the farmers in a nearby village to notice the smoke from my cooking fire and come up to find out what was going on. There were four of them. They watched from a distance until I waved them over.

“Welcome,” I said.

They nodded.

“May I offer you something to drink? You must be thirsty after the climb.”

They shuffled their feet and talked among themselves.

“Perhaps you could clear up something for me,” I said. “The rumbling, the way the mountain shakes-do you know what it is?”

The tallest of the four looked at a group of big pine trees that stood in front of my house. “It’s the blasting,” he said slowly. “They are building dams, supposed to stop the flooding we get in the summer, and maybe give us some electricity to run the pumps. The army boys are doing it.” He pointed vaguely to the north. “On a clear day, you might spot it from up here when trucks and whatnot aren’t raising a lot of dust. Take good care of those trees.” He leaned back in order to see all the way to the top. “If you don’t, someone will chop them down, sure as I’m standing here.”

The other three looked anxious to go.

“It was good of you to come,” I said. “But you’ll have to leave. This mountain is badly off-limits.”

One of the four laughed. He was short, red-brown from the sun, a little better dressed than the others, and quicker in his gestures. “I’m the manager of the farm at the foot of this mountain, and that means-in case you didn’t know-this mountain is technically my responsibility. I have to make sure no one is breaking regulations.” He looked at me with an expression so serious that anyone would have believed he was a serious man. “I can’t at this point say that you are; I can’t say that you aren’t.”

The others began to walk back toward the road, as if they had heard the speech before. “Also, we all know that this mountain has been here a lot longer than any of us, longer than any dynasty, longer than any king.”

I nodded. He nodded. And the four of them went away.

That first spring, before planting season, the manager returned by himself. “You made it through the winter,” he said. His face was still red-brown from the sun.

“I did.”

“The others thought you might not. I said you would.”

“You were right. That’s why you’re in charge, I guess.”

“You could be low on food about now.”

“I’m doing fine.”

“That old man in the truck won’t be able to get up the road for a few more weeks. If it gets bad enough, come down to the farm. We have a little extra this year. I hear there will be more coming from over there.” He nodded toward the south. “Next week, we’re having our spring music show. You like music?”

“What’s not to like?”

“It’s an accordion group. Six of them, very spirited. We won the county competition last year.”

“Is that so? They must be good.”

Accordion music was a Russian plot, the old men in our village used to say after a few drinks. It was something the Russians left behind to drive us crazy when it dawned on them that we weren’t going to be like Eastern Europeans and lick their boots. When I was in the army, headquarters sent down squads of accordionists. It lowered morale alarmingly, though no one would admit it. Even the Ministry had its own accordion troupe that performed overseas every other year. They told me they needed someone to stand on the stage with his hat pushed back and a big grin on his face while the troupe played. The sound of even a single accordion set my teeth on edge. I told them if I had to smile during that much noise I’d murder someone.

During my first year on the mountain, in the spring after the snow had melted and when the road was passable again for a fancy car, my brother drove up to see me. My brother was now very prominent in the party. His name was listed high in the ranks at important occasions; he sat solemnly on the podium among other old men, gave speeches on holidays to schoolchildren. Despite all this, he must have known he had failed; he was not and would never be part of the inner group. If he had done something wrong, I couldn’t figure out what it was. He seemed the perfect halberd. For someone like my brother, it was worse than nettlesome to face this knowledge every day. It ate away at him and boiled up the anger that he had carried inside ever since we were young.

When his car stopped in the clearing next to the pine trees, he said something to his driver and they both laughed. Then my brother came into the house. I could see that he was shocked.