Graham Joyce - The Silent Land

They returned to the hotel, and once inside Zoe made to reinsert the antique skis through the door-handles, but Jake gently took the skis out of her hands and laid them aside. Suddenly she shivered. Her teeth started to chatter, like when she had the flu. Jake found the duvet and settled it around her shoulders.

‘You’re freezing,’ he said. ‘I’ll light the fire again.’ ‘Are you not cold?’

He shook his head, no. He’d never felt the cold all the time they had been in this place. But her teeth chattered, and she shook. Jake got down on his knees before the fire and struck a match. It sparked and hissed and in a few moments he had the fire going again and was banking it up with smaller logs. Then he cleared the area so she could sit before the comforting flames.

‘These logs don’t last long,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to go out there at some point and get some more.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t.’

‘Look, it’s about a hundred paces up the gradient of the road. Even in this mist I can’t get lost out there. And the way you’re shaking, we’re going to have to feed that fire.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘Tell you what, I’ll take the tarp and drag another load of logs back here. And after that I will make you a breakfast, cooked over the fire in a skillet, old-style. Won’t that be great?’

‘Take the tarp. Skillet.’

‘What?’

She blinked at him. She didn’t feel at all hungry. ‘Could we have the breakfast first? Before you go out?’

He smiled. ‘Sure.’ He sidled over to her and pulled the duvet around her shoulders and put his arm around her, trying to pass on some of his warmth. He held her tight but he seemed to drift off somewhere, deep in his own thoughts.

Her shivering had subsided. She could feel the heat of the fire now. She looked at Jake. ‘You okay?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘You look—’

‘I was just about to do something and I couldn’t remember what it was.’

‘You were going to cook breakfast. On a skillet. Over the fire.’

‘I was?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s right. I was. Funny. Funny how it comes back.’

He got up and headed off towards the kitchen and she watched him go. Something about his demeanour wasn’t right. She wondered if he’d taken a knock to his head during the avalanche that had affected him. His eyes still hadn’t recovered from being bloodshot. It was the sort of thing you would get checked out in a hospital. But here there was no hospital, no doctor, no nurse. She didn’t even know if or how much you could hurt yourself in this place. She thought about the baby growing in her belly.

Jake came back with a large, oiled frying pan, plates, bacon, eggs, bread and set about making a flat bed of the burning logs so he could heat the pan. ‘The freezer has shut down. We should eat this bacon while we still can. Everything is going to decompose and after a few more days we’ll be eating out of tins.’

He laid out strips of bacon on the pan. ‘Hungry?’

She pretended she was.

‘It’s like camping,’ he said.

She watched him carefully steering the pan into the flames and had to fight back tears.

They ate breakfast in silence, until he said, ‘Remember it for me. Remember the taste of bacon.’

‘Well. You were a vegetarian when I met you.’

‘Was I?’

‘I converted you.’

‘Really?’

‘Are you serious? You don’t remember that? You must remember that!’

He looked pained. ‘I seem to be forgetting so many things. I try to recall it but it’s just not there. I listen to you telling me stories about things we did together, and it’s as though you’re talking about someone else.’

‘It was a couple of months after we’d got together. We’d spent forty-eight hours in bed together at my flat. We’d only got out of bed to go as far as the toilet. It was shocking. We couldn’t tear ourselves away from each other. We’d been fucking all day and all night and snoozing in between and we’d eaten nothing. And I said: right, that’s it. I’m having a bacon sandwich, and you said, can’t, vegetarian and all that. I said too bad please yourself and I went down to the kitchen and made a bacon roll dripping with bacon fat and tomato sauce and brought it back up and you watched me eat it, and then when I’d finished it I said too bad you can’t kiss me now cos you’ll get bacon fat in your mouth. Disgusting you said, that’s disgusting; and then you kissed me. And you drew your head back and licked your lips and you said, right that’s it.’

‘I said “right that’s it”?’

‘You said right that’s it, nine years of vegetarianism and that’s an end to that, can you make me one? And I did. That’s it.’

‘Must have been a hell of a kiss.’

‘It was. A carnal kiss. You loved it.’

‘Anything else you converted me to or from?’

‘You were teetotal.’

‘You’re joking!’

‘Yes, I am about that. You really don’t remember, do you?’

‘Yes. No. I don’t know. There’s so much I seem to have forgotten.’

She was deeply worried about him but she said, ‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because everything you can see or touch or hear or smell has a story attached to it; a story I can tell you. If you say bacon I can tell you a story. If you say snow I can tell you a dozen different stories. This is what we are: a collection stories that we share, in common. This is what we are to each other.’

He stared hard at her, his bloodshot eyes full of love and admiration for her. Then he stood up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to get some wood, to keep you warm. What we have here won’t last the rest of the day, let alone the night. I’ll go straight there, get the logs, and I’ll come straight back.’

He bent down to kiss her and then froze and pulled back.

‘What is it?’

‘The taste of you. It came back.’

He kissed her again and then stood up quickly. He grabbed a corner of the tarp and flicked off the few remaining logs before rolling it under his arm. Then he went out through the lobby doors and set off into the thick mist, small flakes of snow billowing about his ears.

Zoe banked up the fire with logs and waited. She did nothing but gaze into the flames. After a while she became anxious. It felt as if Jake had been gone a long time. She took the breakfast plates and the pan away to the kitchen and washed them. When she came back to the lobby it was thronged with people.

It was the same people as before, crowding the lobby all over again. They chattered excitedly. The place was packed. People were standing in line for the reception desk, waiting to register. The three receptionists were busy all over again, one on the telephone, one processing a credit card and a third frowning and struggling to hear what her grey-suited manager was trying to say above the din. The exact scene was replicated in minute detail.

There was the sneeze of air brakes from the luxury bus. Here was the man who passed her, winking suggestively as he went by. Here was the whiff of his cologne.

It was all being repeated, all over again.

Zoe heard the word ‘avalanche’ mentioned by a woman at the reception desk. She looked up and her eye was caught by the bald-headed concierge, who was waving at her, beckoning her to come across the lobby to him. ‘Madam!’ he called. ‘Madam!’

But Zoe was paralysed. She couldn’t move a muscle. The scene, played before her for a third time, began to take on a menacing appearance. Even though the people looked at ease, their animation and the enthusiasm of their chatter made her bowels churn.

The concierge in his maroon and grey livery saw that she was stuck. He smiled encouragement. Then he picked up a brown envelope and waved it at her.