Graham Joyce: The Silent Land

He stopped stroking her and became still.

The dog snuffled in his ear a third time. Jake’s head fell forwards. He became still, his hand placed flat on Sadie’s flank. They stayed that way for some time and Zoe thought something must be wrong, but after a while Jake became reanimated, stroking the dog’s flank and tickling the sweet spot behind her ears. Eventually he got up and led the dog over to Zoe.

Sadie came and flung herself flat on the snow next to Zoe. But when she looked up at Jake, his face was wet with tears.

‘What is it?’

He shook his head, then lowered himself beside Zoe and hugged her and kissed her neck.

‘Jake?’

‘Sadie explained it all to me.’

‘It?’

‘Yes. She told me everything.’

‘What did she tell you?’

‘Well, she’s a dog and of course she can’t explain everything but somehow she made me understand some things. And I’m going to tell you, but it’s going to make me cry, my darling.’

She held his face in her hands. Fat tears, snow-reflecting crystals, were already streaking his face. Sadie, wagging her tail, shuffled up to him and licked away his tears. He laughed, stroking her.

‘You see, we cheated death.’

‘We did?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does that mean we’re safe?’

‘We were always safe. But we cheated death, and because we couldn’t let each other go we found some extra time.’

‘No.’

‘Yes. We found some extra time. The dream of the present moment was interrupted for us. We’re watching all of this through the seams between life and death.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Our love. It gave us extra time. It cheated death.’

‘But that’s a good thing. Isn’t it? Isn’t that a good thing, Jake?’

‘Yes. Yes it is.’

There came from somewhere in the mountains a tiny shivering sound, faint and distant, at that moment almost indiscernible, but though they didn’t know it yet, they both surely heard it.

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No. I don’t think I like what you’re saying.’

‘Because you know what’s coming?’

‘No.’

‘Yes. It’s because you know what’s coming. Listen to that.’

A steady, rhythmic rattle, like crushed ice shaken in a cocktail glass, or perhaps like the wheezing of an old steam train climbing a gradient, sounded out of the far distance.

‘What’s that, Jake?’

‘You know what it is.’

‘No. I don’t. I don’t want to know.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s all good. It’s all good.’

‘How can it be good?’

‘I’m keeping you here. I thought I was keeping you warm, but I’ve been keeping you here. Our love. Keeping us.’

‘We’ll be all right here. We’ve done fine so far. The baby.’

‘No. It’s already passing. We cheated death, but just for a little while.’

The rhythmic rattle, a kind of hissing in the sharp, cold air, was drawing closer. And then she recognised the sound.

‘You’re abandoning me, Jake? You’re leaving me here?’

‘Listen to me. Everything we are we have built from every thing we have done together. If we drank a glass of wine and we said it tasted like this or that, then that’s how it tasted. One has to help remember it for the other.’

The sound was growing now and was accompanied by a kind of drumming in the earth, under the snow. The drumming was the sound of hooves and the rattle was the shiver of harness bells.

‘No. Please don’t leave me here.’

‘Everything, our whole lives, has been a series of delights and griefs that are gone for ever; gone unless we remember them for each other.’

The shiver of the harness bells was louder now, and the great black horse they adorned appeared out of the dark, its vast sweating flanks gleaming, its breath rising and billowing in the freezing air, its huge red plume, red like wine caught in a jewelled cup or like blood in a silver chalice, shaking before it and cutting a swathe through the brittle air.

‘You can’t abandon me on the snow! You’re not going to. You’re not.’

‘I’m top banana today, my darlin’ girl, and there’s only a seat for one of us.’

‘No. I’m not having it, Jake.’

‘All you have to do is refuse to forget.’

She grabbed at his lapels and hung on to him with a ferocious grip. ‘This is not going to happen.’

‘You know how to do that, don’t you, Zoe? You know how to refuse to forget?’ He floated his index finger over her gripping arms and touched her lightly in the middle of her forehead. ‘You just keep this eye open. And you’ll see me everywhere. Just everywhere.’

He pulled away from her.

The giant black horse and sledge approached at pace, taking a track that curved away from them both. Jake turned and started taking long, purposeful strides towards the horse, aiming to intercept its path.

‘Jake!’ she screamed and scrambled to her feet, stunned, incredulous to see him walking away from her.

But it didn’t stop him. He proceeded on his steady determined way across the snow. Already the horse was slowing as it made the slope. Jake had already covered a few paces before Zoe set off after him, running. But she had no strength. Jake was heading to intercept the horse, but even though he was only walking steadily towards it and she was running, it was Zoe who was falling back. She ran faster, but the irrational distance between them only increased instead of shortened. She fell and got up again, running, slipping on the snow, her feet going from under her.

For a moment it seemed that Jake might not catch the horse; but then as he approached the animal and the awe-inspiring vapours rising from its flanks, it seemed to slow deliberately, to break its trot to a brisk walk; and in that break Jake marched up to the sledge, finding a step up onto the footboard, and from there he scrambled into the safe pocket of the black leather upholstery. The horse tossed its head and recovered its trot again, picking up speed as it found a flat track.

Still Zoe ran after them, screaming at Jake, trying to make pace. For a moment she even drew abreast of the giant sledge, reaching as she ran, but the footboard seemed to climb away from her as she scrambled alongside, and the door to the carriage loomed above her outstretched fingers. The sledge seemed to swell in size until the footboard was well out of reach, or until she was impossibly small. She fell on her knees in the snow, crying after Jake.

Sadie, keeping pace with the sledge, stopped and stole a look back at her. Then the dog bulleted across the snow to follow her master, quickly catching up with the sledge before both it and the horse disappeared into the swirling darkness.

Zoe was numb with shock and cold. It had never occurred to her that Jake would abandon her. As she looked around her she could see nothing but a wide expanse of snow with the mountain slope on one side and dark pools of pine trees on the other. The town, and whatever comforts or resources it had previously offered, had gone. She understood that she was alone in this place, and pregnant.

She retreated to the flickering embers of the fire, but it only served to remind her how bone-numbingly cold she was. There were only a half-dozen or so logs remaining, the very last of the supply. She picked up one of the logs but it felt light and insubstantial in her hands, and when she put it onto the embers it flared and caught unnaturally. She huddled over the flame, feeling weak, drawing the duvet around her shoulders, shuddering with the pain of a cold that scraped crystal fingers across her beating heart.

She stared up at the stars in the winter sky. They had never in her life looked so multiple, so incalculable. The stars did not look down upon her. They seemed almost to turn away, with disinterested hard energy.