Justin Go - The Steady Running of the Hour

— Rather far enough for the porters, Price says, don’t you think?

— I’d say.

Price turns to Tebjir.

— The porters can rest here. Walsingham and I shall flag the rest of the route and come back down. Mind they don’t get too settled.

Price and Walsingham set off alone. They follow a route over black moraine, then a field of powdery snow. Finally they step with crampon spikes onto the arrested river itself, a long azure tongue of ice. Ashley runs his hand along a pinnacle, his damp fingers sticking to the ice. Beneath the crystalline surface are shafts of milky white. He wonders if these are the supporting beams of the spire or mere fissures, the signature of countless tons bearing down upon the trough. Price points his ice axe between a pair of huge seracs.

— This one should go.

The climbers rope on to each other, Price in front, Ashley fixing his waist loop. Suddenly Ashley grins.

— The trouble is that I’ve left everything to you in my will, Hugh. If you drag me into a crevasse—

— Hush.

They push forward, searching for a route through a maze of obstacles. They stop before vast bergs dropped in the center of their path; they ascend ice cliffs with strange enthusiasm, pleased by the rare challenge of genuine climbing. They hammer wooden pickets up ice walls and string rope through the eyelets, spiking red flags to mark a path. The pennants hang limp in the dormant air.

A searing light reflects off all the ice, the rays passing through the smoked lenses of Ashley’s goggles, grinding at his brain in tandem with a sharp altitude headache until the effects are inseparable. His head is humming. It melts in time with the thousand-ton pinnacles, drips in sync with the great icicles, drifts along with the imperceptible slide of the glacier.

They stop to rest among a forest of giant seracs, Price unroping and pulling off his smack. Ashley spikes his ice axe in the snow and sits on a heap of dark moraine.

— Something’s on your mind, Price says. You’ve hardly spoken since breakfast.

— Not worth the effort.

— Come now, Price insists, something’s grating on you. What is it?

Ashley swigs greedily from his flask. He corks the flask and wipes his brow, speaking in a dry whisper.

— You remember that first lecture at Kensington Gore? During the war.

Price looks at Ashley with surprise.

— Not very well.

— You were on leave. After the lecture you introduced me to a pair of sisters. Soames-Andersson. I spoke with the younger one. It was right before I went to France.

Ashley throws one leg over his knee and chips the ice from the sole of his boot, testing with bare fingertips the sharpness of his crampon spikes. He says nothing more. Price frowns and peers up the glacier, the summit pyramid looming above.

— Something happened with her? You never told me.

— It didn’t last. We had a week together and after I got to France we wrote every day. When I was wounded she came to see me in hospital in Albert. We had a row. She left England. One could say she left to get away from me. That was eight years ago.

Ashley blots his forehead with the sleeve of his wind suit.

— I’ve wondered what it’s like to have it with you every day. I wonder if you live with it, if it becomes familiar and you take it for granted until it isn’t love anymore.

Price shrugs. — It’s like this place. Some days it’s too damned familiar. Other days it’s strange and wonderful.

Ashley shakes his head.

— A fine bloody waste, isn’t it? Wanting something you can’t have. Not wanting what you’ve got.

— You’ll get past it.

The climbers rise and pick up their ice axes.

— Shall we rope up? Ashley asks.

— Probably no need—

— Then let’s not bother.

Price looks up the glacier.

— I never knew about the girl. What was her name?

— Imogen.

Price nods. — You never told me.

Once an hour I leave the hostel and walk to the pay phone in the middle of Rosenthaler Platz to call Mireille. My flight to Reykjavík leaves at eight in the morning, but I didn’t get her e-mail until after I’d bought the plane ticket. Call me as soon as you get this, whenever you get this. So I go on calling every hour all night, because if I didn’t call on the hour I’d call more often.

It’s always the same. I cross the street to the pay phone and lift the pink receiver, dropping a one-euro piece into the slot and resting a stack of coins on top of the phone. The phone hesitates, then connects with a faint ringing that goes on and on. I watch the people coming up and down Weinbergsweg with beer bottles in hand, talking in German or English or Spanish. Mireille never picks up.

By three in the morning everyone in Rosenthaler Platz knows me: the girl at the hostel’s front desk who gives me a drowsy smile when I walk out; the burly Turkish man who stands in the door of the kiosk smoking cigarettes; the Vietnamese cook at the all-night Asia Imbiss who has given up trying to wave me inside for a meal, but still grins every time he sees me. All of them know I’m going to the pay phone.

At four o’clock the sky is lightening and I’ll be leaving for the airport in two hours. This time Mireille picks up.

— I’m sorry, she answers breathlessly. I went out and my phone died. I just got home and plugged it in.

— You said to call right away.

— I know, but I was going crazy waiting. Claire came over and we went for a walk along the river—

— You’re back in Paris?

— Yes. Are you still in Berlin?

— I’m about to leave.

The Canadians from my hostel pass by on the sidewalk. They tap the glass casing of the phone and wave at me. I wave back. Mireille’s voice is quieter.

— Where are you going?

I grip the receiver with both hands.

— It doesn’t matter. It’ll be over in a couple weeks, I can go to Paris if you still want me to—

— So you’re still searching, she sighs. Tristan, I’m sorry how I acted at the station. I thought if you went away and I went back to Paris I could forget about all this, but it hasn’t worked. I need to tell you something. I should have said it while you were in France, but I was afraid to.

Mireille hesitates. I drop in more coins.

— I believe you about the English couple, she says. But all this about the lawyers and the money. Ce n’est pas possible. You need to see that. The first night when you told me about it in the bar, I told myself I shouldn’t go to Picardie with you. But when we got to the métro I invited you anyway. Maybe I thought that even if you were a little crazy it didn’t matter, because I was just happy to be with you. But now that I know you and I care about you, and I see what this is doing to you—

— It’s true. I’ve met the lawyers.

— But what do you really know about them? If there’s so much money involved, why don’t they find the evidence themselves, or hire someone to find it?

— The trust says they can’t hire anyone—

— And they give you only two months? C’est fou . And the letters, it was too simple, as if someone put them there for us to find. Tristan, I don’t trust the lawyers. I don’t trust their story. And I don’t like that you’re so far away when none of it makes sense. I wish you hadn’t left France—

— I can come back.

— That’s not the point. The point is I’m worried and I want you to forget about this search. Cent millions de francs suisses? C’est une connerie . You must know that, if you can admit it to yourself.