Justin Go - The Steady Running of the Hour

Then Ashley will write to say: Meet me when my train comes in and we shall walk in Regent’s Park. I’ll be sunburnt still and I’ll have a cough, but meet me in Regent’s Park and we’ll walk again in the French gardens. We will sit by the water and you will tell me what you have done these years. Then I’ll know why I wasn’t taken by Empress Redoubt or by this mountain or by you. And I can live in England green and rolling, and never wish for anything but what I have.

Ashley wipes the snow from his face. He has crumpled against the mountainside and cannot rise. He does not feel the cold so much now, only great weakness. The speck quivers in the distance, a hundred yards down the snow slope, the only shape in a surge of white. The third climber is waving at Ashley, growing closer all the time. He will be here soon.

Ashley cannot make himself go. In crazed thirst he stuffs a palmful of snow into his mouth, but the taste is sandy and he gags and spits it out, nearly choking. He begins to curse and moan. He knows well what is happening to him, but he can do nothing about it. A fine bloody waste , he thinks. A stupid fucking waste . He looks down to his right hand, now a bare white claw, the mitten and underglove lost somewhere behind. Perhaps his teeth will shatter frozen.

Ashley begins to limp down the slope, leaning against the mountainside for support. His clenched hand drags a faint track in the snow. You can’t break me , Ashley thinks. You can do anything you like, but you can’t break me .

The librarian drives on through the hills, the road swerving downward, the sea coming in and out of view. My breathing has slowed and I begin to feel calmer. I ask if the old woman might be buried in this area. The librarian shrugs.

— I have no idea. There’s a cemetery in the village. It’s pretty small, but it’s on the way. We can stop by if you want.

The librarian switches on the radio. We turn onto a dirt road and I ask if I can send a text on his cell phone.

— It’s to France, I add, but I’ll pay you for it. It’s important or I wouldn’t ask—

— Don’t worry about it.

The librarian hands me his phone. I switch the input language to English, typing a quick message to Mireille. We approach a farmhouse on a hill and the librarian suddenly slows down, pulling into a muddy driveway.

— I’m going to ask about the old woman, he says. Everyone knows everyone here.

A farmer in orange coveralls sees us and walks down the driveway. The librarian gets out of the car. Through the windshield I watch them talking, the farmer pulling off his baseball cap to wipe his brow. The farmer glances at me for a moment, then looks back at the librarian.

Suddenly the librarian’s phone vibrates, the display flashing green. I pick it up from the cupholder and look at the number. The country code is 33. I answer the phone. The connection is weak, Mireille’s voice coming in and out.

— Why haven’t you written me back? I was worried—

— I’m out in the middle of nowhere. I can barely hear you.

— You’re still in Iceland?

— Yeah, but I’ve found something. I’m getting close—

Mireille sighs. — Listen Tristan, I know I’ve been saying the wrong things, telling you to come back for the wrong reasons. It was a mistake—

Her voice wavers as the phone loses reception. I try to talk back until I’m practically yelling, but I don’t think she can hear me. Suddenly her voice returns.

— Meeting you in the bar, and sharing my grandfather’s house, and finding those letters. I should have let myself care about you, even if it was dangerous. But now you’re making the mistake, because you’re staying away. I want you Tristan, but you have to want me too.

— I do.

— Then come back tonight. It doesn’t matter what it costs you. You don’t need anything once you’re here.

— I can’t get there tonight. I’m too far out in the country.

— Tomorrow then. I’ll meet you at the airport—

Her voice goes out again. I speak loudly into the phone.

— The line’s breaking up. But I’ll come as soon as I can.

— Demain , she corrects me. Please Tristan, just find a way. I’ll be waiting—

She says something I can’t understand. The line beeps and goes dead. I try calling her back, but the call diverts to a message in Icelandic. I put the phone back in the cupholder, wiping my face with my hands. Outside the farmer is pointing and sweeping his arm as he talks, apparently giving directions. Finally the librarian waves his thanks and gets back into the car.

— I don’t know, the librarian says, if that farmer and I were talking about the same woman. He said her name was Östberg, that could be a Swedish name.

The librarian smiles and cocks his head a little, looking amused. He starts the engine and swivels the car around in a three-point turn. We start back down the road, gravel pinging against the car’s chassis.

— He said the old woman’s still alive.

— Alive?

— According to him she lives about ten kilometers away, at the next fjord to the north.

I sit up in my seat, almost yelling in protest.

— It’s impossible. She’d have died decades ago.

— Maybe. But Östberg sounds familiar—

I shake my head, feeling the nausea sweeping back.

— There’s no way. If she was in her seventies thirty years ago, she’d be more than a hundred now. It doesn’t make sense.

The librarian shrugs. — He said she’s very old. Anyway, it’s not far from here. We might as well find out for ourselves.

— It must be someone else.

The librarian turns onto a dirt road, shifting into a low gear. The path is an old tractor trail cluttered with huge rocks. We lurch slowly over the bumps, the suspension creaking. My arm is still shaking.

— Don’t worry, the librarian says. We’re almost there.

The road curves through valleys and drops back sharply to the sea. I lower the window a crack, watching the white swells cresting offshore.

I can’t focus on any single thought. I imagine the mad forces that might have conspired to produce all this, the arcane weaving of threads that ends with me on a dirt road in Iceland. It was impossible. It required the gathering of whole constellations, a harvest of countless stars funneled into a single cup and rolled out, a pair of sixes, a million times in perfect succession.

But it had happened. Already I’d seen the proof of it and held it in my hands. And it happened again every moment, for surely the meeting of any two souls required the same arithmetic. If it seemed improbable, maybe that was only my own narrowness of vision. Mireille said there might not be an end to this. But if I could reach an ending, was it possible that the veil would be lifted, that I’d rise to a higher vantage point and see something utterly simple, the purest design of all?

The car dips into a steep fjord. The narrow inlet is flanked by dark mountains, below these a black sand beach, the waves foaming white against the shore. The librarian points down the fjord.

— There.

The house is poised along the finger of water, the windows flush with the ebbing sea. Its cream-colored plastic cladding is immaculate. There is a neat flower garden, a wooden porch. A small waterfall spouts down the sheer cliff behind the house, gushing into a stream that skirts the property. The crags above are sheathed in mist.

We turn onto a smooth gravel driveway and the car stops jerking. The front door of the house swings open. Someone has seen us approaching.