Sarah Hall - The Beautiful Indifference - Stories

She stood on the pontoon and watched him swim out. His head above the lake surface grew smaller and more distant. After a while he turned and looked to the shore. His face was white and featureless. It eclipsed as he turned away again and continued swimming. The water was sorrel-coloured, with ruddy patches where the sun lit its depth. When they’d arrived they had knelt on the wooden structure and examined cupped handfuls, trying to discern what its suspension of particles or dye might be. Peat perhaps. Some kind of mineral. The rich silt of the lake bed. Evergreens lined the edge of the glinting mass. Beyond was a vast Scandinavian sky that had, for the duration of their stay, failed to shed its light completely at night. The humidity had surprised them, this far north. The air was glutinous. The meadow grass and the barks glistened. Locals complained that it was the worst year ever for mosquitoes. Spring conditions had suited the larvae. They were everywhere now, whining in the air, their legs floating long and dusty behind them. In the outhouse there was no escaping. They seemed to rise invisibly from the walls, from the chaff and sawdust covering the silage container below the hole. She had rows of bites along her ankle bones, legs and arms. Each bite was raised into a welt, but was not itchy.

Though there was electricity at the cottage, they had been carrying buckets of the orange water up to wash plates and cups. A natural well was being directed to the house, they had been informed, but the plumbing was not yet complete. Two other cottages were tucked into the strong greenery along the shoreline, painted red, shingled, their plots impeccable. There was a pleasing folk-art look about them. Their inhabitants had not been seen much. Wood smoke curled from the sauna sheds in the early evening. The second night, while they’d been standing at the water’s edge observing the start of a vague, ineffectual sunset, two forms had exited the nearest shed, made their way along a scythed path, and entered the lake. She had waved to them. The Finnish neighbours had waved back, then swum round a pine-covered promontory, out of sight. There was a correctness here, a sensual formality, which she liked very much. You must always take your shoes off inside , the friend whose cousin had lent the cottage had said to them. It’s a particular thing . Since arriving they had worn no shoes at all. Nor much clothing. The grass around the cottage had been softened by a rainstorm. She had woken during the first night to the purring of rain on the cottage roof.

Under her feet, against the tambour of pontoon planks, the lake slapped and knocked. He was three hundred yards out or so. She could see that he was swimming breaststroke. His feet and hands barely broke the surface. He did not turn round again and his movements were slow and regular. His head grew smaller. He had decided to swim to an island in the middle of the lake and back again. It was perhaps a mile and a half altogether. He was a strong swimmer and she was not concerned. At home he went a long way up the rivers. She did not want to join him. She liked swimming, but not any great distance. She was happy to float on her back, her head submerged, listening to the somatic echo. Or she would crouch and unfold in the water, crouch and unfold. Or look down at her hands — two moon-white creatures in the rippling copper.

The lake was deep, but it was not cold. They had already rowed out in the little boat belonging to the cottage and dropped anchor and gone in where the shadows were expansive, the bottom no more than a black imagining. The temperature seemed almost indistinguishable from that of her blood, a degree or two cooler. He had held her waist as they kicked their legs, bringing her gently to him. His shoulders under the surface looked stained, tones of surgical disinfectant. His face was wet. There was a taste of iron when they kissed. Suddenly she had become breathless, from exertion, from the eroticism of their bodies drifting together, the memory of that morning’s lovemaking, on their sides, discovering the fit of him behind her, that she should lean away slightly and tip her pelvis as if pouring water from it. That feeling of rapture, of flood, like being suspended.

Her fears had begun to coalesce. The lake depth was unknown and the pressure against her limbs was a trick: it felt no greater than in the shallows. Underneath was vestigial territory. Rotting vegetation. Benthic silence. The scale of her body in this place was terribly wrong. Something was reaching up, pulling down. Urgency to get out made her kick away to the boat, haul against the side and scramble over its rim. Once inside she had rested her head on the oarlock, breathing away the panic, amazed by the direness of the impulse. Are you OK? he’d called. Oh God, for some reason I thought I should feel imperilled, and then I did , she said. What an idiot. Look at you. Calm as anything in there . He acted out a frantic drowning, and she laughed.

She had rowed the boat back to the cottage while he lay against the prow and sunbathed, getting used to the rotation of the long thin oars, the lunge and drag. Soon the vessel began to skim through the water, and was easier to steer. They’d beached the boat, pulling it high up into the trees and looping the rope around a trunk, taking the bung out so the hull wouldn’t fill if it rained again. Then they’d walked through the meadow to the cottage, through blooms of airborne pollen and ferrying insects, their shoulders sunburnt, hungry, in no rush to eat. The midday sky was an immense shale. When she lifted her arm her skin smelled of the lake, almost sexual, eel-like. All she had been able to think about was having him move behind her again, fractionally, his hand on her hip, until it was too much, or not enough, and he had to turn her against the bed, rest his weight on her, take hold of her neck, her hair, move harder.

A eucalypt scent. Pine resin. Spruce. The reeds behind her rustled. A breeze combed the lake surface, left it smooth for a moment, then came again. The pontoon rose and sank, instinctively, like a diaphragm. The pages of the book he had left next to his sunglasses and camera flickered. She picked it up. It was a speculative text about humanity’s chances of extinction within the century. All the ways it might happen. Plague. Bio-terror. Asteroid impact. Finland is the right place to read a book like this , he’d joked as he began it on the plane. They’re such great survivalists. There’s some kind of seed bank there, just in case we mess everything up. I think that’s in Norway , she had said. They had read dreadful sections out to each other over the last few days. The twelve-day incubation period for smallpox means it could spread globally before an epidemic is declared, or contained. Aerosolising sarin is the terrorist’s main challenge . Most unpredictable were the colliders, the super-viruses, strangelets. Dark matter.

She rocked up on her toes and strained to see his head, which was now a tiny brown spot, difficult to identify between the onshore waves. He must be two-thirds of the way to the island. Soon she would see him climb the rocky skirt in front of the huddle of trees, and stand upright. Even at this distance, even minute, she would surely see him, once he was out. Her eyesight was good. He was tall. And he was naked. His pale form would contrast with the dark green hub of the island. He would probably rest for a time then set off back. She put the book down, under the camera.

He had decided to make the swim after they’d taken a sauna. The sauna hut was traditional in design, beautifully crafted. He’d prepared it, checked the tank, cleared away the old ashes and built a new fire under the stones, as instructed by the cousin. They had waited for the heat to intensify, then lain on the benches in the cedary fug, listening to the interior wood panelling click and creak. The heat was so dense they were immobilised, robbed of energy. They became soaked with perspiration, reaching out to touch each other with extreme effort. Finally, the situation felt forced, the environment unendurable. They bathed in the lake afterwards, and emerged refreshed. Then he said he would try for the island. I think it’ll take about forty-five minutes, or an hour. Photograph me coming back victorious .