High as the Waters Rise

by Anja Kampmann

  He drove more slowly. It was a short tunnel, open on one side. The light flashed between the columns like the shadows of a very slow propeller. The sky beyond them was white, only road, and no more bushes. He drove very slowly through the hairpin turns until another entrance emerged before him, darker this time, and he was hot, he still heard her voice saying the word daughter in various languages, like a question, like a question that lay before him, and he grasped the steering wheel and drove into the opening, which immediately began to swallow the light. There were no headlights and no sound, no fleece that no one wore, only the fear that gaped from below, as if the mountain were a hollow space, as if man were a goddamned mountain, filled with black, and there was the fear, it came from below, he braked sharply, stopped the truck, the pigeon basket slipped on the old man’s knees, the darkness around them, the lights out, the engine off, the Fiorino silent, just the beads still swinging, clack, clack, a soft heartbeat that disappeared in the blackness. He could smell them, the two old people and the bird. He was alone.

  He thought of Troy and how there was always a kind of gap. A way home. An alpha and omega. And that it was more like a ladder, with wet rungs, with the sky hissing between them, and it was hard to hold on. Between the rungs was an airspace of time, filled with names: Jakarta, Mumbai, Seoul, Karachi. Some platforms were connected to each other by metal bridges the men called widowmakers. There were old images of burning rigs that they carried around with them forever, Piper Alpha, the Alexander Kielland, which went down with two hundred men, an indeterminate fear that followed them all those years. Fatigue fractures in the iron braces, flames that couldn’t be extinguished. When Mátyás came it seemed less important, their eyes always found each other first. But Mátyás had stayed beyond these mountains.

  A boat headed toward Clearwater from the mainland, he’d watched it awhile, a tiny boat that churned up the sea in a bright line behind it, and he was nonetheless astonished when it cut its engine by the legs of the platform. It seemed desperately small with its outboard. It had women on board, and crates. Waclaw had been out barely a year and watched anxiously as the slewing crane began to move, and lowered the big ring. Over the ring stretched a tapered net of stiff ropes, which the workers held on to when they were lifted up. Bringing prostitutes or others onto the platform wasn’t allowed; the fear of piracy was great, and the possibility that instead of Caribbean rum the crates might contain a detonator had been drummed into their minds—particularly those of the younger ones.

  Next to Waclaw, Philippe spat on the deck in disgust while the ring containing three women was lowered toward the platform. A few guys helped them on deck, the women carried their shoes, and Waclaw didn’t want to see any more, no more than a leg that jutted out from under a coat with every long step. He retreated to his cabin and lay uneasily in his bunk bed. Distantly he saw a ship with a welt of rust around the hole for the anchor chain, a wearily circling echo sounder. A detonator out here, that would be it: an immense, inextinguishable jet of flame, a dazzling hot ball twenty-five meters in diameter, a fake sun, extinguishing explosions and burning water. Waclaw lay there, and in the silence of the cabin he began to tell Milena about it, as if everything he said would coalesce as into a finely woven fabric, and the fear would be only one thin thread, and not something that would be with him always from now on, at the sound of every damn alarm.

  He hadn’t known that a mountain was powerful and quiet enough to make him feel this way. He hadn’t known that everything would stop and lie scattered around and that it would take nothing more than the engine of the Fiorino running, the slight smell of gasoline through the window, the darkness of the tunnel before him. The walls were made of roughly hewn stone, and the road ran toward a turn where the light disappeared, as in a well where something fell and fell without a splash.

  He hadn’t known that no one would notice if no evening came on which he talked of what had happened all those years, a familiar table, the glasses greasy after a long night, the neighbors would just be closing the door behind them at daybreak. Here was only the rock, the tunnel, silent in all directions, and the old couple had begun to whisper. Luce. The woman shook his arm, he should turn on the lights. Signore, the old man said, and struck the dashboard with the flat of his hand, the woman began to whimper, he should drive, she said, and wouldn’t let go of his arm as he reached for the gear shift and the Fiorino slowly rolled into first gear. Mátyás had stayed beyond these mountains. Waclaw didn’t know the places he was driving toward anymore, a water stain on paint, running in every direction, black becoming purple, then yellow at the edges, the pigments separated but the original color didn’t return. He was sweating. Next to him the old people still stared at the roadway, and the woman had red spots on her cheeks and laughed nervously as the centerline flashed in the headlights, and after another turn the exit hove into view. The old man began to hum a song softly, and he stroked the basket with his old, worn hand, the way one strokes the fear out of an animal’s fur.

  Once they were out of the tunnel they drove through heavy rain. The panorama was swallowed by clouds that rushed over the mountainsides like large animals.

  In some places green shimmered through the fog, and the old man hummed his song, which sounded guttural and ancient, like a three-note chant. Waclaw’s pulse was still racing, a dark pounding that opened downward, that was tearing open every moment, he was cold and he looked for a turnout to stop in. Soon they reached the pass and the boundary marker, and the meadows lay above in a somber light, and he could walk a little way into them, and he stood there and breathed in the fog and felt the couple looking at him. His shoes weren’t sealed against the rain that came from all sides.

  Somewhere in all the fog stood the boy from the airport, silent and serious, as if in the whole evening, in nothing more than the distant shimmer of a city, in the horizon with its lights, he could read something like meaning. Waclaw felt heavy and tired. In the car he saw the faces of the two old people behind the fogged panes like two bright circles, like stars that were contracting, not because a complicated theory told them they must, but because they had glowed once some time ago, together perhaps, bright, and this glow was now, for anyone who looked upon them, no more than a vague sense.

  The Fiorino shone in the fog, and beyond, where the road suddenly flattened over a plateau, a lake shimmered gray and still under a layer of cloud. Beyond it a high wall of rock or more clouds, sluggishly letting out their burdens of rain. A light was on in an RV stopped at the side of the road. Cars passed now and then; they, too, were slow and had their lights on. He didn’t know how late it was or how to dry his boots or what to say to the couple. He thought of the pigeon basket and the emblem in the wood and that the bird had no chance in this fog. The mountains like giant waves, frozen.

  The couple drank from an old jam jar from which a white liquid sloshed over the edge, little bits of cream or fat floated on the surface, and the woman had a milk mustache that she wiped away with the back of her hand as he opened the door. Everything smelled of barn. They looked at him as if he had accidentally disturbed their nest while plowing, with small eyes, thickly wrapped, creatures that couldn’t survive outside. And the woman smiled. Suiss, she said, and casa, and many other words that he didn’t understand. Her hair shone a bit greasily. Through the clouds came the muffled sound of an airplane.

  The windshield wipers, the headlights, one lake after another, little vegetation. Here the road was less steep. The man no longer hummed. He’d covered the basket with the cloth, and they drove, all three of them, in silence. They could see no farther than the cones of light from the headlights, as if that were all the future could promise. They took the descending turns in silence.

  They’d crossed a border, evening was falling. He was hungry. He asked the couple if he should let them out in the next town by saying stop and exit a few times, but they shook their heads, so he took them with him as he turned off the road and followed a wooden sign and ordered in a tiny
pub, now surrounded again by trees. It looked like an old railway car that had been stuck on a wooden floor, he got three of the same dish by pointing at the menu, and he felt half ashamed and half at ease under the low-hanging lamps. The couple ate shyly and more slowly than he was used to, as if reminding themselves to chew every bite. It was potatoes and eggs, and there was some cheese, too, and the proprietor looked healthy, like the other guests, only his nose was flat, like it had been worked over with a mallet.

  People looked at them as they couldn’t afford to in most places, and Waclaw prepared for a fight, but the old couple didn’t seem to notice. He laid money on the table and waited outside. The firs were black shadows, and a dark gurgling could be heard where the river was. No lights. In the distance a few single engines struggled up the slope. He could see the couple standing up inside and pushing their chairs in until the backs touched the table, then their eyes sought the door, and the woman seemed relieved to see him still standing there. He wanted time to think. He took the spare can and filled up the tank and walked around the pickup. The couple watched him, half-illuminated by the light that came through the high window. They held hands, like children afraid of the dark.

  24

  White Maps

  They found a place not far away. The darkness came as quickly as if someone had spread a cloth over them. But it was cold. The Fiorino stood flat, the headlights shone for a while into the larches, and the slate squeaked on the path when they walked back and forth between the driver’s side door and the truck bed.

  Waclaw gave them the tarp, they slept on their coats, each of them shrouded in all the layers of cloth. Then the tarp. Then nothing. Alpine air, a darkness. They lay close together. He sat in the cab, and he heard them whispering. Very quietly, so he couldn’t understand anything. He looked after the pigeon. He talked to her. Still in another language, he wasn’t sure why. He left the light on in the cab for a while. He stretched out her wings, he saw her perfect feathers, she weighed almost nothing. Like Farangis had weighed almost nothing, back then, emaciated like him. He’d brushed her hair, she was light, she needed sleep just as he did. He wanted to tell her about the accident, the brush felt almost like nothing in his hand. He spoke to her in a language she didn’t understand, no one here understood the few fragments of Polish his father had taught him. Farangis smelled of a sweet perfume, the room was cool, sometimes he touched her roughly, but then he stayed with her, an hour, two hours. He went home changed, as if she’d reminded him of something. Something like a land that he hardly dared set foot in anymore.

  It grew cold. His back hurt. The seat was too short to lie down on, and he couldn’t sit. He climbed onto the hood and leaned his back against the glass. Before he fell asleep he tried to find the North Star amid the few stars not blocked by clouds. He looked in one direction for a long time, and he didn’t know if it was the right direction, and if it was, whether that would mean anything.

  In the dawn he sat shivering before a small fire that he’d kindled from wet wood and a splash of gasoline, and it didn’t warm him, and the smoke drifted away over the jagged paths. The old man walked stiffly toward him through what looked like a blueberry thicket. He stood next to Waclaw in front of the puffing fire, but he kept his distance. The flames were weak and both men were wet and chilled to the bone, and Waclaw thought of the little coffeepot that he’d left with Alois, and regretted it. Travelers left things behind but they never came back to retrieve them. A pair of shoes in the closet, a bag of souvenirs, mother-of-pearl, for which there was no space or no one to show it to. The old man stared into the smoke and breathed in deeply.

  His face was angular, and without the hood and the thick collar he seemed lively, his hair reached almost to his ears and looked like it had been cut with something blunt, his jaw was a sharp line, his eyes alert, and he seemed to be thinking about something, he breathed in a few times as if he wanted to speak. Then he looked at Waclaw and his still-damp boots and asked if he still had a long way home, and Waclaw shook his head a bit hesitantly. The man looked at him.

  Then you have to take them off.

  He touched his own ankles and made as if to place next to him what were once boots but now were just many bands of leather around his calves. Waclaw nodded. Then he felt naked on the stones, his feet were swollen from the moisture and had a surreal brightness against the earth. He laid his socks in the grass and placed the boots next to the flames that gave off no warmth. He looked at the boots, and then put them in another place, and the man looked at him and at the fire and at the boots and said: wood. And Waclaw nodded: yes.

  Neither moved. Finally Waclaw sat, bare feet and smoke in front of him, as if waiting for something. They heard noises from the truck bed, but they didn’t turn around to look. The fire died, then flared up again. The treetops on the hill became edged in pink. Waclaw was freezing, but he wanted to stay, like a boy who’d found an older friend. Behind them the woman had climbed down from the truck bed, and they heard something that sounded like rocks being struck together. The old man bent over and picked up a boot, and it was wet and heavy. He weighed it in his hands and gave it back to Waclaw. I can’t see where we’re going anymore, he said. My wife thinks it’s just that my eyes are bothering me, but that’s not true. He said that he’d heard the animals in the night, roaming, just like them. His voice was soft, and Waclaw sat awhile and then nodded. They heard steps behind them, and the woman stood behind the old man and bent down to him. Can he understand us? she asked. But he just shook his head.

  That morning they gathered firewood that was less damp, and they ate small, sweet walnuts that the old woman had cracked with stones, and they drank hot water that tasted slightly of earth out of one of Alois’s empty cans. It was a mountain forest, and the grass was lush and green and the stillness untroubled, and he sat barefoot and saw the pigeon pecking at grains with concentration, one after the other. No one asked what he was planning to do with her.

  The light fell on the slopes, and the expanse was bluish, no one counted the turns of the descending road, no one counted the little villages and towns they reached and passed through, with their orderly sidewalks and people who waited at yellow-painted crossings, and with other cars and hotels and signs with illustrations of families and canyons and hikers. The man had taken out a little compass, and they followed the roads and tried to head northwest, as new mountains came, and valleys, silent and shining, and no places to stay. The slopes were steep, the crags silent. Conifers pointed toward the sky. The couple didn’t say where they wanted to go, but he noticed that it made them uneasy when a road led east for too long. He filled up the Fiorino’s gas tank; an endless freight train passed on the track above them while he bought a map and a water canister. None of them tried to read the map or even opened it, as if there was some other kind of coherence, deep beneath the haste. They took side roads and passes, which were crossed by smaller roads and cars like errant caravans that converged by accident, until the hunger grew too strong and they turned into a parking lot above a lake.

  Afternoon light. A few white sails like huge moths. They ate at a snack bar with a lighthouse painted on it. There were waves, and tentacles stretching out of them. What these old drawings portrayed, Sharam had told them once, weren’t just sailors’ fantasies. They knew only too well what it meant to be left alone with oneself. Out there. For weeks. Months. Waclaw had thought then of the pits: out of the deepest mine shafts rose monstrous, poisonous gases. The woman seemed to disappear in her coat, and her feet hardly reached the ground when they sat on the bench: a small lee, out of the wind. She ate fried calamari rings, so slowly that her husband stroked her back, as if to give her courage, so she might hurry up.

  They looked for a long time for a place where they could stay. In the twilight they sat by the lake and watched the evening coming over the water, silvery bands amid the blue and against the endless black of the slopes, and above them, the embankment and a highway. There was trash on the slope, but the casua
l strollers didn’t come out here with their big healthy dogs and those jackets—thin, but warm enough against the cold that rose off the water. None of them slept that night, the yellow of the streetlights forced itself through the bushes as if to silhouette the sad harbor that was the truck bed, and after a while the man and woman came up front and shook their heads wordlessly. Then they looked at the lake. The woman turned a thin ring she wore on her finger. Waclaw’s back ached.

  Around four in the morning they sat with three paper cups, and a cleaning cart dragged wet traces over the tiles and around the tables like a sea lion with a dirty, fringed muzzle, and the lights passed by, and the coffee was lukewarm, and the woman cried a bit, against the hurtling of the nearby highway.

  They looked at Waclaw, but he avoided their eyes. His elbows stuck to the table, and he didn’t know whether they would continue with him, or in another car, or where they were going. He thought of Milena. He could see her, with an open newspaper next to the window, the house in Wiórek, the window frames that she’d sanded alone during his first shifts, the bandage on her arm. She was almost hidden by the paper, but he knew it was her, he saw the dark ends of her hair. But the newspaper was white and it shone, as if from within, unreal, as no paper had ever shone. White maps. She’d loved the old sea maps where only the coastlines were marked and not the countries, as if the world were a territory still to be explored, white land.