‘Here,’ Louvière says with his brow raised. He passes a crumpled piece of paper into my hand.
I nod at him. He leaves. The room is emptying.
I finally arrive back at the hotel and find my bed. I let the breeze in through the window. It comes off the Atlantic. A word I struggle to mouth. It seems unlikely, foreign despite being so near at this southern moment of the Bay of Biscay. I remove my shoes and hear Harry shuffle his limbs in the opposite bed. I catch myself in the mirror. My face thin, a beard arising I have never seen before, yet it is very familiar. I lie on the bed and practise breathing. In and out, a smooth rise and fall as my lungs fill and depress. I breathe as I do when I ride and listen only to my wheels and chain. I look past my chest as something takes my attention. I see my feet and know that they belong to me, though they seem quite distant, the horizon of the body. They seem a memory, one from home, one quite in front of us.
I remember the piece of paper and retrieve it from my pocket. It is a list of gear inches for each stage.
12
My Marya, see her sleepwalking in the hours after midnight. Wandering the halls of the house and making detours into rooms she had no right to enter, even taking a book from my hands as I sat up reading and placing it on the shelf in its proper place. I’d whisper her name and she’d speak unintelligible things to whoever it was she believed was listening. If I managed to wake her she’d make that noise so sharp, so loud it seemed an animal breaking.
I think of her to pass the time. The soft sound of her feet moving through the hall and how I knew she was near. She trod rugs my father brought back from Persia during the time he spent travelling with his brother through Europe and Turkey, Afghanistan and Syria, Arabia and Egypt. Nostalgias they spoke of when beer was drunk. Rich rugs, colour and feel, fibres soft between toes like a heavy velvet. I often wondered if she could name the sensation as she strolled. She walked quite upright and only occasionally held out her hand to feel the space in front of her. On a summer’s evening I followed her into the garden and towards the fountain in the centre of the lines of roses that ran to the border of the property. She sat on the fountain’s edge and looked at the sky. What shapes she saw in the stars as she dreamed, I can’t say, but in the morning after each of these excursions she would be composed and tranquil as if she had been given a glimpse of something simple and whole, something unseen to the wakeful, as if love finally had a shape and she had seen it move and talk. She poured tea and watched how milk made the dark tannin turn tan, she’d dip in a teaspoon of honey and taste how it went sweet.
Of these excursion’s origins, I have no true idea. They began in her adolescence not long after I had begun riding. Driven by what, I couldn’t find an answer. I sought out the word for her condition and found she suffered from somnambulism. I thought it a beautiful word, and I would say it to myself in class, or at the dinner table. It ran clearly in a smooth rise, then tumbled, as if the letters had come to an unseen staircase and fallen. I kept the word secret from her, and her condition felt as much mine as hers. Her night walks continued until the late Spring of 1918, several months after my brother returned. Marya was 15 years old. Thomas came home from the air corps, Europe and the hospital, and stalked the house. I have often thought how they ran into each other in the hall, how there they shared whatever sights they saw behind their shut eyes. My brother too could be found walking in the night, though he was quite awake. He would pause on the way to the lavatory or the kitchen and stand stock-still in the hall, his eyes closed, his hands clenched. He’d whisper, say words near her ear.
I watched. I did. A voyeur for the two of them – strange the melt of love.
And now, what do I do? I search out stand-ins at the side of the road, spectral stand-ins. I’m reminded of how I miss them by men and women I see being young. Their eyes latching on to the things each other say and become so wide. I want to blow them kisses when I ride by. But I don’t; instead I seek out the eyes of the woman, Celia, as Louvière has named her, and hope they are wide awake, and willing.
We are a deluge in the night of the lowlands, a hundred riders in flood. It’s hot before the mountains and I feel a wetness inside my jersey, but it isn’t sweat. My nose has begun to bleed and it’s only the first hour. I put my hand into the V of the garment and bring it up to smell; it has the odour of iron as when your gum is damaged and you taste blood. It’s dark and I know nobody will see the stain until morning. I am certain too that by then I will have crashed from the bike five, six times. We ride blind, as if in the centre of another man’s thoughts, guided by events never experienced, never heard. Direction is guesswork, a question like the feathers of a crow flying in the night. No one will notice where the blood has come from. By then it will be everywhere.
I look for Louvière on the road, for a hint of last night’s conversation to return via a glance or a finger lifted from the handlebars. I see nothing of him. I have his ratios set in my chain ring and rear sprockets. I sport a 46-inch for the day.
I find a rhythm. I feel the road vanish as the miles turn to vapour behind us. The throng of riders streaming in the darkness. Take away the rattle and a low hum emanates from this great bunch, the bottomless sound of a male choir. The whole of the peloton sniffing as if an influenza had passed through the village during the brief sleep we managed before the start. Our pupils swollen so they are as large as the moon hidden behind the highest peaks clambering at 10,000 feet. The mountains, the Pyrénées – risen ruptures as if some stern god has taken Spain and thrust it into France, forcing the earth up and up until the plains buckled and cracked and became violent ridges and peaks, until they were impassable except by goat. And indeed, they are. Henri Desgrange, the inventor and spector, the father and director, absent, unseen and everywhere, paid some thousands of francs to have their tracks cleared of rubble and snow for the Tour. That was 20 years ago. Now we ride in the black beneath the peaks.
Here, I list them:
Aneto
Pico Posets
Monte Perdido
Pic Maudit
Cilindro de Marboré
Pic de la Maladeta
Pico de Aneto. There she is somewhere hidden in the dark: 11,168 feet and no more. The granite lump that lurks highest, peaked by a Christian cross ported to the summit by zealous souls some years ago and wedged in place by rocks and gravel. I’ve seen photographic proof of this thing, this oversized crucifix lurking in the formations, the glacier below melting into an eventual sea. Percy offered it to me after a woman put it in his hand outside that café in Paris before the race to Rennes. She had seen him on one knee as if in prayer. There was sleet falling with the hail. She brought it to him, handling it with great care. And without poetry or precision, Percy thanked her. We’d stared at each other, fascinated, as she walked away. Now I wonder what they see, those mighty alps, as they stare down at us, a river of men riding so close.
My knees flick the petals of flowers pushing out from a near garden; its house a hundred yards distant amongst its farm where the sleeping are rustled in their slumber by our chains and wheels, the charge of a hundred men as if dispatched into the night with a message for kings and their court, the footmen, the generals, the parliamentarians, the suitors of the queen. Though, sadly, all we have to offer is the sponsors’ names. The scent of the petals linger in my shorts, the stigmas staining my skin yellow with the colour of the sun still to break the horizon, a yolk behind the shell.
My other knee is bleeding. I have fallen twice into the wall of the road. The second time two others tumbled with me and I heard a sound so familiar, a tone so distinct. I was then recalled to her in the dark, my sister quiet and alone, the sudden noise she made as she awoke standing in the hall. The sound of metal tearing itself from metal running through the hills. Her mouth open like a tunnel into some province untamed.
Will me on, Marya, I say to myself. Stand me on my pedals. Today I must climb.
The cars follow behind, their lights making long s
hadows of our wheels, queer ellipsoids and the spokes like darts into the rough of the road. I lose the others spread out around the hillside. Dim shapes come and recede as we struggle by the moon. Darkness blooms and becomes hard. Darkness, like coal for a furnace. It retreats, then grows. Fear is close. I plummet into valleys not knowing their depth. I fear the bottom for I do not know if I will still be on my wheels when it hits, or if I will be airborne like a stone hurled from above. The support vehicles slowly disappear, their lights on more famous sons than we southern urchins. Bruce Small lost amongst the riders. I manifest questions like regrets:
How long do I climb?
How long until the sun?
How long until I find them?
And then, inevitably: When will I fall?
This last question, it is answered time and again.
The effort is to keep this machine in the smooth slot of the tracks made by the leaders. The handlebars almost wrenched from my hands, my body off the seat. I feel myself heading for the darkness beyond that of the night. Somehow I right myself and I’m back on my seat. I’m sweating like old dynamite. I’m ready to be thrown the far and ultimate distance by a lack of concentration. I shout at myself.
I say no words.
I seem to be slowing. Slowing.
And then, a voice: ‘Fiche moi le paix.’
I hadn’t noticed the rider beside me until the sound broke the rustle of tyres and gravel. He’s a shadow rider in the dark. All is shadow. I call back, a phrase learnt and kept for a time like this: ‘Est-ce que vous pouvez l’écrire?’
No answer though I feel him breathing. I try again: ‘Je ne comprends pas.’
Again nothing. We ride on. An hour, maybe more. Creeks of dark water make sound nearby as they head into the valleys we once saw on a map but whose shape I cannot describe. Valleys whose walls we climb but know nothing of. There are moments when I shut my eyes. I have said it before, but I say it again, because in this morning the sky is that exact darkness, the road at one with the trees and ravines. We pass by figures pissing beside their bikes in a hollow where the streams run, a man holding his cock to the road and spraying the gravel. Later: a man bent over his wheel with the tube in his hands like the innards of some failed creature. Then back to the lone darkness where creeks run with the endless blood of a shadow land inhabited by hunched men seeking the end of Desgrange’s nightmare. It was his idea and it makes me think all madness is his, every inch of it. I call to my companion once more, one other question for this silent Frenchman (it is a question, I believe, regarding the freshness of milk).
A cough, then he calls out: ‘Bonjour you French fuck. Sit in ya piss.’
‘Ha,’ I blurt. I know the voice, the tide of profanities like profundities. It’s Ernie. Ernie with his anger rolled up like a sleeping mat and unfurled at the lowliest passerby. He is the sweariest of us, the foulest-toothed and I love him for it like an old dog whose stink stays in the clothes of its angel-eyed owner. ‘Ernie.’ I say. ‘Thank God.’
‘What?’ His voice vexed by the sudden English. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Come on.’ Our voices sound like wounds, or the words of old men spoken long before. It’s hard to pin anything on us.
‘It’s you. Thank fuck,’ he half-stammers, each word calling out for its own full stop so it might rest a while. We’d been riding beside each other for over an hour without any idea.
‘You didn’t recognise me?’
‘Digger, I am done.’
‘Digger, digger, digger,’ I say. He rides on quietly, not speaking for a few hundred yards. I realise he is likely doing what I’m doing, gauging the distance between us, the necessary span needed to keep us from crashing into each other. I listen to the sound of his bike, the light tyre crunch through the gravel. That, I understand, is how each of us knows the space we reserve to avoid putting our pedals into our spokes and send us into the wall or over the cliff. I can’t remember if I’d caught him or if he’d found me. Either way we’re a congregation awaiting the sun and its teachings. Things will be better when it comes. It is a promise we need.
‘You seen the others?’ he asks.
‘Percy is dead,’ I say.
‘You’re an idiot. Watson?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Someone must have seen him.’
‘Why?’
‘I saw his back –’
I had seen it too. The hurt: the boils ranging up under the skin, the fibrous anger of deep infection. Bearings of pus.
‘He’s coming up behind,’ I say.
‘Truth?’
‘Truth.’
His breathing seems to relax.
‘He’ll find us soon,’ I say, though I fear I am lying. I haven’t seen Harry in hours. It’s rare for him to lapse into the distance. I ride on with Ernie, that aging veteran, and I long for a sight of my friend. I long for him to be out in front where I always had the best view of his will to keep on. But I’m frightened at the idea of him. I imagine him amongst the stones standing in those fields. That uncertain congregation. I find myself in shivers. I have a sudden fear the night won’t stop. In truth, I fear everything.
We ride under the dome of the dark, hunting out the dawn.
I ride looking in the rear of my mind for things to recall succinctly. People come and go, days, events. Summers and girls and women. My sister fills in long hours of darkness. Her mind’s eye so clear as she walked the halls. There is a comparison to be made of her darkness and the one through which we ride. Though, in truth, I do not know what it is, how they match. I look for her amongst the women in night gowns who stand at the gate to some farm. Sisters, five of them, and Ernie makes a noise.
I want to ask her questions, my Marya.
Ernie shouts at me and I veer. Two bikes linked in the road, their owners nowhere near we can see. We seem to be heading downward but I am uncertain. Ernie shouts again, but there is nothing but a dark road. I see lights in the sky above, or if not the sky, on the side of the mountain. I’m perplexed that I cannot make a decision, which further terrifies me. I hunt out the shape of the alps but my eyes cannot make contact with the rock. The rest of our team must be somewhere in the night and I just hope they are on that hillside, for surely they are riders we see, support vehicles glinting their lights off the spokes and frame. I can’t help but wonder through other things though: Perhaps these are planes. Perhaps balloons or other contrivances I can’t think into my mind’s eye? I watch them like they are fireflies and imagine my sister and me driving upwards, a final ride in a moonless dawn. And then I must ask, is Harry one of them? Opperman, Osborne?
Nobody dies, yet the sun comes to save us. The belligerent surge of pinks and yellows, a day as if blown from the palm of a child’s hand. I feel the peloton push as one towards a common speed some rate quicker. The mountains rise up before us and we begin our climb. We near the foot of Col d’Aubisque. A group of 20 or 30 arrived before us and removed their rear wheels, spun them around then slipped them back into place with the lowest of the gears attached to the chain. Then more riders, and again more. The entire peloton arrives out of the shadows. They ride off in silence as we pause to make the adjustment. I take a pill from the bottle and let it dissolve in my mouth. I feel the light explode.
Marya, did you ever see such a thing?
Part 2
13
Sometime before noon, François Louvière exited the road where the rains had cut the track so it resembled a funnel and a yellow slew of clay dripped to the valley. With his bicycle beneath him he sidled through and felt his wheels leave the road, a road that always seemed built just for him; but it failed, he fell. He fell at open grave, the pace at which your very own tomb creaks open to show you its environs. And if you fall. Tumble and lurch.
He lay in the trench of the valley where the creeks ride together, a long moan echoing off the rock. It appeared he had fallen in silence, for I heard nothing from his mouth until that groan, that bassoon sound from out beyond. A
sound so precarious I knew life was near and Louvière, despite his extraordinary legend, despite the way we held our breath, was near to a certain kind of end.
I watched the French doctor scamper down the hillside with a syringe between his teeth in order to fill Louvière’s pipes with morphine. I stood on my pedals, balancing on the gearing and thanked the rays of the slanting sun for catching my goggles and blinding me and pushing me back behind the wheels of the breakaway pack. Five bikes had gone down that temporary ravine; I might have been the sixth but for fear of the dark. That is what you get when you are staring right at the sun: a darkness like the deepest cave, like no other kind of light. I stood, balanced with my feet shifting the cranks back and forth minutely. Still moving, still in the race, still a verb in this sentence.
We circled in the dirt waiting for a sign of the living to arise from the valley so the race might go on. Solemn-eyed men on the verges, not knowing whether to follow him down or to stay on the road. That bald legend who, as his legs broke and muscles were torn from ligament, became confined to that mythical status for time onwards and on, for all the truth about him seemed to fall away as he went down.
Here’s one for a start: if he’d ever carried a whip, we would have felt its crack on our skins.
I waited and hoped for a sign of Osborne and Harry.
Sometime earlier, perhaps an hour after the sun had risen, with Ernie Bainbridge and I still a pair talking through the dawn, our team had come together. We rode more or less in the middle of the peloton which had formed at Col d’Aubisque, as if all the riders had been summoned by the coming demand, the Pyrénées and the animal tracks barely roads. Louvière had led a breakaway group trying to catch Fontan who had torn out from the pack into the valley after Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Chased the group that followed. I went forward and sat on Louvière’s wheel until just below the first climb of Tourmalet when the light caught me and I fell back.
The Invisible Mile Page 9