We're in Trouble

by Christopher Coake

  Was that Hugo? he asks. Can I talk to him? You hung up?

  I give Karel a look, and he puts his hand on Stane’s head.

  Hush for now, Karel says.

  I sit down on the sofa, a little ways from Karel. I pat the space between us and Stane sits. Karel puts his arm around Stane; his arms are so long that his fingertips nearly brush my shoulder.

  Papa’s all right, I say. But his radio is broken.

  Did he get hurt? Stane’s face is more curious than frightened.

  No. It just broke. Once it got dark, he used his headlamp to signal he’s all right. But it’s not very good news.

  Stane is watching me carefully. Karel is twisting the beard over his chin with his thumb and forefinger. He knows right away what losing the radio means. But it is as if both of them are waiting for me to tell them how I feel about this, about Jozef having his chances reduced, when they were so low to begin with already. I tell myself not to be angry. If I do not know what to feel, how can I expect anything from them?

  Is Papa in trouble? Stane asks, his voice quieter now.

  I say, Yes. They use the radio to tell your papa where he ought to climb next. It’s hard for him to know, when he’s in the middle of the face. And he can’t climb back down the pillar. He doesn’t have the right equipment. He’s going to have to change his route.

  I open the folder and we look at pictures of the west face, all 3,900 meters of it. Before he left for Nepal, Jozef printed this picture for us, overlaid with a grid. Hugo has the same photo in base camp, with the same grid. Every time he calls he gives me Jozef’s coordinates; and afterward Stane and I make a line with a wax pencil: the day’s progress. My husband’s life, like a stock on the market.

  I point out a square in the center of the face, at the foot of a sloping field of ice a kilometer high and wide.

  Papa’s here, I say. He can’t go straight up, like he wanted. So instead he has to go this way up the ice field, here to the ridge. From there he could come home, or go on to the summit. Either way it is very dangerous for him now. It won’t be easy for him to make the ridge.

  Stane asks, Could he die?

  This question takes me by surprise. Jozef sat down with Stane before leaving and talked to him about the west face, about how no one has ever climbed it before. He told Stane it was dangerous, that he could get hurt. We have always talked to our son in terms of danger, and not death. He sees death on the television, of course, and he knows about animals that die to make meat. He knows his uncle Gaspar died and went to heaven before he was born, that he fell on a big mountain while climbing with Papa. But who knows what all of this means to him? Now he has asked me the very thing I am trying to say to Karel between my words.

  He could, I say, and I keep my eyes on Stane’s. This is a very dangerous place for Papa to be. That was true even before he lost the radio, and now it’s even more true. Going to the ridge is risky, and if he gets hurt he can’t call for anyone.

  Stane thinks this over, his mouth screwed up. This is his thinking face, which at other times has made me smile behind my hand. Not now.

  He should come home then, Stane says. By the ridge.

  That’s what I think, too.

  Can I see the picture?

  Stane holds the photo on his lap, and Karel looks at it over Stane’s other shoulder, as Stane traces his papa’s route with his small square finger.

  The radio was all he lost? Karel asks me now, his voice husky.

  I don’t know. He didn’t signal much to Hugo.

  Did he signal anything for us? Stane asks.

  Jozef has been passing along messages to us, both through Hugo and through the website Hugo and his team have been updating from base camp. These messages are only a few lines long, but all the same they are what Stane lives for—and why not? His papa might as well be calling from a rocket ship. I would like to lie to him here, but I don’t have the heart to do it.

  No, I say, he didn’t. I don’t think he had time.

  Stane’s pink fingertip moves across the photo, the black triangular cliffs of the headwall, the little icy smears that maybe—or maybe not—will provide a route. Stane looks up at me and Karel, and talks like he has information we do not, like it is in little boy’s heads that these issues are decided.

  Papa will be okay, he says. He’s good on ice.

  Karel runs his fingers through his hair, and over the top of Stane’s head gives me a look full of fear and relief. He has no children of his own to ask him questions like this. To him, parents are magicians: keeping Stane peaceful is the same as pulling a coin from his ear.

  Yes, he is, I tell my son, and kiss his forehead, trying my best to sound as sure as he does: calm, hopeful, as though he and I have not just discussed his father’s death.

  As though I do not want to scream, to call Jozef the callous bastard that, in my heart right now, he is.

  LATER STANE GOES outside to play with his plastic toy men; he has been fighting a war across the complicated terrain of the yard and the drive, and even onto the low and crumbling Roman wall that follows the road for the length of our valley, halfway to Kamnik. Casualties are heavy in this war; many of his men die, only to be resurrected the following morning. I hear him sometimes, making explosions under his breath, mimicking screams. I’m being naïve. All little boys are eager to know about death, and the ways it happens.

  I should remember, too—such things are not just the domain of boys. When I was a girl not much older than Stane I became obsessed with the Holocaust. I had just begun painting: I filled canvas upon canvas with skulls and bones and gray swirls of smoke, until my mother told me I would have to see a doctor if I continued.

  Karel is sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, student essays at his elbow. I can see he is only pretending to read them.

  I’ll make dinner, if you’d like, he says.

  No, you sit right there.

  Really, Ani, you’ve been running all day. Rest and let me pull my weight.

  Karel has been with us all week; he arrived from Ljubljana Saturday, the day before Jozef began his solo. Jozef had been in Nepal almost six weeks by then, acclimatizing, and talking to me and Karel both from base camp at night. It was Jozef who asked Karel to come and stay with us.

  I tried to argue—I did not think I wanted company for the week of a climb. But Jozef said, It will be good for both of you. Don’t tell Karel I said so, but he and Marja have been fighting. You two can worry about each other instead of me.

  Karel and I are good friends, we always have been. He is a professor of art history, and even though he and I both know I will never be a great painter, Karel is one of the few people who understands that what I do carries value. He used to paint when he was young. We are the only artists in Jozef’s family, and we have always spoken to each other with something like relief.

  And in the end Jozef was right—having Karel here has been good for us. Stane loves him. Karel brought his laptop so we can look at the expedition website, and he has been teaching Stane how to use some other programs. He has offered every other second to do housework. In a strange way our house has been more alive since Jozef left; we pay attention to who goes where, to do what. I’m going to paint, I always say now. When Jozef is here? I just go.

  Karel has been so concerned for me and Stane that he has not spoken of Marja, not yet. I have not asked—other than simple courtesies—but I think Jozef is right about this, too. Karel has been subdued, above and beyond worry for his brother. His shoulders slump, and he sighs heavily, like a much older man. It looks like a long time since he has slept or eaten well. I tty to put good food in him, but aside from this I don’t know what to do.

  I have to admit, in a small way, that I have enjoyed worrying about Karel. He is so much easier to worry over than Jozef.

  Does Stane ever want to climb himself? Karel asks suddenly.

  I start washing potatoes for zlikrofi. I think about how Jozef and I have had this discussion before. Stane
is just old enough to want to do what his father does, to be a famous mountain climber, to be on commercials. I have forbidden it. Jozef knows to agree with me, but he also says, You have to let him make his own decisions. You can say no, but you might just mother him right onto the rock.

  I tell Karel, He asks sometimes. But we don’t allow it.

  Jozef goes along with this?

  Jozef loves his son. He doesn’t want him risking his life.

  Karel seems about to say something more, but we are interrupted by Stane, who opens the door and shouts in that someone is here. Just as he says this I hear the sound of an automobile coming down the road. We live deep in the country; we have neighbors here—mostly people from the city in summer homes—but we do not hear cars very often. I look out the kitchen window and see a van slow in front of our house, a cloud of dust from the dirt road billowing slowly behind it. On the side of the van is the 24ur insignia.

  Reporters, I say.

  Karel drops his cup to the table in disgust. I’ll talk to them, he says.

  I can do it.

  Let me. Please. You’re too rude.

  The news people have come every other day since Jozef’s climb began: 24ur especially. Jozef’s last four climbs, all solo, have made him a celebrity—the best climber not just in Slovenia but maybe in the world. One of Hugo’s jobs is sending out press releases. I’m sure the news people know about the broken radio.

  Giving in to Karel is a relief this time. Thank you, I say.

  He smiles at me, very quickly, and then he goes outside to tell the whole country that Jozef’s family would appreciate privacy now, in this very serious time.

  AFTER DINNER we play games; Karel is teaching Stane chess, and the three of us trade matches for a while until I reach my limit. The boys want to stay at it, so I go to my studio and paint for an hour or two—fussing, mostly. Then Stane comes in to tell me I have been relieved of my bedtime reading duties. Uncle Karel will read, he announces.

  My studio is next to Stane’s bedroom, and I listen to them while I work. Karel sits and talks with Stane for a few minutes after the bedtime story is over. They have been like this all week: very serious with each other, Karel treating Stane like a little man, and Stane acting like one for his uncle.

  I open a window and, standing near it, I smoke the one cigarette I am allowed per day when Jozef is on a climb. I try to send my mind out to Jozef—he will be climbing now—but I keep losing myself in the smoke and the sounds of the voices in the next room.

  Then Karel is at the doorway. Stane would like to say good night, he says.

  Stane is curled on his side. A toy soldier hangs off one of the big posts of Stane’s bed, attached by a length of string to the knob at the top. Its feet are against the headboard, and it leans back on the rope just like a resting climber, considering the tricky knob up ahead, the best approach.

  When did your man go climbing? I ask.

  Today. Uncle Karel found some rope and we put him up on it.

  Is he careful?

  He’s very careful.

  That’s good, I say. I would like to know how the climb goes.

  He’ll make it, Stane says.

  I kiss his forehead and say, I think so, too.

  Karel is in the studio, smoking one of my cigarettes, when I return.

  I hope you don’t mind, he says, turning the cigarette in his hand with obvious relish.

  I quit last year, I say.

  Me, too. He offers one out of the pack to me.

  I lean forward and he fumbles with my lighter and I keep leaning. We are both laughing guilty laughs by the time I take a drag.

  You’re good with Stane, I say.

  He’s a smart boy. I hope I don’t bore him.

  Be serious. He loves you.

  He loves his papa, that’s for certain. Karel grins. You know, he asked me about the college for a while yesterday, and I still don’t think he understands what it is I do there. Finally I told him I look at paintings like yours, and this he understood. Then he said when he grows up he will work outside, not sit indoors all day.

  I have heard this opinion myself.

  I say, Stane’s eight. Tomorrow he’ll tell you he wants to start a restaurant on the moon.

  Karel chuckles, and we sit for a while. With him here I surpass my cigarette limit, and then some. I look out the window and try not to notice that Karel watches me. He is content to do this, I think, and I am content to smoke and be watched. We are quiet and calm.

  Well, Karel says, finally, after a showy yawn, good night Then he hugs me, quickly, from the side, squeezing my waist. He says, Wake me if there’s news, all right? Or if you need anything.

  Then he moves away from me, out into the hall, not looking at my eyes.

  LATER, WHEN I am in the dark of my bedroom, I wonder: What, exactly, would I need from Karel?

  If anything, when Jozef is on a climb I feel I have too much. I am lying in a soft bed in a warm house, with food and drink only a few steps away. This is safety, after all, the thing we build houses for, what we sleep together in beds to receive. Where is Jozef now? It is early morning in Nepal, the coldest hours, when the west face is frozen; right now he is climbing across the ice field by moonlight. He is at almost seven thousand meters; he will barely be able to take a breath.

  Or he is dead. He has slipped and fallen, and no one will know until the morning, when Hugo trains his binoculars on the face and sees nothing.

  Jozef chooses this. Alive or dead, he does not have to be where he is.

  And I have chosen it, too.

  Karel sleeps down the hall, in our bedroom; I have, despite his protests, taken the guest bed. It’s better this way; the bed is smaller, and I do not feel the space where Jozef ought to be. The bed Jozef and I use is old—we still have the cheap mattress from our flat in the city, before Stane was born, before we had money. I can hear the frame squeak every time Karel shifts. It occurs to me now that maybe the guest bed is better. I should have let him take it.

  Maybe that is what he meant, a little voice says. Maybe what you need is to invite Karel to it now.

  Karel and I have always flirted; that is the way Karel is, and he does it with the safety of a man who is not often taken seriously by women. It has always been better for us if I pretend not to notice.

  But more and more Karel reminds me of someone I knew many years ago. A young man who was in love with me before I ever met Jozef.

  This man, Peter, was a student in mathematics at the University of Ljubljana. I worked in a café then. And every day for months Peter came in and made his single coffee last for a long time, as the students do. He kept his books open in front of him, but mostly he made sad eyes at the girls who came and went. I liked him well enough—he always tipped me, and never complained—but I never thought of him otherwise. He was too timid. I was twenty-one, and I had not lost my taste for wildness in men.

  But then one day, cleaning Peter’s table, I found a folded slip of paper with my name on it. Anica, it said, I can’t stand silence anymore. I have been in love with you for months. Here is my number; if you call me I will be happy. But I will understand if you don’t; and if so, I will never appear in here to trouble you again. All my love, Peter.

  I thought the note was sweet, and I saved it because of what it said about me. But I did not call Peter. He kept his word; I never saw him again. And then, not too much later, Jozef came into the café, and I didn’t think of any other men at all, not for a long while.

  Three years later I came across Peter’s note in my things—I was packing to move into this house. I was not much older, but something had changed in me. When I read the note again, I was filled with shame. All I could think was how Peter must have sat by the phone that night, and maybe the next, his stomach in knots. How he must have seen, more and more clearly, that he had failed. I should have called him, if even to tell him no thank you. Or let him take me out, just to see, just to be kind. I read his note again and again, and I
hoped he was married, and happy.

  And soon, after enough of Jozef’s climbing, I thought of Peter another way. As the husband I could have had. When Jozef has left me and Stane alone, waiting to hear if he lives or dies, I wonder if I wouldn’t be happier in the thin arms of Peter the mathematician, now thirty-five and balding, with a soft paunchy stomach next to mine in the bed.

  Wherever he is, he would not be so different from Karel. They are men who live in their minds more than their bodies. They value safety in their lives. Is it awful of me to think of Karel like this—as another kind of life for me? I don’t know. But here he is in my house, and it is not my fault that my husband is not. It is not my fault that I have to think of myself: what I would have to do, if Jozef does not come home.

  We spoke for the last time just before Jozef left for the face; he called me from base camp to say goodbye. This is our habit, before one of his solos. Five years ago we would have spoken at the airport in Ljubljana, but now technology has made things more immediate. I stood in my studio, the phone to my ear, and looked out my window across our valley. The sun was setting and the peaks to the east glowed a deep orange, like they were burning. In Nepal Jozef stood under a full bright moon.

  I’m looking at the face right now, Jozef told me. You should see it. It’s unbelievable.

  I have seen it, I said. Jozef had kept its pictures strewn across our house for a year. I didn’t need to be in its presence to fear it. You should turn around, I said.

  Ani, he said. Please don’t do this.

  We were quiet for a while then, listening to the hum of energy in our phones. I tried to see him where he was: on a glacier, the ice blue in the moonlight, that horrible black face blotting out half the sky. Jozef does not carry phones on his climbs. He will take a radio, for route finding and emergencies. But a phone, he says, violates the spirit of the mountain. After we hung up, I would have no more chances to speak with him. Maybe not ever. But even so I did not know what to say to him.