I smelled the smoke from our stove before I saw the cabin, and I ran, bent over, across the open ground, as if a sniper might have been raising his gun to take aim. My father’s tracks in the clearing were already turning to slush, and the snowman we had made had shrunk as the day had warmed. In front of the door, lying on the snow, was a squirrel. A dead squirrel. I couldn’t see any blood on it. I looked at the roof and wondered if it had been up there and had lost its footing, falling conveniently onto our doorstep. But the snow on the edge of the shingles was dripping and it was impossible to tell. I glanced around. The feeling of being watched made me nervous, but the relief of returning with even a single animal was enormous. I picked up the squirrel by the tail and went inside. My father, who was sharpening tools, glanced over his shoulder.
“I was starting to wonder if I should send out a search party, but there were no volunteers. Only one?” he said, looking at the squirrel. “They’re probably all keeping warm in their dreys, sensible creatures.”
Our room was cosy, safe. I stood by the stove, warming through, feeling the bite of blood flowing again through my veins. My father carried the squirrel outside to gut and skin it. And I wondered whether Reuben was watching him too.
15
Although I loved the snow, every morning I hoped it had melted, so my father’s mood would lighten, but each time I woke I could tell from the muffled sound that more snow had fallen. My father and I re-counted our stored food and he reworked his calculations, his writing becoming smaller, filling in all the gaps on the map, so that undersized numbers even floated down the river.
“One thousand calories a day,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Or eight hundred? There’s no fat on a squirrel. How many calories in a squirrel? Two hundred? Two hundred if we’re lucky. Four squirrels a day each, for how long?” He threw down the pen and put his head in his hands. “How can I work out how much food we need if we don’t know what the date is?”
I stopped humming, my fingers still, on the keys.
My father looked up at me, his face white and drawn. “It’s not enough,” he said. Until that winter I had always thought my father had a solution for everything, that he had all the answers, but I learned soon enough that I was wrong.
We began rationing the food we had stored. Every day, packed into my father’s boots, I trudged through the snow to check the traps, but many days I came back with my rucksack empty. I never lost the feeling of being watched, but I didn’t see any more footprints except ours. When I stayed indoors, my father wore the boots down to the river to fish, standing with the falling snow coating his head and shoulders, until he said he could no longer see to cast. I wasn’t sure which was worse: tramping through the cold and finding nothing, or sitting by the fire with all the food surrounding me and not being allowed to eat any of it.
Within a week or two, any remaining summer plumpness had gone. My father’s face became gaunt and his ribs showed through his skin when he lifted up his shirt to wash his armpits in front of the stove. All I thought about was food and music. If my father had the boots and I was indoors, I used La Campanella to measure the time from one meal to the next. I calculated that playing the piece sixty times from start to finish would take me through from breakfast to lunch. I ate my food in morsels, sipping at our thin stews—a few scraps of meat floating in grey water—licking the spoon clean between each mouthful. We had smoked the squirrels without removing their bones, simply crushing them with the hammer, and so at mealtimes the room was full of the sound of crunching bones as we ate everything in front of us.
We were always tired, always cold and hungry; it became difficult to remember a time when it had ever been any different. I thought less often about Ute and our old life, but sometimes a particular memory would pop up out of nowhere to remind me.
“Is it Christmas yet?” I said one day when I was plaiting my clotted hair into the coils which helped to warm my ears; it no longer needed sticks to keep it in place.
“Christmas! I hadn’t even thought about it,” my father said, putting a log on the stove fire. “It might have been and gone already or it might be Christmas next week.”
“But how will we know?” I whined.
“How about we decide that Christmas is tomorrow?” He jumped up, at once animated by the idea.
“Really? Tomorrow? But that means I missed my birthday,” I said.
“But it also means that today is Christmas Eve,” he said, laughing. He grabbed my hands and spun me around, crashing against the table, tool chest, and bed. His excitement was infectious; I was amazed that it was so easy to name the days in any way we chose. My father sang:
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!
“I haven’t got you a present,” I said, my head spinning.
He thought for a second, then clapped his hands. “Wait here and I’ll get us both one.” He made me face the wall while he got ready, saying, “It’ll be the best present you’ve ever had.”
When he had gone, I sat on the bed, chewing my nails, worrying about how my father was too happy and how long it would be until his happiness left. And then I thought about food. And because it was Christmas, I thought about Christmas food. The rich smell of roasting meat; the fug of vegetable steam in Ute’s kitchen; her smack on the back of my hand when I stole a piece of crisp, salty skin from the turkey, cooling on the blue and white serving plate which came out once a year; the gravy spooned over layers of white meat because it was too thick to pour; Brussels sprouts, boiled for so long I could squash them in a burst of bitterness between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. At that moment I would have eaten a whole pan of overcooked Brussels sprouts without complaint. I shut my eyes and tried to ignore the growls in my stomach. I tasted the fried oiliness of roast potatoes and the sweet crunch of undercooked carrots. Tears came when I remembered home-made trifle: soggy sponge fingers spread with raspberry jam—picking the pips out of my teeth later—set in a red jelly which my tongue washed through my mouth, transforming it back into liquid. Next, a layer of cold custard, gloopy and best swallowed in one gulp before there was time to think too long about the texture. And finally, the multicoloured sprinkles—leaching their colour into the whisked cream, like something bad spilled onto fresh snow. My spoon reached right to the bottom and, with the noise of a boot being pulled from wet mud, brought out some strata of Ute’s trifle.
Half an hour later my father beat on the door of die Hütte.
“Surprise!” he called.
I opened it, and he stood there smiling, one arm around a tall fir tree, as if he were introducing me to a rather lanky girlfriend. Disappointment overwhelmed me.
“No, no, no!” I kicked at the door, so it swung toward him faster than I had intended and there was just time to register the shock on his face before he was shut out. I backed myself against the far wall as he shoved the door inward, manhandling the tree into the room.
“What’s wrong? What is it?” He pushed the fir into the corner beside the stove, where it leaned sideways, embarrassed at overhearing our family Christmas argument and trying to act as if it wasn’t listening.
“I wanted a proper present, like normal children get.” Even while I said the words, I felt guilty.
“Oh, Punzel,” my father said, bending down to my height and holding my shoulders, “you knew there wouldn’t be any other presents.”
“Or food. I don’t want to eat stupid squirrel any more.” I reached up to bat one, but it was too high above my head. My father’s eyes narrowed.
“You ought to be grateful to be alive.” He stood up and backed away from me.
“It’s Christmas Eve. We should be eating Kartoffelsalat and Wiener!” I shouted. Tears were coming again.
“It’s always about you, isn’t it?”
“I want turkey and trifle.” I couldn’t stop. “I don’t want a stupid Christmas tree.”
The tree slid sideways and thumped against the floor as though
it were trying to avoid being dragged into giving its opinion.
“This is all there is,” my father shouted, his veins standing out on his bony temples. “If you don’t like it you can leave.” He held the door open and a swirl of snow came in.
“I’d rather live in the forest than here with you.” I ran to the door. I was only dressed for inside—jumper, dungarees, my three pairs of socks—and the cold in the doorway took my breath away. I hesitated.
“Wait, Ute!” My father reached out and grabbed my wrist.
We stopped like that, both of us taking in what he had just said. We were frozen in a tableau, me half out, my father pulling me back in. He let go of me and I came inside and shut the door. He sat on the edge of the bed and gave himself a kind of hug, wrapping his arms and hands around his shoulders and over his head. I picked up the tree and wedged it into the corner, pushing the buckets in front so that it wouldn’t fall again.
“It’s a lovely tree, Papa,” I said, looking down and flicking off water droplets where the snow had melted. I was overcome by a wave of homesickness brought on by the smell of the pine in the room. Facing the corner, I let my silent tears fall because Ute was dead and because my father was sitting on our bed crying too, for something I didn’t understand.
We ate well that Christmas Eve: four squirrels in the pot with a handful of mushrooms and dried herbs, and a couple of bulrush roots baked in the stove.
“Sod the calculations,” said my father.
For two or three full moons after Christmas, we eked out the smoked and dried food, supplementing it with occasional wild finds. As our stores decreased, each meal was smaller than the previous and I was always hungry. Our empty stomachs dragged us out of bed, muscles shivering. Borrowing my father’s boots, I would clear the snow from the traps and reset them with clumsy fingers. Once or twice I came back with a rabbit, which we made last for days. We ate every bit except the fur. We even washed out the intestines and stomachs, and boiled them. “Chitterlings,” my father said they were called. When they had all gone and the pan had been scraped clean, we sipped at plain water, boiled in the same saucepan, my father trying to convince me that there would still be some goodness left. Until, one day, the only stored food remaining was four bulrush roots in the bottom of the tool chest. We cut them in half and found brown veins lacing through them, each with a grub inside. My father stumbled to the sluggish river to use the fat bugs for bait, but no fish came. We dug through the snow under the trees, looking for a frozen mushroom or two we might have missed, and scrabbled around where the bulrushes grew, searching for more roots. Under the snow, the earth was like rock, the trowel bouncing off it when we tried to dig. Every day we stayed out less and often came back with just a handful of pine needles, which we boiled into a tea and drank.
We stopped playing the piano or even singing and spent a lot of the day sleeping or lying in bed with all our clothes on, listening to the snow creak and stretch, waiting for it to fall from the roof. Sometimes I imagined a squirrel was playing up there, and I would go to the door, hoping to find another lying on the doorstep. I begged my father to let us eat the sprouting potatoes he had bought, or a pinch of the carrot or cabbage seed. Once, when he was out fishing, I searched die Hütte for them, going through all the pockets of the rucksacks and balancing on my tiptoes on a stool on top of the table, so I could see along the joists, but I didn’t find them.
“We’ll get through. Just wait,” he would say. “We’ll need those seeds when the spring comes.”
Hunger flowed over me in waves; bedtime was the worst, when I would feel that my stomach was devouring itself from the inside and I would sit up in bed, holding my cramping muscles, looking around the cabin for something I could eat. My father boiled anything he could think of: a putrid pap he collected by re-scraping the animal skins we had discarded and even once, in desperation, his leather belt. I sipped the foul liquid and lay back down on the bed, holding Phyllis’s hard little body against mine.
Mornings were easier. When I woke I was always able to convince myself that this would be the day we would find food. I remembered when my father and I had sat at the top of the meadow and he had cut some cheese and given it to me with a hunk of brown bread; the cheese and the bread that might still be hidden in the roots of the tree we had stopped to rest under. I made a plan to go and find it and packed my rucksack with Phyllis and a toothbrush, but when I stood at the edge of the river I realized that not even starvation could make me cross it.
Two mornings later, I woke to the scream of the wind, shrieking through the gaps in die Hütte, shaking and rattling the roof shingles and sending invisible icy streams across my face. Outside, the noise from the forest was of crashing and whipping, as if the trees were being uprooted and flying through the air. My father stirred beside me, mumbling something but not waking. I squeezed closer into his side and buried my head under my sleeping bag, trying and failing to ignore the sound of the storm. Finally, I wriggled my way out, scrambled over him, and pulled the door open. It was only a chink, but frenzied snow blasted me in the face through the gap. It took the weight of my body to push the door closed. I shook my father’s shoulder; he groaned, although his eyes remained shut.
“Papa, Papa, a blizzard! A blizzard has come.”
He moaned again, bringing his knees up to his chest inside his sleeping bag. “I need to go to the loo,” he said. His breath was sour and the corners of his mouth cracked open when he spoke.
“I’ll get you the bucket,” I said.
“Outside.” His voice was a whisper.
“You can’t go outside, Papa, there’s a blizzard.” I stroked his hair back from his sweaty forehead. Shivering, he pushed his sleeping bag down and swung one leg and then the other off the bed. A rank smell rose from him as he moved, and I stepped backward. He was wearing his cardigan and, over that, his dirty coat. He also had on his trousers with patches across the knees, and a pair of socks—nearly all his clothes except for the boots. I wondered how he had managed to get up in the night and put on everything without me hearing him.
The cabin was dark, but I could see the shape of him on the edge of the bed, doubled over, clutching his stomach. When the spasm had passed he said, “Fetch me the rope, Punzel.”
The masses of the table and the stove loomed at me, but I found the bucket and took it to him, together with our loops of home-made rope, and put them on the floor in front of him. He had his head in his hands, and when he lifted them away I saw that in the night his eyes had shrunk back into purple sockets, or else the bones of his face had come forward, to press against his stretched skin.
“Tie the end of the rope onto the door handle and get me my boots,” he said.
I hoped he might already be feeling a little better if he had so many instructions for me. I did what I was told and he put the boots on. He leaned on me as he staggered up, and I was strong, full of a strange energy, my empty stomach forgotten.
“I have to go outside to use the loo,” he said.
“But the blizzard will come in if we open the door, Papa.”
“It’s just windy. I’ll be back in a moment. Quickly, help me.” We stumbled over to the door and he opened it. Outside, the snow was a snarling white beast, clawing and biting at our faces. It blasted straight through my dungarees and the jumper I had worn to bed.
“I don’t mind if you use the bucket indoors.” I was sure going outside wasn’t the right thing to do. “Please, Papa, don’t go.” I clung on to the back of his coat, but he shook me off.
He took hold of the rope and, turning back toward me, he said, “You can eat the seed potatoes now. They’re under a loose floorboard, near the stove,” and he stepped out into the storm.
The whipped-up snow stung my eyes, and after a couple of paces my father was a blurred grey shape and after three he was gone. The rope, attached to the door, spooled out slowly, stretched tight, then slackened. I couldn’t bear to shut the door after him, so I stood in the opening, shi
vering with my teeth chattering while snow blew inside, piling up and melting on the floor.
“Papa!” I called, but the wind flung the name of my father away. For a long time I stood at the door with the snow beating against me, grit in my eyes, the front of my jumper caked and stiff. Eventually, I shut it and went to the stove, stomping on the floor until I heard the rattle of a loose board. Tucked under it was a hessian bag full of wrinkled potatoes and the packets of seed that my father had brought with us. I looked at the pictures—carrots, cabbages, leeks, beans in garish colours—then I put them back in the bag, laid it under the floor, and replaced the board. I shoved a log onto the embers of the previous evening’s fire and moved a pot of snow water to the other side of the stove. I went to the bed and tidied our sleeping bags. I went back to the stove and moved the pot again. I bent to check the fire, but when I straightened I couldn’t remember if it needed another log or not. I went to the door and peeped out into the storm, shielding my eyes. There was just wind and blasting snow. The rope was still slack.
“He’ll return in a minute,” Phyllis said, but muffled, because she was under the covers.
“By the time I get the rest of my clothes on, he’ll be back,” I said to her. I put on my anorak, balaclava, and mittens, which were kept warming on a nail above the stove. I got Phyllis out and together we sat on the edge of the bed, watching the door. I pulled on my shoe and the shingle bag. “Wait here,” I told her, and I went out into the snow after my father.
The noise of the storm was a tremendous roar, a shriek of fury. I crouched low, my face down and my arm across my eyes. Each breath was an effort. With my mittened hands I held the rope, the whipped snow freezing the wool, so my fingers became fixed into the shape of hooks. Doubled over, I shuffled along, hand over hand. The end of the rope tapered to the thickness of string and, as I reached it, the wind almost whisked it away from me. My father was not there. I looped the rope twice around my hand and tugged to make sure the other end was still attached to the door of die Hütte.
Our Endless Numbered Days: A Novel Page 13