The Ribbons Are for Fearlessness

by Catrina Davies

  Pierre introduced me to Rémy, who looked me up and down in a manner that suggested he was decidedly unimpressed. He handed me a mojito anyway.

  “You are the girl with the yellow camion.”

  “Yep.”

  “The one that was in trouble this morning,” he smirked.

  “Yep.”

  I knocked back the mojito in less than a minute and held out my cup for a refill. Rémy raised one eyebrow in a gesture he had clearly practised in front of a mirror. I didn’t care. The only thing worse than being at that party drunk would be being at that party sober. I drained my second mojito. Rémy gave me a third. After the third mojito I decided I would drive off that bloody mountain first thing, Børge or no Børge, and if I didn’t kill myself on the way down I’d damn well go home, just as soon as I’d saved the money for a ferry ticket. Again. I felt a little bit better. Rémy filled my glass for the fourth time.

  I decided to explore the house. I found a broom cupboard full of wetsuits, a room full of foosball, a room full of weights, and a room with a giant flat-screen television. I went upstairs. The first room I went into was obviously Rémy’s bedroom. There was a whole shelf of aftershave and a rack of Hawaiian shirts. The walls were covered in blown-up pictures of himself collecting various prizes. It was equally obvious that the second room I went into was Børge’s. It had a single, extra-long, unmade bed and a chest of drawers with clothes spilling out, some of which I recognized from Unstad. Hanna’s book lay facedown on the floor next to a half-full mug of cognac.

  I picked up the book. A paragraph had been outlined in thick pencil. It was about dying. About death being just another thought. And about being afraid of it nevertheless. I had forgotten about the way reading this book was like falling off a cliff and spinning through the air, not knowing which way was up anymore. Or maybe that was all the mojitos. I thought about Hanna. I remembered her saying that men were not the answer, and that I should stop looking back over my shoulder at the ones who had gone. I closed the book and hugged it against my chest. I wandered around the room, looking at things, touching things, trying to imagine the Børge I knew at Unstad lifting weights and watching a giant flat-screen television and sleeping in this narrow single bed. In one corner of the room was an open suitcase. It was full of clothes. I looked closer. The red coat was in there, with a load of other brand-new Patagonia clothes. I pulled it out and put it on. It felt so warm and comforting. I zipped it up with the book inside it, pulling my arms up so the sleeves covered my hands and hunching down so it came up over my chin. I felt safe in the coat. The coat was why I had come. Maybe it was all going to be okay. The wall behind the suitcase was covered in strange wallpaper. I leaned in for a closer look and saw that it wasn’t wallpaper at all but photographs, hundreds of them, and all of the same person—a pretty blonde girl with a crooked mouth. Børge was in some of them, standing next to her, and he was actually smiling, his arm slung around her shoulders. And then I saw something familiar. I hunched down further into the coat. In almost every photograph the girl was standing in thick snow with skis on. But in this one she was on a beach, holding my surfboard, the one Børge had given me at Unstad. Wearing my wetsuit.

  A shadow landed on the wall in front of me.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Børge’s voice was dangerously quiet. I made myself turn around. He was standing in the doorway, his massive frame blocking the light.

  “Who told you to come in here?”

  “I’m–”

  “Get out.”

  There was an expression of disgust on his face. As if he hated me.

  “Get OUT!”

  30

  I woke up in Pierre’s armchair, still wearing the red coat. My head was trying to push itself through my skull. I made it to the bathroom just in time. When I had finished throwing up I crossed the living room and went to stare out of the window at the blizzard. By now my van had also disappeared under the snow.

  I went back to the armchair and put my head in my hands. I moaned softly to myself. To think that I could be waking up safe and warm at the hostel, with Jack close enough to touch and Ben making a fry-up in the kitchen, the smell of bacon wafting into the bunkhouse, an old reggae record on the decks and Andrew rolling joints on the bar. Except Andrew wouldn’t be there, of course.

  I closed my eyes. It was a long time since I’d been this hungover. It was worse even than Tromsø and the day after the night I spent with Henrik. If only I’d been drunk enough to pass out and not remember anything. Instead I couldn’t stop thinking about Børge’s face when he found me in his bedroom and the way he’d pinned himself to the side of the door frame so I wouldn’t accidentally touch him as I squeezed past, still wearing the coat, with Hanna’s book zipped inside it. Everybody had been clustered around Rémy, counting down the seconds to midnight. I ran past them and out into the snow and kept on running until I fell over and Pierre picked me up and brought me to his cottage.

  Oh God! What had I been I thinking? But what kind of psycho papers their bedroom walls with pictures of their ex-girlfriend? Maybe he was mentally ill and everybody knew it except me. That would explain a lot.

  Pierre eventually got up. Without saying anything he gave me some acetaminophen and a bowl of milky coffee with cognac in it. He kept going over to the window and staring out of it for ages at a time and not saying anything, then turning around and looking at me and rubbing his chin. I picked up Hanna’s book and read a sentence. It made no sense whatsoever. I put it down. Maybe I was the one who was mentally ill. Pierre was still pacing.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Si.”

  “I can go back to the van.”

  “Non, non. Trop froid.”

  Eventually Pierre put on his skis and said he was going to Les Crevasses. When he had gone I went and stood by the window myself. I looked across the valley at La Mas. Pierre said it was one of the deadliest mountains in the French Alps, as well as the highest. All the runs were off-piste and dotted with obstacles like trees and rocks and the huge crevasses that gave the village its name. That day the peak was hidden behind a blanket of swirling snow.

  I put on my wet boots, Pierre’s jumper, and Pierre’s big duffel coat that was hanging by the door and came down below my knees. I carried the red coat in a plastic bag. I couldn’t wear it anymore. I passed the old stone barn. Cows were coughing and fidgeting inside. I passed the church. The snow was so deep every step was an effort, but I kept going until I reached Børge’s house. I crept on to the veranda and left the plastic bag hanging from the door handle. The fire was out and there were no lights on. The big room was full of the devastation of the previous night. Empty glasses covered every surface. A rug had been rolled back, presumably for dancing. There were people asleep on both of the sofas.

  In spite of the swirling snow, I wanted to be outside. I walked down a tiny lane that branched off the main one just after the church. It was hard going, pushing through the blizzard, sliding around on the icy lane. Finally I reached another stone hamlet, tinier even than Les Torches. The lane turned into a track that turned into a path that followed the bank of a frozen river. The blizzard had eased, and I could see now, but I was still wading up to my thighs in snow. After what felt like a very long time I came upon two ruined stone cottages. Beyond them there was a rickety wooden bridge. Beyond that there was nothing but mountains, folding endlessly into one another as far as the eye could see.

  Mountains, help me find the paths of freedom.

  I stood on the bridge for a long time, staring at the water moving under the ice.

  Pierre came with me to the van. He said the regulator on top of the gas bottle had air in it, which had frozen. If I put a hat over it to warm it up the cooker would work fine. He ran his fingers over the thickening sheet of ice that covered the inside of the fiberglass ceiling. Night was falling.

  “But you cannot sleep in here.”

  I leaned on the side of the van, utterly exhau
sted. The mountains were so silent. Somewhere a dog howled. It was impossible to tell if it was close or far away. Or maybe it was a wolf. Pierre said there were wolves in the Parc National des Écrins. I went back to the cottage with Pierre and slept on the floor in his duck down sleeping bag. He tried to persuade me to let him sleep on the floor so that I could have his bed, but I wouldn’t let him. He had already been far too kind.

  I spent the following day in Pierre’s cottage. I didn’t go outside. Pierre went skiing and I read Hanna’s book, which was comforting, even though I still couldn’t make head or tail of most of it. In the evening some friends of his, called Sergio and Kevine, came to the cottage. They were musicians. Pierre made me unpack my cello. Sergio played a drum, eyes closed, joint balanced between his lips, long black dreadlocks swinging gently in time to the music. Kevine had a guitar, and he played gypsy jazz like Django Reinhardt. I didn’t know what to do. I sat holding my cello and not playing it until they had finished. Pierre took the joint out of Sergio’s mouth and handed it to me.

  “But you’re a doctor!”

  “C’est la médicine,” said Pierre.

  Eventually I played “Bruca Maniguá.” They knew it and pretty soon they had both joined in. They didn’t know the words though, or the history. I told them what Hanna had told me, about it being a song about oppression, sung by the descendants of black slaves in Cuba.

  “I think all music is about freedom,” said Sergio. “I think music is freedom.”

  They taught me a new tune that night. It was called “Kasbah Tango” and it was by an Australian group Sergio had heard of called Trio Alegra. It had a kind of melody that’s so perfect it keeps you awake at night, running itself round and round in your head. We played it over and over and over. Sometimes I played the bass and sometimes I played the melody. We all kept our eyes closed while we were playing. Pierre made us endless cups of coffee with cognac and smiled like a child.

  “Why did you come to Les Torches?” Kevine wanted to know.

  “I met a guy called Børge at a place called Unstad. We were surfing. He told me that if I came here he’d take a photo of me wearing this coat and I’d be able to keep it. Then I saw him again, halfway across the Pont de Pierre in Bordeaux. It was weird. That’s why I came. And now I’m here I can’t go. My van is buried in snow. I’m trapped.” I glanced at Pierre.

  “Børge?” said Sergio.

  “It was a strange coincidence, don’t you think?” I said, defensively.

  “Une vraie coïncidence,” said Kevine, who was small and dark and had two Italian parents.

  “Faites attention,” said Sergio. Be careful.

  It was deep into the early hours when Sergio and Kevine left. Pierre and I watched them crunch off through new drifts of thick snow that had fallen while we were playing. There was a big moon and the sky was so clear and cold it literally took my breath away.

  “You are smiling,” said Pierre. “It is better.”

  “I love that tune.”

  “Your violoncello is your friend, I think. Perhaps your lover.”

  “We’ve been through a lot.”

  31

  It was a week before I saw Børge again. Pierre persuaded me to go with him to L’Arctique one night, to watch the screening of a film called La Trace de l’Ange, about a man called Marco Siffredi. He promised me Børge wouldn’t be there.

  “He is always in the mountains. Nobody has seen him since the party.”

  L’Arctique was full of people with red faces standing around in snow clothes and drinking beer from high wooden tables. Marco Siffredi was a teenager with white hair from Mont Blanc, who had been the first person ever to descend from the peak of Everest on a snowboard. The film was projected onto the back wall of the bar, where Marco launched himself off the roof of the world laughing, as if life were a game. Incredibly, he survived. Then he did it again. They never found his body. When the lights came on everyone was crying.

  I looked for Pierre, who was no longer sitting in the chair beside me. He was at the bar, talking to a tall man with a rucksack on his back. I looked away quickly, but it was too late.

  Børge crossed the room and sat down next to me in Pierre’s empty chair. His clothes looked like he’d been wearing them for a few days. His slate-blue eyes were bloodshot. He seemed desperately tired.

  “You’re still here.”

  “I’m stuck. My van’s stuck.”

  “Pierre says you are sleeping in his cottage.”

  “That’s why I’m still alive,” I said.

  “Do you like the mountains?”

  “Yes.”

  Silence.

  “Actually I love them.”

  “Have you tried skiing?”

  “Nope.”

  “I said I’d take you.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Thanks for leaving the coat. Do you still want it?”

  I looked up at him. His curly dark hair had snow in it, as if it had gone gray overnight.

  “That’s why I’m here,” I mumbled.

  Børge came to Pierre’s cottage the following day. Pierre had already gone out. If we were to get a good photograph, Børge told me, we would have to spend the night in one of the ruined cottages further up the mountain. The ones I had accidentally walked to on New Year’s Day. The cottages belonged to the national park. Since Børge was employed by the national park, as a guide, he had keys. We had to wake up there, he said, so that we could get a shot at first light. The cottages were basic. We’d ski in, towing food, sleeping bags, and the cello behind us on a toboggan.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Børge.

  “I don’t know how to ski.”

  “Okay, we’ll go tomorrow. Today I will teach you how to ski.”

  It was Unstad all over again. We went to the baby mountain, where the under tens go, and Børge watched me fall over. Again and again and again. One leg going one way and the other one going the other way until I landed hard in the middle, on my bum.

  “I fucking hate snow.”

  “Just be patient. It’ll come. It’s much easier than frigging surfing.”

  “I can’t fucking do that, either.”

  The following afternoon, by which time I was pretty much just one big bruise, I was deemed ready. Luckily, Børge was towing the toboggan. Also, because most of it was uphill, we were actually mainly walking. It was hard work.

  “Careful not to fall in,” Børge shouted, as I veered much too close to the river.

  An early dusk had descended by the time he unlocked the door to the farthest cottage. Inside was a wood-burning stove with a pile of logs on the stone floor next to it, dust, spiders, two chairs, and an ancient table with a rotting blue top that reminded me of old French films, and a pile of books that Børge said were his. There was another floor, but you couldn’t get to it, because the stairs had rotted through.

  “Do you often spend the night here?”

  “Yep. Rémy likes to party. I don’t.”

  “Where do you sleep?”

  “On the floor.”

  Børge went outside and chopped an armful of logs. He lit the stove and pulled a saucepan and a bag of pasta out of his rucksack. I peeled off the waterproof trousers I had borrowed from Pierre and lay on the floor in front of the stove, my feet pressed against the metal. Børge stood in the open doorway, looking at the darkening mountains.

  “You said you were going back to England.”

  “I was going back to England.”

  “What changed?”

  “I saw you on the Pont de Pierre.”

  “You thought it frigging meant something?”

  I sat up. I was angry.

  “No. I wanted the coat.”

  “You could have just bought one in a shop. It would have been cheaper.”

  He crossed the room and sat down at the table. He looked like a giant, squashed onto one of the tiny chairs in his big coat. I got up of
f the floor and came and sat opposite him.

  “It was your idea. Why did you tell me to come, if you didn’t want me to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You told me to come twice. You said you would lend me a heater.”

  “I thought I was over it, okay?”

  “Over what?”

  “You saw,” he said roughly. “When you came in my room. You were looking at her.”

  “The girl in the photographs? The one you’re stalking?”

  Børge clenched his fists

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

  “She’s dead.”

  32

  “I’m so sorry,” I said at last.

  It all made sense now. All of it.

  “When? I mean what happened?”

  I wanted to touch him, hold his hand or something, but I didn’t dare.

  “Two years ago. The first of January.”

  “New Year’s Day?”

  “I didn’t know you were going to frigging turn up then.”

  “Shit.”

  “I’m sorry I shouted at you.”

  “I’m sorry I was nosing around in your room. I was drunk.”

  “I should be over it by now,” said Børge. “I thought I was over it, until you turned up at Unstad.”

  I felt like someone had nailed me to my chair.

  “I hated to see you wearing her wetsuit.”

  “I know. I could tell. Why did you give it to me?”

  “I decided to get rid of her stuff. To get closure.” He laughed, but not because anything was funny. “Only there you were, hanging around, wearing it every day right in front of me. She was like you, too. Mental. Afraid of nothing. You even look a bit like her.”

  I stared at him. He shook his head.

  “The way you came knocking on the bus and asking for a board like that. You didn’t even know us. The way you got back in the sea after the size of that set that took you out the first day. The way you tried to drive that frigging van of yours up to Les Torches with no chains.”