by Moss, John
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get some wood ready in case this works.”
Together they broke off some shards from the weathered boards and gathered a few branches small enough to break with their hands. Then they crouched to the task, the gunpowder flared, the greasy paper caught fire, the pyre of wood ignited.
“Thank you, Karen,” he said out loud.
“Thank you, Cairn,” said Lena, mimicking his homage to an unknown deity.
“Let’s get some rest, then we’ll get to it.”
“To what?”
He didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure.
Shadows danced across the walls like frightened spirits as the fire roared and then quieted down as the flames faded to a soporific glow. It had been a long day. It was probably nighttime by now. They arranged a few boards by the fire and curled close to each other on top of them, drawing his soiled nubuck jacket over like a blanket.
They dozed fitfully. Several times, Harry woke up and shoved charred ends of wood deeper into the embers to keep the fire alight. Eventually he couldn’t sleep. He got up, walked into the shadows and relieved himself. When he returned to the fire, Lena’s eyes gleamed green in the flickering light as she shifted to give him more room on the boards.
“Good morning,” she said.
He could not decide if she was forcing her cheerfulness or if good cheer was the product of hopelessness.
“I wonder if the sun’s up?” she said. “Has Joan turned my chalet into a funeral pyre? She’s a very strange girl, you know.”
“You said that before.”
“She is. Her primary motive seems to be a kind of innocent curiosity. She’s pathological, Harry.”
“No, she’s religious. There’s no need for moral responsibility when you’re convinced you’re right.”
You’re an anarchist to the end—but you’re right on, Slate. The girl’s bush Catholic?
Both of you insist on calling her a girl. As if executing a man in cold blood and consigning us to death in a salt mine is cute.
“You figure we slept through the night,” he said, addressing the only other living person present. “I couldn’t tell you whether I’ve had two hours sleep or ten. I still feel depleted.”
Lena didn’t respond.
“I’m going hunting,” he said.
He drew a small root with a flaming end from the fire and, holding his torch at arm’s length, set out to explore their prison. First he went to the door. The puddle in front of it had soaked into the packed rubble. Off to the side, a rock wall glistened and felt damp to the touch. By digging down with his hands, he cleared a depression the size of a basin which slowly filled with water. He took a sip. It tasted brackish but was drinkable. He beckoned Lena to come over and she crouched on her knees and drank.
He tested the door. It was unyielding. They turned and walked hand in hand, exploring the limits of their confinement. To one side, there was the vertical air shaft big enough for a man to fall through. On the other side the rock wall was rough with the marks of prehistoric miners scrabbling for rock salt to preserve their meats and trade with their neighbours. At the farthest end of the cavern, the actual mine tunnelled into solid rock.
He blew on his smouldering torch to revitalize the flame.
“You stay here,” he said. “I’m going in.”
“It’s blocked, Harry. The rockslide.”
“Yeah, I know. Joan was here before it happened.”
“You are not making excuses for her?”
He wondered if he was. He moved forward. The glare of his torch nearly blinded him as one foot reached tentatively in front of the other, feeling for a purchase in the stifling gloom. He gasped as his foot struck an impediment. He held his torch to the side so he could see ahead.
The beginning of the slide.
He looked back, startled to find Lena only a few paces behind. She moved up beside him. He put his arm around her for a moment, then they both turned and retreated back into the quavering light of the antechamber.
“Not much fuel,” he announced. They picked up stray bits of wood as they made their way to the fire. “We’ll have to burn our bed-boards. It’s amazingly dry in here.” Residual salt in the rock leached moisture from the air.
Natural mummification has already begun, even before you’ve expired.
Thanks, I needed to know that. You’re unnaturally chipper.
I’m dead.
He realized once they had dried off they weren’t cold. The ambient temperature was comfortable. They needed the fire to fend off the oppressive darkness.
“Sit down and rest, Harry. Don’t use up your energy. Sleep for a bit.”
When they woke again, Harry fished around for the limp sausage staining the pocket of his nubuck jacket. He stuck a small branch through it and warmed it over the fire. They ate it slowly. He was aware of how salty it was, but the grease felt good hitting his gut.
After a while, they dozed. When they woke they took deep drinks of brackish rainwater. The level in the basin was diminishing.
Harry walked over to the air shaft and dropped a precious stick of burning wood into the depths. It exploded into brilliance from the rush of fresh air as it fell, then as it tumbled against rocks the light shattered into sparks and the shaft returned to a menacing black. To confirm his estimation of its depth he tossed a couple of small rocks into the darkness and listened for them to hit bottom. He retreated to the fire.
They talked. Their lips were cracking. The lip gloss was gone. Their throats were raw but the company of words was worth the discomfort. They tried to talk about Joan, about destructive innocence. They moved on to Klimt and Egon Shiele for a while and shared their impressions of the Secession building and the Beethoven frieze. They drifted into an exchange on the voluptuous evil of Orson Welles in The Third Man. She hummed a few bars of the theme but, without the otherworldly drone of the zither, Harry couldn’t connect.
When they woke again, the fire had burned down to embers. Lena squirmed around and poked it until an array of sparks lit the air with flashes of red and orange. They gazed at the colourful shower, then in a rasping voice Lena asked, “Harry, are you afraid of dying?”
“No.”
“Me neither. I’ve done it before.”
Me too, Karen whispered.
They crawled over to the water supply and strained a few mouthfuls through teeth clenched to catch the grit. Returning to the remains of their fire, they leaned against each other for a while in the flickering darkness.
Harry went back to the air shaft. He dropped another shard of burning wood into the hole. He edged forward, bracing his weight against the rock wall, and stretched across until he could touch the far side.
“Lena,” he called. “I’m going down. I need light.”
Silently, she crawled over to him. She seemed to assess his plan, then returned to their meagre supply of wood by the fire and brought the entire small pile back to him.
He lit a gnarled root from his flare and once it was blinding bright he dropped it into the darkness. After a brief shower of sparks when it landed, the root continued to glow, filling the shaft with a flicker of light. Still, after all his calculations, he wasn’t sure of the depth. He didn’t like not knowing. He reached behind him and his fingers found Lena’s thigh. He gave it a squeeze, then edged forward until he was braced sideways between the rock walls.
He had put his jacket back on to diminish abrasions, but as he inched his way down the rock gouged into him. A foothold gave way. He lurched, plunged a full body length, extended, twisted, jammed himself between the walls, caught his breath, worked his way down, slipped into air, and sprawled across the smouldering root.
“Damn it,” he called. “Lena, we’ve made it.”
He looked up. It was only a three storey drop, maybe four. Her hair flared against the flickering light from the fire in the antechamber.
“Come on,” he shouted. “Drop the wood to me. We’ll need light.”
&nb
sp; Suddenly pieces of board and branches plummeted down and he had to duck to the side.
“Now you,” he called.
“No, Harry. I can’t.”
You waited too long, she hasn’t got the strength.
Oh God.
On the other hand, if you hadn’t waited so long you wouldn’t have been desperate or foolish enough to try. Do you really believe this will lead to another way out?
Gotta believe in something.
Said the atheist.
“Lena, I’ll catch you,” he called.
That would be bloody absurd.
But in the twisted logic of terror, it seemed plausible.
As he watched with his heart thudding against the inside of his chest and his stomach knotted, she edged forward, blocking out the flickering light overhead, then slowly she descended. When she finally reached the top of the chamber he was standing in, Harry reached up. He touched her thigh, the last place he’d touched before he left her. She released her muscles and fell. Together they toppled onto the rubble and lay tangled in each other’s arms, both gasping for breath.
The first thing Harry noticed when he rose to his feet, after helping Lena to sit upright, was the burning root. Tiny flares popped here and there on its gnarled surface. There was fresh air nurturing the flames back to life.
Harry picked it up and surveyed their surroundings. The tunnels on either side of them, large enough to permit human entry, led into absolute darkness. But one tunnel held only dead air. The other came alive with the flickering of his torch as he moved into it.
He gathered their wood in a bundle, then reached out for Lena.
“Harry, I can’t move.”
He tried to lift her to her feet. She screamed.
“Your muscles have seized,” he whispered.
“Leave me, go on. See what you can find.”
A flush of terror swept through him as he stood over her. He could not bear the thought of getting lost and dying alone. Or of returning and finding her dead. He squatted beside her and began to massage her limbs.
“Here?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And here? Here?”
License my roving hands, and let them go
Behind, before, above, between, below.
Dear God, he thought, addressing the deity of the impious cleric John Donne as he added more appropriate words from Donne’s famous sermon, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Too soon for the death knell, Harry. Rage with Dylan Thomas against the dying of the light.
Lines from innumerable half-remembered poems clashed in his mind. Enough, he mutely declared, staring into the shadows. Enough!
“Come on,” he said, addressing Lena. “Let’s go, let’s give it a try.”
Slowly they rose together; taking up their torch and bundle of wood they shuffled into the darkness.
Other small tunnels led off to the sides, but they followed the flimsy current of fresh air until they came to an impasse of boulders that had tumbled down from another shaft. There was no possibility of moving forward.
Simple as that, Harry. It’s over.
Nothing dramatic, merely rubble and rock. Air seeping through between immovable boulders. As simple as that. Their hoard of wood was nearly consumed. With no words between them, they turned back. They stopped to rest as little as possible to make the most of their diminishing light. At one point they heard the clanging of steel.
“The door, Harry!” Her voice cracked from the strain.
He tried to shout. Nothing intelligible came out, only the guttural sounds of a stricken animal. He tried to lick his lips, his tongue scraping over the calloused raw flesh. He whispered, “It’s nothing.”
They moved ahead.
When they reached the spot below the shaft, Harry tried to make sounds by smashing rocks together, but the sounds echoed like a taunt and there was no response from the darkness above.
He gathered the few bits of wood that still littered on the rubble floor and created a small fire. They settled close together on his shredded jacket and disappeared into sleep.
23 ABSOLUTE DARKNESS
Time thickened and became immeasurable. They dozed, stirred, drifted at the edge of consciousness. Finally, saturated with sleep, Harry rose and in the dying light explored the dead end tunnel and finally found a trickle of water. He drew in a slow mouthful and took it to Lena, letting it drain from his mouth into hers. After a few draughts, they both felt better. They talked, despite the discomfort. They discussed their dreams.
“Mine are loaded with symbolism,” Harry declared. The pain made him smile.
“Can you interpret the symbols?”
He thought she was smiling as well. “When I wake up they shatter.”
“Dreams do that, don’t they?”
They both experienced severe stomach cramps and massaged each other’s bellies. At least they had water.
Time simply became a context for each separate moment. The agonies of making themselves talk were affirming. They talked about the impossibility of Nazi atrocities, they talked about the impossibility of crimes against children, they talked about the impossibility of evil.
Eventually, talking became more painful than silence. They listened to the quiet, interrupted by the feeble crackling of their diminutive fire and the raw sounds of their own parched breathing. Each appeared spectral in the flickering light. Then the light flared and turned into darkness. All they had left were their voices, their touch, their imagination.
“It would be nice to believe in God,” Harry murmured.
“Why? I can die without God.”
“I know what you mean.”
A few times, when he hovered between wakefulness and sleep, Karen whispered to him. He knew she was nowhere except in his mind. He knew his mind was closing down. Yet strangely it gave him comfort to know she was there.
“Harry?”
“Yes?”
“What do you think about drinking blood?” Lena’s voice was surprisingly clear, but the strength had gone out of it.
“Not while the bleeder’s alive.”
“I suppose there’s no point, anyway.” After a few moments of contemplation, she said, “What about eating flesh?”
“Maybe,” he said. “It would have to be cooked.”
“Fire’s gone.”
“Maybe raw.”
“But only after the other one dies.”
“If it isn’t too late.”
“Too late?”
“It just might not seem worth it.”
“I’d rather we go at the same time,” she said.
“You can’t wish yourself dead.”
God knows there were times when he’d have liked to. On the banks of the Anishnabe River when he realized Karen and Matt and Lucy were gone—the horror when he realized he was alive, and later when he realized Karen’s body had been consumed by the river. For Lena, there must have been times after Freya was abducted and again when she knew how Freya died—when death offered the respite of oblivion but would not come on its own.
“Do you want to talk about the files?” he asked.
“It’s over, Harry. My research was solace. Vengeance was, was,” she faltered, “was knowing I tried. We cannot change anything. We can tame the cat and call it domestic, but it is still a tiger inside. It will kill what it can. We are fallen, Harry, we can only weep.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s over.”
She nestled close to him, making herself small. “I don’t want to talk anymore,” she said in a brittle voice.
Harry closed his eyes against the unutterable darkness and flickering apparitions danced in his skull against the rock all around them.
Later she mumbled about Freya in German or perhaps Yiddish, repeating the word Freya over and over.
She didn’t speak after that.
Karen had lapsed into silence as well. She had settled in, waiting.
He
slowly released his hold on Lena’s body and laid her out beside him on the dry rubble and covered her with the remains of his jacket.
He waited. Time spread around him like a vast, dense emptiness.
Sometimes he crawled to the trickle of water. Each time, he returned to Lena’s side, pressing against her, touching her, sometimes whispering, sometimes dreaming, awake and asleep. Sometimes ravaged by familiar images, sometimes aware only of the swollen blackness surrounding them. Sometimes impatient.
He felt Karen’s presence, but she remained silent.
He thought about Joan, mostly in images where she merged with Lena, where her radiant smile turned into a gaping maw that swallowed him whole into the darkness inside her. He thought about the destructiveness of innocence, about Joan’s childhood where absolution displaced rules and God was awesome but indifferent and faith was a facile convenience.
She was named after a rock star, Joan Jett. Snippets of of her lyrics floated through his mind.
Gradually hell closed over him and he remembered the red canoe hovering, plummeting into thundering impossible turbulence, his children’s smashed and twisted bodies, Karen hurtling among rocks. He felt himself falling into welcome unconsciousness.
But he wasn’t unconscious. He snapped to, sat upright, alive. Hope is the worst evil of all, Nietzsche whispered inside his head. Hope prolongs torment.
Hope conjures the future, he answered. He rose unsteadily to his feet. He moved around his small cell, scraping at the walls with his fingers until they bled, finding holds to grasp in the rock face, pulling himself upward, falling, getting up, discarding his shoes, climbing, seizing a purchase with his fingers, with his toes, bracing, climbing, jamming himself against the walls of the shaft, furiously, calmly, frantically, slowly, working his way upward, eventually up over the edge onto the floor of the antechamber.
He crawled to where he knew their fire had been.
He could smell the odour of their bodies and sweat, the odour of lip gloss, of burnt wood, of fear and of courage. He slipped into unconsciousness. He dreamed empty dreams. Blackness swarmed. He couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep.