There was a knock at his door.
‘Come in.’
It was the cleaner. Twice a week she excused herself and emptied his waste-basket. She was a Native American Indian woman, very big with a solemn leathery face. She had a trolley loaded neatly with brushes and shovels, sprays and polishes. She didn’t smile when he greeted her but adjusted the muscles of her face to show him that she was returning his greeting. She reminded him of the tall Indian in the movie of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The one who never spoke. She took his waste-basket to her trolley and upended it. Nothing much came out.
He said, ‘It’s so cold today.’
She set the basket back on the floor.
‘You betcha,’ she said and went out. Her metal shovels clanged like low-pitched wind chimes as she moved down the corridor.
He finished the CV and began to type up his notebook from the weekend. He’d written quite a lot. When he ate out he’d choose from the menu then jot things down until his food arrived. It was a way of having a conversation with himself. Writing in the notebook was a way of not being alone:
Shop at the Hy-Vee just as it’s getting dark. The clear sky is amazing, almost like a tinted windscreen – pinkish rising to green then to navy. The evening star is low and as bright as a plane headlight coming at you straight on.
Met a girl student today called Ellen Lonesome.
Walking down Hickory Drive I look up and see that in this country Cassiopeia has become an M rather than a W. And somebody has upended the Plough onto its handle.
Here people don’t cook food, they fix it.
Remembered a phrase of rejection of my mother’s today at lunch. ‘The back of my hand to you.’ If I failed to keep a promise to her or let somebody down and she was really disappointed she’d say it.
The snow fizzed as the wind whipped it at the window pane. He looked up but could only see the leaden grey sky. ‘Will it lie?’ In Scotland it was the first question asked when the snow came on. Here it always did.
At lunch-time he went along to the kitchen for another coffee. The last woman in the office was putting on her coat. All the others had gone.
‘Didn’t you hear the weather warning?’
‘No.’
‘Oh really?’ she said. ‘Campus Radio have been at it since morning. They don’t expect it to quit until after midnight.’
He went back to his room and stood looking down through the window at the snowstorm. The paths were covered now. He sipped his coffee and sat down in front of the computer again. He checked the phone in its cradle. He should write to Lorna – put it on paper. Elegantly. To see if she could be tempted by words. But then it would be too late. Decisions would have been taken. He could ring her but she would be in class. And if there was one thing she hated, it was to be phoned at school. Trekking along corridors behind that stork of a school secretary.
He stood up to look out. Maybe he should go. He couldn’t see to the ground and the trees outside his window were no longer visible. Yes, he should go. And not wait for a phone call. She’d only said ‘maybe’. And if she was getting rid of him she wouldn’t want to talk to him directly. He saved what work he’d done and snapped the Off switch on the computer. He put on his coat and zipped it up to his throat.
The only one in the corridor was the Native American cleaner mopping to and fro. Pulling an apologetic face he tiptoed over the wet floor.
‘I’m off,’ he said.
‘You betcha.’
Somewhere there was the sound of a distant flush and a woman from Linguistics came out of the ladies’ restroom.
‘Hi – I thought everyone had gone,’ she said.
‘Not me.’
They walked together as far as the lift and she pressed the button.
‘The University is officially closed this afternoon,’ she said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘That’s why,’ she looked towards the window at the end of the corridor. ‘It’s a rare event – to close down.’
Both of them turned from the window and stared up at the indicator lights.
‘I think this elevator’s bust,’ she said. They went down the stairs. At ground level he turned off as she continued to the garage in the basement.
‘You don’t have a car?’ she said.
‘No.’
‘Oh really?’
‘The bus does me fine.’
‘Are they still running?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Which side of town are you?’
‘West – out by the river.’
‘Oh – I’m the other side.’ She hesitated. ‘Can I offer you a ride?’
‘No – no thanks. Not with the roads the way they are.’ She nodded and jackknifed her hood up into place.
‘Take care,’ she said.
He waited until he was at the front doors before putting on his stupid hat and gloves. His boots squidged on the terrazzo. Even with the doors closed, papers swirled in the draughts of the hallway.
The snow had silted up the steps outside, evened them to a slope. He wound his scarf around his mouth and nose, Bedouin style, and went down the steps. He breathed in and, at about the third breath, felt the hairs in his nose begin to stiffen and freeze. It was an odd sensation, a bit like having too much Coca-Cola. He turned left and headed along the path. In some places the snow was forming into drifts, other places there was no snow at all. The path in front of him was swept clean by the wind. It was so bitterly cold. He had never felt anything like it. At home in Scotland there was a damp cold that got into your bones and joints but this was different. This was thermometer cold. The wind ripped at the skin of his cheeks. He partially closed his eyes to protect them and kept his head down. Now the path disappeared into the snow. He couldn’t tell where the edges were. So he just kept walking straight. Each time he put weight on his boot the snow creaked beneath his sole. He looked round to check on the direction of his footprints and noticed that he could no longer see the building he had just come from. It was a white vortex.
‘Fuck me,’ he said. His prints were fast disappearing as the wind evened them out. The snow was so fine it got everywhere – particles the size of salt. His wrists were feeling numbed. The wind got at the skin space between his gloves and his sleeves. He tried to put his hands in his pockets but it didn’t help. With his eyes narrowed he now found difficulty in seeing. His eyes had begun to stick. His tears were gumming up his lashes as they began to freeze.
‘Jesus . . .’ He jerked his eyes open, widened them quickly so that the icing was broken. He’d had ‘mucky eyes’ as a boy and in the morning he’d have to open them with his fingers. It was like that now, hard to see into the wind with the ice on his lashes. There was also a terrible roaring of the wind around his head, cuffing him this way and that, probing his hood and the thin knitted hat. His boot sunk down to his knee in a rise of snow. His other foot followed and the drift covered his knee. It was getting deeper. This can’t be right. It has only been snowing a couple of hours. He didn’t want to look at his watch, to bare his wrist. He tried to calculate how long – four hours at the most. The snow was even, uninterrupted when he looked round for any sign of the path.
He heard a noise in front of him – a kind of stuttering – and for a moment he couldn’t think of what it was. A rattling. Then he saw it was the flagpole. With its halyard vibrating in the wind. But the flagpole shouldn’t be there. It was in the middle of the fucking green. How could it have moved to the path? He stopped and reached out and touched the metallic pole with his glove. He looked up but could only see glimpses through the driving snow of the flag at the top of it.
He knew the path was to the right of the flagpole so he headed back to join it. The wind had loosened the scarf protecting his face and it blew out in front of him. He tried to cover his face again and stuff in the end of the scarf at his neck. But his gloves were too big and insensitive for him to do it properly. He stumbled into a drift of snow and lost his footing.
But he didn’t fall far – this snow was up to his thighs and it was soft. He keeled over, more than fell. ‘I’m too old for this kind of a caper,’ he said out loud. ‘What the fuck’s going on here?’ He clambered upright. Because of the fall, snow had got inside both his gloves and up his sleeves. As it melted his wrists were wet as well as cold.
Now the skin of his cheeks felt numb. He tried to protect himself from the wind by cupping his hands like horse blinkers at each side of his face. But this exposed his wrists again to pain. He looked back at his tracks and headed into the unbroken snow. Then he heard the gonging of the campanile. That must be the hour. Two o’clock. He had been out here the best part of fifteen minutes. Normally, at a good pace, it took him about eight minutes to cross from one side to the other. The sound was coming from his left, which was as it should be. Or was it coming from his left? The wind kept plucking and distorting it – was it an echo he was hearing? It was like trying to tune in an old radio. Then he heard another sound – distantly. The long slow hoot of a train. It appeared to be coming from his left also. But this could not be because he knew the tracks ran along the west side of the campus. He decided to keep going straight ahead. The sound could not be trusted.
The sheeting snow eased momentarily and he saw a clump of trees in front of him. Ah! He stepped into the shelter of one of the trees. Here the snow was over his boot mouth. Which particular group of trees was this? He tried to remember – there were groups of trees all over the place. Scots pines with the longest cones he had ever seen, evergreens with swishing fronds which he thought would do for whisking at flies if he stayed till the hot and humid summer, ornamental trees with burnished bark the colour of copper. But this was a group of trees he couldn’t remember seeing – these were like silver birch. There was a bench of polished stone or marble in the middle of the copse which was still miraculously free of snow. Along the back of its seat the words:
AFTER TILLAGE COMES THE OTHER ARTS
Then in smaller gold lettering:
DONATED BY THE CLASS OF 1932
He sat down on it with his back to the wind – and thanked the class of thirty-two.
Fucksake, this was getting serious. He was completely disorientated and his cheeks were beginning to hurt or to go numb, whichever was the more dangerous. He was panting for breath and the tears in his eyes were freezing and icing his bottom lids to the top ones. He was too old for this kind of nonsense. He debated whether or not he should turn around and go back to the department. Maybe stay there till the thing had blown over. But the woman in the office had said the forecast was for it to continue snowing until midnight. There was a sleeping bag on the top of the book shelf in the room they’d given him. So it had happened before. He could stay the night. It was a piece of fucking nonsense that he couldn’t get from one side of the quad to the other. He felt so tired. Tired out of all proportion. Maybe lie down on this marble bench. He took off his gloves to get a handkerchief to dry his face. He put his hand in his right pocket but he was astonished to find it full of snow. And it was frozen. He had not buttoned the pocket flap down properly. Somewhere beneath the snow he located the handkerchief, took it out and tried to wipe his face. But the hanky too was stiff and frozen and felt like sandpaper or broken glass on his skin. He put it away again. His left pocket was in the same state. He’d better get on, now that he’d got his breath back. Get the bus. Get home and make a cup of coffee. Turn up the heating. Maybe have a hot shower. Step out on the tiles with the underfloor heating. There was an enormous gust of wind which blew his gloves off the bench onto the ground. He grabbed at one but saw the other cartwheel away into the snow. Hand over fist. It was the right one he’d saved. The left one had disappeared completely.
‘Jesus . . .’ He cleared his left pocket of snow and put his hand into it for protection. The inside lining crackled and felt like cold tinfoil. He could maybe find the glove tomorrow. Or in the spring.
He hunched his shoulders and stood up. All he had to do was continue walking in the same direction – to walk in a straight line – across the diameter of the park – and he would get to buildings of some sort at its circumference. The snow in this place was so deep he was having to lift his knees to make each stride. Could this really be the path? Off the beaten track, for fucksake. It was laughable. Except that he hadn’t enough breath to laugh. He was panting with the effort that was required of him now to keep going. He wanted to stop, to lie down. To curl up and sleep. The most bizarre things were coming into his head. He laughed. Where was the emergency telephone? What fucking use was an emergency phone if you couldn’t find it? He had not thought much about it, assuming, because it was equidistant from all buildings, that it would be for violent situations at night – an assault or rape or something. It had a red push button and a built-in mouthpiece for speaking into. Yelling into, maybe. If he could find that he would definitely use it. He wouldn’t feel shamefaced about using it – because now he felt he was in some difficulties. No, I’m not being raped – I’m just lost. Yes, somewhere in the middle of the fucking campus. Then he remembered someone telling him about the habit of Midwestern farmers in weather like this, who tied a rope from the house to the byre for fear they’d get lost going to feed the beasts. And another story about a father and son who tied themselves together in case they’d become separated in just such a storm.
He must be at the other side by now. The snow on the ground here was blowing, forming into ribs like sand at the seashore. Something loomed up in front of him and disappeared just as quickly. He moved towards it. It was another flagpole. He leaned up against it. But he could only remember one – in the centre of the quad. There wasn’t another one. Maybe he’d forgotten the second one. He looked up. This one was flying the same flag as the one earlier.
‘Fuck it.’ It was the same one. He must have walked in a circle.
He remembered a childhood game in which adult hands had grabbed and blindfolded him. Then they turned him round and round until he didn’t know where he was. He’d stand, his arms outstretched, his fingers moving, listening to the breathing of the grown-ups. When they took the blindfold off he was always astonished at where he was in the room. And once memorably when he opened his eyes they had tricked him into a different room altogether.
He hunkered down to make himself less of a target for the wind and snow. He would have to try to extricate himself. But there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t do exactly the same thing. In another fifteen minutes he could be blundering past this fucking flagpole for a third time.
He must conserve his energy. His feet were now totally numb and his left wrist was causing him pain. The scarf around his mouth had become saturated with his breath and refrozen so that it was white and brittle against his lips. Where any outer material came in contact with his skin, it was abrasive. His cheeks felt like raw meat and he wondered if they were bleeding.
If the flag was at the centre of the quad . . . He looked down but the prints he had made on his previous visit were completely obliterated. The wind direction was of no help because it was swirling and twisting . . . But neither could he take no action. Staying there was not an option.
If he found the emergency phone he would ask to be connected to long distance. Was it still called that? Lorna, get me outa here. I’m fucking lost. We can patch it up. We can make a go of it. I want somebody to share my life with. Somebody to come home to. His mother’s phrase was now in Linda’s mouth. ‘The back of my hand to you.’
He got slowly to his feet. His gloved hand almost stuck to the metal of the flagpole. He arbitrarily chose a direction and set off. He was blundering now. Flutters of panic mixed with a couldn’t-care-less attitude. Why was he so fucking tired? Monumentally tired?
He tripped on something and fell flat on the snow. He looked back to see what it was in the kind of stupid way you do. It was the path. The wind had cleared the snow and the concrete edge of the path was sitting proud of the snow. Ho-ho-ho – he now had a fifty-percent chance o
f getting to his destination. Follow the path. That way he would either end up at the department or reach the other side. Then he remembered that this is what he had done the first time. The path would disappear under the snow. He lay there wondering if he should get up. His face was against the snow. The carillon sounded. It must be a quarter past. Or was it half past? How long had he been blundering around out here? Surely to Christ a grown man could walk across a quadrangle – even if it was as big as a park. He looked to his left and saw a pair of boots. Then upwards to a padded coat. A hooded figure bent down and took him beneath his armpits, helped him to his feet.
‘I must have slipped,’ he said.
‘You betcha.’
He tried to see the eyes behind the slit in the hood. He guessed it was a woman from the voice. She was tall and bulky or else she was wearing a lot of clothes. It was the Indian woman, the cleaner from his department.
At first she took his arm but, when she felt him walking steadily, she let it go. She looked closely into his hood.
‘You from Scotland?’
‘Yes.’
‘You gotta phone call. Nobody else in the bildin.’ She shouted above the howling of the wind, ‘She said to tell you. She’s coming.’
He sheltered in her wake as she walked the blizzard in a straight line to the buildings on the far side.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Collected Stories Page 65