Beneath the Mountain

by Luca D'Andrea

  You could say we bargained, and it’s almost funny to think about it that way, because he wasn’t trying to sell me a used car or a cable TV subscription, he only wanted to make my life better.

  He prescribed some mild tranquilizers and new sleeping pills to make my nights less restless. When he said goodbye, he had a big question mark on his face.

  I understood his doubts, but I couldn’t tell him the real reason for my determination. It was because the story of the Bletterbach, the story of the Bletterbach killings, was now just a file in the recycle bin on my laptop. A finished document.

  I had succeeded.

  I had told the story of Evi, Markus, and Kurt. And of Werner, Hannes, Günther, Max, Verena, Brigitte, Hermann, Luis, and Elmar. The biography of Siebenhoch.

  Nobody would ever read it and I would never make a documentary about that ill-fated excursion, but what did it matter? I had proved to myself that I was still able to do what I loved most: tell stories.

  Now it was time to turn the page.

  * * *

  “Frau Gertraud will look after you,” Werner said. “You like Frau Gertraud, don’t you, Clara?”

  Clara looked first at me then at Annelise, then nodded shyly. “She’s read every book in the world.”

  Werner opened his arms wide. “You see? No problem. So, are you coming to dinner at my place?”

  Annelise tried to hide her surprise at the invitation with a “Why not?”

  “Good girl,” he said and gave her a hug.

  Then he drove off in his jeep.

  “What do you think that was all about?” Annelise asked me when we were back inside the house.

  “I have no idea.”

  “You’ve spent a lot of time together.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I thought you talked.”

  I put my arm ’round her shoulders. “How many times do I have to tell you, darling? Men don’t talk. Men grunt and drink beer. Sorry, they drink grappa.”

  She didn’t laugh. “He loves being with Clara. It strikes me as strange that—”

  “Instead of asking yourself so many questions,” I cut in, “why not just look forward to an evening off?”

  Werner hadn’t told me anything, but I had a pretty good idea what he was planning to do that evening, and I admit I was scared. But I pretended I had other things on my mind.

  I was cheerful and talkative. I helped Clara choose the dress she would wear during the time Frau Gertraud, Siebenhoch’s librarian, would act as her babysitter. By the time the loden-clad woman arrived, at around seven in the evening, my daughter had changed her mind at least three hundred times (jeans and T-shirt were too casual, the green skirt was for having dinner out, maybe the red one . . .) and I, in spite of my affable facade, was as tense as a violin string.

  What Annelise and I were going to wasn’t a simple dinner, it was a farewell that would add a couple of lines to the face of the woman I loved.

  I held firm.

  * * *

  Werner opened the door to us and shook our hands. He searched for my eyes and I avoided his.

  We chatted about New York and Siebenhoch. We talked about Clara, who would start school in September. About Frau Gertraud.

  I was my normal self.

  Werner had lost weight, that was obvious, and yet, when he went to the kitchen to fetch the dessert from the refrigerator, I pretended to be surprised by my wife’s comments.

  “Werner?” I said. “I think he looks very well.”

  As lively as the broken zombies in the photographs in the heart-shaped box.

  I only thought it, but I did think it.

  Once dessert was finished, Werner handed Annelise a little gift-wrapped package. “This is for you. From me and Herta.”

  She batted her eyelids in embarrassment. “What is it?”

  “Open it.”

  Annelise looked at me, clearly wondering if I was aware of the contents of the package. I knew nothing about it: Werner’s move had caught me by surprise, too.

  Annelise undid first the ribbon, then the tissue paper, to reveal a little box. Inside it was a pocket watch with a simple ’round white dial. The casing was silver, scratched in places. The hours were in Roman numerals, the hands were Gothic arrows.

  Annelise stared at it in bewilderment. “What am I supposed to do with this, Papà?”

  “It’s yours,” Werner said gravely.

  “Thank you, but . . .” At last, Annelise noticed her father’s solemn expression.

  It’s starting, I thought.

  I felt a touch of relief. My part in this play was over. I could leave the stage, withdraw to the wings, and prepare to collect the pieces of my wife’s shattered heart.

  “This watch has been in our family for more than a century. Look at the casing.”

  Annelise read aloud. It was a date. “February 12, 1848.”

  Werner nodded. “It was a wedding present. Since then it’s been passed from father to child. And now I’m giving it to you.”

  “It’s beautiful, Papà, but . . .”

  “You have to take good care of it, the mechanism is fragile. You have to wind it every evening, as the Mairs have always done, otherwise it might be damaged.”

  “Papà . . .” Annelise was pale.

  Werner gave her a sad and infinitely painful smile. “I’m dying, my girl.”

  Annelise put the watch down on the table as if all at once she was afraid of it.

  “My time is coming to an end. That’s why I want you to have this watch. You know why you have to wind it every evening? Because that way you appreciate more the passing of the minutes. Those were my father’s very words the day he gave it to me. God knows where he’d read a sentence like that. Maybe it was his, who knows? We’ve always been a bit strange, we Mairs. A bit crazy and a bit innocent. What I meant to say was that you always have to take care of time.”

  “Papà,” Annelise murmured, her eyes swollen with tears. “You’re not really dying. You’re Werner Mair, you can’t die. Everybody in Siebenhoch knows that. You . . . you . . .”

  Werner nodded. “You remember when I fell in the attic and went to see a doctor? He did what doctors always do in these cases, he sent me to see a colleague, and so on. Except that each time, the face of the doctor I was seeing grew as long as a mule’s. In the end, the last one standing had the bother of telling me the diagnosis. I have bone cancer. It’s inoperable and incurable.”

  It was as if an invisible vampire had sucked every drop of blood from Annelise. “You can’t leave me alone,” she said in a low voice.

  “I’m not leaving you alone, my girl. You have your husband and your daughter. You have your life.” He picked up the watch and placed it in her palm, then squeezed her hand. “You still have a lot to do, mountains to climb, battles to win—or maybe to lose just enough to acquire a little bit more wisdom. And I’m sure destiny has a couple of sunny days in store for you to warm your bones when you reach the age when time is counted, not in years but in minutes. Then, at the end, you’ll take this watch, you’ll make a package more beautiful than mine, and you’ll give it to Clara.”

  “But I . . .” Annelise said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what to say to her. I . . .” She spoke as if she was hoping to persuade the cancer to leave Werner more time.

  “When the day comes, you’ll know,” he replied.

  Annelise threw her arms around his neck, as Clara did with me when she was scared. Except that the person crying on her father’s shoulder wasn’t a child, it was an adult woman, the woman I loved, the woman I’d sworn to protect from all harm.

  A promise that couldn’t be kept.

  The devil always has the last laugh, as the Krampusmeister said.

  I stood up, feeling like a deep-sea diver at the bottom of the ocean.

  Father and daughter had words to say, secrets to reveal, and tears to share. I prayed, as I left them alone, that one day, facing Clara, I’d be able to find the same serenity wit
h which Werner was explaining the ultimate mystery to Annelise.

  * * *

  For the whole of the following week, Annelise wandered around the house with red eyes and a bleary expression. It was like living with a ghost. It was torture seeing her like that.

  Especially for Clara, who couldn’t figure out her mother’s behavior.

  “Is Mamma ill?”

  “A bit of flu, maybe.”

  “Shall we make her some fruit juice?”

  “I don’t think she wants fruit juice.”

  “Then what does she want?”

  “To be alone for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “Because sometimes grown-ups need to be alone. To think.”

  To cut off that cascade of questions, I tried to distract her. I invented some new games, a tongue twister, I challenged her as to which of us could find the longest word in the world, just to shield her from all that bitterness. I knew how Annelise was feeling, but I didn’t want her to withdraw into her grief and exclude the world.

  There wasn’t time.

  One evening, after putting Clara to bed, I took Annelise aside. “You have to react, darling.”

  “I am reacting,” she said irritably, as if I had distracted her from her thoughts.

  “No, you’re mourning your father,” I said gently.

  “Of course I’m mourning my father, Salinger!” she cried. “He has cancer!”

  “But he isn’t dead yet. You remember what he said? The drugs are doing their job right now, the pain is almost non-existent. You should be taking advantage of that.”

  Annelise looked at me as if I had cursed in church. “To do what?”

  “To be with him,” I said. “Because the most important thing we can do for our parents is make sure they leave us with happy memories.”

  In the Belly of the Beast

  On April 20, there was a ringing at the door in the middle of the night. A furious ringing that woke me with a start. My heart seemed as if it was about to take flight.

  Dazed by the sleeping pills, wondering if a fire had broken out that was razing Siebenhoch to the ground, or a war, or a disaster of apocalyptic proportions, I went downstairs and opened the door without even asking who it was who was making all that noise.

  The figure that emerged from the darkness embraced me with the strength of a bear.

  “Salinger!” he cried. “I always get the time difference wrong, don’t I? And where’s my sweetie?”

  “Mike, Clara’s . . .”

  She wasn’t sleeping.

  Clara was coming down the stairs, jumping the steps two at a time. She landed in Mike’s arms and he lifted her in the air, making her yell with joy.

  “Uncle Mike! Uncle Mike!”

  You could see the exclamation marks from a long way away.

  Mike threw her so high, I was afraid she would hit the ceiling. So, to avoid a heart attack, I took the two suitcases my friend had abandoned and closed the door, leaving outside the sharp cold of the night.

  “Am I allowed to know what the hell you’re doing here?” I asked.

  “Your Papà doesn’t like Uncle Mike,” he said to Clara.

  “Papà does like Uncle Mike,” she pontificated. “Only he says that Uncle Mike is a bit five letters.”

  Mike turned to me. “What the hell does five letters mean?”

  “‘Crazy,’ in this case.”

  Mike turned again to Clara, and threw her up in the air one more time. “Crazy! Crazy! Uncle Mike is crazy!”

  Every time Clara flew upward, I lost a year of my life.

  At last he put her down, pretending to be hurting.

  “Not even a beer for Uncle Mike, sweetie?”

  “It’s night time, Uncle Mike,” Clara said with unexpected wisdom.

  “In some parts of the world, it’s five in the afternoon.”

  To Clara, the logic of this seemed unassailable, and she disappeared into the kitchen.

  I had seen grown women, worldly-wise women, succumb to Mike’s absurd logic: why expect a little girl of five to be any exception?

  “Since when have you had beer for breakfast?”

  It was Annelise, in her nightgown, her hair ruffled and a smile all over her face. Mike hugged her and smothered her in compliments.

  He thanked Clara, who had brought him a can of Forst, and, still wearing his jacket, collapsed into the armchair in the middle of the living room.

  “How are you feeling, partner?” I asked him.

  “Like someone who’s flown across the ocean for eight hours, spent four hours on a train, and then forked out a whole lot of money on a taxi,” he replied, guzzling down the beer. “Actually, seeing as how I forgot to get a receipt, how much is ‘a whole lot of money’ in dollars? You owe me one, Salinger.”

  “Clara?” I said.

  “Papà?”

  “Bring me the Monopoly, please.”

  Clara was bewildered. It was Annelise who explained to her that it was a joke.

  “Papà makes jokes,” Mike said, sipping at the Forst. “Papà thinks he’s funny.”

  “You could have called,” Annelise said. “I’d have made something to eat. Would you like a sandwich?”

  “How about another beer?”

  “No way.”

  “You’ve lost points, baby.”

  “Mike?”

  “Yes, partner?”

  “It’s three in the morning. I was sleeping with my lawfully wedded wife under a warm quilt and you show up on my private property without warning.”

  “You could have shot me.”

  “I’d have happily done it. Sweetheart?”

  “Yes, Papà?”

  “Bring me my rifle.”

  This time Clara got the joke and burst out laughing.

  Papà and Uncle Mike were better than cartoons, when they really got going.

  “Do you want to know why I crossed the threshold of your private property without warning?”

  “I think that’d be only fair, given that you’ve also appropriated my armchair.”

  “I was sitting quietly at home, after an evening in a club in Co-Op City, an incredible place with a live band doing Stooges covers and lap dancers who were the real thing. I have a couple of beers, chat a little, and meet this blonde. Not bad, let me tell you. So we decide to go to my apartment and—”

  “You can spare us the details.”

  Mike remembered Clara, who was following the monologue as if hypnotized. He cleared his throat and continued, “I take her home and tell her the story of the fox and the grapes. Sweetie, do you know the story of the fox and the grapes?”

  “Is it the one about the fox who wants to eat the grapes and because they’re too high he says they aren’t ripe? Is it that one, Uncle Mike?”

  “That’s the one. Except that in my version, the fox is old and flabby and married and so when his friend Mike starts to tell him about the latest bunch of grapes he took home with him, the flabby old married fox—”

  “Go easy,” I said, cutting him off.

  Mike took two envelopes from his jacket pocket and threw one at me and one at Annelise.

  “What’s this?”

  “An invitation to the premiere of the masterpiece of Mike McMellan and the now flabby Jeremiah Salinger.”

  The envelope contained a flyer printed on stiff cardstock. The logo was the network’s. There were too many gaudy colors. There were snow-capped mountains.

  And a date.

  The date was: April 28.

  * * *

  Seven days later, Mike was telling Clara his own version of the story of Cinderella. From what I’d gathered when I’d gone up to her bedroom for a goodnight kiss, it involved a rich Manhattan lawyer, a Vogue journalist, and a big bull terrier. Mike didn’t seem to have grasped the idea that bedtime stories were meant to get children to sleep, but it was nice to hear Clara roaring with laughter.

  Annelise was finishing clearing the table, an apron tied around her waist and a
tuft of hair brushing her chin and bothering her. I thought she looked beautiful.

  I lit myself a cigarette.

  “It’ll be full of assholes,” I muttered.

  “I know.”

  “Assholes who’ll write bullshit.”

  “That’s a tautology.”

  I cleared my throat. “We’ll have to escape into the night. They’ll come looking for us with pitchforks.”

  “Don’t exaggerate.”

  “I’m not exaggerating. That’s how it’ll be.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “If I’d wanted to exaggerate, I’d have said: they’ll set fire to the house, they’ll impale me on the church steeple, and when I’m dead they’ll make a barbecue out of my ass.”

  “Nothing of the kind will happen. You’ll just have to shake a few hands and answer questions you’ve already answered dozens of times.”

  “Mike’s the director,” I whined. “He’s the one who likes shaking hands. Remember how it went the last time I answered the questions?”

  Annelise’s mouth twisted at the memory of the performance that had earned me a lawsuit (dismissed by the court) and a migraine that lasted three days.

  “You’re the star.”

  “I don’t want to be the star. I like keeping a low profile.”

  “Salinger . . .”

  I raised my hands, as a sign of surrender. “OK, OK . . .”

  “No ‘OK, OK,’ understood? I haven’t spent five hundred euros on a dress just to hear you whimpering all night.”

  Having said this, she turned and rubbed a grease-encrusted baking tray: Mike had made the dinner, and when Mike cooked, cholesterol levels were so high, they did somersaults.

  I sat in silence for a while, listening to Clara’s laughter and the clatter of the dishes in the sink, wondering for the hundredth time how come neither I nor Annelise used that modern contraption called a dishwasher. A kind of snobbery, I guess. The same kind that would allow the long list of guests at the premiere of the documentary to kick me in the ass for the next two years. My butt already hurt.

  “Stop it right now,” Annelise suddenly exclaimed.

  I jumped. “Stop what?”

  “Brooding. I can feel it from here.”

  “I’m not brooding.”