by Regi Claire
As they get up to go off to Nita’s flat, Nita reaches over for the rucksack.
‘Would you mind taking the bag instead?’ Celia says. ‘Pure sentimentality, really. The rucksack was Franz’s.’
On hearing the name, Nita glances up and their eyes lock; another funeral missed – is this what she’s thinking?
Celia quickly transfers the knife from under the mat to one of her coat pockets. Better safe than sorry. On the way out she keeps fingering the blade, running her thumb along the cutting edge. She isn’t quite so vulnerable now.
22
THE TRAIN TO Preda is packed. Sledges are crammed into the compartments, upright, alongside their owners, like strange docile beasts squatting on their haunches, reins hanging down, saddled with quilts, cushions, furs and sheepskins. Celia has counted four carriages, all of them a dirty old red. The seats are thinly disguised wooden benches, their yellow-brown vinyl upholstery full of cracks and holes; the floors never stop creaking, as if straining to hold on to the wheels; the windows rattle like loose mouths, sucking in draughts of icy air and howls from inside tunnels – and all the time there’s the sharp blood smell of iron she can taste on her tongue.
Christine has brought her two daughters, Chloe and Diana. They’re nine and eleven and give Celia the X-ray treatment, long, hard and unsmiling, staring first at her face, then her jacket (her mother’s ‘Arctic gear’ as she used to call it, and of an indefinable ochre shade Celia wouldn’t normally want to be seen dead in, but at least the microfibre will keep her warm). Then at her old rucksack with the extra jersey. Then her bulging right-hand pocket. As though they knew about the knife wrapped in its square of tissue paper and stuck inside her mitten.
Ever since they got on the train and squashed themselves into a corner, Nita and Silvan have been sweethearting in low tones, murmuring and kissing and sliding hands into each other’s zip-up suits. Now that she’s been introduced to him, Celia likes Silvan even less. Something about the man makes her go hot and cold inside, wave after wave after wave till she feels nearly sick. It’s nothing to do with his looks; they are strikingly good. Even little Chloe, Celia is sorry to see, isn’t impervious to the polished planes of his face, the slate-blue eyes and shiny teeth, and has shot him a series of admiring glances from across the aisle. Catching his attention at last, she nudges her sister and they burst into giggles. Then, with busy self-importance, she adjusts her forget-me-not kirby grip, wriggles off her seat and minces over to him, burying her nose and forehead in his hair. Her lips seem to nuzzle his earlobes.
Celia is about to protest and looks round at Christine – who’s already rolling her eyes at Nita, groaning, ‘Not more Chinese whispers!’
A few seconds later it’s Celia’s turn: The humbug was heard and the bitch is paid hearts. When she repeats the nonsense words out loud, Chloe laughs and laughs. ‘I didn’t say that,’ she splutters, as if Celia had made it all up, forgodsake. ‘I said: “The humpback wizard and the witches play darts.” ‘
Wizards and witches – they’re the last thing Celia wants to be reminded of. But she joins in the laughter the way she’s expected to. Her right hand, meanwhile, has slipped into the mitten in her pocket. The knife blade feels warm through the tissue paper; warm as her body. She is grateful for the thermal tights Nita has lent her and squirms with guilt at her uncharitable thoughts in the restaurant.
After their walk home from the Crusch Alva, Nita had suggested a bath in her heart-shaped tub. Which was what they’d done. Just their feet were touching – Nita’s nails were varnished black with speckles of silver – and their arms brushed only if they happened to flick the pages of their magazines at the same moment. Celia had merely pretended to read. She’d seen Nita was shaved smooth between her legs, her flesh swollen like a ripe fruit freshly split. Lying side by side in the hot sleepy water, it was hard not to imagine Silvan in all sorts of positions, bruising those lips to a glazed purple; hard not to fantasise about Alex and herself.
And hard not to remember her fifteenth birthday, when she’d locked herself in the bathroom with a razor blade. Stepping out of her skirt and knickers, she’d placed her mother’s magnifying mirror on the rim of the bath. Then she stood astride it, the blade between thumb and forefinger. For an instant she hesitated, fondling her belly button with her free hand as she anticipated the pain, the blood. To be a real woman she had to do this, and do it now. Much easier to endure the pain inflicted by yourself. That way it became part of you, became something you had to accept, perhaps even love a little. She’d bled a good deal that day, and walking or going to the loo was agony for a time. Later, in bed with her first man, she found she’d cut herself in the wrong place and bled again, profusely.
Through the rattling window Celia watches the floodlit pass road weave in and out of the feeble moonlight and the mountain shadows. Sledges are flitting down it, the figures on them curiously small and insubstantial between the walls of snow and safety fencing on either side. Deep in the gorge the icy waters of the River Albula glisten – like the whites of those eyes under the mask, revealing nothing but a coiled red vein. Granite Mask hadn’t come up again in her conversation with Nita. Nor the tulips and passionflowers, the phone calls and Valentine cards. Not even during supper, which was a cheese raclette and a dry Fendant from the Valais.
And Alex is still a secret. Hers. Celia wonders what he is doing just now. Maybe he’s taken his wife out for dinner or to the cinema. Or they’re at home together, sitting on the sofa. Touching. Playing with each other. Sucking and licking and … Will he spare a thought for her at all?
Diana, Christine and Nita have started a discussion about crampon trekking and snowboarding techniques, including jumps over Alpine rooftops, and Silvan is fooling around with his pretty little admirer, trying on her crash helmet, which is a luminous blue and perches on his head like a flashing police light.
A few times, in fact, Celia has felt his eyes on her, reflected in the window. No, she definitely doesn’t like the man.
The water in the horse trough next to Preda Station is a humpback mass of ice – ‘The humpback wizard,’ Celia whispers to herself – crouching like some nightmare creature she can’t resist stroking for a moment, placating it with pats from her mittened hands, the knife handle hard against her wrist. An icicle has grown from the pipe opening above the trough. It glitters in the strip lighting from the station wall, long and sharp and crystal clear. Before she knows what she’s doing, Celia is running her tongue down it, as slowly as she dares. The cold pierces her flesh. Then there’s a rip of pain, the taste of blood.
She swallows and swallows. The others don’t seem to have noticed. They’re standing at the sledgers’ bar no more than a dozen metres away. It’s built entirely of ice bricks, like the wall of an igloo. ‘Röteli, Grappa, Glühwein!’ she hears the barman shout. His hat is as pointed as a dwarf’s. Not far behind him looms the blackest most impenetrable-seeming part of the night: the mouth of the six-kilometre tunnel into the next valley, the Engadin. Celia tries in vain to suppress the memory that’s sprung up in her mind, the memory of the Hölloch and her lost father. She gasps at the damp murky clouds of breath she can feel wafting out of the blackness.
Perhaps she ought to have a glass of Glühwein, after all.
‘Oh, here you are, Cel,’ Nita says, pulling Silvan in Celia’s direction. ‘We’ll take care of her, won’t we, lover boy?’
The teeth beneath his little moustache gleam whiter and stronger than ever.
Celia swallows a last dribble of blood and tries to smile, but her lips have gone numb. She nods, then puts up the hood of her jacket, tugging at the drawstring.
Christine’s in the middle of telling everyone in her vicinity how she adores going sledging with just the moon and stars for guides, forget the floodlights. ‘It’s magic,’ she enthuses. ‘A blessing from outer space. No need for religion.’ Smirking at her audience from underneath her fringed scarf, she suddenly resembles one of those evil mountain spi
rits. The impression is so vivid Celia has to look away, only to catch sight of Diana chasing after Chloe, the sledge skittering and leaping and pouncing behind her like a mad dog. Diana, she thinks, goddess of the moon and the hunt.
The frozen slush sparkles diamond bright as they follow the tyre marks of the cars along the flank of the mountain, down the almost imperceptible slope of the pass road before it falls away into the hairpins Celia had seen from the train. With its drifts and hollows and shadows the snowscape around her is like a close-up version of the face of the moon. The wind has died down. People’s breath hangs in the air like stardust.
‘HELLO! HELLO!’ Chloe and Diana yell towards the gorge, listening for an echo that comes much too soon and in too many voices – yodelling, laughing, screeching, howling.
They’d decided to let the other sledgers go first; ‘To avoid a traffic jam,’ Nita explained smiling. But Celia knows better: this is her friend’s way of reassuring her. She is grateful, with a touch of resentment.
There are perhaps a hundred people in front of them. Young children with their parents, gangs of teenagers, couples, singles, even a few old-age pensioners; everything from veterans to first-timers. Some of them have miners’ lamps clamped to their foreheads. Some sport caps with leather earflaps like early pilots. Celia recognises several of the students from the morning. Without their bags now, they’re doing their damnedest to trip each other’s sledges up, parking themselves on the seats or stepping on the runners from behind; two of the girls are wearing face paint.
Then Celia sets eyes on what she has feared all along. A man – or is it a woman? – in a dark balaclava. And then there’s another. And another. A whole group of people in balaclavas. Which one is it? Which one? Her breathing is quick and shallow; inside the mitten her right hand has clenched into a fist. And inside the fist is the knife, unwrapped and half-protruding. Easy now, she tells herself, Easy …
They’ve reached the small bridge that spans the beginning of the gorge when Silvan pulls out a piece of black material.
Another balaclava! As if to ridicule her.
He is supposed to be her bodyguard, not her tormentor.
The mere idea of having to cling to him on the sledge makes Celia break into a sweat. The idea of having to cling to anyone just now makes her feel burning hot, despite the cold shrivelling up her body.
‘A game of tag!’ she cries, snatching up the rein Silvan has dropped. ‘See if you can catch me!’
And already she’s running, bent double over the sledge, pushing it with both hands towards where the road dips.
‘Hey wait, Cel! It’s too dangerous, too many sledgers! Don’t be silly, Cel!’
She’s flung herself on to the cushioned seat at the last moment. Franz’s half-empty rucksack bangs into her back like someone clapping encouragement.
She’s not afraid any more. She’s got the knife.
Pellets of snow and ice spurt up her legs, cold air cuts into her skin, sculpting her face. She shrieks with laughter. She’s ready.
She leans into the first hairpin, hacking her heels into the glass-hard ground to steer the runners. Grasping the knife tighter.
Into the next, getting caught for a lurching instant in some rut or other, overtaking here, nearly crashing there. Out again by the skin of her teeth.
Kicking the snow to go faster, whipping off the right-hand mitten, thrusting the blade out, just a little.
Hurtling into the third.
Hurtling and whirling, powerless now, roundandroundand-round into the steely whiteness of ice and snow over rock …
… And that’s when her mother’s face smiles into hers, larger than life. Smiles with pain as it becomes more misshapen and gaunt before finally splintering along the cheekbones, the nose and jawline – to re-form itself into Franz’s. Into the face of a mountaineer, full of corners and slightly eroded, burnt a scrubby brown. Nowadays Celia hardly dreams of him any more. He’s been dead almost six years.
It was too late when she got to the hospital. The doctor was bald with ripples of pink flesh down the back of his head. She followed him into a small windowless room that had a beige carpet and nondescript art on the walls. Classical music was seeping through the ceiling, low and mournful. The doctor was talking to her but she didn’t hear what he was saying. He must have started shouting at some point because she remembers glancing up at him and being struck by the turkey-red cheeks, the bulging eyes and the mouth opening and closing.
‘A terrible, terrible fall. No one … sorry, I am sorry,’ she could just about make out. ‘You were his …?’
Were. The violins were screaming in her ears. Squealing. Their tautly stretched strings live guts in torture. Franz had gone off at dawn, alone. His rucksack was intact, the nurse had assured her on the phone. As if she cared. When they gave it to her afterwards – after she’d looked at the battered face under the long hair and held the unhurt hand they’d placed on top of the blanket, the hand with which he used to stroke her inside and out – she noticed that the pockets were still zipped up, the lengths of nylon cord still looped through the clasps and the holes in the tabs.
The first time she’d seen Franz secure his rucksack so fastidiously she’d giggled out loud and said, ‘Poor old thing getting trussed up like that, worse than a chicken! And not much use in an emergency, I’d have thought.’
‘For safety,’ he’d replied, quite earnestly, his fingers busy with a fresh knot. She’d stopped giggling and from then on called it the Rucksack Ritual. She realised soon enough that most of his friends and fellow climbers also had their private little mascots or manias (anything from polishing their boots three times instead of just the once to dead Brazilian gold bugs swaddled in cottonwool and carried in the left breastpocket, over the heart).
And in the event Franz’s rucksack was the only thing to survive. So incongruously ridiculously safe it usurped her dreams, turned them into nightmares from which she’d wake up crying, her body streaming with sweat:
Always, he’s climbing away from her. Up and away. His boots grow gigantic with distance and height, as big as boulders. Always, his back is to her. His rucksack is tied and double-tied, festooned with cord ends that swing from side to side. The rucksack bounces on his back as if there’s something alive inside, kicking to get out. Always, just as he is about to climb out of sight, the leather bottom rips open and a bundle falls out, tumbles down towards her, hitting rock overhangs and ledges, down towards her, spraying blood …
23
CELIA HAD ONLY closed her eyes for a moment, it seemed.
But the moment unfolds like an enormous blanket, stretches and stretches and goes on stretching until it becomes the sheerest see-through silk that floats her into the next morning, then midday.
By now the effects of the painkillers are wearing off. Cel’s eyelids are flickering, Nita is glad to notice. She has been sitting at her friend’s bedside most of the time, waking her every two hours to check she was still lucid, asking her name and date of birth as she’d been told by the doctor, in between catnapping, reading and sneaking off for the occasional quick snuggle with Silvan on her king-size bed. What on earth got into you last night? she addresses Celia silently. Grabbing that sledge and careering off like a bat out of hell? At least the cuts on Cel’s hand aren’t too bad. Not as deep as the blood had made it look at first. She’d swabbed them clean, then stuck some gauze and plaster on top, as instructed. Those metal runners can be right bastards if touched by mistake.
Nita wrings out the face cloth in the yellow plastic basin on the floor and places it across her patient’s forehead. The eyelids flutter sleepily and there’s a contented sigh. Nita almost heaves a sigh herself. She reaches for the cereal-and-apricot bar on the bedside table, bites off a big chewy chunk.
It wasn’t that much of a smash really. Considering how crazy Cel had acted, the knock on her head could have been a lot nastier. Lucky she’d had her hood up, though. Nita had found her lying near the snow wall six hair
pins down, a little groggy but so what, happens to most of us once in a while. She helped her up no problem, holding her steady the way she does with her snowboarding pupils.
Christine, like some New-Age bouncer, had told the rubber-neckers to get lost, for goddess’ sake, and Cel had smiled and tried to brush the snow off her clothes. Which left smears of blood all over. ‘Blood from the rucksack, it’s torn again mygod,’ she’d moaned, staring in horror. Christine, ever practical, slipped off her fringed headscarf and wound it round Cel’s injured hand, saying not to worry, we’ll sort you out again, and gesturing to Silvan to keep an eye on her girls.
Just then that old hippy-doing-very-nicely-thank-you with his flowing iron-grey mane, curly beard, camelhair coat and Bally boots arrived on a sledge painted a vibrant pink. ‘I used to be a doctor in a previous life,’ he announced, almost cheerfully. And that’s the moment dear old Cel chose to take a tottering step and crumple back down into the snow, her scarf-wrapped hand flying out pathetically, like part of a scarecrow.
‘Fainted from shock,’ the man commented, the switch from happy hippy to laconic doctor-in-charge apparently effortless. As he knelt down to examine Cel, Chloe broke into sobs and Silvan ended up walking her and Diana away, his arms over their shoulders, whispering into their ears and making them titter – if they’d been a few years older, Nita would have got pretty cross with him.
But her attention was drawn to a group of sledgers who’d braked to a halt and begun circulating tales of how Cel had laughed and cried out and rammed into everyone like she was playing dodgems, at her age, just imagine, stoned out of her bloody mind probably! Good for Cel she’d passed out and couldn’t hear those unkind remarks.
Nita has eaten her cereal bar. The sun is shining outside and a couple of blackbirds are trilling their melodies into the monotonous whine of the skilift further up. She can feel her legs starting to twitch with impatience. Sexy Silvan left hours ago, off to do some ‘blitz skiing’ before slaving it behind his stall.