Coming Up for Air Page 8

  Ottawa River, 1987

  First day of school. Anouk walked the dirt path to the main road to meet the bus. She was dawdling, couldn’t help it. September leaves. And the sun. Shining through the leaves. Close to the main road, she bent to undo her shoes – she was going to take them off and run through the leaves – but as she bent down she heard the impatient idling of the school bus engine.

  ‘I’m still here,’ said the driver, that sympathy smile pasted on his face.

  She was often late. It was the medication, and then having to wait for the medication to work so her lungs would be ready for the physiotherapy. The year before, the driver had been instructed to wait whenever this happened, but it would have been better if he were mean about it. He was mean to everyone else.

  ‘I was jumping in the leaves,’ she said, climbing the stairs into the bus.

  ‘Sure.’

  Her teacher that year was Mr Chester. He was one of those teachers who preferred his students to sit in circled groups rather than rows, and who brought in muddy plastic bags full of plums and apples from the trees in his yard. Anouk was relieved to see, when she walked into the classroom, that the seats had already been assigned. That she wouldn’t have to be asked to join a group. Or not be asked.

  The first day of school was unremarkable except for one thing: Mr Chester announced that they would each make their own time capsule, which he would keep, and deliver back to them in three years.

  ‘Three years is a heck of a long time,’ he said, rubbing his hands together, circling their tables. His shoes were as soft and floppy as dog ears.

  ‘You’ll choose a few objects that are significant to you. There’s no rush. I’m giving you until Christmas to decide. Also, you’ll write a letter.’

  ‘To who?’ someone asked.

  ‘To whom,’ Mr Chester corrected, one finger on his chin.

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘To yourselves.’

  This is going to be good, Anouk thought.

  * * *

  By the end of the first week of school, Anouk had set aside three objects for her time capsule. One, a celluloid film in a manila envelope, a chest X-ray of her lungs that was taken after her last infection. She knew how to look at an X-ray, how to identify the smoky shading of scar tissue. Like thin clouds, the kind that looked as if they were about to disappear.

  The second choice for the time capsule was a plastic pill bottle full of river water. Naturally.

  The third thing, a fossil of some primordial shellfish, bought in the gift shop at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. The fossil had been presented neatly on a square of yellow foam in a small plastic box, and with it, lost now, a written explanation of how the fossil had been formed. More or less, it read: this was not the actual animal turned to stone, but a copy. Any physical trace of the animal was gone, the soft parts, the muscles and skin and organs, eaten by other animals or bacteria. Then, millions of years after its death, the skeleton, buried deep in sedimentary rock, dissolved as well, leaving an empty space, a mould. Mineral-rich water eventually filled this vacancy and, under the pressure of layers and layers of rock, turned to stone. This was the fossil. Seas dried up and the earth’s crust shifted, and what was underneath rose to the surface like an ancient book found and opened and deciphered.

  So when you died, Anouk understood, you could leave an imprint of yourself behind. Even if no one ever found it. But if someone did, she might try to figure you out. Who you were and where you came from. How you lived.

  * * *

  Anouk had a coughing fit at lunchtime, in front of everyone. It lasted for about a hundred years. When she got home, she put on her swimsuit and went to the river. She stood on the little beach and watched a dead leaf float by on its back, pointed edges curled up like fingers. It was warm out, for September, but the water temperature had already begun to drop. Anouk didn’t have a lot of time; Nora wasn’t home but she would be, any minute, and this, an autumn swim, was not allowed.

  Anouk walked right into the river without stopping, then dove in and frog-swam deep underwater until she couldn’t anymore. The water was punchy. It beat the air out of her lungs. She turned on to her back and floated, ears submerged to the shush, and soon felt as if she were rising up through the fire of September trees and into the blue.

  The fit at school had come out of nowhere. Sometimes that happened. Kids who’d been sitting close moved away, afraid they might catch it.

  Too cold to float for long. She turned on to her front and swam to the island, pulled herself on to its sun-warm rock and pressed her body into the granite. Granite like the story of the earth, jewelled with nuggets of milky quartz and shining flecks of black and silver and pink mica. Hot stone, dry leaves and pine sap, and crisp air on her wet skin. She shivered.

  She watched a rivulet of water run from her body, meander down the rock and back into the river.

  ‘Anouk!’

  Her mother on the beach, one hand on her hip, the other flapping in the air.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  Her mother dressed in a wool sweater big enough to reach her knees, long jeans and leather boots. Nora stomped over to where the canoe rested on its gunnels under a tree and began to haul it towards the river. Anouk stood and watched, hugged her thin arms around her body against the cold. Couldn’t feel the rock under her numb feet. Nora stumbled into the canoe, fought to free the paddle from where it was stored under the thwarts and then freed it, grabbed it by the neck and plunged the blade into the water. The cedar canoe jerked forward in crooked thrusts. As Nora pulled up to the island, her eyes wide and darkly clear, Anouk dove into the water and began to swim home. By the time Nora turned the canoe and caught up to her, she was halfway back.

  At school, in the yard after lunch, some of the kids barked like dogs. Not in front of Anouk, but loud enough for her to hear.

  Legs wobbly, her fingers numb and tingling, Anouk climbed the grassy hill back to the house. Nora ran ahead and came back with a towel, wrapped it tightly around Anouk’s body, so angry and baffled she couldn’t speak. She pushed Anouk into the house and on to the couch, where she pulled off her suit and cocooned her in soft pyjamas and a wool blanket. Outside fading to denim-dark, rich blue. Something small flew fast past the window and was gone from sight, then returned and then was gone again. A bat. Nora pushed a mug of hot water in Anouk’s hands and instructed her to drink; she was shivering so much that water spilled over the rim of the cup. The drops settled into shining beads on the wool of the blanket, hovered there for an instant, then sunk into the wool.

  14

  Pieter

  Ben Nevis, Scotland, 1931

  Bear. there were stories I wanted to tell you. My grandfather, he was a natural storyteller. My father, not so. People die and maybe they leave something behind, a wristwatch or a ring or a set of silver tableware, but none of that means anything without the story. It’s what keeps us here after we’re gone, and we’re only truly dead when those who know our stories are also dead.

  I’d like to tell you about the foolish thing I did when I was twenty-two years old, in 1931, when I was an apprentice making toys for another man. I was very lucky to have this position, Bear. It was my greatest ambition to one day have my own company, to manufacture my own toys, and working under this man, who was very good at what he did, was a good start. In the beginning, I was very happy working for him.

  Every year, this man closed his workshop for the month of August to holiday with his family at their summer home, and so there I was with an empty month and nothing to do. One evening, a day or two into my break, I was eating a meal with an old school friend and he told me about Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland. He said it was relatively easy to reach the top, he’d been the summer before, and so I decided that is what I would do. I would go to Scotland and climb this mountain.

  I had never bee
n to Scotland. I had been walking in the hills in Norway but I was hardly an experienced mountaineer. One could purchase topographic maps from the Royal Geographical Society and I knew how to use a compass, to start a fire, to raise a tent, so I thought I would be well equipped. And when you’re twenty-two years old, you tend not to recognize the things you should not do.

  I borrowed, from this friend, a pair of sturdy leather boots, without taking the trouble to try them on for size, and very quickly organized rail and ferry travel. My efficiency at purchasing tickets, at organizing transfers, at selecting good-quality socks and a useful knife, lulled me into believing I knew exactly what I was doing. Instead of sailing on the Bergen Line from Stavanger into Newcastle, in the north of England, I arranged to travel by train to Calais, and from there boarded a ferry to Dover. It was a meandering, circuitous and frankly nonsensical route to take, which cost more than double, but I had always wanted to see the white cliffs.

  This is something to see, Bear – the cliffs at Dover, across the Channel from France. The cliffs are composed of a white chalk, which is the compounded skeletal remains of billions of tiny sea creatures called plankton. Numbers you cannot even imagine. Looking at the cliffs is like witnessing a part of the earth’s history, one which originated underwater and eventually broke the surface into the air. Quite something.

  Anyway. Once I reached Dover, there was a train to London, and from there, another train to Edinburgh. I spent one night in Edinburgh – a very old and regal and windy city overlooked by a castle at its central point, a castle built of hulking dark stone that has been scored by weather and rain for hundreds of years – and in the morning I boarded yet another train to a small town called Inverness. But still, Bear, I was not within walking distance of this mountain.

  The further north I went, the closer I felt to home. Yet I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going, really. In England, my cobbled English had been sufficient to get what I needed, but in Scotland, people spoke with accents that were as strong and thick as the smoke from the peat they burned in their fireplaces, and much of the time I only half understood what I was being told. Friendly men warned me about the mountains, said the weather was moody and capricious. Warned me of cliffs hidden in cloud, evaporating trails and cold winds that could freeze the hairs in your nose, even in summer. But, I silently protested, I am from Norway. Norway! Where the mountains are bigger and the winters colder.

  From Inverness, I travelled by foot or car or horse-powered tractor, often all three in the matter of a few hours. The boots I had borrowed from my friend? Too small. My feet burned, blisters weeping golden sap into my socks. Socks crusted to the blisters. It was hell, until it wasn’t. You can get used to anything, Bear.

  As I travelled, the land around me buckled into steeper and steeper mountains, snow-peaked and bare of trees but laden with violet and yellow and silver heather, spotted with sleepy white sheep and languid cows. The roads were narrow and potholed. They rose and fell and twisted on a hair, or cut long, sweeping incisions into the steep walls of valleys.

  When I finally arrived at the mouth of the glen that would lead me to the mountain, I had already been travelling for two weeks. I greatly underestimated how long the trip would take me, and knew I would be returning late to my apprenticeship. But I carried on, moving forward as slowly and stubbornly as the ferry that had carried me across the English Channel.

  The Highlands are a melancholic place. The mountains are almost always hidden in mist and the tongues of blue that lick the sky are watery and fleeting, but there is a ballad to the landscape that exists in everything. In the wind, you can hear battle. The bog that sucks keenly at your boots has memory. You climb an outcrop and look out over the valley to an endless horizon of overlapping peaks and it’s like looking back in time, because you know that nothing about this view has changed for hundreds of years. Perhaps only the random placement of sheep on the opposite slope. That’s the only thing that changes.

  I was accosted, Bear, daily, by ticks and flies and midges. The midges, beasts! They got into my tent, into my mouth, into the corners of my eyes. I must have inhaled a thousand of them. There was a stony trail to follow but often it was swallowed by a bog or confused by rock, and several times I got lost. So much of the land there was like a wet sponge and my bleeding feet were never dry. My clothing was inadequate and so was my tent.

  On the third afternoon, zigzagging my way along the face of a rocky traverse, the whole of the sky descended on me and I was lost in cloud. Knowing that below me there was a drop of several hundred metres, I decided to sit and wait for the cloud to pass. I was wearing a thin cotton shirt but was hot from walking and so I didn’t bother to put on warmer clothing, even when the rain started to fall, so fine that it formed perfect, silver beads on the hairs of my arms. Steam rose hotly from my skin. I was content. In the mist, there was nothing at all to the world; it was like being underwater. I needed the rest anyway and I leaned back on the rock, water dribbling down my neck, and congratulated myself for being invincible. By the time I realized I was cold, it was too late. I dug through the damp clothes in my pack for my woollen trousers and top, and, with numbing fingers, jammed my limbs into the clothing. Remember, Bear, I had already spent my youth swimming in cold water – cold wasn’t new to me – but I was on a mountain, far away from warmth and shelter. I was also trapped by the mist. I couldn’t remain sitting in one spot so, going very slowly, I inched my way along the trail, blind, pushing my boots along the narrow path and not daring to break contact with the rock. My teeth were chattering and I shook from deep inside my body.

  I knew I was in trouble but when you’re in the midst of trouble, you haven’t got time to think about the trouble you’re in. So I kept going forward and this seemed to be working okay until, from somewhere beyond me, somewhere in the fog, I heard a harmonic, mournful lowing. I stopped. The sound continued, and it was getting closer. I don’t go in for ghosts, Bear, but when you’re socked in weather that seems to have no end, in a country as old and full of stories as Scotland, and when you’re growing deliriously cold, you become a little more open to the romance of ghosts, of the ones who passed before and perhaps left a little of themselves behind. I’m not saying I was expecting some kind of spectre to appear, only that I considered the possibility of it. Even the appeal of it. Anyhow. The moaning sound continued to grow closer, but I kept moving forward because I certainly couldn’t go back. After a few minutes, a figure did take shape. At first, I was perplexed. It was a hulking thing, low to the ground. As I got closer I could see more detail, a bulk covered in copious amounts of long, straggled hair, heavy with moisture. I thought: dog? Boar? But it moaned again and suddenly the mist between us dissolved, and there, in all apathy, a massive Highland cow. A bull, no less, sitting sideways on the trail and solid as a wall. He swung his great head slowly towards me and shifted a little, but clearly had no intention of moving. His eyes were concealed by his matted, dirty white coat and he smelled of bog water and peat and hot, bovine muscle. The particular way the trail was cut into the side of the mountain meant that I couldn’t divert above or below him. What with my heavy bag, and considering I couldn’t see more than a metre ahead, the bull was blocking my only way forward. I waved my arms and yelled. He swatted his small tail at me as if I were a flea. I sang the national anthem of Norway, danced, unbuckled my trousers and urinated, thinking this might offend him into shifting. Nothing.

  Meeting the bull had at first distracted me from how cold I was, but I soon remembered, as if the cold were a jealous companion and had tapped me on the shoulder and said: You’re not leaving me behind. I needed to move forward and find a place to pitch my tent and light a fire. I searched the ground and found a few good-sized stones. With my heart in my throat and not sure how this would end, I threw the stones at the bull’s rump. All this inspired from him was a grumble and an angry twitch. So, I found more stones and this time, lobbed them at his head. This got
him up. He took a few steps towards me so I bent again for more stones, nearly losing my balance with the weight of my heavy bag strapped to my back. I scrabbled at the ground again and came up with a handful of grit, and threw this at the bull. Steam billowed from his wet, black nostrils. I screamed something low that hurt my throat and this inhuman sound echoed strangely in the mist, surprising both of us. With impressive agility, the bull danced a tight circle on the narrow trail and began to move slowly away, dumping as he went a glorious procession of green and steaming pats of shit. I gave him a few minutes’ head start before I continued down the trail, cold and tired and humiliated.

  I would have told you this story, Bear, when you were a little older; maybe I would have taken you on a similar trip. We wouldn’t have had to go to another country. We could have found one of the wild places at home, rambled from one world into this other, and I could have built you a fire and told you this story and hoped you gleaned from it some sort of wisdom. Maybe you would have, or maybe, like most men, you would have ignored your father and gone off to make your own mistakes. Because these are the sorts of things that build a life: crossing water to another country and wondering about ghosts and suffering the humiliation of being bested by an animal dumber than you and with more time to lose.

  15

  Anouk

  Ottawa River, 1987

  Mr chester trooped Anouk’s class to the school gymnasium on a morning when they weren’t normally there, and everyone got excited. Thought they’d be doing something physical with balls or hula hoops or rope. But when they got to the gym, there was a woman from St John Ambulance waiting for them, and on the floor lay a manikin dressed in a blue-and-white tracksuit.

  Someone said the manikin looked like the killer from a Halloween horror movie. Anouk thought she looked like Red when he fell asleep on the couch with the newspaper.