This time they went to a restaurant in the village. In the car, Jill asked Hubert where he had been, Arno had been desperately looking for him. We have the events committee tomorrow afternoon. He’s afraid you won’t be ready in time. It’s in less than two weeks. He’s thinking of trying to bring in someone else instead at short notice. Hubert didn’t say anything.
After dinner, Jill quite naturally drove back to her house. They split a bottle of wine and talked about the past six years. At midnight Jill asked if Hubert wanted to stay the night. Again, they slept in the same bed.
When Hubert awoke, Jill was already up, and he could smell coffee. Over breakfast she said she had to get going, but he didn’t have to hurry. Just call Arno.
Hubert didn’t feel like going to the cultural center and getting leaned on, so instead he showered and then wandered farther on up the road out of the village. It climbed a little more, and wound among meadows with large rocks lying on them, and then it went down, and he arrived in a thin forest. The air was cool and damp and resinous and ever so slightly smoky. Sunbeams fell through the trees and cast blurred patterns on the forest floor. He sat on a thick tree trunk by the side of the road and listened to the birds. He could hear the rushing of the Inn down below. He remembered walks he had gone on with his parents, vacation weeks in the mountains, endless days spent building dams over mountain streams, playing hide-and-seek in the forest, making campfires and cooking sausages. Suddenly he heard a buzzing sound. He looked down at his cell and saw he had five text messages. Three were from Arno, who wrote that there was an important meeting today, and would Hubert get in touch, urgently. The fourth was from Astrid, who asked how he was doing. She was planning on coming to the opening. Nina had written some nonsense. Hubert wiped everything and put the phone back in his pocket.
He walked back to Jill’s house, did the dishes, and picked a bunch of wildflowers from the garden. He couldn’t find a vase, so he used a big beer glass. Then he looked around the house once more. The books on Jill’s shelves were surely mostly her parents’. Everywhere in the house lay piles of magazines and fashion papers, in the living room next to the sofa was a stereo, beside it a little shelf with a couple dozen CDs. Hubert sat down at Jill’s desk and opened a drawer. He leafed through her old calendars, which he found right at the back. Most of the entries seemed to be about her work, plus a few massage or pedicure appointments, and sometimes a name without time or comment. Mostly they were women’s names, and they came around fairly regularly.
It was just two o’clock. Hubert went back out into the garden. He took a piece of wood from the pile next to the door, sat down at the granite table, and started whittling away at it with his pocket knife. He didn’t carve a shape, but first took off the bark, then cut the wood patiently into thin strips. As a boy he had often whiled away the hours like this, had pulled one thread after another from a piece of rough cloth, or picked away at a rope until there were just thin fibers left, broken up a blossom or a fir twig into its constituent parts, hatched and crosshatched a piece of paper with pencil till it made a shiny even surface. Suddenly he saw the exhibition he wanted to put on: white steles distributed around a room, and on them the remnants of such labors, a pile of thread, hemp fibers, blossoms. Or, better, he would leave the steles empty, and the materials would lie beside them on the floor, as though rejected, or as though the objects had dissolved of their own accord. He went into the house, got a small plastic bag from the kitchen, and put in the wood shavings and the rest of the log.
He made his way back to the cultural center. He was pretty sure that Arno would be underwhelmed by his idea, but he didn’t care. It had sprung organically from the situation in which he found himself and was the logical continuation of his earlier work. Whereas he had always been at pains to arrest time, now for the first time it would be incorporated into his work. He doubted that anyone would notice, but the main thing was that it convinced him.
In the cultural center, he headed straight to Arno to tell him the good news, but he wasn’t in his office. Presumably the committee meeting was in progress where they were talking about the exhibition. He thought of calling him, but he liked the idea of the committee racking their brains over something while he had already solved their problem for them. He would tell Jill about his project tonight, that was plenty early enough.
He drove down into the village to buy the things he needed, a rope, soft pencils, a few coarsely woven red place mats that would be easy to pull apart. Then he drove back to the cultural center and climbed up to the attic. The roof wasn’t insulated and it was warm in the long space, and smelled of dust and old junk. There were all kinds of things standing around, and after looking for a while, Hubert found a dozen white steles. They were a little tall to be ideal. He carted six of them down to the ground floor and carried them into the kitchen and washed them with warm water and soap. They were full of spiderwebs, and it took a long time to get them more or less clean. Then he stood them up in the entrance hall and tried out what their best positions were. In the end, he decided to stand them all in a row.
Jill was waiting in the hotel lobby.
No sooner had they sat down than Jill said she had some good news for Hubert. And I’ve got some for you, he said. You start.
We’ve found someone to stand in for you, said Jill, a young woman artist from Germany who was going to come up anyway. Thea Genser, perhaps you know her? Arno talked to her on the phone a couple of days ago, now she’s coming a little earlier than planned and bringing a series with her that she’s completed recently.
Hubert shook his head and smiled, that wouldn’t be necessary, he had had an idea himself.
When? asked Jill.
Hubert told her of his plan.
But we’ve committed to Thea now, said Jill. She’s been here before too.
You could at least have spoken to me, said Hubert.
Arno was trying to reach you all this time, said Jill, but you kept ignoring him. I’ll try and have a word with him.
The dining room was starting to empty when a young man joined them. When he had finished his plate of hors d’oeuvres and went up to the buffet, Jill explained that it was part of the concept of the vacation club that no one was to sit alone. Hubert wouldn’t have minded talking to her quietly a little longer, but now the young man cut in and told them about a hike he’d been on. Twelve hundred meters, up and down, he said. Jill praised his fitness. When she got up to get her dessert, she laid her hand briefly on his shoulder. Hubert followed her to the buffet, but only to get a cup of coffee.
Who the hell is that? he asked. Is there something going on between the two of you?
It’s part of the job, explained Jill. It’s called talking to the guests.
What if the guest gets on your wick? asked Hubert.
No sooner had Jill finished her apple strudel than she said she had to get changed and made up for her performance.
Will we meet at the bar later?
After she was gone, the young man told Hubert the whole story of his hike again, as though he hadn’t heard it already. Hubert got up and went over to the bar.
There were a few couples on sofas and armchairs by the windows, in their midst stood a hotel employee asking questions in a broad Frankish accent. It seemed to be a kind of quiz, whoever knew the answer had to call out a word, Hubert didn’t understand it.
He went outside for a stroll in the grounds. When he came back, the doors to the theater were open, he sat as far away from the two dozen or so hotel guests who were waiting for the show to begin. The young man from dinner was sitting in the front row.