The trail ran along a ridge and then with an altogether gentle slope reached the summit, where once, Daniel Atijas read, there used to stand a lookout post for forest fires. Poring over the map for a while, we figured out which mountains we could see from there, which ranges ran along the horizon, and where the highest peak was, but after the initial thrill, and even a little jostling, our interest waned, and soon we dispersed, each of us looking for something different: Daniel Atijas went back along the ridge, believing he could find a vantage point from which to see the hoodoos, Ivan Matulić’s grandson mingled with a group of tourists listening attentively while a woman described the origins of the different geological formations in the Banff area, and I stayed behind to survey the golf course that stretched along the river, unsure about whether I felt it was a perfect adaptation of nature, as it seemed from this height, or a blotch on the natural face of the world. I found an almost-round stone slab and sat on it. Closing my eyes, I began, despite the surrounding voices and noise, to hearken to the altitude. There is something, I thought, that cannot be changed, and that, as I had said to Daniel Atijas, is the feeling of belonging to solitude. The artist who is not alone, I said to him then, is only barely an artist, since the interpretation means more to him than the work itself, which, after all, I made a point of saying, may be of no consequence whatsoever. Daniel Atijas had then drawn my attention to the fact that totalitarian rulers are always alone because the multitude around them is actually invisible, but I never managed to discover any connection between totalitarian rulers and artists.
All I meant to say, I then said, is that most of the time an artwork is not created for this or that meaning, as critics, and with them the public, often like to think, but without involving any search for meaning. It is created for itself alone or, possibly, for no reason at all. Why should everything, I asked him, have to have meaning, including meaninglessness itself? Actually I cannot remember exactly when it was that we spoke about that. All those days are merged into an indivisible whole, and sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I cannot draw even the slenderest dividing line between them. I am almost certain, for instance, that Daniel Atijas arrived in Banff on a Tuesday, but I cannot determine whether we were at the party at the home of the director of the Literary Arts Programs on the Saturday or the Sunday, which doesn’t maybe matter so much, especially if one is comparing it to other things, though I have noticed many times that the question of what matters — the meaning of an event or person or any apparently insignificant moment — usually arises in and of itself, outside us, and persuades us to give ourselves over to it, and it won’t release us until we are satisfied with what we have done. This may have occurred to me while I was sitting on that round slab of stone near the highest point of Tunnel Mountain, soaking in the warmth of the sun’s rays until the surrounding clamor died away in my ears, so I thought I was finally hearing silence, silence and nothing but silence: I had fallen asleep. When I first opened my eyes, I didn’t realize I had been sleeping.
My nap seemed to me but a blink of an eye; I was convinced that my absence from reality couldn’t have lasted long. Then I looked around and saw Daniel Atijas and Ivan Matulić’s grandson sitting under a pine tree eating their sandwiches, and I was confused for a minute, because the last time I had seen them they had each been somewhere different. I don’t know whether they were talking, because even if they were talking, I was too far to hear anything, just as I was too far to make out the expressions on their faces, but I am certain that Ivan Matulić’s grandson was holding his head a little bent to the side, the way a person does who is listening attentively. I got up, stretched, yawned, and rubbed my eyes. While I was rummaging through my backpack, all of a jumble, looking for the orange juice, Daniel Atijas noticed my activity and waved. Ivan Matulić’s grandson joined him, and for a time there we were, waving to each other atop Tunnel Mountain. It’s a good thing, I thought when I turned to look around, that there weren’t very many people there just then, because had there been, I wouldn’t have known what to do in my embarrassment. Daniel Atijas struck me as the type of person who couldn’t have cared less whether he was alone or surrounded by an uncountable multitude: he would always behave in just the same way. But I was always fearful of the possibility that I might become a focus of attention, that of others as well as my own. I tossed the backpack on my back and set off for their pine tree. They were closer to me than they had seemed, a surprise for both me and them, for it was obvious that they had to stop talking quickly when they saw my short, early-afternoon shadow.
Ivan Matulić’s grandson coughed, cleared his throat, and said they had just been commenting on how every mountain peak is always a summit and how there is not a great difference between being on top of Mount Everest and being on top of Tunnel Mountain. On Everest, he said, you stand above everything, of course, while here, he said, gesturing in a circle, you are beneath everything, because all the surrounding mountains reach higher altitudes, but what matters is the feeling, not the altitude, which is admittedly, he said, a big difference. My gaze followed his finger, pointing to the surrounding mountains, Sulphur and Rundle and the others, but I didn’t believe him. Once a person starts doubting, it is easier to doubt than to believe. Daniel Atijas would understand that, though he might not agree, though this no longer interested me. Just in case, I asked them what they had been talking about. They exchanged glances like boys caught out in a lie and said they had been sitting there in silence. They had been waiting, said Daniel Atijas, for me to wake up, because they thought it would be nice for us to have lunch together, but when they saw me still sleeping, they moved away, sat in the shade, took out their sandwiches and juices, he having taken his from my backpack, and started to eat. I had to shove my hands into my pockets so that I wouldn’t start waving my arms and shouting, I was so upset by the lie. It’s a good thing, I thought, that we aren’t on one of those peaks, because now I would definitely die of a lack of oxygen. Ivan Matulić’s grandson also shoved his hands into his pockets, though his gesture couldn’t have had anything to do with my anger. Coincidences like this happen, whether or not a person believes in chance.
Daniel Atijas and I had already talked about that once, I couldn’t remember when, but at the moment the conversation seemed so long ago that it ceased existing altogether. While I watched Daniel Atijas and Ivan Matulić’s grandson exchanging surreptitious glances, I thought how incredible it was, the ease with which events that were so promising at first, especially those which simultaneously offer undreamed-of ramifications, turn into something that is the opposite, which is most often accompanied by a feeling of betrayal, loss, and — why not? — submission to tragedy. The only consolation in all this is that without it there would be no art, certainly no literature, which, one can freely say, is nourished precisely by such betrayed expectations. In this, I thought, lies the advantage of literature over painting, for what literature can merely suggest by playing with presentiments, painting must articulate fully, except when the painting is based on a myth or historical fact and the observer can take into consideration whatever is left unsaid or undepicted. I assumed that these thoughts were coming to me because I happened to be on a mountaintop, albeit a low-altitude peak, and I felt a pang of sorrow that I couldn’t share them with Daniel Atijas, for whom they were intended. Perhaps I could, I thought, take him a little farther from this spot; perhaps I could come up with an excuse which would justify our stepping away from Ivan Matulić’s grandson, and then, keeping an eye out the whole time for the grandson and his possible approach, I could repeat it all and, finally, ask the question for which, after all these years, I had yet to come up with an answer: is the edge of the canvas — the perimeter of the picture, its frame — the place where the picture ends or where it begins? Now I wonder why I hadn’t thought to ask him that before.