He took the easiest route. Sometimes the stream narrowed and he leapt across it, hoping that it wouldn’t become a trickle and peter out. Sometimes it sank into the ground, but he always found the spot where it re-emerged into the light. He shook his fist.
‘Hahaha, we’ll soon see!’
He no longer felt tired and hungry. He walked on and on until the forest suddenly ended. He found himself standing on a slab of rock over which the stream plunged, almost inaudibly, into the depths.
Before him lay a broad expanse of open countryside. To his front, separated from him by a deep gorge, he could make out a small village. It took him a while to identify the dark specks he saw in the surrounding fields as bales of hay. He counted a dozen houses and as many outbuildings. There was no sign of life. He estimated that the village was ten kilometres away, possibly fifteen.
Immediately in front of him was a drop of at least 100 metres. A precipitous wall of rock, and no path leading down into the valley.
He couldn’t account for it, because he felt sure he’d never been there, but the distant village looked familiar.
He turned left. Keeping to the edge of the plateau, he walked until the village had long disappeared from view. He encountered no road, no track, no fence or signpost, not even a notice put up by the Forestry Commission or the Alpine Association.
Worried that he was getting further and further away from Kanzelstein and the surrounding villages, he retraced his steps. Three hours later he was back at the place where the stream plunged down the gorge. Having drunk his fill, he leapt across it with contemptuous ease. He looked over at the village. It was as lifeless as before.
Something about this panorama alarmed him. Ignoring it, Jonas walked on. He pulled his hat brim down with his left hand to avoid having to see the village out of the corner of his eye. He felt like shouting something. But he was too weak.
*
In a big clearing he waited for darkness to come. He had no illusions about his fate. He even felt vaguely thankful that it was happening like this, here, where he preserved at least an inkling of what had been, and that he hadn’t ended his life in a lift immobilised between two floors.
And yet … Something within him could not believe that this was the end.
He took a card from his pocket.
Sleep, he read.
He crumpled it between his fingers.
*
Jonas had often thought about death. He managed to banish the thought of that dark, looming wall for months at a time, but then it recurred day and night. What was death? A joke you understood only after the event? Was it good, evil? And how would it strike him down? Cruelly or mercifully? Would a blood vessel in his skull burst? Would pain rob him of his reason? Would he feel a stab in the chest or be felled by a stroke? Would his guts churn? Would he vomit for fear of what lay ahead? Would he be knifed by a madman, so that he still had time to grasp what was happening to him? Would he be tormented by some disease, fall from the sky in a plane, drive into a brick wall? Would it be: Five … four … three … two … one … zero? Or: Five, four, three, two, one, zero? Or: fivefourthreetwoonezero?
Or would he grow old and die in his asleep?
And was there someone who already knew this?
And was it all preordained, or could he still do something about it?
Whatever happened, he’d told himself, there would be people who thought of him and reflected on the fact that he’d died in such and such a manner, not another. On the fact that he’d always wondered how it would happen, and now they knew. Who wondered how they themselves would die some day.
But it wouldn’t be like that. No one would ever reflect on his death. No one would ever know how he’d died.
Had Amundsen wondered the same thing adrift on his ice floe, or struggling in the water, or afloat on the wing of his plane, or wherever it had happened? Or had he assumed that his body would be found? But they never did find it, Roald. You simply disappeared.
He could hardly see his hand before his face, but he didn’t reach for the rifle lying beside him in the grass. He stretched out on his back and stared into the darkness.
What lay in store for him, he had wondered, transition or extinction?
Whatever his destination, he had always wanted his final thought to be of love. Love as a word. Love as a condition. Love as a principle. Love was to be his final thought and ultimate emotion. A yes, not a no, regardless of whether he was only being transported elsewhere or coming to a full stop. He had always hoped he would manage to think of it. Of love.
21
Jonas awoke, roused by the cold and the drops of moisture on his face. He opened his eyes without grasping where he was. Then it dawned on him that he was in the forest, and that it had started to rain. It was daylight, the sun no more than a pale glimmer in a mass of grey cloud. He shut his eyes again and didn’t move.
Some inner voice urged him to his feet. Without thinking, he set off in a particular direction. Leaning on the rifle, he trudged up slopes, scrambled over fences, stumbled across muddy hollows. He passed a barn but didn’t stop. He felt he mustn’t diverge from his route. As if through a veil, he realised that the rain was lashing his body. His sense of time had deserted him completely. He might have been on the move for one hour or four — he didn’t know.
A valley opened out in front of him. Some buildings came into view. The inn was the first one he recognised. All he felt was the wind and rain on his skin. No sense of relief.
*
He opened his eyes. There were no trees to be seen nearby. He wasn’t in the forest, he was lying in front of the garden fence.
He stood up and looked down at himself. His clothes were in tatters, his forearms covered with thin red scratches, his fingernails as black as a motor mechanic’s, and he’d lost his hat. Still, he seemed to be largely unscathed. He wasn’t in pain, either.
The garden gate squeaked. He noticed, as he walked up the gravel path to the front door, that he’d left the rifle behind. Instinctively, he clenched his fists.
‘Hooo!’
His voice went echoing round the house.
He stuck his head into the storeroom, the games room. Nothing had changed. He dashed into all the bedrooms. Nothing seemed to have been touched.
He avoided looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, but one brief glance was enough: there was something written on his forehead.
The glass felt smooth and cool beneath his fingers as he locked eyes with the face in the mirror. The inscription on his forehead was in mirror writing, so he read it the right way round:
MUDJAS!
Jonas had no idea what Mudjas meant.
He peered at the word more closely. It seemed to have been written with a marker pen, and he felt sure he knew which one. He would find it outside in the cab of his truck.
He stared at the reflected letters.
Perhaps he’s real and I’m the reflection?
Without removing the fingers of his left hand from the glass, he used his right hand to wash his face. At first he tried soap. When the letters merely faded a little, he resorted to a scrubbing brush lying on the floor, which had presumably been used for scouring the tiles. He held it under the hot tap, then scrubbed his forehead.
Having showered without thinking of the wolf-bear, he threw his torn clothes into the dustbin and changed into some clean ones. He couldn’t help reflecting, when his gaze fell on the things in his suitcase, that the last time he’d stood there, looking into the suitcase, he hadn’t known what lay ahead. He hadn’t known that he would be lost in the forest for two days. And this suitcase had lain on the table the whole time. It hadn’t moved, just waited. Had been neither looked at nor touched.