“Well then, Grand, when do we get there?” Nastya asked rudely. “When we change.” “What do you mean, change?” “Stop behaving in the old ways and become different.” “So how are we behaving?” “Badly. We keep trying to guess what is coming next, we’re waiting for something and hoping.” “Well, what should we be doing?” “We should be living here and now. Rejoicing in what is around us, in what is happening to us.” “Oh, Grand! My feet haven’t been dry for days, we’ve been frozen for nights at a time, we fall asleep at dawn then drag ourselves off to who knows where, eat those disgusting swamp mushrooms. What is there to rejoice about?” “Rejoice nevertheless! See everything as a trial, a lesson, and be glad that you have an opportunity to change.”
“Grand, it’s just talk for you but I really am frozen, and I really am sick and tired of all this! You keep teaching us but nothing changes in the slightest, and it’s completely unclear where we’re supposed to be going!”
Quite what happened next neither I nor Sasha really saw. While they were talking we were trying not to look in that direction, to make as little noise as possible and get on with cooking our porridge. All we saw was that Grand seemed suddenly to pounce on Nastya and she sprang back, as if he had sent her flying, to the larch tree. She looked scared but Grand was already quietly coming back to the fire. “You’re right,” he said flatly. “Words don’t change people much. The Zen masters had good reason to carry a stick.” I thought Nastya would be in a big snit, but she came over and behaved just like us, and we were pretending nothing had happened.
Then he hit Sasha because he was in raptures at finding orange milk mushrooms and rattled on, as he usually did, telling us tales of things that had happened to him in the past when he had been out looking for them. Nastya got it in the neck one more time for refusing to take her glasses off, even though she knew she didn’t need them and her eyes needed a rest. After that Sasha was deprived of his glasses too, and I got a not very serious kick for talking a lot of stuff about reading Tarot cards and coffee grounds. In the end I found I agreed with Grand that I’d been talking a lot of nonsense.
We became less boisterous and more disciplined, and kept a closer eye on what we said and did. Perhaps this, at least, would bring us closer to the Lake.
“Grand, would you like me to tell you all about her?” “Go ahead, Titch.” “You met on the road. More precisely, it was the road brought you together, somewhere around here, in these parts, and you both went West. Am I seeing that correctly?” “Yes, so far you’re getting it right.” “The hitchhiking was easy and swift. You taught her to understand the lessons the road offers and to see the signs around her. In the towns you showed her the right way to walk backwards and look at the shadows on the asphalt. Right?” He smiled.
“Then you came to the town where you live and let her into your home. She lived there long enough to get accustomed and attached to you, to learn your weaknesses and remember what you like. But then it was autumn and you didn’t feel like going on the road, right?” “The autumn was warm, Titch. We could have gone anywhere, but things didn’t turn out that way. We just strolled around a bit in the woods near the town.”
“Okay. Then the rain came. It was time for her to go back, but it would have been grim for her to try hitching a long way on her own. You very civilly put her on a train and you parted. You corresponded. From her letters you saw how attached she was to you. You hadn’t expected that. She wrote to say she wanted to see you again. You doubted that was a good idea but then decided you could, as long as you were not on your own. That way her attention would not be focused solely on you. At which point Sasha and I came on the scene. Am I right?”
“Yes, on the whole, yes. From her letters I saw that one year had been long enough for her to forget everything I’d taught her. She’d lost the goal. But I also recognised that I was the only man in her life she had fallen in love with.”
“Splendid. See how well I have learned my lessons! I won’t forget a thing. Only, you know what? As I’ve been such a good pupil, just promise me, Grand, that I won’t find out on the return journey where you live.”
The rain has stopped during the night and the morning is sunny. We crawl out of the tents and warm ourselves. We begin enjoying life, laughing and joking, something we haven’t done for a long time. Twenty metres from the tents we find a low rock shelter among the boulders suitable for making a fire to enable us afterwards to dry our things on the heated rocks. Next to it is a large flat boulder which I immediately proclaim to be our table and lay our mugs and plates out on it. Sasha and I start making breakfast.
We play at home comforts, forget the rain and the damp, and almost forget we are lost. The forest begins to seem hospitable. It fills with birds and we can hear the distant roar of a river we couldn’t hear yesterday.
Sasha takes his clothes off and repairs to the shelter and its fire. He sits there in his underpants and hiking boots, grunting with pleasure as if he’s in a bathhouse. I imagine clouds of steam coming off him. Nastya arrives, looks round and sits down, frowning in the sunlight. She gives me a smile. Everything is so fine today that we’re prepared to like each other. A little distance away in the glistening bushes I find a few small dark raspberries which I proudly bring back and place on our table.
Suddenly Grand jumps out of the bushes. He is oddly rigid, his eyes fiery. He looks demented, like a lion (if you can have a demented lion). He leaps on to the rock and stares round at us as if about to reveal something. I am pleased to see him and say jokingly, throwing up my hands in mock horror, “This is our table, Grand. Why are you standing on it?”
Before I have finished, the lion leaps down on me from above, pushes me in the chest and knocks me over. I fall backwards and just have time to see his furious, fixed stare, his pitiless frozen eyes and I quail in terror. I flee to the niche under a rock where Sasha is and don’t move. Grand stalks off. It is quiet, as if nothing has happened.
I jump up and run. I slither on the sodden ground, terrified at first that he may be coming after me, but he isn’t. He has done all he wanted to, only why? What had I done wrong? I run, bawling. Not with pain but from incomprehension and the sense of hurt. What had I done to him? Who is he? I’ve come the devil knows how far and he starts fighting the moment anything is not just so! That’s it! Sod him, I’ll turn back and leave him to it. Alone? So what?! Hitchhiking? No problem! Only I know I won’t be on my own: it only needs one person to rebel and they’ll all leave him. He can go alone on his travels as far as he likes but I’m out, I’ve had it up to here, he’s nothing to me and nothing will change for me except that now I’ll never see the Lake! Except that I’ll never…
I stop, dumbstruck. After all, what is it I’m travelling for? For the Lake. It’s nothing to do with Grand and his games. No, my goal is the Lake. A wonderful, pure mountain lake reflecting glaciers like a mirror. That’s what it’s all for. What have I got? What do I stand to lose? Nothing, except my goal.
My emotions subside, and in the stillness I suddenly hear the bubbling roar of water from somewhere seemingly close. Very close. Behind those bushes. I only need to climb up this slope and there will surely be… Well, I might have to climb a bit further up there and then I’ll see it. Or a bit further… and a bit more… I’ll get to it quickly, before they even notice I’ve gone. It’s somewhere here. It’s so loud it must be nearby. It’s thundering, boiling, it must be a huge waterfall. If it still isn’t here, how it’s raging in the place where it is! It really must be huge. I’ll see it any minute now. Now. Just on a little further. Here, here…