In the headlights, the walls ran with condensation. Over the noise of the car Jasper could hear the plink-plink of fat droplets falling down the black rock. He touched his tongue to his tooth.
"Why, Grandmother, what a big dark tunnel you have," he said. The terrible weight of the mountain above him, the white snow shrouding the black mountain, the stale wet air in the tunnel, all pressed down inexorably upon him in the dark. He felt strangely sad, he felt lost, he felt dizzy. He sank like a slow stone in a cold well.
"Hello sailor," Serena said. "Welcome to Grandmother's Tunnel of Love." She put her long white hand on his leg and looked at him sidelong. He sank down, was pressed down, heavy. His tooth whining like a dog. He couldn't bear the weight of Serena's black eyes, her thin shining face. "Are you all right?"
He shook his head. "Claustrophobic," he managed to say. He could hardly keep his foot on the gas pedal. He saw them spinning through the dark towards a black wall, a frozen door of ice.
And then he had to stop the car. "You drive," he said, and fumbled the door open and went stumbling over to the passenger's door. Serena shifted to the driver's side and he sat down in her warm seat. It took all his strength to shut the door again.
"Please," he said. "Hurry."
She drove competently, talking at him the whole time. "You never told me you were claustrophobic. Lucky for you I came along. We should be out soon."
They came out into night. There was nothing to distinguish one darkness from the other but dirty snow in the headlights. Yet Jasper felt the great clinging weight fall away from him. His tongue went up to touch his broody tooth. "Stop the car," he said. He threw up kneeling beside the road. When he stood up, his knees were wet with melted snow. "I think I'm all right again," he said.
"You drive if you want to," she said. "Your call, pal. It's about another forty-five minutes to the hotel, and you can't miss it. There's only one road and one hotel."
Iced pinecones shattered like glass under the wheels of the car. The road was steeper, circling down this time.
"What does the guidebook say about the hotel?" he asked.
Serena said, "Well, it's an interesting story. This is funny. When I called to make the reservation, the man said they were booked solid. It's a private party or something. But I talked sweet, told him we had come a long way, a really long way." She stuck her feet up on the dashboard and leaned her head on his shoulder. He could see her in the mirror, looking pleased with herself.
Jasper said, "The hotel is full?" He pulled over to the side of the road and put his head against the steering wheel. Serena said, "This is the third time you've stopped the car. I have to pee."
"Is the hotel full or isn't it?" Jasper said.
"Have some chewing gum," Serena said. "Your breath smells like vomit. Don't worry so much."
He couldn't chew the gum, but he sucked on it. He started the car again.
"Is your tooth killing you?" she said.
"Yeah," he said. "Revenge of the sugar cereal."
They went another five hundred yards when something ran across the road. It looked like a small person, scrambling across the road on all fours. It had a long bony tail. Jasper slammed on the brakes and swerved. Serena's arm flailed out and walloped him, catching his jaw precisely upon the broken tooth. He howled. Serena fell forward, knocking her skull loudly against the dashboard. The car came to a stop, and after a moment, during which neither of them was capable of speech, he said, "Are you okay? Did we hit it?"
"What was it?" she said. "A possum? My head hurts. And my hand."
"It wasn't a possum," he said. "Too big. Maybe a deer."
"There are no deer in New Zealand," she said. "The only native mammal is the bat. It's just us poor unsuspecting marsupials around here. Marsupials."
Then she snorted. He was amazed to see that tears were streaming down her face. She was laughing so hard she couldn't speak. "What's a marsupial?" he said. "Are you laughing at me? What's so funny?"
She punched his shoulder. "A possum is a marsupial. It carries its young in a pouch. It's just the word marsupial. It always cracks me up. It's like pantyhose or crumhorn."
It didn't seem that funny to him, but he laughed experimentally. "Marsupial," he said. "Ha."
"Your mouth is bleeding," she said, and snorted again. "Here." She took a dirty Kleenex out of her bag and licked it. Then she applied it to his lower lip. "Let me drive."
"Maybe it was a dog," he said. There was nothing on the road now.
2. Arrival
Milford Sound curls twenty-two kilometers inland, like a dropped boot. Its heel points north, kicking at the belly of South Island. The Tasman Sea fills the boot, slippery and cold and dark. Abel Tasman, the first European to set foot on shore, sailed away in a hurry again after several of his crew were cooked and eaten. He left behind him Breaksea, Doubtful and George Sounds, and Milford Sound, which is now accessible by sea, by air, by foot across the Milford Track, or along the Milford Road by car, through Homer Tunnel.
In winter, the road is sometimes closed by avalanches. In summer there are sometimes unseasonable storms. Even blizzards, sometimes. Was it winter or was it summer? There was snow on the ground. Jasper's tooth hurt. He didn't remember.
The Milford Hotel is a tall white colonial building. It has a veranda for warm weather use in December. From the front bedrooms, guests look out on the Mitre, rising up from the Sound 1,695 meters, thin and pointed, doubled in the looking-glass water below. At the back of the hotel, lesser mountains march down to a flat broad meadow. The Milford Road ends at the hotel's front door; the Milford Track begins at the back door.
What happens when you get to the end of the world? Sometimes you find a party. This party has been going on for a long time. There is music, lights, people drinking and dancing. Strange things happen at these parties. It is the end of the world, after all.
There is a small guest parking lot behind the Milford Hotel. To Jasper's dismay, it was nearly full when they pulled in. As they got out of the car they could hear a band playing jazz. Two windows stood open on the veranda and they could see into an enormous room. There was a crowd of people, some dancing, some sitting and eating at small tables. Someone was singing, "I'd, like to get you, on a, slow boat, to China," in a low croony alto. They could hear wine glasses being tapped against each other, knives skittering across plates – all this through the two French doors that stood open to the veranda, to Jasper and Serena as they stood there, and to the Milford Track.
Jasper's tooth, his whole body, burned in the fresh cold air. He looked doubtfully at Serena, at her uncombed spit-curled tails of hair, parted haphazardly over the new livid bruise. Her jeans had holes in them. He was wearing his college fraternity sweatshirt with a cartoon of two dogs fucking on it. His tennis shoes were covered in gray caked mud and his knees were still wet. "Serena," he said, "They're having a party."
"Well, that's what I said," Serena said. "Come on. I love parties like this. Everything's always so fancy. Cocktails and little napkins and weird shit on toothpicks."
Inside, the women wore elegant dresses. The men wore dinner jackets. They were probably wearing cummerbunds. Jasper's tooth ached.
Serena turned and made a face at him. "Come on," she hissed.
"Serena," he said. "Wait for a second. Let's find another door. " The farther she moved away from him – the closer to the veranda she got – the more the weight of the tunnel fell back on him. His tooth was twanging wildly now, like a dowser's rod. He ran after her.
A tall man met them in the open window. The man was all in black. He had a hairy face. "Here you are," the man said. His clothes were old-fashioned, the collar of his shirt narrow and starched. He smiled at them as if they were long-lost acquaintances. His lips in the black beard were red, as if he were wearing lipstick.