‘Jake! Stop it!’
He made another smaller incision on the tip of his ring finger on his left hand. Again he winced at the bite of the knife, but again there was no flow of blood, not even a pinprick. He put down the kitchen knife, rolled down his sleeve. ‘I cut myself while I was cooking and playing the fool last night. It was a deep cut. But no blood. I decided not to tell you. God. I love you, Zoe.’
His eyes were misted.
She blinked at him. ‘I love you too, Jake. Please tell me what’s going on.’
‘You don’t know what this means?’
‘No! Please tell me! And please stop harming yourself, my love!’
‘It means we died,’ said Jake.
6
The snow stopped. The swollen grey clouds drifted on and the sun appeared in the ice-blue sky. The sun lanced off the snow and they had to wear sunglasses all the time. Good sunglasses, expensive ones, and all they had to do was walk into a store and pick out the very best designer pairs available.
Of course Zoe did not immediately accept that they had died in the avalanche. Swallowing that was more than a little difficult.
For who could acknowledge such a thing? But it was as if once Jake had enunciated the fact, and had himself accepted the logic of the situation and openly proclaimed it, then the weather had changed accordingly. There was no longer any need—it seemed—for the world to be wrapped in a spectral mist of snow, and the best of all possible worlds could be on display.
Naturally Zoe blanked the idea. She insisted they walk out of the village all over again, this time on the clear roads. Jake offered no resistance, beyond commenting that it would make no difference. He was right: even on a clear day, with no confusion over the direction in which they walked, the roads unaccountably delivered them back to Saint-Bernard-en-Haut all over again. They commandeered the police car again and successfully started it up; but whichever route they drove it was as if a giant, gentle hand curved the road and steered them back to their starting point.
‘How can this be?’ she had railed. ‘How can this be happening?’
Jake had merely blinked his eggshell-blue eyes. ‘I’ve explained it to you. There’s no more to be said.’
Four days of this. It was impossible; it couldn’t be happening; it made no sense; it defied natural law. But there it was. And in that time lighted candles did not burn down, meat and vegetables on the slab showed no sign of decay or wilt, and blood did not flow.
While her brain resisted and reasoned, fought and tested the uncanny and undeniable logic, her heart never accepted any of it.
‘I can’t be dead. I can feel pain. I can feel pleasure.’
‘I know. I know.’
‘I know I love you. That can’t be death, can it?’
‘I’m not saying I understand it.’
‘It’s not hell to be here. It’s not heaven either, because I keep thinking the avalanche is going to come down over us.’
‘The avalanche already came down, my darling. That’s what you won’t accept. We died in the avalanche.’
‘No, I mean the bigger one. There’s a big avalanche up there, waiting. I can feel it. I can feel the tension in the air. Maybe this sunshine is going to melt the snow and bring it crashing down. Do you think it’s like this for everyone?’
They sat on the snow-carpeted steps of the village church, stunned, exhausted and bewildered by the compact nature of their new existence.
Jake took off his sunglasses and thumbed his still-bloodshot eyes. Zoe kept asking him questions, as if he knew, as if he had the faintest idea of the answers. If this were an afterlife, would it last for ever? Did it fade? Would other people come into it? Could they die inside this death? Why was time there measured by the movement of the sun and the moon but not by the burning of a candle? She had a hundred such questions, and Jake would say: All I know is that there is sun and sky and snow and me and you, that’s all I know. And she would rage against him, until he felt obliged to try to answer the questions for her, even though he admitted now that he’d spent all of his life pretending to know the unknowable, pretending to be able to outstare the man in the hood.
‘What man in the hood?’
‘The one who watches us all.’
‘You mean Death? Is that what you mean?’
If Jake was right, Zoe thought, and they had died in the avalanche then all the great religions of the world were wrong, that much was clear. The sacred building right behind them was a cold shell, populated by flickering points of hope, and no more than that. Only one question remained: what were they to do? What to do?
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Have you actually felt cold? Since it happened, I mean. Since the day of the avalanche?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Believe it or not, it was only three days ago, no… four days.’
‘Was it? It feels like… much longer. Much longer.’ ‘Weeks, yes. But it isn’t. And my point is, have you actually felt cold? You see, we’ve been sitting here an hour. And I don’t feel cold at all.’
‘Take your clothes off,’ she said. ‘You’ll feel cold pretty quick.’
So he did. He shrugged his ski jacket off, and his pullover. Then he took off his boots and his salopettes, and then he stripped off his thermal underwear and his thick socks. Naked, he lowered his bare bottom onto the snowy step.
She watched his eyes, waiting. He held her gaze.
I’m not going to say anything, she thought. If he wants to play games…
But several minutes went by. Maybe ten, maybe fifteen. No, maybe two minutes.
‘Admit it,’ she said at last. ‘You’re fucking freezing.’
He shook his head, no.
Zoe stood up, pulled off her jacket and unbuckled her trouser belt. She undressed completely and sat beside him, her bare bottom on the icy snow. She linked her arm through his and leaned her head on his shoulder. ‘You know what? Even if we don’t need clothes I’m not going around naked.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Maybe I would if this were a tropical island.’
‘But it’s not.’
‘Do you think that the place where everyone dies is where they get to be afterwards? I mean, if you’d died in the trenches of the First World War, are you stuck there for eternity?’
‘Who says we’re here for eternity?’ he said. ‘My arse should be blue. I can’t feel the cold at all. Can you remember what it was like?’
Zoe thought hard. ‘Remember it for me.’
Jake said, ‘It was like catching a finger under a hammer. It was like a burn. It was like a mouth, sucking at you, stinging as it sucked. It was like a knife sharpening itself on you, whetting itself so it could cut you.’
She winced. ‘My God, I am fucking freezing! Look—I’m shivering!’ She jumped up and started pulling her clothes back on. Her teeth chattered. ‘I don’t know if I just remembered it or if I felt it, but I’m going to put my clothes back on. Aren’t you cold?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ll get dressed. Shall we go back to the hotel?’
Zoe was now perishing as she waited for Jake to put his clothes back on. With the winter sunlight dipping over the mountain, and with their shadows flung before them across the white snow, they walked back together. As they passed some shops, Zoe peeled away from him. ‘I’ll catch up. I want to pick up some things.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘It’s okay. I’ll catch up.’
‘I’ll wait.’
‘Jake, are you afraid we’ll lose each other? I just want to pick up some things.’
‘What things?’
‘Some more eye-drop from the pharmacy, stuff like that. I’ll be two minutes!’