‘No, you’re right. We can be free, together, staying here, playing in the snow like children, with all our needs taken care of.’
‘But. Tell me your but.’
‘Okay. It’s like this. Even though there is no decay here, even though meat stays fresh and candles don’t burn down, there is still another level in which time is passing. The sun goes down and comes up. We sleep, we pee, we dump. There is energy, keeping the lights on, driving the chairlifts. And energy burning is an event. And the event must pass.’
‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’
‘Been thinking about it. In all our folklore about death, someone comes to collect us. You know, Uncle Derek in a surgical gown telling you to go into the light. The Devil shovelling you into his furnace. Charon to row you across the River Styx. I can’t help feeling someone or something… is coming.’
‘Coming?’
‘Yes… coming. To collect us.’
Zoe shivered. ‘I wish you hadn’t said that.’
He went over to the window and looked out across the lustrous moonlit snow. ‘Me too. I also wish I hadn’t said it. But . . . that’s my but about all this. I feel it. I feel something coming.’
‘You don’t believe in any of that! Charon, the Devil, Uncle Derek! Maybe this is an atheist’s afterlife. You’re an atheist to the bone, like I am.’
‘I am. And I’m not backing away from that. I just feel that someone or something is making its way here.’ He drained his glass. ‘What does this cognac taste like to you?’
They went out to ski. Zoe said that she’d come to this place to ski and that she wanted to ski, so out they went. She asked if they might try the same route by which they’d tried to leave the village after the avalanche. Jake knew that she was going to want to cut through the trees all over again, to find a way out, but he said nothing. He seemed resigned to letting her try, as if he knew what was going to happen. It made no difference if they tried or if they didn’t.
The chairlift running up the south side of the valley was still in motion, exactly as they had left it. The engine emitted a low hum and machinery rattled as empty chairs were whisked around at the bottom of the lift and sent back up in pointless ascent; on the other side the chairs returned in regular order, somehow looking as if they’d been through fire; or through a war; or had survived some bitter experience that, regardless, had left them stoic and unmoved. Though they were just empty chairs, there was a horrible futility in the repetition of their tracked existence along the cable lines. As if they’d had the chance to learn something, but failed.
They dropped into a chair together. Jake put his arm around Zoe. She let herself snuggle into him as they were whisked above the trees. She saw him scanning the white wilderness below.
‘What are you looking for?’ she asked.
‘Tracks.’
‘Tracks of what?’
‘Anything alive. Fox. Hare. Chamois. Pine martens. Anything. Bird tracks even.’ He leaned across the chair, scanning the pristine snow between the trees. ‘I haven’t seen a living thing since the day of the avalanche.’
‘I have.’
‘Really.’
‘There were two crows.’
‘Really?’
‘I haven’t seen them since.’ She fell silent, thinking about the crows. There was only the hum of the cable,and a chatter as the chair rode over a pylon, followed by a regular flapping of the cable like large leathery wings. Then there was quiet again, with only the sob of the wind in the taut wires.
‘What does it mean?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘The crows.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know that it means anything. It was just two crows. Does everything have to mean something?’
There was no answer to this, other than the chatter of the chair. At the top of the lift they easily glided off. Jake re-fixed his hat and threaded his pole straps over his wrists.
‘It’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful. Jake, Can we—’ ‘Yes.’
‘Yes to what? You don’t know what I’m going to ask.’
‘Halfway down. Can we turn off into the woods. Try again. Yes.’
‘I made such a bad job of skiing it the other day. I only want to see if I can do it better.’
He smiled. ‘That’s a good reason.’
‘We can be a little more relaxed this time.’
‘Sure. We’ll stop at the same place.’
Jake pushed off, letting the skis glide. The quality of the snow had changed. It was still deep and unblemished, unpisted by machines, but the sun had softened it and the skis ran fractionally slower, and with more of a hiss.
Zoe came behind him. The sky was an astonishing blue and the larch and pine mingled with spruce wove a thrilling flank of green velvet either side of the waxen white slope. Zoe knew that just to let the skis run was the nearest she could ever come to flying.
I am falling through the rings of heaven.
The virgin snow parted for the floating tips of her skis. Way, way down the slope she looked back to see Jake, in his black ski suit, swooping down the run like a beautiful crow, offering barely a turn, wheeling only when he approached Zoe so that he could draw up beside her.
‘I didn’t know I’d passed you,’ she said.
‘You were in your own world.’
‘I was. Just for a minute I was a bird. So were you.’
‘Through the trees now?’
‘Through the trees.’
They managed it more effectively this time, and where they didn’t, they laughed, and their shared laughter cut through the silent trees. It was a little like laughing in church: whether it was approved of or frowned upon depended on the aspect of your God. They sprang across icy streams, and stepped around outcrops of stone that resembled the half-buried fists or knuckled fingers of giants. They slipped between the shadowy spruce and pine, triggering flurries and falls of powder behind them.
It was difficult going, but they got through it without taking a fall this time before hitting the same snow-covered logging road. They knew it would carry them back into Saint-Bernard, so without a word, they plunged further down through the trees, only to find another loop of the road beneath them, and a steep edge they couldn’t cross. Surrendering again to the inevitable, they let the skis ride the logging road back into the village.
There were no signs of the ski tracks they had made on their first attempt to abandon the village. All had been covered over. Jake stopped twice on the way down, turning to look back. He said he thought there might be someone or something behind him, following them. Or maybe he just wanted there to be something behind him.
They saw nothing. A kind of acceptance came over them.
They set chairlifts and drag lifts running all over the village, opening up a network of runs. The snow conditions were perfect. The sky was the blue of a prayer and the sun made it possible for them to leave off their coats.
‘I’m skiing better than I’ve ever done,’ Zoe said.
‘Me too. You want to stop for lunch?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Me neither, but I want to stop at one of these mountain restaurants, build a fire and relax in front of it.’
‘Are you cold?’
‘Not at all. But it’s what I want to do. We eat when we’re not hungry; drink when we’re not thirsty; and I want to relax when I’m not tired.’
‘Okay. I’ll race you to La Chamade.’ She was already sweeping down the fall-line.
Zoe stood at the entrance to the mountain restaurant, skis off, holding them upright, waiting. ‘Slacker.’
‘I don’t know how you do it.’
There were a couple of abandoned ski sets, ice-packed and snow-covered, resting against the rack outside the log-built restaurant. They set their skis upright on the rack next to them and went inside. The lights were on in the kitchen but not the dining room. La Chamade had a large open stone hearth, with a ready basket of logs. Jake went into the back to find kindling and matches, then quickly made up the fire. The pine logs spat as they caught.