But then a sense of emergency successfully obliterated that vision, and he called out to the woman and ran toward and then alongside the hastening train, and she was up and throwing their bags out the open door as if it were all part of a well-rehearsed drill, and just before the place where the platform ended she leaped into his arms.
The train clacked into the darkness, the door of their carriage still flung open, like a dislocated wing.
For a moment he held her closer and tighter than he had held her in a long time. Then they unclasped and went to fetch their bags, which appeared artfully arranged, dark rocks on the snowy Zen expanse of the platform. Then they stood for a moment and looked about them at the darkness.
This can’t be it, she said.
He pointed to the letters on the station wall.
I know, she said, but this can’t be it. There’s nothing—
Let me look around front, he said. Perhaps there’s something there.
What?
I don’t know. A telephone, or a taxi.
Yes, she said. And perhaps there’s a McDonalds and a Holiday Inn as well. She laughed bitterly and he realized that she had finally turned against him, forsaken him as he had watched her forsake everyone else she had once loved, slowly but surely drifting toward a place where anger and impatience and scorn usurped love. She stepped away from him, toward the edge of the platform, and for a moment they silently regarded each other. He waited to see whether her fury was rising or falling; he suspected she was too exhausted to sustain such glaring fierceness, and he was right—after a moment she staggered and reached out to steady herself against the metal railing.
With his outstretched arm, shrouded in his Arctic parka, he swept a cushion of snow off a bench that stood against the station wall. Sit down, he said.
No. I’m coming with you.
No, sit. Are you cold? Do you want my coat?
There’s nothing around the front, she said. There’s nothing anywhere.
Don’t be ridiculous, he said. Sit.
I’m not a dog, she said. But she sat on the bench.
I’ll be right back, he said. He waited for her to object but she did not. He bent down and kissed her cold scraped cheek. Then he walked along the platform and around to the front of the building, where no one was, and even though their encounter had been conducted quietly, he had the disturbing feeling one gets upon leaving a pulsating discotheque late at night—the sudden absence of sound more jarring than its presence.
A few dark cars and trucks stoically amassed garments of snow in the small parking lot. A single road disappeared into the forest that surrounded everything. There was no sign of life anywhere, just trees and snow and silence and the shrouded slumbering vehicles.
And then a light shone from one of the cars in the parking lot, and its engine started. The silence and stillness had been so deep that witnessing the car come to life was as eerie as watching an ambered insect unfurl its frozen wings and fly away. A bubble of white at the center of the car’s snow-covered roof glowed from within, suggesting that the car was—might be—a taxi. The door opened, and the man watched the driver light a cigarette and throw the still-flaming match into the air, where it somersaulted into the snow, and died.
The man assumed that it was his appearance that had roused this vehicle from its slumber, yet the driver gave no indication that this was the case; he smoked his cigarette and regarded the parking lot and the train station with disinterest.
So the man walked down the wooden steps and crunched across the hard-packed snow of the parking lot. The driver made no response whatsoever to the man’s approach, not even when he stood in the narrow alley of snow that separated the car from its neighbor.
After a moment the driver flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the snow at the man’s feet.
The man realized that the burden of acknowledgment was his. Hello, he said. Do you speak English?
The driver looked at him with surprised curiosity, as if he had never heard a man speak before. He cocked his head.
Do you speak English? the man repeated.
The driver seemed to find this utterance amusing—he laughed a little and lit another cigarette, and dragged upon it contentedly. He scraped an arc in the snow with his dainty slipper-clad foot.
Confused by everything, the man looked into the warm cavern of the car and saw two stuffed Disney Dalmatians hanging by their necks from the rearview mirror. The incongruity of this sight momentarily suspended the man’s debilitating notions of foreignness and ineptitude. Emboldened, he pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and held it out toward the driver and pointed to the words, as if they were not the only words written on the paper.
Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel Furuhjalli 62
For a moment the driver did not respond. Perhaps he wasn’t looking at the words, or perhaps he couldn’t read; it was impossible to tell. But then, in an oddly unaccented voice, he spoke the words aloud: Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel. And he pointed toward the road, the only road that left the parking lot, narrowing into the dark forest, like an illustration of perspective.
Yes, I know, the man said. But we cannot walk. He marched in place for a second and then wagged his finger in the air: Walk. No.
The driver continued to observe him with silent amusement. He made a little shrug and pointed to the man’s feet, indicating that apparently he could walk.
My wife, said the man. His hands outlined an hourglass in the air between them, and as he did this he thought of his wife’s emaciated angular body. He pointed toward the station house. My wife, he said. My wife no walk.
The driver nodded, indicating that he understood. He shrugged a little and toked on his cigarette, as if there were many worse fates than having a lame wife.
You drive us? The man held an imaginary steering wheel with his hands and turned it back and forth. Then he pointed at the driver. You?
The driver did not respond.
I’ll pay you very good, the man said. He removed his wallet from his coat pocket and showed it to the driver.
The driver smiled and reached out his hand.
You’ll drive us to hotel? the man asked.
The driver nodded and tapped his open palm with the fingers of his other hand.
The man opened his wallet and, holding it so that the driver could not see how much cash it contained, took out two bills. He handed one to the driver.
The driver pointed to the second bill.
I get my wife, the man said. Once again he caressed an hourglass and pointed toward the station house. Then he shook the second bill in the air. I give you this at hotel, he said.
The driver nodded.
The man ran across the parking lot. He slipped and fell on the snow-covered steps and cut his chin on the edge of the deck: he saw the red bloom on the snow. He removed his glove and gingerly touched the abrasion. His teeth hurt, and he could feel the warm saline seep of blood in his mouth. He stood up but felt dizzy, so he steadied himself for a moment against the wall. When he felt a bit better he walked carefully around to the back of the station house.
The woman was still sitting on the bench. She was being slowly covered by the snow. It was falling so quickly and thickly that it had already obscured the disruption he had made by dancing on the platform; there was just a ghostly trace of it remaining.
The woman was so still that for a moment the man thought she was dead, but then he saw the fog of her breath tumble from her half-opened mouth. She was sleeping.