False Dawn (26 page)

Because she wished it they raided the other houses nearby that day, looking for food and other supplies they could use. The people who had kept houses at Squaw Valley had not wanted monkish lives, and there were many valuable things that lay strewn about the rooms, things Thea had never seen, and some that Evan remembered only remotely. There were paintings on the walls ranging from amateur efforts to signed masterpieces, books were plentiful, there was a wide variety of decoration, electronic systems sat with silent speakers flanked by vinyl libraries, and many spools of various sorts of tape.

There were jackets and coats made of furs of animals that no longer existed. There were jewels like sections of the rainbow in chests that rivaled their contents for beauty. There were boots and shoes in so many shapes that Thea grew disgusted with them.

Musical instruments littered one house, strange fiat things with buttons and wires as well as strings. These were hooked up to amplifiers and speakers, forever voiceless now that the power was gone from them.

It was there that Evan looked through the collection of recordings, for this one was much more vast than those they had seen before. He pulled them out at random, shaking his head and returning the cardboard envelopes to their designated slots.

Then he came across one that he took out very slowly. He was dazed as he turned to Thea. “Look,” he said, handing her the album.

“What’s that?” she asked, not particularly interested. She was fingering a jacket of soft mink the color of apricots. It was very warm and almost the right size.

“That’s my father,” he said unbelievingly. “That’s my father.”

Interested now, she put down the jacket and came nearer. “What’s he doing?” she asked, seeing the photo of a middle-aged man waving a long thin stick with his right hand and making a fist with his left. Even though the photograph was old and faded, there was an energy to the man, and a kind of beauty.

“He’s conducting.” Evan’s voice was thick and the words did not come easily. “Mozart’s
Jupiter Symphony
.”

“Conducting? You mean leading the orchestra? And the Mozart is the one you and Rudy Zimmermann talked about?”

“Yes.” Without warning he threw the record across the room and rushed from the house. The door slammed behind him.

Thea found him some time later back at their house. He was sitting, staring into the fire, a glass filled with pungent dark-topaz-colored liquid in his hand and an empty as well as a half-empty bottle of brandy beside his chair. There was a bleariness about his face, a loss of focus, and his words, when he spoke, were slurred.

“Why did you leave?” She kept her usual distance from him, but there was real concern in her voice. “What went wrong?”

“With my father?” He refused to look at her, at the beaver jacket she wore over a sensible wool sweater. “He died.”

“But I didn’t mean—”

“At London. In ‘98. When the New chol…cholera broke out. Old cholera was bad enough. But this New shit…it spread so quickly…When everybody died there. World Health tried to help, but they just got sick, too. The bodies got as thick as…It stank, London did.” He took another mouthful of the brandy and let his face sag. “It was such…such a great city. The sickness got it. Destroyed it. Destroyed the people.”

She moved a little closer to him. “Evan, why haven’t—”

But he interrupted her. “It was a waste.” His voice was harsh. “A whole city died because too damn many people lived there. They all wanted things, and you can’t blame them for that. Another car. Television. Wash-after-one-wearing clothes. Freezers full of food. Everyone wanted that.” “Evan—” He wouldn’t be stopped. “Everybody believed that someone would take care of the problems before they got too bad; they forgot that the international corporations, who ruled like feudal lords in the name of democracy they didn’t really believe in, and would not spend the money or their resources to do something that would cut into their profits.” He paused just long enough to finish the brandy in the glass and pour more. “People got frustrated with politicians and confused by apologists for the corporations. Most people tried to find something to do that wasn’t enough, because the problems were larger than they were. They stopped trying, after a while. It wasn’t their fault, though. It wasn’t. They had no access. No one told them the truth. No, not the kind of truth no one wanted to hear. Not the truth—Truth”— he wagged his finger at her—”doesn’t win elections. Or sell papers, or products. Truth isn’t popular. Truth was kept from everyone until it was too late. So they died.” Suddenly he stopped. “And the few of us that are left, we’re like Goths, living in the ruins. The Dark Ages come again.” A racking sound filled his throat. “I’m going to be sick,” he muttered. He lurched to his feet and shambled from the room. A moment later Thea heard him vomit into the toilet.

“Evan!” There was alarm in her voice as she ran to him and found him bent over the howl, his face gone from flushed to pasty. He stopped her at the door. “I’m drunk, Thea. Keep away.”

She hesitated, then, worried, started toward him.

“I said keep away!” The sound was like a blow and she reeled under it.

“But why? You need help, don’t you? Evan, what’s the matter?”

Even in his condition he could sense her concern and confusion. Slowly he wiped his mouth on one of the fresh, soft towels, and threw it down with a grimace. He sat on the edge of the tub, gesturing to her to come nearer, taking her hand when she did. “I wouldn’t say this to you if I were sober,” he began, making an effort to keep his words crisp. “No, don’t draw back. I won’t hurt you. My word on it. I’ll stand by my word, I promise you.” He could see she was poised to flee from him. “You’re perfectly safe. I’m not that drunk. If I were going to take you against your will, I would have done it a long time ago. I couldn’t do that to you, Thea. But…but, Thea, I’m not a stone. I know you and I want you. That’s all. I couldn’t…hurt you, Thea. I know what hurt is and I know what it does to people.” He went silent, swallowing hard several times. “All right. Maybe I don’t understand what it was like. But I wouldn’t do it, Thea.” He rubbed at his eyes as if wanting to wipe alcohol or his memories away. “It’s been almost a year since we started traveling together, since you saved my life in that silo. We’ve been through a lot together. I could not have survived without you. I would have died months ago. And now I know you, Thea. I know the kind of woman you are. I value you. I want you. I won’t lie about that.” His fingers tightened as she started to pull her hand away. “Maybe it’s not possible. Maybe there’s no way. If it isn’t possible, so be it. But promise me…” With an effort he released her hand. “Don’t say no yet. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

She nodded, frightened, but not with the blind terror he had seen in her before. Then she was gone from the room and Evan felt himself sinking into a hopelessness that was as engulfing as night. He knew he should not have spoken to her, that she wasn’t prepared to deal with his need, and he couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t lust he felt, he told himself. Or if it was, it was only a small part of it.

In a little while she was back, holding a cup of cold coffee out to him. “I think it helps. I remember my mom saying that once.”

Wordlessly Evan took the cup and drank the coffee, not aware of the dreadful taste. It was much easier to drink the coffee than to talk with her, for now he was becoming more sober by the minute, and he felt the first discomforts that presaged a hangover even more acutely than he felt shame at his behavior. When the cup was empty, he handed it back to her, watching her lean, strong fingers close around it.

The next day they explored the old stadiums and dormitories. There was a little shop filled with winter clothes and another, next to it, that displayed pretty, useless things that were for people to keep or give as mementos. “Souvenirs,” Evan explained, picking up a tiny, badly-done statue of a deer with
Squaw Valley
scribbled on its side. “People used to buy millions of these things.” On one rack there were faded paperback books, most of which had fallen to pieces. Beyond it, rising up against the wall, a stand with toothpaste and aspirin, shampoo and tanning lotions.

“What did people do here? Why did they come?” Thea asked as they walked to the foot of the dilapidated ski lift.

“Winter sports. Ice skating. Skiing. All the sports that go with winter. Hockey, downhill and cross-country skiing, ice-skating, snow-shoeing. It was fun. They came up from the Coast and the valleys and exhausted themselves in the snow. Then they went back to the cities, tanned, stretched, almost smug. I used to play hockey myself, in college.” He looked up at the mountains rising around them, to the snow that clung so tenaciously to the crags, the shaggy fringe of trees defying winter, the redness of their reddened needles reaching toward the sun like little flames. It was not a place for playing now.

Two days later, while searching the other houses, Evan came upon a grandmother clock, a weight-driven, old-fashioned device that chimed the hours in a muffled clang when he set it running again.

“What do you want that for?” Thea asked when Evan hauled it into the octagonal house and set it up in the main room.

“To tell the time,” he said as if the answer were obvious.

“But why?” she pursued, puzzled by the clock. “There’s only you and me here. What do we need a clock for?”

He had no answer to give her, but he stubbornly insisted he had to have the clock. “I’ll figure out when it’s mid-day and I’ll set it then. It’ll make a difference. You’ll see.”

She shrugged. “If you want to do that, go ahead,” she told him, and went to check the stock of wood in the kitchen, for the stove and the water-heater both burned a lot of wood, and she did not want to run out of heat during the night. She paid no attention to his happy preoccupation with the grandmother clock.

The next day was cloudy, and Evan used the afternoon to look for more old-fashioned clocks. He found three of them, one a mantle-piece nautical clock that ran from a wind-up key and rang the watch hells that used to be familiar to sailors the world over, one a pendulum clock with another key, and one a novelty clock that slid down a saw. Gathering them all, he brought them back to the house in as much triumph as if he had stumbled on a trove of food or a supply of ammunition. Grinning with pride, he set them out. “As soon as we have a sunny day, I’ll set them running, and then you’ll see,” he promised her.

“I’ll see what?” Thea looked up from the pile of blankets she had gathered from the resort and the houses and was now sorting out, setting aside those that were moth-eaten or mildewed and folding those which could still he used. She was perplexed by his plan and his satisfaction with it. “You’re going to run all of them?”

“Of course,” he said, his enthusiasm making him a little breathless.

“Of course,” she repeated in disbelief.

Over the next two days, Evan carefully observed shadows at mid-day, and, finally satisfied, set his clocks to ticking, smiling at their chiming as each hour passed. Although he was yawning more than an hour before the clocks announced their various versions of ten that night, Evan stayed up, saying with a laugh that he used to be awake well past midnight.

Thea, who had gone to her room sonic time before, heard him climb the stairs, humming to himself. She rolled over, wondering what it was about the clocks that so delighted him.

For the next week, Evan tended his clocks with an intense devotion, taking care to make sure they all kept the same time, correcting any irregularities in their mechanical reckoning with meticulous adjustments. He made a point of announcing the time before their meals, and of staying up until ten every night, as if retiring before that hour was more than he could stand to do. “I wish I could find one of those old wind-up alarm clocks,” he confided to Thea at the start of his second week of time-keeping.

She shook her head. “You wake up at sunrise, don’t you?”

“Usually,” he allowed.

“Would the alarm be any better? Your habit’s pretty reliable.” She was genuinely confused.

“No,” he decided aloud. “But I miss hearing an alarm.” As he said it, he knew it was true, that the clocks were a link to the life he had had before. “I like the ticking, too.”

Thea found the sound annoying, and the chimes and bells disrupting, hut she held her tongue, sensing that his understanding was far different than hers, “If you like it, then you like it.”

“I do like it,” he responded, needing to defend his clocks. He continued to fuss with his clocks for another week, then, just as suddenly as he had appropriated the clocks and set them to keeping time, he abandoned them. Over the next fourteen days they ran down and fell silent.

Finally Thea summoned up her courage and remarked, “Are you going to use the clocks any more?” They were sitting in front of the fireplace, the glow of the embers and half a dozen candles providing their golden illumination to their evening.

Evan looked up from the book he had been reading. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “No. Probably not.”

In spite of herself, she blurted out, “Why not? You wanted them so much.”

He did not answer at once, and when he did speak, his voice was as distant as his eyes. “You were right. There’s only you and me here. What do we need clocks for?”

Thea was astonished at the sadness she heard in this admission, and she quickly said, “I think there might be some wild sheep up near the crest. I might go try to track them.”

“Fresh mutton would be nice.” He nodded and smiled, but his eyes remained bleak, and not because he didn’t like mutton; he could tell that they would have to move again before summer.

But it was pleasant as the spring came on, timidly at first, and then with a fragile energy giving a kind of beauty to the place. Spindly, determined shoots of green appeared at the edges of the snow. There was a shining in the air, a freshness that not even the new pall of volcanic smoke could obscure. The streams grew their own kind of peppery watercress, and miner’s lettuce poked out of the ground, more stunted than before but still tangy and good. The days became weeks, and a month went by.