The Fisherman (24 page)

Jacob’s certain his confusion is written all over his face. “B-b-b-b-but Angelo,” he manages.

“Do you mean to tell me,” Rainer says, “that this was not an accident?”

Jacob shakes his head from side to side, furiously.

“So.” Rainer nods at the ropes in front of them. “It would be best if we were not here much longer. But be careful. You saw what happened to the Fisherman.” The men nod, and set to work.

XXIV

Even though the Fisherman is gone, the ropes still hum with energy. Jacob’s fingers stick to his axe’s handle as he shifts his hold on it. The air above the gap he cut in the rope bends and blurs; the hooks to either side of it pull horizontally, as if buffeted by invisible streams spilling out of it. Trying not to recall the expression that spread across Angelo’s face in the instant before his death overtook him, Jacob raises his axe.

In a blow, the rope is cut. A great crack, the sound of a mountain halving, throws the rope high and shoves Jacob back half a dozen rapid steps. Torn loose by the force, a handful of fishhooks whiz in all directions; a smaller one spears Jacob’s right cheek, just below the eye. He cries out and too late raises his hands in defense.

Around him, a series of booms and crashes breaks the air. The Fisherman’s ropes rear up like living things. Rainer and the others stagger and stumble with the forces unleashed. As if it’s being reeled in, one of the ropes streaks towards the waves. Another falls onto one of the great tree stumps and digs a handful of its hooks into the wood. The third rope flails from side to side like a thing in pain; Italo barely manages to duck its swipe. The fourth rope, Jacob’s, lies flat on the ground, making its slow way to the beach. One last rope remains, off to the left, beside the raging stream. Rainer drops his axe as he approaches it and, taking the Fisherman’s knife in both hands, cleaves it. Jacob flinches at the resulting boom. Cut free, the rope curls and loops amidst the stream’s spray.

His ears ringing, Jacob joins Italo and Andrea to wait for Rainer. Neither man will look at him. As Rainer walks up to the them, Italo gestures with his axe across the stream, where the other set of ropes hooks the titanic beast to the land. “What about them?” he says, speaking too loudly, the way you do when your hearing’s been dulled.

“By all means,” Rainer says with something like good humor. “If you want to swim over there and tend to those ropes, none of us will stop you.”

Italo frowns. It’s clear he has no desire to try the stream and whatever might reside there, but if cutting the ropes on this side of it has been important enough to risk and sacrifice their lives over, then surely the ropes on the other side must be no less significant.

Rainer has returned to Angelo, whose shoulders he has taken hold of in order to ease him up and over onto his back. Angelo’s eyes are open, full of the distance of his death. Rainer closes them, straightens Angelo’s arms at his sides, and pulls his legs out from under him, speaking as he does. “You are right,” he says, “it would be better to take care of those ropes, too. And if we could walk along this shore to the next set of ropes, and the one after that, it would be better still. Oh yes, our friend has been busy. He has spent many years at his labors, many, many years. To undo all he has done would also take a long time. Not as long as it took the Fisherman—always, it is quicker to tear down than it is to build up—but enough time that our children would be old men and women when we were finished.” He shakes his head. “I will not speak for you, but for me, that is too much.”

“But,” Andrea says. He points at the vast gray curve rising out of the dark ocean.

“What we have done is enough,” Rainer says. He considers the Fisherman’s knife. “For that,” he nods at the enormous beast, “to be bound requires a precise distribution of forces. Next to this, planning the dam we are building is child’s play. If those forces are disturbed, then the whole thing comes undone.” Rainer leans forward, raises the knife, and drives it into the ground above Angelo’s head, improvising a cross. “I am sure,” he says, “that our comrade would appreciate some prayers.” He stands, bows his head and clasps his hands, and waits.

It’s Andrea who answers Rainer’s suggestion, crossing himself and speaking rapidly in Latin. Italo follows suit, and together they run through what seems like a Sunday service’s worth of prayers. Jacob keeps his head bowed for the duration. Needless to say, he keeps his eyes from Angelo’s face, not to mention the wound that insults the base of his neck. He focuses on Angelo’s boots, which are the same, worn variety the rest of them are wearing. They’re coated with the red dirt and dust of wherever this is Rainer’s led them. The left foot sticks straight up; the right leans against it. When Angelo tugged these boots on this morning, tightened and tied the laces, he had no inkling they would be his funeral wear. This strikes Jacob as painfully sad.

Once Andrea and Italo have said “Amen,” and crossed themselves again, Rainer unclasps his hands and turns to the hill they descended on their way here. Italo says, “Wait.”

“What is it?” Rainer says.

“We aren’t done burying him,” Italo says.

“I have made a marker,” Rainer says. “Prayers have been offered.”

“He can’t be left like this,” Andrea says. “He needs a grave.”

“How are we going to dig one?” Rainer says.

“The stones, then,” Andrea says, pointing to the beach. “We can pile stones over him.”

Rainer shakes his head. “I am sorry, but there isn’t time.”

“Why not?” Andrea says. “We don’t need that long.”

“I would guess that, while we speak, the Fisherman is drawing his strength back to himself. This means that we do not have very much time before the passage that took us here collapses.”

“I thought this Fisherman was dead,” Italo says, and the crease in his brow makes Jacob uneasy.

Rainer ignores it. “Who told you that?” he says.

“My eyes,” Italo says. “I watched the man dragged into the water by one of his ropes.”

“And you think that that is enough to kill the one who did all this?” Rainer flings his arm to take in the broad tree stumps, the heaps of rope, the slaughtered cattle, the monster in the ocean. Jacob recalls his aerial vision, and the nervousness Italo’s glower provoked uncoils into fear deep and profound. What has led them to believe the figure who caught and was on his way to bending the power in front of them to his will could be slain by the likes of them, a threadbare professor and a handful of stoneworkers? Jacob’s fear swiftly verges on panic, and it may be that Rainer notices this, or that he reads a similar change on Italo and Andrea’s features. He says, “Make no mistake: we have won a great victory, here. We have removed the threat to our families. We have disrupted the Fisherman’s plans. And we have caught the Fisherman, himself, trapped him using his own tools. If we are lucky, then the great beast he is bound to will break free and swim into the ocean, taking him with it. If we are not so lucky, then he will find his way free before that. Even if such is the case, though, it will be the work of decades for him to escape the prison we have locked him into.”

Anything else Rainer wants to say is interrupted by a succession of crashes. “The ocean,” Italo says, but the rest of them are already turning toward it. For the second time since he arrived here, Jacob watches the vast arc of flesh offshore move. But where its previous movement was the tensing and relaxing of a creature shifting into a more comfortable position, this is something different. The beast—Jacob can’t help continuing to think of it as the island—is swaying, the right side leaning closer as the left side leans away, then the left side leaning closer as the right side leans away. The motion disrupts the surrounding waves—the crashes that drew the men’s attention. Still swaying, the creature raises itself, the dull, scaled mass of it growing from large hill to small mountain, from small mountain to bigger mountain. Jacob’s mouth drops open—he can’t help it—as yet more of the thing emerges from the ocean, bigger mountain growing to Alpine peak, water pouring off it in great rivers, Danubes and Hudsons falling down its side. The dark ocean seethes around it, thrashes against it.

Beyond terrified, beyond awestruck, Jacob is blank, his mind wiped clean by the enormity eclipsing the sky in front of him. When a pair of hands grabs his shoulders, spins him around, and pushes him in the direction of the hill backing the shore, his feet shuffle forward out of simple muscle memory. Not until he catches sight of Andrea sprinting ahead of him, and Italo running to catch up to him, does Jacob start to move his legs in earnest. Rainer is beside him, and despite the pale light washing his face, Jacob can sense the concern on the older man’s features. His recognition of Rainer’s emotion spurs him to pick up his pace, close the distance to Andrea and Italo. By the time he reaches the foot of the hill, Jacob is running all-out, his arms hammering, his legs pistoning. He powers up the slope, the muscles in his thighs, his calves protesting almost immediately. A quick check over his shoulder shows Rainer behind him, the vast bulk of the great beast continuing to rise in the distance. Ignoring his burning legs, his heaving lungs, Jacob maintains his pace. Around him, the strange trees peculiar to this place thicken on the hillside. His breathing thunders in his ears. Darkness crowds the edges of his vision, until he’s watching Andrea and Italo crest the hill through a long, black tunnel. Something presses on the small of his back—Rainer’s hand, urging him forward. In no time at all, it seems, Jacob’s legs have become blocks of concrete, which grow heavier with each step he takes. He’s still carrying his axe, hasn’t lost hold of it this entire time. He might as well be hefting an oak. He would drop it, gladly, but his fingers have forgotten how to release it.

Once Jacob tops the hill, it takes him half a dozen strides to realize what he’s done. He doesn’t stop so much as slow, his legs momentarily unable to cease their motion. Like a runner who’s completed the race of his life—which, in a sense, he has—Jacob walks in a circle, knuckles on his hips, head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth inhaling bucketfuls of air. Somewhere close, he hears Rainer’s labored breathing. He should open his eyes, but Jacob can think of nothing he’s less inclined to. He’s gone straight through exhaustion to nausea, to this side of shuddering collapse. Weights fall on his shoulders. He opens his eyes to Rainer, grabbing him and bringing him to a halt. Jacob’s already shaking his head, refusing Rainer’s insistence that they must keep moving. He has nothing left. Jacob waves Rainer away, points him up the track they made on their way here, which Andrea and Italo have located and are on the way along.

If Jacob expects an argument from Rainer, he’s disappointed. Having said what he had to say, the older man moves past Jacob, after Andrea and Italo. As he goes, however, he says, “And what about Lottie?”

Jacob’s head jerks back as if he’s been slapped. That name is maybe the one word capable of slicing through the torpor that’s snared him. Questions crowd Jacob’s tongue: Why did Rainer mention Lottie? Does this mean he no longer objects to Jacob’s attention to her? How is that possible, since not only is Jacob still Austrian, but his hands are wet with another man’s blood? Unsure what’s going to emerge, he opens his mouth—but Rainer has set off after Andrea and Italo at a brisk pace. Perhaps Jacob spends a moment debating whether he can summon the strength to carry him to the door of the Dort house, but the argument is
pro forma
, its outcome already clear. For what he’s reasonably sure is the promise implicit in Rainer’s question, Jacob will find his way out of this place.

XXV

In years to come, when Jacob relates his and his companions’ experiences that strange night to Lottie, that detail will remain her favorite part. No wonder at first, I suppose, but even after the romance has dimmed and their union settled into its predictable patterns, the image of Jacob trudging through the forest, those odd trees being joined by and then replaced by evergreens, the others far ahead of him, with only her face bright in his mind’s eye to keep him putting one foot in front of the other, will stir something deep within her.

During his trek to the door, Jacob looks behind him once. By this time, the trees have gathered thick and tall about him—actually, he isn’t that far from exiting this place—obscuring his view almost completely. Despite this, through the tops of the evergreens he can distinguish a vast, rounded edge—the great beast, the Fisherman’s catch, this segment of it risen to a height Jacob does not want to estimate. As he watches, it begins to shift, tipping with the slow gravity of very large things towards the dark ocean. In an instant, it’s gone, and Jacob can picture the enormous length of it smashing into the waves, thrusting a wall of black water up to the sky. He doesn’t wait for the titanic crash; he runs for the spot in front of him where he can see his companions.

They’re waiting for him; or, Rainer is forcing the others to wait for him. Rainer is holding open a heavy wooden door, which appears to be set within an especially dense cluster of trees. It shouldn’t surprise Jacob that the door Rainer is gripping by its thick edge is the same one that was sundered by the force of his earlier attack on it, but it does. Rainer is straining to keep the door from closing. As Jacob hurries near, Rainer nods, and first Italo, then Andrea, steps through the passageway. “Faster!” Rainer shouts at Jacob, who wants to shout back that he’s hurrying as fast as he can, but doesn’t have the breath to do so. Somewhere far behind him, noise is gathering itself, the roar of a mountain toppling into ruin. The weird light on Rainer’s face has dulled enough for Jacob to see the sweat trickling down his forehead. He brushes Rainer as he runs past him and over the threshold.