The Lava in My Bones (2 page)

When Sam passed through Swiss customs on the morning of June 5, he felt he'd burst through a membrane he hadn't known existed until then. Before him lay thirty long, juicy days in Switzerland. A clock began ticking the countdown to his tragedy.

His first days in Zurich, he wandered as in a dream; the snow-capped mountains loomed in the distance and everything confused him: the slope-roofed Tinkertoy buildings, breezes smelling of baked bread and
parfum Givenchy,
cobblestone streets that forked or headed in all directions at once. Sam snaked his
fingers into his pocket, touched the card with his hotel's phone number. In unfamiliar cities he got lost easily. Was that so bad? Sam had no friends to telephone, no one to send postcards to; he hadn't seen his parents in years. He tried not to think about this.

The streets of Zurich were perilously empty; agitated, Sam searched their polished surfaces for something to occupy his mind. There, a window display of baguettes lined up like artillery. Notice it's interesting. A tour guide talking about cheese and watches because she doesn't know what else to say. Remember her.

In the late afternoon, Sam collapsed exhausted onto a chair at a café. The table-top was a perfect circle—the beige marble cool against his palm. The waitress smiled, her lips a pert crescent moon; pigtails hung down the front of her blouse. Sam chuckled. Heidi of the High Alps. Yes, he will think of this waitress if, before his lecture tomorrow, his mind goes blank and he panics. Skirt pleats curved round her large hips and comma-shaped dimples bracketed her lips. Like most women she'd seem attractive until she spoke.

“Ready to order?” she asked in English. The linguistic skills of the Swiss humbled Sam. He admired the gentle swell of the woman's bosom. Her face curved like a Valentine heart. Yet she lacked mystery. Five minutes alone with her and you'd know everything.

“Just some tea.” Sam rarely had an appetite. A line he'd once heard: “If you love something, you put it in your mouth.” He never understood people who were always hungry.

Behind him, two women were speaking English with
American accents. They were from far away, like him, and Sam felt reassured.

“We'll take the Lake Zurich cruise earlier or we'll miss the symphony.”

“I so want to see Bamberger conduct.”

“His daughter once dated Tom Cruise.”

Sam often wondered why people had conversations. Nothing new was ever said. Should he start listening? If he changed his behaviour, would the Earth change too? Everything was connected, after all.

Sunlight gleaming on the tabletop hurt his eyes. He was jet-lagged. Yet he sensed something significant was going to happen. He'd dragged himself across the ocean and was farther from home than ever before. If you changed the position of one compound, the elements surrounding it changed too.

Heidi returned with tea. “Here's your drink,” she sang. Her eyes were lit. She was becoming friendlier. Sam looked away. The
click-click
of her receding footsteps was like a metronome ticking.

Lately, he'd had nightmares in which he looked into a funhouse mirror, his teeth grew as long as a rabbit's, his eyes expanded to cover his cheeks, and his ears protruded like parking meters. His face became a baby's, a gerbil's, a cow's.

Sam sipped the tea; it scalded his tongue—he spit it out.
What's with Heidi, bringing him this
? Through the window, distant mountains rose and fell like the curves on a woman's body. The few patches of glaciers were blindingly bright. These mountains looked different from the ones on the placemat. The photos must have been taken around 1983, as every summit was topped
by a crown of ice; now, only ten years later, half of Switzerland's glaciers had melted and landslides occurred regularly.

Women passed on the street like figures on a television screen, yet they were real, and he could touch their skin if he wanted. At night he'd wake with an erection pointing skyward like a finger testing the wind. What happens to energy that isn't expended?

There was a stack of
petit pains
on the neighbouring table; he could smell their sweet butter scent, and his stomach growled.
If you love something, you put it in your mouth.
He reached, snatched one, two, three rolls, swallowed them whole.

Back at the hotel, he strutted through the lobby, and the desk clerk chirped, “The guests are looking forward to your speech tomorrow.”

Sam hoped that when he stepped up to the podium, his voice, normally a mumbled rasp, and his arms, which hung down like pendulums, would transform—his arms dramatically jousting at unseen opponents, his voice resonating. “See my emaciated body,” he'd be saying silently, “these stick-thin forearms, my wrinkled jacket? I'm nothing, for I've sacrificed all to save the world. Adore me. I only ever had one girlfriend and I didn't love her. Take me on your shoulders and parade me through the streets.” At unguarded moments he admitted he was grateful for global warming because it distracted him from his own life and made strangers respect him.

That night Sam dreamed he was seated before crowds of men
with electric sockets for eyes. Someone kept calling “Where's the plug?” He noticed a two-pronged plug lay on his knee. Nearby, tips of volcanoes puffed like lips exhaling smoke.

In the morning Sam arranged his papers and practised his first sentence, “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning. Good.”

At last he was sitting at a table before a room full of scientists. In his bag were gleaming cobalt, pyroxene-filled trachyte, sharp-edged obsidian, pock-cratered basalt. To one side, the podium where the German doctor was speaking. Sam's knees trembled; goosebumps prickled on his forearms. Was he tense because he'd crossed the ocean, something he'd once felt forbidden to do? Or was this the same edginess he'd experienced in his Toronto apartment, now magnified in the absence of his university degrees on the wall? He recalled the mall at the end of his street, its fake palm trees beneath the glass pyramid skylight, people eating chop suey with styrene forks at Gourmet Fair. A world made of plastic.

Applause. The German scuffled to his seat.

Sam clutched the bag full of stones, stood up, took two steps to the podium, and pulled the mic to his lips. “Ladies and—.” Germs. Yes, he almost said, germs. “Gentlemen.” His voice boomed so loudly that it startled him. “We have been paying attention to the poisons that kill the world, such as carbon dioxide, which heats up the atmosphere and is melting our ice caps.” Before him the dark mass of people throbbed like a giant restless amoeba. He forced out the words: “The polar regions are warming up and the tropics are overheated. The two extremes—heat and cold—must
be maintained for life to exist.” Spectators shifted in their chairs; they'd heard all this before. “Until now climatologists have given warnings, but have politicians listened to these scientists of the air? The recent Rio Summit achieved little. Geology—” he said challengingly, “holds the answer.”

He plucked a stone from his bag, held it up; his trembling fingertips pressed its contours, the jagged crevices, twinkling crystals. Get personal, he thought. Tell them about your life. His speech coach said that spectators love personal anecdotes. “Rock is why I became a geologist.” His cheeks felt warm. God, was he blushing? “Rocks are intimately connected to us. No matter what we do, we are standing on stone.” He repeated his memorized lines. “Rocks bear the imprint of the weight of our bodies and, like snowflakes, no two are alike. They
are
us. I am in love with rock”—his voice became husky—“more than I love myself. This rock from Labrador
is
me. Labrador is where I spent my childhood. Look into a rock from your home; you're looking into something essential to you.” Now his main point. He deliberately banged one fist on the podium, which wobbled drunkenly. A sound in the dark. Giggling? “Instead of focussing on the poisons destroying the Earth, we must study rocks and the forces protecting our planet. Rocks are the immune system fighting toxins in our atmosphere. Rocks are less affected by global warming than water or air. They are part of that larger force that isn't conquered … Yet what exactly is this force that spins the world?” Perspiration ran through the hair on the back of his scalp. “If some scientists question God's existence, where then do they think rock's energy comes from?” A complete hush. Were
spectators bored or captivated? “If rocks embody the power that moves the world, we must find that force and strengthen it. Only then can we halt the Greenhouse Effect.”

The empty silence lasted.

When the lights were turned on, three arms flew up. The shadowed, outer edges of the crowd pressed against walls that seemed to push inwards. Had he spoken well? Would the world change? He was struck by his egotism.

Answering the few questions, Sam noticed a man sitting in the front and centre of the room, as still as a boulder.

At last, coffee break. Relief flooded him. Sam fingered a Styrofoam cup. “Very bad for the ozone,” he murmured.

Then the man approached him. Cautiously. The man from the centre. Later Sam would find out that he rarely approached people; people approached him. Uncharacteristically, he shuffled his feet. His head hung shyly. Also, atypical. On the day he met Sam, Franz was a man he had never been before and never would be again.

With one glance, Sam labelled him a frivolous peacock. The man wore a feminine mauve blouse that glimmered in the light, shiny canoe-shaped shoes with steel tips, and tight, herringbone-patterned jeans. He was the only man not wearing a suit, and Sam wondered why they had let him in.

Sam turned away and sauntered to the snack table, unaware that walking ten metres to speak to Sam was the hardest thing Franz had ever done, and it was followed by rejection, something he'd never experienced, especially in public.

Sam chatted with the Finnish biologist: “… and I'll be studying
felsite deposits on rocks below the Matterhorn next week …”

When the biologist excused himself—“I forgot to pick up a nametag”—Franz stepped into the space he'd vacated. He scrutinized the rock Sam was still clutching, then examined the space above his head. Was this man timid or mentally ill? Sam wondered. Months later he would learn the meaning of all this.

“Mr Masonty,” he said. “My name is Franz Niederberger. I notice that your rock belongs to a stone mass bigger than all of Switzerland.” He stared directly into Sam's eyes, then again at the space beside his cheek.

Sam answered as if reading from a textbook. “Yes. The Canadian Shield stretches 3,000 kilometres from the Arctic Circle to the forty-ninth parallel.” This wasn't news to anyone.

Franz's eyes worried back and forth as if erasing the line separating Sam from the surrounding air. His lips quivered. His eyes fixated on Sam's rock; next, he studied Sam's chin.

Sam became conscious of his own appearance; his un-ironed pants and stained tie, the jacket he'd had since he was eighteen, the unwashed hair he couldn't remember combing today. This man had tight, tanned skin, gleaming blue eyes, and wet lips (his tongue kept gliding over them); he was someone women probably considered attractive. Sam thought: Do I deliberately make myself homely so no one shows interest?

Franz stated, “You said something wrong. Rocks around the world are different?
Das ist nicht richtig.”
He tilted his head cockily. “Rocks are the same everywhere. All rocks are hard.”

Surprised by this silly challenge, Sam answered, “Our presence affects how rocks erode.”

“But why study the surface of rock?” the man continued. “Even in Canada, what's below is more meaningful than what you see.”

Why was Franz so poetic that day? Why did he become so ridiculous later?

Sam tightened his grip on the stone as Franz glared at it. For a second Sam felt violated.

“You should go to Canada,” he muttered. “If it interests you.” Sam studied the rising arc of the man's pompadour. He must have spent the whole morning arranging it.

“No, I'm … I get afraid of … of leaving Switzerland. You see, I've never been to another country.
Das ist scheusslich.
I don't know what would happen if I crossed a border and entered France or Italy. I'm afraid I'll dissolve or something.” Sam had always had the same fear but only now realized it. “Because I am an artist but have been blocked for years. Nobody knows this. Everybody thinks I'm a great professional but,
Scheiss”
—why was he telling Sam this?—“nature should help, and there's so much of it in your country. I saw ‘Canada' beside your name on the conference poster and so I knew I had to come here. Something might
begeistern
—inspire me. And seeing you talk about your enormous home while holding a real Canadian rock in your bare hands,
mein Gott!
” The man choked. “You're from so far away.” Then he reached for the stone but instead touched Sam's forearm. His fingertips were warm on Sam's skin. The man's hair swirled luxuriously around two ears, curling, Sam thought, like the wave-rippled coves near his hometown in Labrador.