The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (56 page)

Charlotte Derby. 18
.
Southampton, England. Eskifjörður.

It means nothing. I know it means nothing. An English girl with the same first name as my grandmother traveling to eastern Iceland in July 1936. A coincidence only because the age is right, because my grandmother was born in 1917. But why would she go to Iceland? I lean back in my swivel chair, looking at the ceiling. I imagine Charlotte coming of age in England, boarding a steamer for Norway and then for Iceland to visit the woman she called her aunt, Imogen preparing for her visit and commissioning the brooch from Ísleifur, the initials engraved on the reverse—

It’s absurd. Charlotte would have no reason to travel under an assumed surname, and if she did she could just as well have changed her first name. There’s also the obvious fact that
Charlotte
is a common
name and common names are bound to occur in these lists, even English names. I scan the lists for familiar names. There’s nothing else in the
Nova
’s lists, but forty minutes later I find an Eleanor M. Cotter, age forty-eight, sailing from Hull to Reykjavík on the
Goðafoss
in 1934. An hour later I find a Charles Bell, age nineteen, sailing from Leith to Reykjavík on the
Bruarfoss
in 1929.

I switch off the machine. I’m grasping at nothing, names and dates and ports pulled out of a hat. There must be dozens of people named Eleanor and Charles and Charlotte in these lists, and if I looked long enough I’d probably find an Imogen. I no longer even believe in my own theories. I take the microfilm reels back to the desk.

Back at the hostel I check my e-mail, but Mireille hasn’t written me back. The only message is from Khan.

James and I were pleased to hear of the information you’ve uncovered; we would be interested to see the documents with regard to the contact between the two parties in 1924. He expressed concern, however, that the chain of research you are following cannot lead you to the evidence required for distribution of the estate. James reminds you of your time constraint, and he suggests reappraising your options before proceeding—particularly as far afield as Iceland.

As October is fast approaching, I think it would be helpful to schedule a call with James at your earliest convenience. Please let me know when you are available.

Yours Sincerely,

Geoffrey Khan

I write to Khan that I’m already in Iceland, but I’ll call the law firm soon. Then I log on to my bank account. I have only three hundred dollars left and no ticket off this island. My credit card shows an unpaid
balance of $612, with $88 of available credit. I can’t ask my family for money to continue this absurd search. Nor can I get anything from Prichard until I’ve found real evidence, and anyway he doesn’t seem to approve of my trip to Iceland.

I know I should deal with all this by economizing, by organizing my research. But I’ve lost my confidence. The next morning I realize that all the archives are closed for the weekend. I go back to my bunk and lie there for an hour, feeling close to a breakdown. When I finally get out of bed I stay in the hostel all day, running aimless Web searches and paging through my folder of photocopies, my mood swinging wildly from moment to moment.

At dusk I go to a public pool near the hostel. It’s a clear but windy night. An attendant takes a few coins from me and hands me a stiff white towel stamped with the city’s logo. I bathe myself carefully according to diagrams posted below the showerheads, then I pull on my pair of cut-off corduroy shorts. I wade into the empty indoor pool, swimming a few laps of breaststroke. Through the windows I see the outdoor hot tubs, their columns of steam curling in the wind.

I’d left Mireille for this. Before I left California I’d even lied to my own father about this trip. The only people I’d listened to were the lawyers and now I wasn’t even listening to them.

I rise dripping from the pool and push through the glass doors, sprinting barefoot toward a hot tub. The air is freezing. I plunge into the churning water, floating on my back as I watch the steam lift toward the stars. A few minutes later the jets switch off of their own accord. Above the swirling vapor there is a curtain of shifting blue-green light in the sky.

—The northern lights.

The water laps around me, half of my body freezing and half scalded. I wonder if the lights are pointing in any particular direction.

Later in the night I walk downtown, swigging gin and tonic I’ve mixed in a soda bottle. I climb the main shopping street among crowds of young people, picking out a well-dressed group as they turn onto a side street. They go into a ramshackle bar decorated with Christmas lights and painted palm trees. The electric sign says
SIRKUS
. I follow them in.

It’s after eleven and there are only a few people inside. Everyone is dipping glasses of punch from a huge bowl on the bar. I dip myself a glass and sit down. A girl with a doll-like face passes by me and suddenly glances back as if she recognizes me. She’s holding someone’s hand and she steadies herself with great effort. The girl stares at me and says something in Icelandic. I tell her I don’t speak the language.

—You’re drinking my punch, she says.

—I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

—This is my party, but I don’t know you.

—I’m very sorry.

The girl shakes her head slowly, leaning in toward me with a breathy whisper.

—It’s my birthday, she confesses. Drink up.

The girl walks on with her companion. They open an unmarked door and disappear inside. I take a sip of punch. It’s strong and must have plenty of rum, but it tastes good.

A strange thickness builds in my throat until I begin to feel queasy. I must have drunk the gin too quickly. I go into the bathroom, but as I walk to the toilet stall I glimpse an intruder in the mirror. But I’m the intruder. I lean toward the mirror running my hand along my face, not believing it’s my own. My eyes seem wider than I’d imagined, my nose thinner and more pointed. I turn from the mirror and go into the toilet stall, sitting down for a few minutes. But it only makes me feel sicker. Finally I bend over the toilet and throw up, heaving out the whole contents of my stomach. I flush the toilet and sit back down, leaning against the cold metal walls of the stall. My eyes are shut, my head dense with muddled images.

A damp cellar near Polygon Wood in 1917, with no fire and the soldiers wrapping wet socks around their necks to dry; the dark purple wallpaper of the Picardie bedroom, Mireille lying in the blackness with her grey eyes open, listening to my footsteps up and down the hallway; a candle lantern swinging in a snowbound tent on Everest, mittened fingers struggling to write on pages propped over the knees, the pencil skating across the paper; the blood-red house at Leksand, the tin of letters wrapped in paper and addressed to England but never sent; the lapping black water of the Eastfjords, two hundred and fifty miles away, a shuttered window beside the waves.

There’s a pounding on the stall door. I rise slowly and wipe my face with toilet paper, unlatching the door. The bathroom is packed elbow to elbow with young men. Someone calls at me in Icelandic. Another person taps my shoulder, but I ignore them and walk out.

The bar is packed now, the air hot and steamy. I check my watch: 2:14. I’ve slept for two hours. I edge my way upstairs, taking the last empty seat on a couch beside a young couple. They smile at me and move their coats so I can sit. I light a cigarillo. Moments pass and the young man beside me taps me on the shoulder, speaking in Icelandic first, then in English.

—Are you all right?

—Yeah.

—You were sleeping.

—I guess I drank too much.

—That’s OK, he says. So does everyone else.

The cigarillo is still lit. I take another drag. My eyes begin to close again, but I sit up straight and try to stay awake. I think about what Mireille said, of what I’m losing by going on with this. It’s more than just her, because I can’t imagine going back to my old life in California. But I’m also tired of this life.

I’m sick of traveling. I’m sick of searching, sick of questions I can’t answer, sick of disappointing Mireille and disappointing Prichard, sick of eating bread and cheese from my backpack and filling water bottles
in public restrooms, sick of counting foreign coins, sick of war and dead lovers and the billion cruelties of the past that never, ever could be set right, not by a thousand of me circling Europe for a thousand years.

I collect my coat and go out into the cold. It’s a long walk back to the hostel.

15 May 1924

Rongbuk Monastery, 16,700 feet

Rongbuk Valley, Tibet

The expedition has been beaten off the mountain by terrible weather, forced to retreat into the Rongbuk Valley below. They have come to seek the blessing of holy men. They carry gold brocade and a wristwatch for gifts. The true present, the yakload of cement, had been delivered a fortnight before.

They trail past a great stone chorten, its golden paint flaking off in the wind; they file in silence beneath a web of flapping prayer flags, approaching the low whitewashed rooms of the monastery.

The battered men stand in the open court: British, Gurkhas, Sherpas, Bhotias. Climbers, noncommissioned officers, porters, syces, muleteers, cooks, a lone cobbler. Seventy men. In grimed palms they clasp a pair of rupee coins as offerings, rationed out an hour before from the expedition’s oaken coffers.

A monk leads the British and their interpreter up a narrow staircase. Unseen trumpets begin a ceaseless drone. The deep note continues without interruption: as one trumpeter exhausts his breath, another begins to blow. The nails of the climbers’ boots skid on the stone steps.
Cymbals clash in time, marking the intervals. At first the British can see nothing in the dark, then a few rays of window light upon the worn steps.

—Some of those trumpets, Noel remarks, are made of human thighbones. They’ve drums made of skulls, with human skin on top.

Ashley peers through a window to a man braying a trumpet on a landing below.

—Looks like brass to me, he whispers hoarsely.

They enter a cramped dining room lit only by a few butter lamps. Amid the blackness they make out an array of small dishes set on a low table. The British sit awkwardly upon cushions on the floor.

—What is it? Mills says. I can’t see.

—Macaroni and spices, the colonel says. What else?

The British eat with lacquered chopsticks, the monks replenishing the empty bowls. The colonel glances at Ashley’s bowl, shaking his head.

—A bowl and a half, the colonel says. You’ll spark a riot. The head lama has been dressing and preparing for two days.

—How many have you had?

—Three, the colonel says. And I’m cooked.

Ashley lays his chopsticks across his bowl. His right leg has fallen asleep and he struggles to find a better posture.

—What’s the lama like?

—Damned impressive fellow, Noel says. Supposed to be the reincarnation of a god. Spent thirteen years in one of those hermit’s cells in the valley.