We're in Trouble (9 page)

But this seems too much like vengeance, too much like I am kissing Karel in anger, which is not what I feel at all.

So I imagine my husband in love with me: Jozef, ten years younger, walks into the café. His beard is too big for his face, and the corners of his eyes crinkle up when he smiles at me—as though he recognizes me, as though he is surprised to see such an old friend in a place like this.

Karel's arms are tightening around my waist, pulling me close to him, and up on the balls of my feet. I am stretching my mouth wide against his.

Jozef. I wake in the night after giving birth to Stane, only to see Jozef sitting awake in the corner; he smiles tenderly at me and asks if I would like some water. He holds the glass to my lips and then kisses me and strokes my hair.
I love you
, he whispers, runs his rough finger across my cheek.
I love our son.

Karel puts his hands under my bottom and lifts me onto the rock. I curl my calves around his legs. He nuzzles the space where my blouse is open.

Love me
, Jozef says.
As long as you love me I will be all right.

Right now his hands are on rock, his lungs ache, he tastes blood.

Death, then. Think of death—death, after all, has given us permission. So here: Jozef moaning into my neck in the hospital. Papa's eyes red with loss and rage. And here: Gaspar's casket, my shocked husband hobbling to it with a cane, putting his hand on the lid, as though something is inside it.
Here is Gaspar's wispy blond girlfriend, arriving suddenly from Dresden, knowing no one and latching on to me in her grief.
We were engaged
, she says to me, her voice so thin it must hurt her to say any words at all. She says,
We hadn't told anyone, we were waiting till he came back to announce it.
There's Papa in a chair, head in his hand, Karel's hands on his shoulders. Across the room Jozef embraces other climbers, some flown in from Russia and America. Two Sherpas are here from Nepal. None of the wives or girlfriends look at each other except in sideways glances, mistaken turns. We listen to the men we love so much say over and over,
At least he died doing what he loved.
I keep my arm around Gaspar's German girl, knowing what she thinks, what all the women think: if Gaspar died doing what he loved, he would have died at home, he would have died inside her. These brave men are cowards, that is what I think. I look around the room, a little drunk from a flask Karel brought, the girl snuffling into my shoulder, and I know—for the first time I know—tonight is only a rehearsal.

My husband, alive, does not stop me. But Jozef dead and gone—this is what makes me pull away from Karel.

Love does not keep me faithful.

But shame does.

I'm sorry, Karel says, breath rasping.

I shake my head and slide away from him. No, I say, angry now. No. We both did this.

He nods twice, quickly, and rubs his jaw as though I have hurt it.

We have both agreed on a course, but there is still wildness in the air, that thing which is so easily called up between us but so difficult to dispel. I walk to the edge of the meadow and back again, to calm myself more than anything else. Karel
stands next to the rocks, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped. I want to tell him not to feel bad, but for now I cannot go closer.

Over the curve of the hill, a curl of dust rises: a car driving slowly toward the house. I look at Karel. We stand side by side on the hilltop and try to see who it could be—we can barely see the road from the meadow, only glimpses through gaps in the trees. The trail of dust slows and begins to billow, and then for a moment we see a van, marked on the side with the 24ur emblem.

Something has happened, I say.

We hurry back down the path. I try to prepare myself. Today is summit day, and that is all the news people care about: they don't ever think about how, if Jozef makes the top, he still has to climb down, half dead. But maybe something else has happened. I tell myself: Hugo wouldn't inform the media before me. But I have been gone for an hour, and there are many people at base camp, all with satellite phones.

I do not believe it, but of course in my heart I do: I broke my promise. I kissed Karel and Jozef has died.

I am almost running when I emerge from the woods onto the road. The van is parked twenty or thirty meters away. I walk to it, and this is what I see:

A cameraman and a newswoman are standing next to the Roman wall, right in front of one of the tall crumbling pillars, three meters high. And clinging to the stone, at the level of their heads, is Stane. I hear one of the newspeople say, loudly, so Stane can hear too, He's his father's boy, look at that.

Stane is climbing. Not the clambering up tree trunks I've seen him do. The newswoman was right.

He has been
taught.

Stane grips the rock the right way, locking his thumbs over the tops of his fingers, keeping his balance out away from the rock, suddenly lying sideways, leaning away from a crevice while his feet push the other way. By the time I reach him he has touched the top of the pillar, and when he does this he emits a laugh, the squeak of delight I know so well.

The newspeople applaud, and the cameraman moves in, and Stane takes one hand off the rock to wave.

The newswoman is saying something about a new generation, and that's when I force my way past her. I put my hands on Stane's waist and pull him off the pillar. He's heavier than he used to be, but I catch most of his weight, even though it nearly knocks me over.

Turn the cameras off, I say. Get out of here.

The camera swivels to me. The newswoman asks if I have any words about Jozef's success today. All of the nation is watching, she says. We're all very proud.

I turn and walk back to the house, Stane shocked in my arms. I am so angry I can barely see. I pass Karel, just coming out of the trees, and I say, Get rid of them.

Mama, put me down, Stane says. Put me
down.

I set him down and then swat him twice on the behind, hard. The newspeople can see us, but I don't care. I pull Stane along by the arm. He's wriggling and trying to escape, without knowing why or where to go. I can't help it. I tug him off the road, down the slope, into the trees out of sight. There I swat him again, and again, enough so that he stops struggling and begins to cry. Enough so that he
knows.

Then I kneel and put my arms around him. Stane smells of little-boy sweat and pine needles. He tries once again to
pull away, but then he sees me crying, and this hurts him more than the spanking. I hold him to me, my quivering son.

He is a man, eyes crinkling like his father's, smiling at a girl in a café. He is calling a name into swirling snow, screaming wind, alone.

Mama, he says. It's okay, I was only climbing.

I tell him, You mustn't, Stane.

I am holding him as an infant, handing him for the first time to Jozef. Jozef's face falls into pieces when he takes his newborn son—when he looks up again at me, for the first time as a father. And I know: my husband will never climb again, he will never risk anything, now that he has seen his darling boy. I shake and throb inside and think I might die from love. I watch Stane in his father's arms and I think,
My sweet boy, do you know what you have done? You have given me your father back. You've saved us. You've saved me.

You mustn't, I say into Stane's ear. I shake him with each word.

You mustn't
ever.