“We’ll soon be there, now,” he said. “At the end of this plain there’s a valley cutting up into the mountains. .”
“Is it in a valley?” she asked.
“No, no. It’s at the mouth of the valley. With a view of the fjord, as I said.”
He stopped, raised his head.
“Can you hear it?”
Anna halted too.
“What?” she said.
“The rush from the river?”
There, far away, she heard a rushing sound.
“That’s where it is,” he said. “A stone’s throw from the river. Well, it’s more of a stream really. But it’s always been known as ‘the river’ by the people who live here.”
She put her arms around his chest and kissed his neck.
“I can hardly wait,” she said.
“Just don’t expect too much,” he said.
Ever since he’d first told her about the place, she’d formed a clear picture of it. Each new thing she’d learned about it altered it a little, but without disturbing the basic outlines: a small house on a hillock above a fjord. One field below the house and one field behind it, stretching back to a wooded slope. There was a lake there and a bog he was going to drain. And a barn on the other side.
Now there was a river there too.
“Anna?” said Javan. “Are you coming?”
He’d gone on without her noticing. Now he stood out there in the dark and held out his hand to her.
She took it, and they moved on. In a little while they arrived at a stone bridge, it crossed “the river” — which was indeed nothing more than a stream, in Anna’s terms — and when they got to the other side, Javan pointed up to the slope ahead of them.
“There it is,” he said.
The darkness was too deep for her to see anything but the outlines of the landscape as they walked up. There was what looked like a wooded hill, there a peak, there a field. . and there a house!
When they halted by the front door, she could see that it wasn’t much more than a shack. But he’d told her that. She had known that. So she wasn’t disappointed.
“Well, here we are,” he said. “Shall we go in?”
The door was stubborn, and he had to put his foot against the bottom and his shoulder to the top before it opened.
It smelled like a cellar inside. Dark, damp, almost decaying.
They took off their packs in the hallway. Javan went into the living room to light a lamp, she followed and stood dumbfounded looking round as the light spread through the room.
“It’s a pauper’s home!” she said.
Still holding the lamp he looked at her.
“It’s been empty for six months,” he said. “Some of the windows are broken. That’s why it looks a bit unkempt.”
“Unkempt?” said Anna. “Is that what you people call it?”
“You people?” queried Javan.
They stood there staring at one another for a long while. Then Javan put the lamp down on the windowsill and went over to her.
“It’s been a long day,” he said. “Things will be better in the morning.”
“You think so?” she said.
“There’s nothing here that can’t be fixed with a little soap and water,” he said. “Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the house.”
This was quickly done. A living room, a kitchen, a hallway, and on the second floor a couple of bedrooms. That was all.
They found two dead mice, light as feathers, on the bedroom floor as they were about to go to bed. She picked them up by their tails, took them downstairs, and threw them out the door. When she got back up, he’d spread two woolen blankets on the floor.
“We’ll have to sleep like this tonight,” he said. “Then I’ll organize something better.” He stroked her cheek, said good night, blew out the light, turned over on his side, and fell asleep. She lay awake. The sounds were new — the wind blew through a different landscape than the one she was used to, and struck different notes; the hiss of the waves lapping at the shore of the fjord was more wheezing, its rhythm more juddering, than the even, quiet swish of the river she’d grown up next to. And she’d never before lain next to a sleeping man.
He lay with his face turned away from her. She raised herself on one arm and leaned forward to look at it.
It told her nothing. It was just a face.
She lay back and looked up at the ceiling. This is awful, she thought. This is awful.
The only thing that would allow her to endure it was the knowledge that she could leave it at any time. Tomorrow, next week, in a year, in ten years or twenty.
It was the only way she could live there.
When she awoke the next morning, Javan was standing at the chest of drawers by the wall, shaving. He was holding a mirror in one hand, a razor in the other. His torso was bare, his face white with foam.
She stretched, and he turned the mirror so that their eyes met.
“Good morning!” he said.
She got up and went over to the window. Far below her the fjord lay blue and glittering.
“I’ve never seen the sea,” she said. “Is there anywhere close by where I can look at it from?”
“Certainly,” he said. “It’s just a matter of going up the mountain at the back of us here.”
He leaned forward and rinsed his face in the bowl that was brimful of water on the chest of drawers, took the towel that lay next to it, and turned toward her as he dried his cheeks and throat.
“Come here,” he said.
She pretended she hadn’t heard, leaned on the windowsill, and looked down over the sunlit slope, at the aspens on the mound below shimmering in the breeze.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, putting aside his towel and crossing over to her.
“Nothing,” she said.
“I know you’re disappointed,” he said. “But it’s better here than you think.”
He laid a hand on her neck, she twisted away.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
“Are you?” he said. “Really?”
She gazed at him for a long while. It had made him happy.
Suddenly she was overpowered by emotion. She didn’t know if it was sorrow or joy, she could just as easily have started laughing as crying out of despair, but when she saw that he understood this, and a trace of concern showed in his eyes, she gave way to tears.
“It’ll be fine,” he said, and squeezed her close to him. “It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”
“D’you think so?” she said, and sniffed.
He held her head in his hands and smiled at her.
“Yes, I do,” he said.
She had already learned to read that look. He looked at her as if she amused him. She was only twenty, he was thirty-three, and this was how she interpreted his amusement: he viewed her as a child. That merry look only appeared when she did something to confirm this notion. She knew what he sometimes thought: whims. That she was whimsical.
For this reason she felt displeased with herself after such outbursts. They turned him into something. He became something then. But at the same time she also longed for exactly that. It made him no longer a stranger. But what happened then was that she became further removed from herself! Or went astray in a part of herself that she didn’t like.
As she stood there sniffling, and he smiled at her, the desire to yield and weep on his shoulder was matched by an equal reluctance. But then she pressed herself against him and felt the way he ran his hands through her hair, across her shoulders, her back, through her hair, through her hair.
“How long have you known?” he whispered.
“Only a few days,” she whispered back.