Instead, he got up on legs that were asleep from sitting on the floor for too long, limped to the firewood he had stacked in the now completed northwestern corner of the living room and brought two of the logs and a twig with him to the hearth. He placed the logs on the ashes, fetched the lighter from the top drawer in the kitchen, and lit the twig, let it burn a little, before he put the flame to the logs so they caught fire too. The new warmth made him shiver and he moved as close to the hearth as possible and stared into the flames for a long while.
As he had suspected, none of the local physicians listed online were authorized to sign the medical test that the space organization required.
“The closest person who can issue certificates is on the coast,” they informed him when he called the doctors’ offices, giving him the name of a small town two stops closer on the rail line than his home city. He’d save little more than an hour’s travel by going there. But since he didn’t trust himself to not give everything up and flee back to Michael and the apartment once he was home, he decided to go to the coast instead. He found the doctor the local physicians had mentioned online, phoned her office, and scheduled an appointment later in the week.
Several hours by train through mountains and valleys covered in red and orange oak, ash, aspen, birch, beech, and rowan, interspersed with green from fir, spruce, juniper, and yew, took him to the coast. On that part of the continent the forest reached almost down to the ocean and just a narrow band of pebble beaches and round-backed islets, many only visible at low tide, kept the sea from the land.
As most other small towns along the coast, it was a holiday resort, and like most such places it went into hibernation in late autumn. Visiting such places out of season was unsettling and alienating, like staying in a large office after everyone else has left. The physical objects, the streets and buildings and shops and piers, were still there, in the same location as they would be in the summer, with even some of the carts that sold hot dogs and ice cream and candy floss, and some of the booths that offered t-shirts and postcards and model ships in the high season, were still open, but the lack of people, the surplus of public space, and the gray light of autumn, made everything look run down and lonely.
Large tracts of the seaside walk were covered in scaffolding and put in dry dock by temporary wooden walls. There, the water had been bilged back into the ocean by peristaltic pipes and compressors, although the enclosures were wet and slowly refilling. Plastic signs bearing the town’s crest explained that the seaside walk was in the process of being elevated and strengthened to be able to withstand the increased erosion of the higher sea level and more frequent winter storms. The text further apologized for the unsightly conditions and claimed that the process would be complete by a date several years into the future.
He nevertheless enjoyed the stroll along the sea, the hiss of the white waves against the stone, the constant wind from the ocean, and the dim, heavy sky. The gale nipped at his mountain jacket and he was glad he was carrying his thirty-liter backpack, since it helped keep the wind out. The rain tasted salty from the spray of the waves and he had to stop for a moment to take his leather gloves out of the backpack and pull them on.
On his way along the frothing seaside, he passed a wall so thick with layer upon layer of glued-on posters and flyers the surface seemed almost like papier mache. The announcements advertised the previous summer’s performances by various bands, stand-up comedians, tattoo masters, circus acts, fortune tellers, and magicians. He passed his eyes over the rotting, water-peeled sheets to find the most overdone and improbable of them. But then one of the posters presented a familiar name, an address in the town center, and a time just a few hours into the future. Blood shot into his head and he suddenly felt warm. The still-intact paper and the not-yet-faded print hinted that the ad was relatively recent. He gaped, looked again, then took out his phone and photographed the address on the flyer. With his heart beating hard, he continued to the doctor’s office.
In a corner of the waiting room stood a small spruce, its flat, shiny needles revealing its plastic nature, decorated with small electrical lights and glittering red tinsel. Lengths of artificial mistletoe garlanded the walls of the room. He smirked a little at the festive display, December being several months away. But here, summer probably started right after Easter and lasted till the autumn holidays. No wonder they wanted Christmas to arrive as quickly as possible.
“You’re going for a pilot’s license, then?” the doctor, a brown-haired woman just a few years older than him, said as she fastened a blood pressure cuff around his arm.
“Yes, starting this spring,” he lied. Trying out for the astronaut selection wasn’t something he wished to share, especially not to a stranger.
“That’s rare,” the doctor said. “I mostly see requests for diving licenses, you know with the tourists and all, but the tests are nearly identical.”
He nodded. “I’m tempted to get that license too,” he said for the sake of small talk.
The doctor performed all the necessary tests, for blood pressure, heart status, lung function, hearing, ear-nose-throat, visual acuity, and color blindness. He had emailed the form in advance and the doctor promised to fill it out, sign it, and send it back to him within a week.
When he left the doctor’s office it had grown almost dark. The rain had ceased, giving way to a rushing wind. At the edge of the horizon, between the black ocean and the pewter sky, a slice of orange burned, like the last embers of a fire. The drawstrings on his jacket whipped in the gale and even inside the gloves his fingers began to feel cold and stiff. He pulled out the schedule he’d picked up at the train station, the paper dog-eared and damp from his pocket. The next train left at six, the last one at nine. It was nearly five o’clock. He decided to attend the meeting advertised by the poster.
Hoping to get away from the worst of the wind, he continued one street inland from the pier, looking for a restaurant or cafe that served dinner early. A little further he saw a flimsy glass front with letters in gold foil announcing that the food served there was eastern, and hurried inside.
Although the place was clearly for take-outs, two small tables with round stools tucked beneath them flanked the door. He nodded at the man behind the counter, who addressed him in an eastern language he didn’t understand.
“Sorry,” he said in the language of the coastal country they were in. “Are you still serving lunch?”
“Lunch, dinner, whatever you need,” the man said, in their common language.
“May I eat here?”
“Of course,” the man said. “What do you wish to order?”
He took in the lit posters behind the cook which displayed the variety of dishes the small restaurant offered, and ordered a dinner plate of beef and broccoli with rice. He sat down by the window, pulled the backpack off, removed his jacket, and draped it over the other stool so it would dry a little. The room was chilly and humid, and the air itself felt greasy, dense with the smell of food and cooking oil, which only made him hungrier. He hadn’t eaten anything before he left the cabin in the morning. Outside in the gray dusk the streetlamps blinked on one by one, first hesitantly, then burning steadily, and scraps of paper rolled past in the gale.