In Babylon

‘You can’t.’

‘Let’s call someone.’

‘There’s no phone.’

She raised her head and looked at me, her face expressionless. ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’

‘You’ll never find the car, and if you do it’ll probably be buried in the snow by now.’

I walked out of the room. When I looked back through the doorway, she was still sitting, motionless, on the big four-poster bed. She was peering down at her feet, as if she could see something that simply wouldn’t let her go.

The house smelled like an auditorium. I inspected the kitchen and then from the kitchen window, the white lawn with the wooden shed where the gardener kept his tools. The thermometer on the windowsill read seventeen below zero. It must have been about five below in here. None of the doors at the back of the house had been forced, none of the windows were broken. I went to the library and stared into the murky light at the flood of books. The shutters were closed, the windows appeared to be intact. When I was back in the kitchen, I opened the door to the cellar. Behind the door, one foot on the stairs, I fiddled in vain with the light switch. I took the box of matches out of my pocket, lit one, and groped my way into the receding darkness. Slowly the floor came into view, and then the walls, and glass and tin, walls of tin cans, glass jars, bottles, shelves piled high with provisions, a fat red Edam, a smoked cheese, dried meat, sugar, salt, onions, dried apples, a string of garlic, crackers, candied fruits, toilet paper, a large cardboard box with bottles of detergent, bars of soap, indeterminate tubes of toothpaste, two bottles of calor gas with burners and detachable parts, and an assortment of candles. I stared, in the light of the dying match, at the display. Outside of a supermarket, I had never seen this much food at one time.

I dropped the match, it went dark. I sat down on the stairs, elbows on my knees, hands folded, and let the chilly darkness stream around me, the cool, sweet smell I remembered.

Uncle Herman never kept much in stock, because he never stayed at the house for more than three months at a time, and if he was there, he had Mrs Sanders order in as much fresh food as possible. Now the shelves were filled.

‘Herman,’ I said, ‘Nuncle, what the hell is going on here?’

I struck another match, stood up, and walked on. The vaulted cellar extended over the length and breadth of the entire house, divided into rooms that were separated by white stucco walls with semicircular passageways. The first room, a kind of central hall beneath the real hall, was once filled with virtually empty shelves. Now they were crammed. I unpacked the candles and stuck a few in my jacket. I lit another and in the flickering light I inspected the vault to the left of the main hall. One half was taken up by a mountain of potatoes, held together by three partitions. In addition to that: tin cans and glass jars of baked beans, carrots, kidney beans, corn, red cabbage, beets, sauerkraut, ravioli, macédoine, pickled mushrooms, salmon, tuna, sardines, corned beef, canned brie and camembert, dried apples, condensed milk, powdered eggs, chicken soup, stock, green peas, candied fruits, herring in dill sauce. And in addition to that: packets of rice, pasta, potato starch, flour, jars of coriander, dill, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, pepper, oregano, ginger powder, chilli peppers, capers, horseradish, pesto. The vault to the right of the entrance, the wine cellar, was as I remembered it. Racks from floor to ceiling, not a single free patch of wall. Thick, white-grey shreds of cobweb, and fine dust, powdery as ash. There was no cellar book here, but no one would have trouble finding his way around. Everything was carefully arranged, white on the left, red on the right, subdivided by country of origin (France, Spain, Italy), province (Bordeaux, Burgundy, and so on), region (Saint-Émilion, Médoc, Pomerol, Chablis, Margaux) and year.

A barricade at the top of the stairs and enough supplies in the cellar to survive an atomic war. I couldn’t believe that Mrs Sanders had dragged all this into the house by herself. And why should she? Uncle Herman was never coming back and I hadn’t been here in ages. But what disturbed me most was that it looked as if that huge stockpile was there in preparation for something that was yet to happen. I turned round and went back from room to room. Jars and cans, neatly in rows, packets of sugar one behind the other, as if it had all been stocked by a diligent shop assistant. I couldn’t tell whether any portion of this enormous quantity of food had ever been touched. What I did see, when I got back to the stairs, was the old transistor radio I had brought along with me on one of my visits. It was lying behind the bottom step, half-covered with a spider’s web. I switched it on and heard the soft rustling of empty ether. I tucked it under my arm, blew out the candle, and went upstairs.

In the kitchen, I turned the aerial this way and that and twiddled the large dial until I picked up the sound of voices. It was the local station. I put the radio on the counter and listened to the babbling. After a minute or two there were a few bars of music and a bronzy male voice. ‘This is Radio East, on air twenty-four hours a day. We’re here for you. Give us a ring and tell us how you’re enjoying the storm!’ Then I heard a man and a woman, who took turns answering calls from people who were stranded or had something exciting to share with the listeners. A couple of people snowed in at a petrol station phoned to say they had been living on coffee machine coffee, soft drinks, and chocolate bars since the night before and longed desperately for bread and cheese. A police spokesman reported that entire villages were cut off from the outside world, columns of trucks were stranded and disbanded in the middle of nowhere. Everyone was advised against using their cars. Then came the weatherman from the airport. The snow would continue all day and possibly into the night, he said, and the temperature, for the time being, would remain at around fifteen degrees below zero. That night he expected local temperatures to drop to twenty-five below. I stood at the counter and looked out at the endless snow. We had to get wood.

In the horizonless white world that was forming outside, the blizzard snarled and shrieked. I stood knee-deep in the snow. The trees were white, the sky hidden behind a curtain of flakes so thick it was impossible to look up. The wind had blown drifts nearly three feet high against the wall of the verandah. Where the logs should have been, where they had always been, under the lean-to behind the kitchen, I found only the sawhorse and an empty brown wicker basket.

I went to the little gardener’s shed, to the right of the house. There was no wood, but I did find tools, an axe wrapped in burlap, a couple of rakes, a hoe and a shovel, a grindstone, and empty wooden crates that had once held flower bulbs. There were still a few onion-like skins at the bottom. I picked up the crates and the axe and went back out into the snow, towards the kitchen. I stopped briefly to take shelter on the verandah. There, blinded by the blizzard, I wondered what to do. Chop down a tree? How long did you have to wait before green wood was dry enough to burn? White whirlpools spun through the air, snow that had fallen was whipped back up and formed new drifts in other corners. I clasped the axe firmly under my arm and went inside.

In the kitchen I laid the axe down on the counter and looked at the cold gleam on the blade. I picked it up and slowly turned it around. Then I lit the candle again, tucked the axe under my arm, and went to find Nina.

‘I’m home …’

I opened the hunting room door a hand’s-breadth and peered in through the crack. There was no answer. I pushed the door open a bit further. ‘Daddy’s ho-ome …’

The hunting room was empty. The yellowy candlelight glided across the walls and bed. Where Nina had been sitting the covers were rumpled, but she herself was nowhere to be seen. I walked inside and laid my hand on the bed. Cold. She must have been gone for a while now. She had probably left after I’d gone down into the cellar.

Why had she left without saying anything? What could possibly make her want to sneak back through the icy wind to her car, through a forest she barely knew? I blew out the candle, put the axe on the bed, and went into the hall. In the doorway, with the wind blowing me straight in the face, I peered out at the snow-covered stairs. Not a footstep in sight. I pulled my coat tighter around me, closed the door, and walked down the path, to the forest.

For half an hour I plodded through the white storm. Although it was much less windy among the trees, Nina’s footsteps had vanished. It wasn’t until I had reached the spot where we had left the car that I saw the first sign of her presence. Under the white film of snow that covered the path glimmered the tracks of a car that had backed out, turned, and disappeared, skidding, towards the bottom of the hill.

On the way back my feet went numb. It was as if my shoes were full of cement. Each time I took a step I felt the dull thud of something coming down too hard. I had left Nina alone while I went to look for wood and make a fire, and God knows we needed it, but now, on my third trek through the snow, as my feet and calves got soaked for the third time, I was beginning to reach the point where one is no longer cold, but scared. If my toes, fingers or ears froze, I would lose them. There was no chance of me reaching civilization on foot. I had to warm up, fast.

The last stretch I began to run, half stumbling, nearly falling, towards the house. For a moment, on the great white lawn, I rose up out of myself. I saw a tiny figure, swathed in black, fighting its way through the whiteness. The house stood motionless in the whirlpool of snow and the little man in the depths ran and ran and ran.

There is a God

IN THE LIBRARY, by the fire, we ate with our plates on our laps. The Pinot Gris was at perfect cellar temperature and fragrant as a meadow in summer. The sauerkraut was steaming hot, but we were so hungry we gobbled it down.

‘Sauerkraut with mustard sauce and apples,’ Nina said after a while. ‘This is the first time you’ve ever cooked for me.’

‘You could be right.’

She sipped her wine, squinting slightly. ‘It’s delicious. I didn’t know you had it in you.’

I bowed my head in gratitude. ‘When I was a boy I used to cook for the whole family. I didn’t think Sophie was any good at it.’

‘And was that true?’

‘Was she good at it, you mean? Oh, she was alright. She’d just lost interest over the years. If you have to cook every day of the week, it’s no fun anymore.’

‘But you cooked every day, too. You just said so.’

‘It was different for me. I cooked so I could think up fairy tales.’

Nina had put her plate down on one of Uncle Herman’s mobile bookcases and was holding the glass of wine in her hand. ‘I think it’s time you told me why we’re here,’ she said.

‘Why we’re here? You’re here because you gave me a ride and can’t get back. Though you certainly did your damnedest to escape. I’m here because …’

‘Not the old Uncle Herman story again. What’s going on here?’

‘I don’t know, Nina, I have no idea.’

‘Then let me ask you something else. What were you just doing with that cup of water? What were you saying?’

Before we sat down to eat I had filled a cup with water and poured it out over my hands, three splashes over my right hand, three over my left. ‘The blessing over washing the hands and eating,’ I said. ‘A Jewish ritual.’

‘Never heard of it. I didn’t know you were religious.’

‘Religious … I’m not religious. I’m a sceptic.’

She looked annoyed. ‘So what’re you saying? You pray but you don’t believe in God?’

‘The berakhah, the blessing, isn’t praying. It’s talking to God.’

‘Whatever. If you ask me it’s like sitting on your bike and saying vroom-vroom.’

‘So?’

‘So it’s nonsense. It’s illogical.’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Sex is nonsense and illogical, too. For the preservation of the species it’s enough just to …’

‘Nathan, shut up. What’s the point of doing all that if you don’t believe in it?’

‘Because I don’t believe in believing. That’s what I call nonsense. But the rituals, the washing of hands, the berakhot over bread and wine, we’ve been saying them for centuries. They don’t serve any particular purpose. We only say them because we want to say them. It’s an exercise.’

‘Exercise?’

‘In self-perspective. In humility. In transcendence. When you say the berakhah over bread, you’re reminded of what a miracle our daily bread really is. You didn’t make it yourself. You didn’t till the land. You didn’t sow the seeds and reap the grain. You didn’t grind the wheat and bake bread with the flour. But it’s there.’

‘You worked for it. You bought it.’

‘But it’s still a miracle. People in other countries work for it, too, but they can’t get it.’

‘You’re a believer.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m a non-believer, through and through. I distrust every form of religion. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see what’s extraordinary about the world.’

‘The world is there.’

‘And the world is extraordinary. Such a sophisticated … machine. So many people. So much technology. So many structures and forms.’ I hesitated. ‘For something that complex, it runs amazingly well.’

I leaned over and piled up the empty plates. ‘I’ll be right back.’

Nina nodded. She lay curled up in the chair, one side lit by the orange glow from the hearth, the other bathed in shadow.

In the kitchen, with only a faint glimmer of light from the chinks in the oven door, it was a while before I could see anything. As I waded through the darkness, something shot past the window. I froze. I stared at the black square above the sink, searching. For the first time today it fully dawned on me where I was: in an enormous hunting lodge in the forest, on top of a densely wooded hill in the middle of the countryside, a hill straight out of some dark fairy tale. A bird, I thought, it was a bird flying past the window. I put the plates down on the draining board and went into the hunting room to light a fire in the big stone hearth. If Nina hadn’t returned I would have wrapped myself in a sleeping bag and spent the night in the chair in front of the fireplace in the library.

‘We’re running out of wood,’ said Nina, when I came back in. ‘There are a few more of those black chunks, but not an awful lot. What is that anyway, that black stuff?’

‘The piano.’

‘The …’ She was remembering the piano. I could tell by the look on her face. The image loomed up deep within her of the black colossus that had been hanging above the stairs, like a guard before the barricade of chairs and cupboards and tables. ‘My God, how did you get it down?’

‘Let it fall,’ I said. ‘Sliced through the ropes and let it fall.’

‘Wow …’ A glittering flickered in her eyes. ‘What a shame I wasn’t there.’

‘Yes. You don’t know what you missed.’

It had been quite spectacular. Under any other circumstances, if I hadn’t been so cold and it had been of my own free will, I’d probably even have enjoyed it.

After I had abandoned my hunt for Nina, I’d staggered up the stairs like a wounded deer and immediately begun throwing things down. Fire. The word blazed before my eyes. I grabbed chairs, seizing them by the legs and hurling them to the ground. One of them smashed to pieces on the stone floor of the hall, another bounded up and down a few times like a young stag on mahogany hooves, and then broke. It was followed by a hatstand, a stool and the drawers from a sideboard.

The sideboard was the first piece of furniture blocking the way upstairs, a sturdy oblong, four drawers high, old oak, wrought brass handles. I knew nothing about antiques, but it looked Dutch, early nineteenth century. On top of the sideboard was a small red sofa, covered in plush right down to its squat wooden legs. On the seat were marks left by the chairs I had already hurled into the depths. Various odds and ends were scattered over seats and tabletops: a pendulum clock, a pile of framed photographs (Uncle Herman and Enrico Fermi, our family on board the ship to America, Sophie, Molly, my first wife). To the left of the sideboard my way was barred by a secretaire, and above that, a wooden colonial-style desk chair with padded green leather seat. The space on the right was completely filled by a mahogany china cabinet, taller than I was, the colour and gleam of fresh dung. I lifted up the desk chair and flung it over the banister. For a brief moment it occurred to me that I was standing here before a collection of antiques which had not only been assembled with great care, but which was also quite valuable, and that I had judged this construction of chairs, cupboards and knick-knacks on its wood content alone.

It had taken me a while to decide what to do next. The barricade was as much of a puzzle as it was an obstruction. If I removed the sofa, I’d have access to the linen cupboard, I could bash in the doors and side panel and dismantle the rest. Then I could cut through the ropes and the piano would go crashing down without hurting anyone. I reached forward, grabbed one of the sofa legs and tugged carefully. The sideboard under the sofa groaned. When I looked up at the piano, slow patches of light were gliding across the gleaming black lacquer and the sideboard began to move. The piano needed the sideboard to stay up, the sideboard needed the sofa to hold it down.

I walked downstairs to gather up the bits and pieces of wood, carried them into the kitchen, lit a fire in the Aga, and went outside.

It was snowing harder than ever. I had to grope my way to the gardener’s shed. There, tired and wet and cold, I rummaged through the tools. I chose a rake, a hoe and a shovel, cranked up the grindstone and placed the blade of the hoe against the grinding face. Minutes later it was sharp as a knife. I threw a hammer, a chisel, a pair of pincers, and a couple of screwdrivers into a burlap sack, tucked the tools I had set aside under my arm, and walked back.

Lucky for me, the shed was only about a hundred feet away from the kitchen door and I wasn’t so tired that I’d lost my sense of direction, but even at this short distance, anyone else would have been in serious trouble. The icy wind whipped up thick whorls of snow and drove the flakes in high banks against the back of the house. If it continued snowing like this, in a few hours’ time I’d no longer be able to get the doors open on this side. I’d have to climb out the window to dig a passageway through a bank. From what I could tell, the snow was about two feet deep, much deeper in places where the wind had blown drifts. That shovel would certainly come in handy.

Back inside, at the top of the stairs, I climbed up onto the sideboard and the sofa. I straightened up and, balancing precariously, raised the hoe. Night hadn’t fallen yet, but dusk hung heavy in the hall and I could barely see the ropes. It was a long time before I finally got the blade in the right place. If I cut through the left rope, the one farthest away from me, the right side of the piano would come down. The piano would land next to me on the stairs or, by the force of its own weight, tighten the rope around the left side and hang there, at least for a while. Then I could cut through the remaining rope and let the piano fall on the stairs. I pushed the hoe upward and began to make cutting movements. The blade was so sharp, it sliced through the rope in almost a single stroke. There was a loud bang, the creaking of wood, the groaning of the rope as it was pulled tighter. But the piano didn’t just hang there. It swung forcefully to the right, seemed to come to a standstill, and then, with a powerful heave, came swooping back. It was a terrifying sight, the great gleaming black instrument swinging back and forth up there from the ceiling. The rope groaned loudly and you could faintly hear the singing of the piano strings. Then the barricade began to move. The sideboard shifted. Wood moaned, slid past more wood and made the disagreeable sound of things being slowly pulled apart. I aimed my hoe at the other rope, which was quivering with the strain, and pressed down. The rope was hard as steel. I took a deep breath and leaned my weight against the handle. Suddenly, before I knew what was happening, a black beast came raging down from the heavens. I fell sideways, grabbed hold of the sofa, which began tipping, and let go of the hoe. The roar of breaking wood, a crash as if a complete symphony orchestra had been hurled into a cellar. The whole house was filled with sound, piano notes echoed from wall to wall, pieces of wood that had flown up came back down again.

It was a full minute before the rustle of silence had taken possession of the hall once more. Down below, the stone floor looked like the scene of a shipwreck on a South Sea island beach. The piano had exploded in a cloud of brushwood. Only the harp and lid had survived the fall. The rest lay strewn over the marble tiles in chunks the size of a hand or a forearm. I grabbed the rake, walked downstairs, and began clearing up the mess. On the way down I saw the marks of the piano’s descent. It had hit the banister, gouged out a piece of wood, then bounced off the stairs and shattered to bits. The staircase looked as if someone had rolled down from the first floor in a tank.

Downstairs I picked up the piano lid. I leaned it against the staircase, grabbed the axe, and split the wood into strips thin enough that I could kick them to pieces. When I was finished I divided up the wood between the library and the kitchen. In the library hearth I built a fire with crumpled newspaper, the remains of a splintered crate, and the thin strips provided by the bottoms of the drawers. The wind shrieked through the chimney and tugged at the front door, which was pounding wildly in its latch. I arranged a few of the larger chunks of piano on top of the little heap of paper and splinters, and lit a match. The draught in the chimney sucked up the burgeoning fire out of the newspaper, through the brittle wood, to the larger pieces.

The hearths in the library and hunting room, green catafalques of Italian marble, were deep enough to sit in. You could build a huge fire in those hearths, and I would have done so, if I hadn’t already known that Uncle Herman had made the same mistake when he spent a winter here in the fifties. The heat had burst the frozen flue and they’d had to send for a man from one of the neighbouring villages to repair the damage.

By the time I got back to the kitchen, it was fairly comfortable. The fire in the huge stove had driven out the worst of the cold. I picked up the basket I had found in the gardener’s shed, went down to the cellar and filled it with several bottles of wine, a box of crackers, a wedge of cheese and butter, a tin of powdered milk, jars of spices, a coffee pot and filter, salt and sugar, and a handful of candles. In the library, in front of the fire, I sat and ate. I could still hear the front door rattling in its latch. High above me, where the wind played the chimney like a flute, rose a low, plaintive moan. I imagined snow whirling around the house, curling along the windows and walls and settling in banks that grew higher by the hour. I put the remains of the piano lid on the fire and watched as the flames tasted the black wood. The lacquer began to wrinkle, here and there a tiny bluish flame danced on a splinter. Then the fire shot into one of the chunks, and then another, and another. It gave off a delicious warmth. I closed the heavy curtains, put the plate of crackers and cheese that I had prepared on my lap, and poured a glass of wine, an ice-cold Nebbiolo d’Alba. The glow of the flames lit the room. Candles stood on either side of the mantelpiece, others here and there on top of a cupboard. Slowly, I began to warm up. My joints thawed, the wooden feeling in my knees disappeared.

Nina had left at around five. It was now nearly seven. I had spent about three hours in the house. I was dead tired. The cold, lugging all that wood, the chopping and splitting, had worn me out. As I sat there by the fire, my eyes grew blurred and I was overcome by a metallic feeling of exhaustion. The flames illuminated the green marble scrolls on the mantelpiece. The hearth began to look like a gateway. Beyond that gateway I saw the soot-covered wall of the chimney, the paler spots where the fire couldn’t reach and the blackened patch in which the brickwork was no more than a tar-nished bulge. The fire murmured and sighed. I heard the banging of the front door in the hall as the wind yanked it back and forth. I closed my eyes and thought about the fairy tale I had been working on for the past few months. It was as if something toppled over inside my head.