Jan Urban | Author

LOSING THE TIME ONCE SOUGHT

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Rain fell through the night, and Ivanovich slept like a child until an icy hand gripped his shoulder, and he sprang from the bed. He curled into the corner like an embryo. At five in the morning he stepped outside the cabin. There, someone nudged him again, and he fell against a stone, blacked out, and shut his eyes once more.

He woke as a giant orange globe rose above the summit, revealing the thin air atop the heights. Ivanovich coughed — a deep sickness clung to his throat from the frozen night. He went back inside. Though the cabin held its warmth, he pulled on his hat, scarf, and gloves, hoping to still the shivering. He drank tea and watched a beam of sunlight draw a strange golden chimera on the table, worn down like an old Verne novel. He sneezed hard, and to keep from spraying that morning wonder, he covered his mouth with the hat. Then tossed it onto the shelf.

He stepped outside to make sure no one was coming. He gazed up at the front face of the mountain, which, at several thousand metres, looked as if it held something against him. Its upper edge was sharp enough to carve the moon.

"We'd chisel it into all manner of forms," Ivanovich said with a raw voice to the autumn air, at a height where no one but him ever played a gramophone. The summit was wrinkled like the face of the oldest man, and now it trapped the shadow of its slightly less massive cousin.

“No one will come today,” Ivanovich told himself with satisfaction — but then he saw a figure in the middle of the pass.

Two, maybe three hours, and they’d reach my cabin, he thought.

He went back inside and turned on the radio. The news gave him no comfort, so he placed a record on the gramophone and played the French chanteuse loud.

Later he opened the windows. The air had warmed like a midday meal.

For a while he closed his eyes and imagined drifting over the whole valley on the waves of music, as if sprawled in a soft hammock.

Then he opened his eyes and saw something growing in the hat he’d sneezed into that morning. When he looked closer, he saw a plant was sprouting there.

Ivanovich held the hat in his hands like an offering to God, watching the plant grow before his eyes. He laughed at the thought that he had sneezed something living into the world.

He planted it outside, unafraid that the chill night air might harm it.

The visitor, willing to climb the calloused walls of the summit, was nearing the cabin. Ivanovich sat at the table, watching steam rise from the pot. He turned off the gramophone and held his breath. A moment later, he heard a hard knock.

“Are you the only living thing coming here? Be careful how you answer!” Ivanovich called out hoarsely.

“Hello.”

He recognized a woman’s voice. He rushed to the door and opened it. A young woman stood there, dressed for the cold, a backpack on her shoulders, clad in red, so bright it dimmed Ivanovich’s vision.

“This is a parched land,” the girl said, stepping inside. Ivanovich thought the scars on the distant summit smiled for a moment. He shut the door.

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

“It rained all night.”

They sat at the table like sleepwalkers.

“I came to paint. I’ll set up my canvas there, by the tree. Beautiful view. Two thousand metres. And yet your clock doesn't freeze.”

Ivanovich knew time couldn’t freeze but he had no idea what tree she was talking about.

He stepped outside.

The tree he had planted not long ago had grown wild into a branching young giant. It bore little green, and its limbs looked as if someone had sketched them nervously in charcoal but it stood firm, and could not be uprooted.

“I’ll have to think about this business of frozen time,” Ivanovich said to himself.

He walked to the tree and looked at it from the side the foolish painter had seen it. Then he went back inside.

“You’ll paint the sunrise,” he said firmly.

“Why?”

He gave no answer.

At night he thought about how old he’d become. Then he slept like a child, until a bony hand woke him. Ivanovich was ready to curl into the corner but he recognized the face of the young girl, telling him something about the light.

“What light?”

“Down there.”

They went outside. Ivanovich realised someone was lost in the valley. He could picture the figure wandering among the rocks, palms scraped raw on jagged stone, with no idea where they were going. A moment later, the light vanished.

“What was that?” the girl asked, her voice catching like she was short of breath.

“Another flying kite,” Ivanovich said.

When he returned to the room, he lit the greasy lamp. He set the gramophone turning, soft. The French chanteuse reminded him of a time, years ago, when he had hauled the machine up here, back when he could still climb peaks so high his head would sink into the clouds.

“You won’t be painting the sunrise either,” he said later, unsure if he’d spoken from a dream, or if he’d fallen asleep after saying it.

“Why?” the girl asked, frowning at the silhouette of the easel leaning against the wall.

“Because tomorrow we’re going down together.”

At sunrise they ate at the table, pocked like a pox-scarred man, and without a word began descending the dew-slick slope into the valley. Ivanovich left everything behind. He had no cap now; the tips of his ears had turned red. He left the gramophone playing loudly, so the French chanteuse could warm their morning thoughts. And though her voice rang out beautifully across the hills, Ivanovich did not stop — not even when it seemed the needle had begun to skip.