Our Endless Numbered Days: A Novel (17 page)

Later that same afternoon, when we had eaten mushrooms stewed with ground elder, I persuaded my father to let me use his boots to go out on my own. The traps needed checking, I said, and I had set them on my own nearly every day, so a little bit of snow wasn’t going to worry me. I put on my anorak, two pairs of socks, my father’s boots, wadded with more socks in the toes, then tucked a couple of stove-warmed rocks into my mittens and went high-stepping through the snowdrifts. The clearing was trampled and dirty, but farther away from the cabin the snow was untouched, and I understood my father and I really were the last two people in the world.

Although I knew which branches caught the most squirrels and which holes yielded the most rabbits, I followed my usual route in order to check them all. It took me first down to the river, but no animal tracks showed in the soft meringues heaped over the bank. I trudged into the trees. They stirred their sleepy heads to see who was coming, then settled back. I had expected the ground under them to be clear of snow, but even here I had to wade through it. The wind had blown it in drifts against one side of each trunk, making the forest flash black and white. Deer and birds had been there before me, and I even saw tracks that might have been wolf, but I didn’t find any squirrels or rabbits—dead or
alive. Every trap was either covered in snow or empty. I imagined the animals tucked up asleep in their beds for the winter, and wondered what we would do if they didn’t come out again until spring. In my head, I counted the number of animals still hanging from our rafters, and worried about my father’s scribbled sums. Perhaps I could eat more slowly so we would have enough food to see us through.

Each empty trap made me think about how angry my father would be when I returned without any food. I heard him shouting and saw him throw a billycan across the room. I ducked but it clipped the side of my head, bouncing off and clattering on the floor. I went back to the traps that were buried in the snow and uncovered them in case there was a creature I had missed. The forest was more handsome than I had ever seen it, but all I could think about was returning empty-handed. Many of the snowdrifts came up to my knees, and my feet became wet and numb; I was cold and trembling, but still I walked. I hummed the last bars of
La Campanella
and played the notes within my mittens, but it didn’t take my mind off the panic that was building inside me.

When I neared the place where the wintereyes sprouted from the rocky soil, I remembered a noose I had tied to my favourite tree, higher up the mountain,
in the summer. It had never caught anything, but now I wondered whether the acorns that we had forgotten to gather because we were too busy with the piano might have attracted a squirrel into my trap. In desperation, I continued up through the trees.

The wintereye, crouched in the rocks, had been kept squat and crooked by the wind which raced up the mountain. Its roots clasped the stone with giant claws, and below the branches the snow was patchy, the flakes scattered by the wind. From a way off, I could see that the noose was not there—perhaps it had rotted or been nibbled by an animal. But as I drew closer, under the wintereye, I saw footprints. Feet, in man-sized boots, had shuffled around under the tree and walked off across the rocks. They had made the same kind of movements my father had when we played outside die Hütte, as if this person too had hopped around. I stepped into one footprint, from heel to toe—it was the same size as my father’s. For an illogical moment I wondered if he had been there before me, but we had only one pair of boots, and I was wearing them. A breeze came up through the trees, sprinkling snow, and when the wind reached the wintereye I stood beneath; the tree shuddered and in a whisper, I said, “Reuben!”

I ducked low against the trunk, scanning the rocky outcrops above me. There was no movement, no shadows
unaccounted for. I looked at the footprints I crouched amongst and wondered if I could have remembered incorrectly. Perhaps I had been there already to check the trap; maybe the prints were mine. In my head I re-ran the route I had taken—from the river up through the pines, zigzagging between them, out the other side to the wintereyes and here. I was sure I hadn’t made them. When my thumping heart had steadied, I hurried back to die Hütte, jumping and turning at every whump of falling snow. Each creak of my father’s boots through the drifts made me look around, suspicious that the man who had carved his name in die Hütte was following me.

I smelled the smoke from our stove before I saw the cabin, and I ran, bent over, across the open ground, as if a sniper might have been raising his gun to take aim. My father’s tracks in the clearing were already turning to slush, and the snowman we had made had shrunk as the day had warmed. In front of the door, lying on the snow, was a squirrel. A dead squirrel. I couldn’t see any blood on it. I looked at the roof and wondered if it had been up there and had lost its footing, falling conveniently onto our doorstep. But the snow on the edge of the shingles was dripping and it was impossible to tell. I glanced around. The feeling of being watched made me nervous, but the relief of returning with even a single
animal was enormous. I picked up the squirrel by the tail and went inside. My father, who was sharpening tools, glanced over his shoulder.

“I was starting to wonder if I should send out a search party, but there were no volunteers. Only one?” he said, looking at the squirrel. “They’re probably all keeping warm in their dreys, sensible creatures.”

Our room was cosy, safe. I stood by the stove, warming through, feeling the bite of blood flowing again through my veins. My father carried the squirrel outside to gut and skin it. And I wondered whether Reuben was watching him too.

15

Although I loved the snow, every morning I hoped it had melted, so my father’s mood would lighten, but each time I woke I could tell from the muffled sound that more snow had fallen. My father and I re-counted our stored food and he reworked his calculations, his writing becoming smaller, filling in all the gaps on the map, so that undersized numbers even floated down the river.

“One thousand calories a day,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Or eight hundred? There’s no fat on a squirrel. How many calories in a squirrel? Two hundred? Two hundred if we’re lucky. Four squirrels a day each, for how long?” He threw down the pen and put his head in his hands. “How can I work out how much food we need if we don’t know what the date is?”

I stopped humming, my fingers still, on the keys.

My father looked up at me, his face white and drawn. “It’s not enough,” he said. Until that winter I had always thought my father had a solution for everything, that he had all the answers, but I learned soon enough that I was wrong.

We began rationing the food we had stored. Every day, packed into my father’s boots, I trudged through the snow to check the traps, but many days I came back with my rucksack empty. I never lost the feeling of being watched, but I didn’t see any more footprints except ours. When I stayed indoors, my father wore the boots down to the river to fish, standing with the falling snow coating his head and shoulders, until he said he could no longer see to cast. I wasn’t sure which was worse: tramping through the cold and finding nothing, or sitting by the fire with all the food surrounding me and not being allowed to eat any of it.

Within a week or two, any remaining summer plumpness had gone. My father’s face became gaunt and his ribs showed through his skin when he lifted up his shirt to wash his armpits in front of the stove. All I thought about was food and music. If my father had the boots and I was indoors, I used
La Campanella
to measure the time from one meal to the next. I calculated
that playing the piece sixty times from start to finish would take me through from breakfast to lunch. I ate my food in morsels, sipping at our thin stews—a few scraps of meat floating in grey water—licking the spoon clean between each mouthful. We had smoked the squirrels without removing their bones, simply crushing them with the hammer, and so at mealtimes the room was full of the sound of crunching bones as we ate everything in front of us.

We were always tired, always cold and hungry; it became difficult to remember a time when it had ever been any different. I thought less often about Ute and our old life, but sometimes a particular memory would pop up out of nowhere to remind me.

“Is it Christmas yet?” I said one day when I was plaiting my clotted hair into the coils which helped to warm my ears; it no longer needed sticks to keep it in place.

“Christmas! I hadn’t even thought about it,” my father said, putting a log on the stove fire. “It might have been and gone already or it might be Christmas next week.”

“But how will we know?” I whined.

“How about we decide that Christmas is tomorrow?” He jumped up, at once animated by the idea.

“Really? Tomorrow? But that means I missed my birthday,” I said.

“But it also means that today is Christmas Eve,” he said, laughing. He grabbed my hands and spun me around, crashing against the table, tool chest, and bed. His excitement was infectious; I was amazed that it was so easy to name the days in any way we chose. My father sang:

       
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,

       
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!

“I haven’t got you a present,” I said, my head spinning.

He thought for a second, then clapped his hands. “Wait here and I’ll get us both one.” He made me face the wall while he got ready, saying, “It’ll be the best present you’ve ever had.”

When he had gone, I sat on the bed, chewing my nails, worrying about how my father was too happy and how long it would be until his happiness left. And then I thought about food. And because it was Christmas, I thought about Christmas food. The rich smell of roasting meat; the fug of vegetable steam in Ute’s kitchen; her smack on the back of my hand when I stole a piece of crisp, salty skin from the turkey, cooling on the blue and white serving plate which came out once a year; the gravy spooned over layers of white meat because it was too thick to pour; Brussels sprouts, boiled for so long I could squash
them in a burst of bitterness between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. At that moment I would have eaten a whole pan of overcooked Brussels sprouts without complaint. I shut my eyes and tried to ignore the growls in my stomach. I tasted the fried oiliness of roast potatoes and the sweet crunch of undercooked carrots. Tears came when I remembered home-made trifle: soggy sponge fingers spread with raspberry jam—picking the pips out of my teeth later—set in a red jelly which my tongue washed through my mouth, transforming it back into liquid. Next, a layer of cold custard, gloopy and best swallowed in one gulp before there was time to think too long about the texture. And finally, the multicoloured sprinkles—leaching their colour into the whisked cream, like something bad spilled onto fresh snow. My spoon reached right to the bottom and, with the noise of a boot being pulled from wet mud, brought out some strata of Ute’s trifle.

Half an hour later my father beat on the door of die Hütte.

“Surprise!” he called.

I opened it, and he stood there smiling, one arm around a tall fir tree, as if he were introducing me to a rather lanky girlfriend. Disappointment overwhelmed me.

“No, no, no!” I kicked at the door, so it swung toward him faster than I had intended and there was just time
to register the shock on his face before he was shut out. I backed myself against the far wall as he shoved the door inward, manhandling the tree into the room.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” He pushed the fir into the corner beside the stove, where it leaned sideways, embarrassed at overhearing our family Christmas argument and trying to act as if it wasn’t listening.

“I wanted a proper present, like normal children get.” Even while I said the words, I felt guilty.

“Oh, Punzel,” my father said, bending down to my height and holding my shoulders, “you knew there wouldn’t be any other presents.”

“Or food. I don’t want to eat stupid squirrel any more.” I reached up to bat one, but it was too high above my head. My father’s eyes narrowed.

“You ought to be grateful to be alive.” He stood up and backed away from me.

“It’s Christmas Eve. We should be eating Kartoffelsalat and Wiener!” I shouted. Tears were coming again.

“It’s always about you, isn’t it?”

“I want turkey and trifle.” I couldn’t stop. “I don’t want a stupid Christmas tree.”

The tree slid sideways and thumped against the floor as though it were trying to avoid being dragged into giving its opinion.

“This is all there is,” my father shouted, his veins standing out on his bony temples. “If you don’t like it you can leave.” He held the door open and a swirl of snow came in.

“I’d rather live in the forest than here with you.” I ran to the door. I was only dressed for inside—jumper, dungarees, my three pairs of socks—and the cold in the doorway took my breath away. I hesitated.

“Wait, Ute!” My father reached out and grabbed my wrist.

We stopped like that, both of us taking in what he had just said. We were frozen in a tableau, me half out, my father pulling me back in. He let go of me and I came inside and shut the door. He sat on the edge of the bed and gave himself a kind of hug, wrapping his arms and hands around his shoulders and over his head. I picked up the tree and wedged it into the corner, pushing the buckets in front so that it wouldn’t fall again.

“It’s a lovely tree, Papa,” I said, looking down and flicking off water droplets where the snow had melted. I was overcome by a wave of homesickness brought on by the smell of the pine in the room. Facing the corner, I let my silent tears fall because Ute was dead and because my father was sitting on our bed crying too, for something I didn’t understand.