Read Snowstorms in a Hot Climate Online
Authors: Sarah Dunant
I looked back at the house, with its elegant frontage, crimson in the last flush of sunset. It would have looked inviting to the curious visitor. Such an unusual building, after all. Wouldn’t they, perhaps, have been tempted to go inside? As it happened, the door wasn’t locked. We had expected to be away for only a few hours. If I had been them I might have sneaked a look.
I justified the second search by the fact that the lights needed to be put on anyway, and I could tidy up a little of the debris left by Elly’s sudden departure. I found an empty wine bottle by the cushion and a book on the telephone table. Surely Elly had left them there? Upstairs in the bedroom, clothes were strewn all around—Elly had had some trouble deciding what to wear. I folded them up and put them back into her suitcase. The place became normal again. No one had been there. Out on the verandah, the mattresses lay side by side, the bedclothes disheveled and unmade. I would not sleep outside tonight. I bent down to pull one of the mattresses indoors—the action saved my life.
I saw the footprint first. There it was, right in front of me on a piece of sheet trailing across the floor, the faint but distinct imprint of a large boot with a ridge of patterned grooves across the sole. It did not belong to either Elly or me. She had Cinderella feet, while mine, big boned and solid as I am, do not reach such circus proportions.
It was then that I saw it move: out of the corner of my eye, a stream of mercury slithering under the sheet. This time my reflexes worked faster than my brain. I was already up and moving when the rattle-hiss hit the air and a black shimmerhead broke cover, reared up, and lunged in the direction of flesh. It missed the bare skin of my legs by a breath—I could feel the rush of air it disturbed. It reared back to strike again, but I was out of range, across the no-man’s-land of the verandah into the bedroom, slamming the door behind me and registering as I did so the thud of snake head against wood. I felt its rage as it recoiled from the blow and imagined it slithering back on itself, gliding along the edge of the verandah and curling itself around the pole that connected the balcony with the deck below. Elly’s dream flashed through my mind, and I flung myself downstairs. The glass door was open an inch or two. I rammed it shut and locked it. In the back of my head, a pulse was pounding. I sat on the bottom step of the spiral staircase and took deep breaths. The thumping receded, and my brain started functioning again. A simple cause and effect equation. Town girl I may be, but it didn’t take Desmond Morris to recognize the death rattle from the room above. Someone had just tried to kill me. I congratulated myself on my continuing survival. Then I began to think about all the other snakes in the house.
That decided it. I suppose I could just have barricaded myself in and slugged it out with the fear and the darkness, but who was I to say they wouldn’t come back? For the first time I began to appreciate the power of Brian De Palma. Outside there
was twilight enough to make the journey to J.T.’s. If I left it any later, I would have to face the path at night. At J.T.’s there were animals. And a car—ill certainly, but technically still alive. There might even be J.T. by now, broad shouldered and calm, sitting at his table cutting up kohlrabi and studying his star map. The picture was absurd and comforting at the same time. J.T., up until now as much a contender for mistrust as anyone else, reborn as a symbol of sanctuary. I had no other choice.
Stuffing a few books into my bag and liberating the rest of a bottle of Scotch, I switched off every light in the place and, hawkeyed for snake movement, slid out of the door and crossed the deck. A gleam of light winked up at me from the bottom of the canyon. It could well have been just the headlight of a passing car; I didn’t stop to check. Striding out toward the brow of the hill, I did not look back.
I reached J.T.’s breathless, to be greeted by a cacophony of animal voices raised more in hunger than in welcome. The walk had restored a measure of sanity, and I even contemplated stopping to feed the chickens before continuing my flight. But the chicken pen was at the edge of the trees, where the air was already thickening into night. If the roles had been reversed, would they have fed me? Survival first, charity later. I headed for the car.
Inside I muttered a few incantations, slid the key into the ignition, and turned. The engine coughed politely and died. I tried again. So did the engine. Again it failed. I sat back and closed my eyes. This time it caught. I put my foot on the gas, and the engine roared into life. Now the real problem began. It was almost three years since a Ford transit van had written off my Deux Chevaux and given me the perfect excuse to stop driving. Three years for someone to whom mechanical skills do not come easily. They say that in emergencies people remember
things they thought they had forgotten. But who are “they,” and how can they be so sure?
I put down the clutch and fumbled for reverse. We backed out of the drive a good deal faster than anticipated, but at least we were moving. First gear took us onto the path, slower and with a judder that was not entirely my incompetence. The headlights, when I located them, were not strong. But they picked up the contours of the path sufficiently for me to follow it over the ridge toward the line of trees which marked the beginning of the path to the world outside.
We were halfway down the avenue, with the trees arching overhead cutting out the remainder of the light, when the engine began its death throes. Whoever had been up there watching over me when the snake’s head missed its target had evidently been called away on more urgent business. I was on my own now. I pumped the gas frantically. The car whimpered softly, then expired. I turned the key. Nothing. This time there would be no raising from the dead. Outside, the darkness rubbed itself up against the windows and the silence howled. What next? Leave the car and walk the rest of the road until I found a lift? On the entire drive in daylight we had passed only two cars. What chance was there at night? Or stay where I was until morning? Or till J.T. came home, taking the corner in memory of racing drivers, speeding straight into the tender frame of the VW? My stomach starting producing ice chips. I sent a message ordering it to stop, but it didn’t seem to get through.
It got me out of the car, though, pushing and shoving the tin lump off the path. It was useless. The lane was wide enough for only one vehicle; however hard I tried, I wouldn’t clear the path. In reverse we got ten, maybe fifteen yards back. Then the rear wheel hit a rut and wouldn’t budge. Back inside the car, sweating, I strapped myself into the passenger seat near to the horn
and turned on every light I could find. The path in front leapt into muddy yellow focus, catching a moth flitting in search of food. It wasn’t great, but it would have to do. I took more than a few mouthfuls of Scotch and, getting out a book, prepared to sit it out.
I have no idea when the lights finally died. Or when I fell asleep. I know only that the last time I looked at my watch it was 12:54
A.M
. and both myself and the lights seemed to be fading. I remember turning off the inside lamp to conserve energy and snapping myself back into life. I was feeling almost alert as I began my introductory lecture on monastic life in early Christian Britain. I couldn’t tell you how far I got, though I have a dim recollection of starting to slide around the time of the Vikings’ destruction of Lindisfarne.
The Ford truck’s destruction of the VW came twelve centuries later, at exactly 3:06
A.M
. A fact I know for certain because it was the moment my watch stopped on propelled contact with the dashboard. I was lucky. As J.T. put it later, if it hadn’t been for the skunk which nipped between his wheels just as he turned the corner by the mailboxes, he might have been traveling a good deal faster than the thirty miles an hour he was doing when his headlights picked up the sudden gleam of tin and glass in the middle of the path and he slammed on his brakes, bracing himself against impact.
The blow lifted me out of sleep and my seat at the same instant, picking me up to fling me backward and then forward. The seat belt and my rag-doll limbs saved me from real injury, but I registered a sharp pain as my chest and the belt welded themselves together temporarily. Out through the windscreen I saw the nose of the truck rutting itself into the bonnet of the VW and, beyond, a door flung open, with a large figure staggering out. I remember thinking that it wasn’t quite J.T., but I couldn’t work out what was different. The whole scene seemed
to be taking place somewhere else, somewhere where I was not. The illusion was destroyed when the driver’s door was wrenched open and the great bear’s head pushed in.
“Elly, are you all right?” it roared. It was then that I realized the deliberate mistake. The Bear did not have its glasses on.
“It’s not Elly. It’s me,” I shouted but couldn’t be sure if I had opened my mouth to let the sound out. “Marla,” I tried again. I pulled myself free from the seat belt and made an attempt to get out of the open door. But it wasn’t just my mouth that didn’t work. My legs seemed to be giving trouble too. I found myself sprawled on the ground with J.T. towering above me like some monstrous high-rise building. I could feel a violence in him, and the sense that once released it would not be controlled. He took my hand and began hauling me up from the ground. I thought for a moment he was going to hit me, and I flinched away from him.
“What the hell …” his voice growled in the night. It was then, with a grace and style entirely my own, that I vomited over his shoes.
“D
rink it.”
I could smell the vomit on my breath. I didn’t want the Scotch, but I needed its antiseptic qualities. I took a gulp and liked the way it flowed like hot lava down my throat, scalding and melting the ice chips still lodged somewhere in the bottom of my stomach. Maybe if I drank some more I might even feel normal.
“That’s enough.” He took the flask from my hands and, holding it up, poured a small river down his own throat. I wondered if he could taste my breath on the rim. I was sitting on a log by the side of the path, his jacket round my shoulders. He was crouched in front of me, squinting through the crazy
paving of one smashed lens, the other mercifully untouched. I was glad he was there.
“You all right now?”
I nodded.
“So, tell me.”
I did, making it as simple and as accurate as I could. And the sound of my own voice reassured me somewhat, which was all to the good, because when I reached the part about the telescope and the phone calls, thunder began to grow in him, a great rolling wave of it, which exploded over me as the snake sent me scuttling across the ridge for cover.
“Motherfuckers … stupid motherfuckers. Jesus, what kind of stunt—” He broke off, and the night shivered with his fury. He wrenched his attention back to me. “You sure about the snake? You sure it was a rattler?”
“I didn’t stop to check its fangs, if that’s what you mean. Yes, of course I’m sure.”
“God damn … I told them. Assholes.”
I suppose I might have got there faster, but I arrived in the end. “What do you mean? I don’t understand. Do you know these people?”
He stared at me as if he hadn’t heard a word I’d said.
“Tell me.” My voice, it now became obvious, was not entirely back within my control. We both noticed it rise too sharply.
“Yeah,” he growled. “I know them.”
“Who are they?”
“No one. Hired hands. Doing someone else’s dirty work.”
“Whose?”
“But she didn’t see any of it, right? The footprint, the snake, the phone calls … she doesn’t know about them?”
“I said, whose? Answer me, for Christ’s sake.”
“No, God damn it, you answer me first. She doesn’t know about that stuff?”
“No.” I took an angry gulp of air. “No, she doesn’t.”
“And she and Lenny won’t be back until tomorrow. They’re staying in the city. You certain of that?”
“Yes, I’m certain. She said she’d call, listen—”
“No, you listen. I’m going to have to leave you …”
“Like hell you are.” The words erupted so powerfully that even he had to pay attention. “What is this? What the fuck’s going on? Tell me. I have a right to know.”
“You will.” He was gentler now, concentrating on me hard. “But not now. Now I gotta do something, and you can’t come with me.”
“I’m not staying here.”
“No, I’ll take you back to the house. You’ll be safe there. They won’t come back.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“Because they’ve got eyes. They saw Elly leave. And it’s not you they’re interested in.”
I shook my head. “I’m still not going back.”
He brought his face close to mine and stared at me. I could smell the sweat on him. It was heavy and sweet and not unpleasant. I liked the bulk of him. It filled up the night and left me comforted. He nodded. “All right. You can come with me. But you’ll have to stay in town. There’s a place you can hang out. I’ll pick you up when I’m finished. But no questions now, right? You’re gonna have to wait for the story.”
“Where are you going?”
“I told you, you’re going to have to wait. Come on.”
He pulled me up from the log and, holding tight on to my arm, guided me toward the truck. His hand was hot and damp through the sleeve of my shirt, and his grip less than gentle. There had been more physical contact between us in the last few moments than in the whole of our strange, oblique relationship. What kinds of women did he love? Ones built in his own
image? Or was it always the pursuit of fantasy? I already knew the answer. “Elly, are you all right?” Every giant has its Achilles’ heel. On the other hand, right now I was more worried about his eyesight.
“What about your glasses?” I said as I clambered into the passenger seat. I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think he smiled. Behind the cracked lens he closed one eye, a kind of wink.
“We were both lucky tonight. I cracked the right one. The left works fine. I just wear the glass to keep the balance. Let’s go.”
Half an hour later I was sitting propped up at a dimly lit bar with padded leather stools and a large fish tank above the optics, where a sluggish octopus was clinging to the glass walls. J.T. had gone, and I had nothing to do but swallow black coffee and wait for his return. Outside it was getting on for dawn, but here it was perpetual night. In the half-light the place looked sleazy, but it was also sleepy and safe. J.T. was obviously a regular. Even the bartender was discreet, or maybe drunk enough to be lacking in curiosity. No doubt this kind of thing was routine for him, all in a night’s work. Whatever the conventions, no one bothered me. The pickups had all been had, and those left were too self-absorbed to care. At the far end of the bar, a man somewhere between forty and sixty sat hunched over a half-empty glass. He had looked up briefly when J.T. left but evidently found me less interesting than his liquor.