The Lava in My Bones (4 page)

He mournfully studied her labyrinth of hair; beads of water
nestled in its curves and glittered in the sunlight. Observing her put her hair up each day had not diminished the mystery. But whatever was there remained beyond him. Just before Christmas, he broke up with her.

He confronted her in the cafeteria. “I don't think we should continue dating. I'm applying to some good universities and need to spend my time studying.”

Esther was momentarily stunned. Then she screamed so loudly that everyone at the nearby tables heard her. “I'm the prettiest girl and I deigned to go out with
you!
” The labyrinth on her head trembled like a giant jelly salad. “I coulda gotten a guy a thousand fuckin' times better! I'll get back at you bunch of assholes.” He assumed this meant his family. Finally Esther told the whole school the underwear stain story and Sam became known as the boy whose mom loved his undies. The next spring, after graduation, Sam left Labrador and never returned.

All of this happened in the early days of the world, before glaciers started melting and ocean levels rising, during a time when the tropics were hot and the North and South Poles frigid. The world's climate was in perfect balance.

His second morning in Zurich, Sam noticed the sun perched on the lower lip of the valley. He was curious about what would happen today. He'd refrain from lecturing Franz on global warming. In the mirror, the skin on Sam's face looked smooth, unblemished. He fingered the gentle bump of his barely visible
cheekbone, the budgie-like beak of his nose. In his life, there was no largeness of gesture; when someone offered him pleasure, albeit peculiar and fleeting, he knew he should accept and be satisfied with it.

The tram made a high-pitched, humming sound as it slid along its steel rails, moving so smoothly through the cobbled streets that Sam felt he was floating on air. The metal-slat seat vibrated beneath him. The city was calm. Zurich always looked calm. Gleaming silver-trimmed cars glided soundlessly along streets, boys on shining bicycles seemed to drift in slow-motion up the city's small hills; an elderly woman wearing a hat decorated with a stuffed bird carefully sipped her coffee at an empty sidewalk café as a teenager with safety pins in his cheeks crouched down to comb his orange rooster-tuft before a shop window. At intersections everything came to a stop as groups of men in identical, square-shouldered suits and women carrying shopping bags draped with floating wisps of gauze walked in single file between parallel lines printed on uncracked pavement. One man's tie blew over his shoulder and he stopped walking to tuck it back in.

When the train passed Zurich's little lake, there was not a ripple on its surface, and all the small boats were docked. The whole city appeared to be waking up but, in truth, it was the height of day.

Little did Sam know that below the ground, continental plates were shifting, buckling their shoulders hard up against each other, and that steam was building up below the Earth's crust.

Finally, at the thirtieth tram stop, Franz stood leaning against
an oak tree next to a cluster of squat pines. He stepped forward, held Sam's fingers with moist hands. “Come,” he said marching between the trees. “Hope you're hungry.”

In the clearing, Sam discovered a picnic table covered with paper plates and piles of sliced cheeses and meats and paper cups and thermoses of drinks. “Why are you doing this?” Sam felt embarrassed. He wasn't used to people giving him things.

“I bring you a typical Swiss breakfast because I'm a typical Swiss guy.” For the first time, Sam saw Franz smile—so broadly, his eyes twinkled. He was wearing a checked T-shirt and suit jacket. A bit overdressed for a picnic? Noting Sam's gaze, he explained, “To prevent me from going wild in the forest.”

“You do that?”

“I ate a rock yesterday. You make me go crazy. I could get weirder today if I don't watch out.”

And then the men ate food. Sam swallowed things Franz's hands had recently touched: thick slices of salami that left grease dripping from their lips, acrid olives that singed tongues and palates, moisture-beaded grapes that exploded between teeth, and Franz's own concoction—“that I invented one day when it wouldn't stop raining and my fridge was too full”—yogurt mixed with cranberries, pomegranate seeds, muesli, and sliced apples.

Then Franz cocked one eyebrow. “That breakfast wasn't enough. I'm still hungry as a
Schwein.”

Sam feared what would happen next.

Franz bent over and scooped up a handful of rocks. Molasse pebbles. His forehead creased. “There's no choice.” He looked at Sam, took a deep breath, shoved them into his mouth, and
swallowed. He clenched his eyes shut, his brow knit. Then his whole face relaxed and he smiled a second time. He offered Sam three beige stones and said gently, “Your turn.”

Sam studied the rocks like pulled teeth in his palm. He hesitated, placed them on his tongue, tasted earth, dust, gravel. Everything in him said not to. His Adam's apple popped forward once, twice; the stones plummeted down his gullet, and there was a warm detonative trembling in the centre of his stomach. He had the sudden impulse to gobble up all the pebbles scattered about his feet.

Franz looked him in the eye and said again, “Your country, Sam. Tell me about your country.”

And again Sam was in an empty field staring down at a pockmarked rock, and although winds blew all around him he dared not lift his head.

“Who cares about my country?” He playfully picked a blade of grass and twirled it. “Tell me about yours.”

Franz leaned back, chuckled. The sun shone right above his head.
“Mein Land
?” he said raising both hands. “This is it.”

And so Sam followed him into the wooded park on the edge of the city and up along rock-strewn paths, over twisted tree roots that clutched the earth like gnarled fingers, past moss-mouthed caves where stalactites had been dripping for the past one thousand years, and when they reached the edge of a limestone pit, Franz took off his suit jacket.

The two men were sweating. Dark blotches marked the back of Franz's T-shirt, his armpits, the top of his chest. Overhead, leaves rustled; Sam watched light-flecks dance over Franz's
narrow nose that jutted like a ski-jump, his low forehead with bangs that, from here, seemed unevenly cut, his thick thighs and wide kneecaps. A woman's body would be more different from my own, Sam thought, hence more separate. Again, he felt bewildered.

Franz spoke to Sam in a hushed voice. “Thanks for coming, stone-man.”

Sam could only reply, “You're welcome.”

A shadow flickered on Franz's cheek. “I live in a small house up ahead, on the edge of this park. My stepfather was the mayor, and he bought it for me. I'm a spoiled
Arschloch
; most people only dream about having my life.” He ran one nail-bitten finger across his chin. “You see, I moved here seven years ago because I thought being near nature would help my art—and it did for a while. I painted every day! So many trees here, but
mein Gott,
your country has so many more. Eventually the trees began to bother me. I get afraid sometimes and will probably move back into the city soon,
glaube ich.
'Cause I forget who I think I am when I'm out here.” He looked at the sky. “I don't
verschmelze
with nature well, though I want to.
Das ist mein Problem.
So I was a daredevil to flirt with you and your country yesterday, your giant country of rock and trees. After meeting you, I actually painted a picture—the first time in years—of trees and light that shows how everything's connected.”

Sam listened in silence. He'd never heard someone talk so candidly. The words flowed gently into his ears.

“I'm surprised I like you.”

“You like me?”

“Yes. You're small like a
Vogel.
You're not my type, and I usually get who I want. I actually barely notice what you physically look like. Funny. Usually someone's body is all I see. You're sweet.
Du bist wirklich ein süsser Mann.”
A breeze moaned through the treetops. He moved toward Sam and quickly and unobtrusively kissed him on the lips—Franz's mouth was harder than a woman's, the lips thinner, dryer, and beneath, the solid bone-plate of jaw. Sam smelled sweat, aftershave, a cinnamon-soap scent. Franz stepped away and sat on a flat rock protruding from the ground.

Sam wondered if anyone saw the kiss, concluded this was irrelevant. He crouched on a stone outcropping.

Franz pulled out a knife and cut an apple. “Are you still hungry?” He handed Sam a slice. “We could've gotten to my place a lot faster, but the scenic route is better.” He looked straight at Sam and said, “Or maybe I'm delaying 'cause I'm scared.” He held Sam's gaze for a long time and Sam felt he was being offered something. “Sometimes I pretend I'm far from Zurich.” He pointed his knife-tip south. “But in that direction another town begins. Head in any
Richtung,
and you'll hit a border, the German, Italian, or Austrian. I'm surrounded by borders. Unlike yours, my country is so small, some days it seems I know everyone in it.” Franz fingered an apple slice. Again he stared directly at Sam. He said, “I feel trapped.”

How strange to talk about sentiments. What should Sam say? He'd mirror Franz. “I've been feeling peculiar lately too. It's one reason I came to Europe. I thought if I corrected my own life, the world would fix itself as well. Funny, eh?”

Then the conversation shifted, rose like a wave, and the two
men started talking about a thousand things: hiking boots, airplane tickets, the difficulty of tying sailor's knots, ice cream that's been refrozen, fire extinguishers, and the hard pit at the centre of avocadoes they both always wanted to eat but couldn't. Franz kept saying, “You're right,” while Sam responded, “Yes. Yes, yes.”

Winds swept softly through the underbrush. Light-flecks scuttled over Sam's thighs. A cool breeze brushed his eyelashes. He thought that everything was normal in his life and nothing was changing. He didn't know that on the far side of the world, earthquakes were happening in the country where he lived, granite mountains were imploding, and shale cliffs were falling into the sea.

He lifted the piece of apple Franz gave him, put it into his mouth.

Franz pointed at the dark cleft in the centre of the limestone pit. “Fall in that, and you'll keep falling and never stop.”

And for the first time Sam heard it, the sound that would follow him for the rest of his life: the fire burning at the Earth's centre. Molten lava separated to join swelling masses that broke apart to meld with other shifting masses …

Sam looked at Franz and Franz looked at Sam and their apples cracked between their teeth. A bird flew overhead. Somewhere, water trickled. The forest was dark and then light and then dark. Franz took Sam's hand in his—a hairy, rough-skinned hand—and led him the rest of the way down the twisting trail until they stood in the clearing where, years ago, Franz had built his sculpture garden. Studded about the square yard was artwork that would remain in Sam's mind for a lifetime: large stone circles
with lines through them and clay spheres penetrated by steel rods that went in one side and out the other; everything round was divided yet connected by lines that criss-crossed at multitudinous angles, and everything was chopped into segments that fit into a framework that was spherical. Plastic slatted wheels rotated on metal axles, wooden hoops adorned with streamers whirled round iron poles, as huge metallic disks spun in the wind, their styrene spokes clattering against out-thrusting metal prongs. Everything had an axis as well as an outer surface, and suddenly Sam realized that if you drew a line from Canada to the Earth's centre, it joined a similar line from Switzerland and the two countries were connected in an obvious, logical, not-even-mysterious way. All at once Sam saw himself in his own barren field studying the crystal-flecked surface of a rock, and as Franz's words pushed relentlessly against his eardrums, “Now tell me about your country, tell me,” he finally let the rock drop to the ground, lifted his head, and saw where he lived.

He beheld a vast plain and a forest and beyond, another forest and lakes and cliffs and more forests and trees and plains and rocks, and suddenly a shrieking wind from the Arctic Circle hurtled down across a vast distance to blast every cell in the surface, subsurface, and deepest layers of his body.