The Seventh Candidate (44 page)

“Come back,” she cried. “We’ll go tomorrow.”
It was 3:56am: already tomorrow.

***

2

She caught up tardily with his excitement at
kilometer 58 when the car went past her rest area, as though into
some uncharted territory although the white fields and bare trees
didn’t change. She didn’t realize it until he told her that the car
was doing 120. It was the first time she’d ever gone above a safe
70. He pointed out that that at 120 she should shift up to
overdrive but that 120 was perhaps a bit fast for a snowy motorway.
They didn’t want to go back to the hospital. There was a much
better place waiting for them.

She didn’t like having to share her powers
of decision behind the wheel but slowed down a little anyhow. He
told her it was better not to brake, she should just lift her foot
from the accelerator. Even this didn’t prevent her from suddenly
yelling above the motor: “Adventure! Adventure!” She felt that her
face must be radiant again but didn’t dare check in the mirror for
fear of an accident. “Adventure!” she yelled again at the immediate
prospect of a shared weekend in the country instead of the usual
two days with books and television.

It was almost as if he’d guessed her hidden
restrictive meaning. He said: “It’s no adventure, we know exactly
where we’re going.” He said it in a sober voice as though ten
minutes before he hadn’t suddenly pulled out two ties from the
valise. He’d held them like dangling snakes in one hand while with
the other hand he cranked down the window. She saw what he was
going to do and tried to stop him. He’d need them, she said. It was
a mistake to have said that, but all he’d replied was, “On a farm?”
and flung them out and stuck his head out to see where they
went.

His idea had been to get to the mountains
that very morning before the predicted snow. But it was well past
noon when they left. He was much better, she decided. She’d
convinced him to take one of his pills the night before. Could it
have been that? His forehead was cool. He spoke calmly and
coherently even if the subject never varied. She found answers to
some of his questions. When he asked if there were tools for the
kitchen garden she replied that you couldn’t dig in January. The
ground was hard as iron. Wouldn’t the saw be rusted? he wanted to
know. They’d need a good saw for the dead wood behind the house for
fire. It might very well be rusted, she replied. It had been so
long ago.

He’d wanted to go before breakfast. But
there were things to do and to buy, she told him. The cat had to be
entrusted to the neighbor, money taken out of the bank, the debt
that had to be settled. His haircut took time too. He throned
facing a mirror, she seated behind him, supervising, occasionally
commanding the scissors. “You look like a new man,” she said when
he arose, hardly rejuvenated, shedding a shower of gray snips from
the gown. Then he needed new clothes. To convince him she said that
you didn’t wear a jacket and trousers in the country. He could pay
her back when things got better. In the clothing shop she cast
quick proud glances about her. She was like the other women with
their men in tow, clumsy and sheepish among the fitting rooms and
full-length mirrors. Like the other women she stood frowning with
pursed lips, giving orders to turn round, bend down, lift his
arms.

She steered him before a mirror and asked
him how he found himself. “I am a new man,” he pronounced finally
in the gravest of tones. It was almost true, she thought. In his
padded jacket, blue jeans and stout walking shoes plus the new
haircut he almost looked like a different person. The glasses were
the only thing that hadn’t changed. She’d try to convince him to
have another pair made up when they returned: clear lenses for when
the sun didn’t shine, to get through to him.

The mirror confirmed her radiant feeling and
she decided to dye her hair again but a more reasonable shade,
costume-jewelry as well but in moderation.

There were the necessary food purchases.
Maybe a restaurant once or twice she said but most of the meals
would have to be taken in the car. It started snowing a little as
she led him to a supermarket. She bought bread, tomatoes, olives,
cold cuts, sliced cheese and two bottles of white wine. With the
cold it would all keep in the car trunk for the two days as well as
in a fridge. While she bought the food he wandered over to the
hardware department and bought a log-saw, a hammer and two handfuls
of big nails. When she joined him he was standing still, deaf to
her like a statue, staring into the faces of the passing
customers.

She hooked her arm in his and steered him
outside, praising his purchases and telling him about her own. The
snow was coming down harder. Where are we going? he finally said.
The bus-stop, she replied. She’d promised a friend she’d pass by
that morning and pay back a debt. It wasn’t far. She told him the
address. It was a mistake. As they passed by the underground
entrance he stopped again, gathering snow, and said it would be
faster taking the underground, a direct line, just two stops. She
said, no, she suffered from … She tried to remember the word for
fear of crowds she’d seen in the book on psychiatry. “From
agrophobia,” she said. She hooked her arm in his and feeling his
resistance said that the underground reminded her of the vaulted
farmhouse cellar where they used to ripen goat cheese. “Goat
cheese?” he said, coming with her. All the way on the bus and back
she spoke to him about the eighty-three goats back then and he
outlined his plans for goats again, chickens too of course and
rabbits. She knew he was more or less himself again when, an hour
after she’d pronounced the word, he corrected her. It wasn’t
“agrophobia” as she’d said but “agorophobia,” “agora” from the
Greek, signifying “a place of assembly.” Her word, “Agrophobia,”
logically would mean “fear of agriculture.” That hardly could apply
to her, could it? “No,” she replied after a pause.

The blizzard had been centered in the region
of the capital. By kilometer 120 the fields held no more than
scattered patches of snow. They were bluish in the gathering
twilight. The headlights of oncoming cars switched on. He advised
her to switch hers on too. She’d never driven at night. He had to
show her where the controls were.

Fog started rising all about them. She
slowed down radically despite what he said about the dangers of
excessive slowness in fog. She gripped the steering wheel like a
life buoy, leaning forward over it for better vision. Her arm and
neck muscles ached. Over and over in the rear-mirror she could see
twin smears
of yellow
slowly focusing into headlights and then the frightening rumble and
loom
of the truck, the
ripping sound of its tires on the wet road, the jump of the
car
as it powered past,
then the spray of dirty water on the windscreen from the rear
wheels. Loud music announced her error again. Once more she’d
turned the radio on instead of the windscreen wipers.

The steep grades were the worst. He
expected her to pass the recent trucks. You’re doing 40. We’ll
never get there at this rate. He offered, for perhaps the tenth
time, to relieve her at the wheel. Shift down when you pass, he
said. In overdrive you’ll never make it
.

Her mood of exhilaration had collapsed.
Migraine was building up in her left temple. It was like
driving-lessons again except this one was going to last all day
instead of half an hour and the instructor had no professional
patience. Finally, she pulled up to the side of the road (without
signaling the maneuver, he pointed out).

“You drive,” she ordered. “I can’t take it
any more.” Yes, he agreed, the driving conditions were particularly
bad with the fog. He took over, at first calling her attention to
the various maneuvers involved in passing until she asked him to
please stop.

By kilometer 240 it was already 7:35pm and
she vetoed his idea of driving all night. They’d have to find a
room. They were hungry. She was anyhow. That didn’t convince him.
They could eat while he drove, he said. As for sleeping he wasn’t
tired at all. She could sleep in the rear while he drove. Finally
she said that at night she’d never be able to guide him to where he
wanted to go. It would be hard enough in the daytime, she added.
Reluctantly he agreed to a hotel.

The hotel turned out to be another problem.
It was strange, she thought. Whatever activity they contemplated,
major or minor, it turned into a problem. Her idea was to turn off
the awful motorway and explore the countryside for an inn. She
imagined a beamed ceiling, a log fire, candles on the table. He
pointed out that driving off the motorway at night was risky given
the weather. An inn would be very hard to find. Anyhow it would
cost a fortune. They’d be sure to find something cheap on the
motorway. They had better things to do with the money. Whose money?
she couldn’t help thinking and then felt guilty at the thought.

The hotel on the motorway was called Happy
Dreams. Illuminated signs announced it fifty kilometers in advance
and then at intervals of growing urgency. Finally a huge red neon
arrow came into sight. It stabbed downward at half-second
intervals.

The five-story futuristic building was set
back just fifty meters from the motorway. It was windowless. There
were no cars in the car park. They saw nobody inside. A machine
accepted banknotes, even made change. It delivered a perforated
plastic card marked 5. In a narrow first floor corridor where soft
music was playing, the card opened the door marked 5.

It was the tiniest of rooms. There was a
plastic table with two hinged seats. The table was attached to the
wall. There was no other furniture, not even a bed. In one corner
was a closet. In another corner, a cabin of frosted glass. The door
slid open on a square meter equipped with a toilet and a shower.
When you locked the door a mercury tube blinked on and the
ventilator started.

From one wall a small streamlined TV peered
at them from a flexible tube. It resembled an extraterrestrial’s
head. On another wall a window-size rectangle contained an autumnal
wood scene with deer. Diffused light behind the color transparency
gave it depth. You could almost believe you were looking out
through a real window on the trees and alert animals instead of at
a wall and beyond the wall the motorway. To one side of the table
were two buttons. Beneath one button was a diagram of a table.
Beneath the other button was a diagram of a bed.

She pressed the bed button. There was a
click and then a chime. The seats tucked away under the table. A
section of the wall slowly pivoted, taking with it the table. The
wall continued pivoting and presented a folded bed in the place of
the table. The bed hummed and slowly unfolded. It was small. It
occupied nearly half the surface of the room. She pressed the other
button. The bed slowly made way for the table again.

She placed the food and a bottle of white
wine on the table. It was to celebrate, she said. It turned out she
couldn’t open the bottle. She’d forgotten to buy a corkscrew. He
said it didn’t matter. They could drink tap water. It
did
matter, she said, how could you
celebrate on lukewarm chlorinated tap water? She tried picking at
the cork with a nail file for ten minutes. The headache was coming
back. Celebrate what? He started constructing a sandwich. Can’t you
wait a minute? she said.

Finally she went back to the car where he’d
left his new hammer. The price tag was still on it. When she came
back she told him that the car park was still empty except for
their vehicle. They were the only people in the hotel. There must
be at least thirty rooms and all of them were empty except this
one. Wasn’t that strange? Wasn’t it a little scary? He saw what
she’d done to the bottle. He warned her of the danger of perforated
intestines from tiny glass fragments in suspension. If she really
insisted on drinking it he advised filtering the wine through a
handkerchief.

I should have brought candles too, she said.
She switched off the light coming from the square of frosted glass
in the ceiling. The gloom made the forest and the deer more
insistent. He agreed that it was better that way.

They started eating in the pallor of the
forest scene, stared at by the deer. She spoke at great length
about the food and wine. It was her only independent contribution.
She couldn’t enlarge it beyond that. Her attempts to talk about
neutral subjects from their past came up against his total
rejection of that past. All that interested him was their future.
But as her conception of that future was radically different from
his – something she couldn’t say outright – all she had to talk
about were the incidents of the trip, largely unpleasant.

Finally, he did most of the talking. It was
the same subject. He had no other subject. Her role was reduced to
answering technical questions about the farm. But didn’t that role
confirm her acceptance of his fantastic vision of their future?

So after a while she dared ask him a
fundamental question. “Where’s the money going to come from?” On
the surface, that question conformed to the rules of the game he’d
implicitly laid down. It seemed to be strictly about the future, as
he saw it.

It would be hard at first, he allowed. He
didn’t want to conceal the fact. But there was a virtue to that.
Finally they’d be at grips with basic elemental things: cold,
hunger and thirst. They’d have great skies over them in
compensation. There’d be the initiation to bare survival in the
bleak month or two till spring.

She tried to object that spring didn’t come
till May in the mountains, but he went on. Survival, he repeated.
First fire. There was the dead wood standing in the forest behind
the farmhouse. He’d gather it. He had a new saw for that. Water
would come from the well, of course. The well was frozen in
January, she said. From the lake, then. The lake was frozen too,
even harder, she said almost in triumph. Then they’d melt the snow
for water, he said, disposing of the problem. As for food, he’d lay
snares for rabbits, she’d show him how. There were chestnuts and
berries and nettles for soup as she’d always said. It would be
their first meal. There are no nettles in winter, Edmond, she
objected in a small hopeless voice and it was far too late for
chestnuts and the birds had got the last berries months ago.