Each note was a bell hanging from its own brass hook, an infinity of them cleverly attached to the smooth and rounded edges of the sky. When streams froze, when branches on the trees were solemn and stiff, when every single thing was wrapped in the brutal hush of solitary survival, it was then her song would come to me from where she stood alone on the wooden bridge. No matter how wide I spread my arms, I could not hold the music of her voice. It echoed from the hills, and danced the icy stairways that led, at last, to the emptiness between the northern stars. Strange, what the senses do to each other—how a raw wind against the skin makes the heart uneasy, how in the crystalline black of long nights, memories become voices close beside you. The Russians love to write about it. They think they are the only ones who know the cold.
Chapter One
The muffled whiteness fell in thick flakes, a final quickening before winter settled into the cold, hard rut of death. Halfway up the slope, pine trees shifted under their new mantle. A few sighed. The rest braced without protest. In weather like this, tracks might last an hour; less if the wind picked up. If a man wanted to walk up the mountain and disappear, I told myself, this might be his best chance.
“Fix these lenses, will you, Inspector? They’ve iced up again. Where are the lens caps? Every damn time, same thing—the caps vanish.”
I brushed the snow from my coat and glanced back. Chief Inspector Pak was scrambling up the path, the earflaps on his hat bowed out, chin snaps dangling loose. No matter what, the man would not fasten those snaps. They irritated him, he said; they cut into his skin. Unfastened, they also irritated him. Gloves irritated him. Scarves irritated him. Winter was not a good time to be around Pak, not outside, anyway.
The binoculars hung from his neck by a cracked leather strap already stiff with cold. Twenty years old, maybe thirty, East German made, and not very good because the Germans never sold us anything they wanted for themselves. The focus wheel stuck, even worse in cold weather, so objects jerked into view and then out again. We had bought ourselves two choices: blurred or blurred beyond recognition. Cleaning the snow from the lenses would make no difference.
“Here.” As soon as he caught up, Pak thrust the binoculars at me. “Can’t see a damned thing.” He fiddled with the snaps on his chin strap. “I don’t like snaps, did you know that? Never have. Too damned difficult to undo in the cold, especially when you’re wearing these damned gloves. If you have to take off your gloves to work the snaps, what have you gained? Who invents these things? Does anybody think anymore? Does your scarf itch? Mine is driving me crazy. Do something with these lenses, would you?”
I felt around in my pockets for something to use. There was nothing but a few sandpaper scraps and two wood screws, one a little longer than the other. They both had round heads, with slots that didn’t fit any screwdriver I could ever locate. Not useful, I thought to myself. So why had they been in my pockets for years, transferred from one coat to another? The coats would each be discarded over time, but the contents of the pockets were impossible to throw away. “Simply because you don’t need something at the moment,” my grandfather would mutter when he found whatever I’d put in the trash pile, “doesn’t mean it’s worthless.” I could hear his voice. “Look ahead,” he’d say as he carefully examined the discarded object before handing it back to me. “Don’t forget—bamboo scraps and wood shavings. Even two thousand years ago some damned Chinese carpenter knew enough to save them. When the kingdom ran out of everything else, he used the bamboo scraps to make nails. Got him in good with the Emperor. Do you suppose you’re smarter than he was, do you imagine the present is all you’ll ever have?” I never knew what to say to that.
Maybe that was why so many things ended up in my pockets—a subconscious bid not to run afoul of my grandfather, but also a bid for an unknown future, a sort of materialistic optimism. Maybe even Marxist in a way, a pocket theory of labor. After all, somebody made those two useless screws, though they were metal,