The Lava in My Bones (43 page)

But it is not the Europe he visited before. Everywhere, the sky is full of bees. They hover on top of mailboxes, shoot across open fields, circle the heads of monuments, and spin in kaleidoscopes before the camera lenses of stunned tourists. The bees arrived on a wind from the West. Sam comes across hordes of bees lying dead in ditches or mounded in empty fields; their armoured bodies gleam, stingers like rusted rifles pointed skyward.

When Sam reaches the Portuguese-Spanish border, a strange frisson goes through him; it's one of the last borders he'll cross. He thinks of how he was once a science geek, then an awkward Romeo, a lunatic, a criminal, a beast, a sheik on a ship, a disaster survivor. Sue taught him to grow beyond the borders of himself.
He recalls his mother's transmogrifications on the ship as well as Franz's letter describing his multiple identities. We were so many people at once. What will Franz be like when Sam arrives? This man of his, yes, this
man
. Now Sam accepts his own desire. “I'm a gayrod,” he shouts marching through crowded plazas. “I'm in love with a man, and I want men. That's what I want. I want man, man, man!”

Spain fascinates Sam. Boys with betel-stained lips run chased by bulls down long, winding streets. Because he's dressed as a hospital orderly, Sam's often called upon to aid men lying gored in back alleyways. Women with riotously coloured flowers in their hair flamenco dance in sunlit squares, their torsos gliding as if on greased wheels. Pork flanks sizzle over crackling fires, girls throw tulips from balconies, matadors strut adjusting codpieces or flicking their Mickey Mouse ears. City centres are full of the
clackity-clack
of castanets; people wear them on their shoes, hands, armpits, and beneath their chins so that every syllable pronounced is accompanied by
clackity-clack.
It's a nervous sound, like heels trembling against marble floors or rocks skipping down mountainsides. Sam shouts to the same rhythm, “Man-man, I want my man-man.” For the first time in his journey Sam doesn't sense clocks ticking, time passing, and the world spinning. Walking through sun-baked tomato fields, he comes upon rivers that he has no urgent desire to cross. He rejoices in detours that increase the suspense leading up to the final meeting that hovers like a beautiful water drop about to fall. He lingers before windows displaying hazelnut candies like tiny chicks with ribbons on their heads. He is uncharacteristically
complacent. Franz is in Switzerland, his body as solid as a glacier wedged into the Matterhorn's stone flesh.

At night he listens to that distant fire roaring. During his time with Sonny and Cher, he believed it had been extinguished. How ridiculous—the fire is stone-ringed and eternal, and there are many ways to hear it. He scrutinizes the townspeople. That man buying a plum, can he hear it? That lady with parsley stuck in her teeth? Who else has felt the heat of fire on their feet and the coldness of snow on their foreheads? Sam is in love with everyone now.

He follows roads that head east, hitches car rides, jumps onto the roofs of fast-moving trains, rides abandoned bicycles, pogo-sticks, does cartwheels, crawls on all fours, or swims, his clothes tied in a knot on his head. Halfway across France he notices the countryside starting to buckle. He is nearing the Alps. He is nearing Switzerland. When Sam reaches the sign, “Geneva 50 km,” he kneels and bows his head reverently.

Suddenly one of the new freak heat waves hits Europe and the temperature tops forty-one degrees Celsius. Sam staggers along the road. At night the temperature finally drops and Sam has a wet dream that lasts until morning. He wakes exhausted in a ditch and has to eat a huge breakfast that includes plenty of almonds.

At the Swiss border, Sam sees a wooden hut beside the road. He creeps toward the building, which is empty but for a dog that barks once whenever a truck passes. Since the erosion of trade barriers celebrated by those businessmen on the ship that sank, no one mans the booths that once teetered on all borders. Sam
examines the road, the painted line separating Switzerland from the European Union. Stepping across this border is the mirror-image of jumping from the loading dock in the Toronto asylum. The yellow line is cracked in two places. A ladybug crawls along its centre.

Sam arrives in Zurich late in the evening. He'd almost expected cheering crowds waving signs, “Go, Sam go,” announcers screaming through bullhorns, cheerleaders shaking American-style pom-poms in bright bony hands. But the streets are empty. A sheet of newspaper blows by like a phantom; it smacks and is pinned against a telephone pole, its edges fluttering. From a back alley, a cat meows. Sam steps through crescent moons thrown by lamps, passes windows full of hanging plants. A woman in high heels clatters over to a Volvo, ducks her head and jumps in; the car whizzes off, leaving a cloud of blue smoke.

This city, long stewing in the broth of Sam's imagination and coloured the shades of ecstasy and nightmare, now seems strangely banal. Unbelievably, people lived here without knowing who he was. He approaches the
Haltestelle
of the tram that had taken him to the airport the very last time. He remembers sobbing, clutching the tram ticket in one hand and Franz's shirt-sleeve in the other, and he pities his younger self. If only he'd known he would return one day. That day is now. He gazes longingly down streets remembered only in dreams.

A jeweller's sign pulsates with turquoise light. The splash
of water in the Escher fountain sounds like applause. As the steel and stone monuments of civilization rise around him, Sam thinks of his appearance. Should he have gotten a haircut? Do his clothes need cleaning? Maybe he should rest up in a hotel overnight so he's at his best when he meets Franz. It's been over a year since they last saw each other, so what's one more day? No, he thinks, boarding the tram, the world does not stop spinning; he hasn't hesitated once on this journey and won't now.

He makes a wrong turn at Seestrasse and misses the trail to Franz's chalet. He's troubled that the map in his mind doesn't match the real Zurich. At the trailhead he dashes up the twisting path. The clearing is lit by the full moon, but Sam does not see chalet walls, windows, or a porch. Where the building once stood are four squat stone pillars and stacks of burnt wood, smashed glass, and piles of ash.

Sam cries out, puts his hands to his face, and sinks to his knees. Franz's disks and poles, which had filled his grounds, are also gone. Sam can't bear to behold this scene, clutches his own arms and, choking, hurries back down the trails and into town.

He sprints over to a policeman handing out parking violations, asks,
“Herr Wachtmeister,
what happened to that house on the hill?

“The Niederberg chalet? It burned down.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

The police officer shrugs. “Don't know.” He writes another ticket.

Sam rushes into a telephone booth and frantically searches the phonebook for F. Niederberger. Sam phones all five Franz
Niederberger's in Zurich, but none are the one he wants.

He checks into the hotel where he stayed before, buries himself under the covers and prays for sleep.

Only certain diamonds are durable enough to survive fire.

Sunlight on his pillow wakens Sam, and through the curtains he sees the city he remembers. Quaint trolleys full of smiling tourists clatter past, their bells ringing; men with flour-coated forearms carry trays of butter-scented pastry; women with shopping bags run in and out of boutiques as if playing hide-and-seek. Sam notices, in the distance, a white glacier twinkling on a mountainside. “Franz exists in this city,” he states confidently. “I only have to find him.”

Glancing down at himself he notices his giant penis has shrunk to its former size. Unconcerned, he studies the rows of people in identical trench coats on the street below. One of them has to be his lover. Yet the charred chalet is a scar in his mind.

Sam dresses and marches purposefully to the Odeon café where Franz used to drink a
Milchkaffee
every morning. Sam orders one and surveys the crowded room; if Franz isn't here, maybe one of his cronies is. He smiles at two men in tank tops. Did they know Franz Niederberger? “Never heard of him.” He asks a man in an Afro wig and then a tuxedoed guy carrying a guitar case. No one knows Franz. Sam is surprised. Perhaps Franz's circle of friends was tinier than he let on.

By noon he has drunk thirteen coffees, his limbs are jittering,
and he stutters when he speaks. The manager threatens to throw him out. “What are you asking everyone? For money? You don't look like a tramp.”

“I need information about Franz Niederberger. Do you know him?”

The manager shakes his head. Perhaps Franz was here but Sam doesn't recognize him. Does he have a new look or a startling hairstyle? Has he stopped going to the tanning salon?

He sees a man at the counter with a rooster's tuft of blond hair on the top of his head. “Darcy!” he shouts rushing at him. “Darcy! Wait!”

The man's nose is painted with stripes like a parrot's beak. “I'm not Darcy,” he blurts.

“Oh, sorry. Do you know Franz Niederberger?”

By one o'clock Sam has spoken to eighty-five people. The manager yells, “If you don't leave right now, I'll call the police and have you arrested for harassing customers.”

Sam struts defiantly out the door. He'll come back tomorrow in a disguise. His experience has shown him it's often easier to be someone other than yourself.

He goes to Franz's gym. “I'd like a membership,” he says to the desk clerk.

“No problem, sir. You get a complimentary trainer for the first week.”

What if his trainer were Franz?! Sam is disappointed when a slender blond man approaches him. Sam yanks at levers as metal lozenges clatter along poles. The trainer yells, “Concentrate on what you're doing and quit watching everybody. You're cruising
desperately, and it's pathetic. Most of the guys here are straight or in couples.”

“I'm looking for Franz Niederberger. Do you know him?”

They check the member registry. No Niederberger.

Sam eats dinner at the café where he'd encountered Heidi. He scans the waitresses and doesn't see her. If she were here, he could pour out his soul, and she'd tell him exactly what to do. Two Americans are chatting at the table behind.

“I think we can do the lake cruise after breakfast.”

Sam remembers how he'd expected something major to happen in his life when he first got to Zurich and it had. If this, the end of his journey, doesn't turn out the way he wants, does that mean that everything leading up to it has no value?

At midnight Sam chokes on cigarette smoke in Wu-Wu Disco. There is the same dry ice, pounding music, muscle shirts, and sailor's caps as last time. He snakes back and forth through the crowd, asking, “Do you know Franz Niederberger? Do you know Franz?”

At last the barman, a bare-chested peroxide-blond, nods. “Yes. But I haven't seen him in at least a year.”

“You know him? The man whose chalet burned down?”

“Oh right, that old place. Filled the suburbs with smoke for days.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Hadn't heard that.”

So Franz must be alive and well. Every muscle in Sam's body unclenches; he nearly tumbles to the floor. The lone woman behind the bar says, “The owner cleared out all the contents and
set it on fire. The police fined him big-time.”

If he was in trouble with the law, might Franz have left Switzerland? Where would he go? The world is enormous. How many countries are there? Sam becomes exhausted thinking about it. What if Franz had gone the opposite way, toward North America, searching for Sam? Did his letter suggest that he no longer feared crossing borders?