The Planet on the Table (10 page)

Freya looked at me with a mild frown, as if confronting a slightly dense and very stubborn child. “So what?”

After I had lectured her on her immorality a good deal more, and heard all of her patient agreement, I ran out of steam. “Well,” I muttered, “you may have destroyed all my faith in you, and damaged Mercury’s art heritage forever, but at least I’ll get a good story out of it.” This was some small comfort. “I believe I’ll call it ‘The Case of the Thirty-third Cathedral of Rouen.’ ”

“What’s this?” she exclaimed. “No, of course not!” And then she insisted that I keep everything she had told me that day a secret.

I couldn’t believe it. Bitterly I said, “You’re like those forgers. You want
somebody
to witness your cleverness, and I’m the one who is stuck with it.”

She immediately agreed, but went on to list all the reasons no one else could ever learn of the affair—how so many people would be hurt—including her, I added acerbically—how so many valuable collections would be ruined, how her plan to transform Arnold into a respectable honest Plutonian artist would collapse, and so on and so forth, for nearly an hour. Finally I gave up and conceded to her wishes, so that the upshot of it was, I promised not to write down a single word concerning this particular adventure of ours, and I promised furthermore to say nothing of the entire affair, and to keep it a complete secret, forever and ever.

But I don’t suppose it will do any harm to tell you.

—1983

hree men sit on a rock. The rock is wet granite, a bouldertop surrounded by snow that has melted just enough to reveal it. Snow extends away from the rock in every direction. To the east it drops to treeline, to the west it rises to a rock wall that points up and ends at sky. The boulder the three men are on is the only break in the snow from the treeline to rock wall. Snowshoe tracks lead to the rock, coming from the north on a traverse across the slope. The men sit sunning like marmots.

One man chews snow. He is short and broad-chested, with thick arms and legs. He adjusts blue nylon gaiters that cover his boots and lower legs. His thighs are bare, he wears gray gym shorts. He leans over to strap a boot into an orange plastic snowshoe.

The man sitting beside him says, “Brian. I thought we were going to eat lunch.” This second man is big, and he wears sunglasses that clip onto prescription wire-rims.

“Pe-ter,” Brian drawls. “We can’t eat here comfortably, there’s barely room to sit. As soon as we get around that shoulder”—he points south—”the traverse will be done and we’ll be at the pass.”

Peter takes in a deep breath, lets it out. “I need to rest.”

“O.K.,” Brian says, “do it. I’m just going to go around to the pass, I’m tired of sitting.” He picks up the other orange snowshoe, sticks his boot in the binding.

The third man, who is medium height and very thin, has been staring at the snow granules on his boot. Now he picks up a yellow snowshoe and kicks into it. Peter sees him do it, sighs, bends over to yank his aluminum-and-cord snowshoes out of the snow they are stuck in.

“Look at that hummingbird,” the third man says with pleasure and points.

He is pointing at blank snow. His two companions look where he is pointing, then glance at each other uncomfortably. Peter shakes his head, looks at his boots.

“I didn’t know there were hummingbirds in the Sierras,” the third man says. “What a beauty!” He looks at Brian uncertainly. “
Are
there hummingbirds in the Sierras?”

“Well,” Brian says, “actually, I think there are. But…“

“But not this time, Joe,” Peter finishes.

“Ah,” Joe says, and stares at the spot in the snow. “I could have sworn…“ Peter looks at Brian, his face squinched up in distress “Maybe the light breaking on that clump of snow,” Joe says, mystified. “Oh, well.”

Brian stands and hoists a compact blue pack onto his shoulders, and steps off the boulder onto the snow. He leans over to adjust a binding. “Let’s get going, Joe,” he says. “Don’t worry about it” And to Peter “This spring snow is great.”

“If you’re a goddamn polar bear,” Peter says.

Brian shakes his head, and his silvered sunglasses flash reflections of snow and Peter. “This is the best time to he up here. If you would ever come with us in January or February you’d know that”

“Summer!” Peter says as he picks up his long frame pack. “Summer’s what I like—catch the rays, see the flowers, walk around without these damn flippers on—” He swings his pock onto his back, steps back quickly (clatter of aluminum on granite) to keep his balance. He buckles his waistbelt awkwardly, looks at the sun. It is near midday. He wipes his forehead.

“You don’t even come up with us in the summer anymore,” Brian points out. “What has it been, four years?”

“Time,” Peter says. “I don’t have any time, and that’s a fact.”

“Just all your life,” Brian scoffs. Peter shakes off the remark with an irritated scowl, and steps onto the snow.

They turn to look at Joe, who is still inspecting the snow with a fierce squint.

“Hey, Joe!” Brian says.

Joe starts and looks up.

“Time to hike, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, just a second” Joe readies himself.

Three men snowshoeing.

Brian leads. He sinks about a foot into the snow with every step. Joe follows, placing his yellow snowshoes carefully in the prints of Brian’s, so that he sinks hardly at all. Peter pays no attention to prints, and his snowshoes crash into and across the holes. His snowshoes slide left, downhill, and he slips frequently.

The slope steepens. The three men sweat. Brian slips left one time too often and stops to remove his snowshoes. They can no longer see the rock wall above them, the slope is so steep. Brian ties his snowshoes to his pack, puts the pack back on. He puts a glove on his right hand and walks canted over so he can punch into the slope with his fist.

Joe and Peter stop where Brian stops, to make the same changes. Joe points ahead to Brian, who is now crossing a section of slope steeper than forty-five degrees.

“Strange three-legged hill animal,” says Joe, and laughs. “Snoweater.”

Peter looks in his pack for his glove. “Why don’t we go down into the trees and avoid this damn traverse?”

“The view isn’t as good.”

Peter sighs. Joe waits, scuffs snow,, looks at Peter curiously. Pete has put suntan oil on his face, and the sweat has poured from his forehead, so that his stubbled cheeks shine with reflected light.

He says, “Am I imagining this, or are we working really hard?”

“We’re working very hard,” Joe says. “Traverses are difficult.”

They watch Brian, who is near the middle of the steepest section. “You guys do this snow stuff for
fun
?” Peter says.

After a moment Joe starts. “I’m sorry,” he says, “What were we talking about?”

Peter shrugs, examines Joe closely. “You O.K.?” he asks, putting his gloved hand to Joe’s arm.

“Yeah, yeah. I just…
forgot
. Again”

“Everyone forgets sometimes.”

“I know, I know.” With a discouraged sigh Joe steps off into Brian’s prints. Peter follows.

From above they appear little dots, the only moving objects in a sea of white and black. Snow blazes white and prisms flash from sunglasses. They wipe their foreheads, stop now and then to catch their breath. Brian pulls ahead, Pete falls behind. Joe steps out the traverse with care, talking to himself in undertones. Their gloves get wet, there are ice bracelets around their wrists. Below them solitary trees at treeline wave in a breeze, but on the slope it is windless and hot.

*   *   *

The slope lessens, and they are past the shoulder. Brian pulls off his pack and gets out his groundpad, sits on it. He roots in the pack. After a while Joe joins him. “Whew!” Joe says. “That was a hard traverse.”

“Not really hard,” Brian replies. “Just boring.” He eats some M and M’s, waves a handful up at the ridge above. “I’m tired of traversing, though, that’s for sure. I’m going up to the ridge so I can walk down it to the pass.”

Joe looks at the wall of snow leading up to the ridge. “Yeah, well, I think Pete and I will continue around the corner here and go past Lake Doris to the pass. It’s almost level from here on.”

“True. I’m going to go up there anyway.”

“All right. We’ll see you in the pass in a while.”

Brian looks at Joe. “You’ll be all right?”

“Sure.”

Brian gets his pack on, turns and begins walking up the slope, bending forward to take big slow strides. Watching him, Joe says to himself, “Humped splayfoot pack beast, yes. House-backed creature. Giant snow snail. Yo ho for the mountains. Rum de dum. Rum de dum de dum.”

Peter appears around the shoulder, walking slowly and carelessly. He spreads his groundpad, sits beside Joe. After a time his breathing slows. “Where’s Brian?”

“He went up there.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

“I thought we might go around to the pass the way the trail goes.”

“Thank God.”

“We’ll get to go by Lake Doris.”

“The renowned Lake Doris,” Peter scoffs.

Joe waves a finger to scold. “It is nice, you know.”

*   *   *

Joe and Peter walk. Soon their breathing hits a regular rhythm. They cross a meadow tucked into the side of the range like a terrace. It is covered with suncones, small melt depressions in the snow, and the walking is uneven.

“My feet are freezing,” Pete says from several yards behind Joe.

Joe looks back to reply. “It’s a cooling system. Most of my blood is hot—so hot I can hold snow in my hand and my hand won’t get cold. But my feet are chilled. It cools the blood. I figure there’s a spot around my knees that’s perfect. My knees feel great. I live there and everything’s comfortable.”

“My knees hurt.”

“Hmm,” Joe says. “Now that is a problem.”

After a silence filled by the squeak of snow and the crick of boot against snowshoe, Pete says, “I don’t understand why I’m getting so tired, I’ve been playing full-court basketball all winter.’

“Mountains aren’t as flat as basketball courts.”

Joe’s pace is a bit faster than Pete’s, and slowly he pulls ahead. He looks left, to the tree-filled valley, but slips a few times and turns his gaze back to the snow in front of him. His breaths rasp in his throat. He wipes sweat from an eyebrow. He hums unmusically, then starts a breath-chant, muttering a word for each step:
animal
,
animal
,
animal
,
animal
,
animal
. He watches his snowshoes crush patterns onto the points and ridges of the pocked, glaring snow. White light blasts around the sides of his sunglasses. He stops to tighten a binding, looks up when he is done. There is a tree a few score yards ahead—be adjusts his course for it, and walks again.

After a while he reaches the tree. He looks at it; a gnarled old Sierra juniper, thick and not very tall. Around it hundreds of black pine needles are scattered, each sunk in its own tiny pocket in the snow. Joe opens his mouth several times, says “Lugwump?” He shakes his head, walks up to the tree, puts a hand on it. “I don’t know who you are?” He leans in, his nose is inches from bark. The bark peels away from the tree like papery sheets of filo dough. He puts his arms out, hugs the trunk. “Tr-eeeee,” he says. “Tr-eeeeeeee.”

He is still saying it when Peter, puffing hard, joins him. Joe steps around the tree, gestures at a drop beyond the tree, a small bowl notched high in the side of the range.

“That’s Lake Doris,” he says, and laughs.

Blankly Peter looks at the small circle of flat snow in the center of the howl. “Mostly a summer phenomenon.” Joe says. Peter purses his lips and nods. “But not the pass,” Joe adds, and points west.

West of the lake bowl the range—a row of black peaks emerging from the snow—drops a bit, in a deep, symmetrical U, an almost perfect semicircle, a glacier road filled with blue sky. Joe smiles. “That’s Rockbound Pass. There’s no way you could forget a sight like that. I think I see Brian up there. I’m going to go up and join him.”