In Babylon. Marcel Moring

her head back and closed her eyes.

      After a while I helped her out of the chair and sat down in her place. I pulled her onto my lap, laid the sleeping bag over us both, and clasped her tightly. She sat on my knee like a mannequin, cold and stiff. It wasn’t until she had warmed up and the whisky began to take effect that she relaxed.

      Half an hour passed before the colour returned to her cheeks. Her forehead was beaded with sweat, her teeth had stopped chattering. The scent of her body rose from the sleeping bag. Her wet hair began to dry, the dark damp streaks grew lighter. I wriggled myself out from under her, tucked her back into the sleeping bag, and busied myself with the fire. It was a fire to be proud of, large pieces of wood that burned evenly and cast a fierce heat. In the library, black shadows danced against the orangey-red glow from the hearth.

      ‘What’s in this?’ she asked, after I had brought fresh coffee and sat down in the chair next to her.

      ‘Coffee in mine, coffee and whisky in yours.’

      She smiled drowsily. Her cheeks were glowing now, her eyes were slightly moist, and they glittered. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’ll get drunk.’

      I picked up the plate next to my chair and fixed her some crackers and cheese. She wolfed them down with the gusto of someone who hasn’t eaten for a very long time.

      ‘I thought you were going to rape me,’ she said with her mouth full.

      I dug my cigarettes out of my jacket pocket and stuck one between my lips. ‘I always let my victims warm up first. I’m no necrophiliac.’

      ‘A cigarette. I must have a cigarette.’

      Her voice was unsteady, the alcohol had set her adrift from the anchor of control. She leaned towards me and stared into my face. I lit her a cigarette, avoiding the piercing black pupils that were trying to bore their way into my eyes. She flopped back in the cracked leather and blew out smoke.

      ‘Why did you come back?’

      At first she didn’t seem to understand my question. Then she raised her right hand and drew on her cigarette. She wrapped herself in a cloud of smoke and shook her head. A shiver ran through her. ‘I was nearly at the bottom of the Mountain. I drove into a snowbank.’

      ‘You walked back up? All the way to the top?’

      She looked at her watch. ‘Eight o’clock?’

      ‘Sounds about right.’

      ‘I drove away and then … what d’you call it … walked right back. It can’t … be that late.’

      ‘It took you almost two and a half hours to get back here.’

      She picked up the sleeping bag, which had slid onto the floor, and pulled it around her. ‘Less. First I tried to turn the car round. I revved the engine for at least half an hour, but I couldn’t get it out of the snow.’ She stared straight ahead. Her long hair glowed in the light of the flames. ‘First it moved, but then it got stuck. I sat in the car for a while, with the engine running. To keep warm. And then I got out and headed back. Kept on falling. The whole time. The wind was blowing so hard I had to hold on to the trees. I was scared that if I lost my way I’d freeze to death.’ She took her cigarette and breathed in the smoke as if it were pure oxygen. I could picture the trek over the snow-covered paths, the light slowly turning to dusk, the wall of trees on either side of the path and the icy whirl of the blizzard. If I had had to bet on the outcome of that journey, I would never have put my money on her.

      ‘And then I got here and practically beat down the door, but you didn’t open it!’

      ‘I was asleep.’

      She shook her head. ‘Could I have another cigarette?’

      I felt around in my jacket until I found them. ‘We’ll have to ration them. There are twenty left. That means we can smoke five a day.’

      ‘I don’t normally smoke, you know.’

      ‘Normally …’ I handed her a cigarette and lit it for her. We drank and stared into the fire.

      ‘Five. What do you mean, five? You think we’re going to be here for five days?’

      I nodded. ‘Maybe. Three, at least. I heard it on the radio this afternoon. This isn’t just another snowstorm, this is a national disaster. Entire villages are cut off from the civilized world, people are stranded in their cars, in weekend cottages and service stations. The snowploughs won’t get up the Mountain until last. If they ever get here at all. No one knows we’re here. This house has been vacant for five years, more than five years. Why should they even be looking, and why here, of all places?’

      ‘So …’

      ‘So we have to improvise. And ration. And plot. And …’

      She sighed.

      ‘As long as we’re here and it stays this cold, we’ll have to keep gathering wood and keep the fires burning.’ I stood up and threw another piece of Louis XV in the hearth. ‘This is going to be the opposite of a holiday.’

      ‘Why,’ said Nina, ‘do I get the feeling that you don’t mind?’

      I shrugged my shoulders, picked up the bottle, and filled our glasses. The fire licked at a gleaming, dark brown chair leg, almost as if it were teasing me about this compulsory iconoclasm, the burning of Uncle Herman’s collection of ‘family heirlooms’. A soft hiss escaped from the fire and the wood began to burn.

      ‘Let’s make a deal,’ I said, my eyes glued to the dancing flames. ‘You tell me why you took off this afternoon and I’ll read you my version of Uncle Herman’s life.’

      She was quiet.

      ‘Or we could always just not talk to each other for the next few days.’

      ‘You think I’m here for the fun of it?’

      ‘No, I don’t think you’re here for the fun of it. You’d much rather be somewhere else.’

      I tried to tear my eyes away from the hearth, but couldn’t. At the centre of the flames, a hollow formed. The room around me turned red. A tunnel of black bored through the tinted glow. I peered down the tube and saw, way off in the distance, something glimmering, a fragment, no more than a speck. The walls of the tunnel began moving past me. The red faded, the walls moved faster and faster until they were streaking past and as I stared into the half-light at the end of the tunnel something began to take shape. I squinted and leaned slightly forward. I felt my body moving sideways, as if part of me wanted to fall and part of me didn’t.

      When I finally looked up, Nina was staring into space. She sat as still as an alabaster statue. Total serenity, even her eyes had stopped gleaming. She blew out cigarette smoke with the clumsiness of a non-smoker.

      ‘Regret,’ Zeno had once said, ‘is the most destructive human emotion. You only feel regret when it’s too late. If something can be restored, there’s no question of regret. Remorse, perhaps, or guilt. But regret, what I mean by regret, is mourning for the irreversibility of things.’

      I picked up my mug. As I drank, staring into the black mirror of the coffee, the image of the tunnel returned. I put down the mug and took a deep breath. The smell of coffee mingled with my fear of what lay at the end of that tunnel. I reached for the cigarettes and pulled one out of the pack. My hand shook as I brought the tiny match flame up to light it. Nina was watching me. When the match went out, I threw it in the hearth and lit another. I looked at Nina. No, not at her, at what she was.

      ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘If we want to stay alive, it’s time to gather wood. I’ll go and pull down part of that barricade.’

      ‘Bar –’ She remembered the pile of furniture at the top of the stairs. ‘I want to get out of here,’ she said.

      I was already at the door. ‘You’ll have to wait until the storm clears, Nina, and the way it looks now that could take several days.’