The Fall of Light (46 page)

“How long do you think we will stay here?” Teige asked her.

“Until we find a house.”

He said nothing. His heart sank. She came to him and touched his shoulder.

“You can get a job soon. I asked today for you at the bank.”

“I can’t work at the bank.”

She turned her cheek as if it had been struck. “We’ll be late for dinner,” she said after a time.

They went down the carpeted stairs and entered the dining room, she upon his arm with her head erect and her pearls shining
like defiance. They ate roast beef and potatoes with gravy and were served a bottle of wine courtesy of a man at another table.
They said almost nothing. As if they had come into a country of extreme civility wherein all discourse was predicated upon
polite formulae, Elizabeth addressed him in dulcet tone over such matters as the passing of the salt and the pouring of the
wine. But nothing more. She sat and was the liveliest woman in the room. When the meal was ended, the man who had gifted the
wine came to their table and asked them if they were coming in to hear the piano played. He was French with a name Teige did
not catch.

“Oh, yes,” Elizabeth said, “thank you. We would love to.”

They sat with the man, whose hair was black and sleek and cuffs linked with studs bejewelled. He asked what plans they had
and Elizabeth told him they were as yet undecided but that Teige would probably take a job he had been offered at the bank.
The Frenchman looked at Teige and smiled. He said it was a good job. Men get rich in banks, he said. He bought them champagne
to drink a toast to their beginning. When Teige asked him what business he was in, he said he was in the business of seeing
opportunity. He accented the last word so such that Teige was unsure at first of his meaning. There is much opportunity in
this country, he said. More than in France. France is old and tired now. Elizabeth agreed.

“Very old and tired,” she said, and giggled and touched her fingers to her mouth where the champagne had left a fizz.

The Frenchman smiled.

“We should go to our room,” Teige said.

“It is early,” said the Frenchman.

“Yes, it is early,” Elizabeth scolded.

They stayed on. The piano music was played and ended and the umber light of that room dimmed further until all were but shadows
slumped here and there. At a moment without warning, Elizabeth’s head suddenly rolled and she swayed sideways and the Frenchman
caught and held her. He sat her upright once more and removed his arm. Teige lifted her to her feet and she staggered and
said small nonsense and the Frenchman offered to help but was declined. He stood to wish them good night. They went then,
tilting, wavering, going over and back in staggered progress and were like a thing of sails traversing into dangerous waters.

The Frenchman’s card arrived with their breakfast. Elizabeth could not eat. She moaned and put her head beneath
the pillows. The tray was placed outside the door. Teige rose and went out about
the city in the black suit. He went to the bank she had mentioned and entered and stood beneath the high-domed roof and watched
for some moments the business transacted there. His chest pounded. He watched those men, bald, bespectacled, as they bent
over papers, collars pinched beneath their chins. Light suffused through high windows and lit dust motes as they swirled and
fell. The air was arid. Across the marbled floor a guard came and asked him if he needed assistance. He turned and went outside
then and stood on the steps and tried to catch his breath. He had felt as if his life had been taken away, as if it were a
document of sorts he guarded in his chest and the instant he walked inside the bank it had been withdrawn to be kept by another.
He stood and watched the sky where clouds moved brisk in the wind. There were signs of the coming winter. He stood and did
nothing and considered, and then he crossed down the street to the railroad station and bought two tickets for the afternoon
train. Then he went back to the hotel and asked at the desk for their bill. When it came he saw the figure and did not know
how they could pay it. He went upstairs and woke Elizabeth.

“Come on, you have to wake now. We have to go.”

She shook her head with its tousled hair. It was as if she were being asked for a dance.

“Yes,” he said. “Elizabeth, how much money have you got?”

She opened her eyes to look at him. “What?”

“How much money have you got? We have to pay, or give them something if we can’t. We have to take a train this afternoon.”

The urgency of his tone roused her.

“What are you saying?”

“We can’t stay here.”

“Yes, we can.”

“No. We have to go.” He began to gather her things that were too many now for her bag.

“Stop it. Leave my things.” She sprang from the bed and was beside him, pulling back her dress. “How dare you,” she said.
She struck at him with her hand. It landed on his cheek and he stepped back and raised his two hands as if to still the angry
air.

“I cannot work at the bank, Elizabeth. I have to go into the country. I have to work on land with horses. This is what I can
do, you
know that. We can have a good house, for our child.” He gestured right-handed to her midriff.

“What?”

“Are you—”

She shouted, “No! No, no, stop!” She turned back to the bed and threw herself upon it and wept.

Teige stood and felt the life go out of him. He put down the bag. He took off his jacket and he sat beside her on the bed
and he stroked her hair. When at last she turned her wet face to him, she said: “Can we stay?”

And he answered her, “All right.”

So they did not take the train that afternoon, and Teige went down and told them at the desk of the hotel
that there had been a mistake and the man there smiled and was most gracious and said how delighted they all were. The first
snow flurries blew. The fire in the lobby was loaded high with logs and the scent of woodsmoke hung thickly. Elizabeth bought
a coat of fur. It was made, she told Teige, from wild bears that ran about in the rest of that country. Imagine. She told
him to get one for himself, but he declined. He sat in the hotel room and despaired. He went out to the outskirts of the city
where the land opened and the treed skyline told of the wilderness beyond. He found a blacksmith’s yard and stables and passed
some time of the day examining the horses there. He surprised the smith with knowledge of hooves and offered to help, and
showed such skill as belied his fine clothes. He went there several times thereafter. When he returned to the hotel he was
again in his black jacket, but his skin smelled of horses.

On many evenings the Frenchman joined them for dinner. Such was his frequency that Elizabeth and Teige were customarily seated
at a table for three and sat in attendance until he arrived. Evenings when
he did not come they sat muted over the noise of their knife and fork. When he did he came with many apologies and kissed
Elizabeth’s hand and ordered champagne. He made jokes about extravagant heiresses with triple chins. He told stories of the
glamour of New York and the fine houses he had stayed in and told too of his favoured place in that country that was called
New Orleans where the ladies wore jewelled garters sent from Paris.

When they came upstairs after one such night, Elizabeth told Teige he should ask the Frenchman for a job.

“You cannot sit around forever.”

He came to her and held her about the shoulders. “Elizabeth,” he said, “I want us to leave. You know that. I want us to go
west. There
is—

“No.”

She spun away. She went to the dressing room. He came there and opened the door, where she was taking down her dress. When
she saw him there she stopped.

“Once you wanted me to see you,” he said.

She held her hands across herself. “Please, Teige,” she said. “Go to sleep.”

She closed over the door.

The day following, he rose before her and went out across the frozen morning to visit the smith and the horses. One that had
recovered from lameness he took for a ride and went out at a gallop across thinly crisp and whitened grass. The plumes of
his breath and the horse’s breath were like signals of some release. The land they crossed was fresh and unspoiled and open
and the sky above clear and bluer than any he had seen. He took the horse down the steep of a valley and journeyed along this
until he came to a stream. He paused there and dismounted and let the horse drink and he squatted and scooped palmfuls of
icy water for himself. He doused his head. He shook the wide ring of drops and then shouted out. He shouted again and the
horse startled and went a few paces in the stream but intuited there was no call for fear and stood then looking sidelong.
Teige stood and opened his arms and shouted again, and the shout travelled up that valley and was heard by what birds and
beasts dwelled there and perhaps by these alone was comprehended.

Teige whistled and the horse came to him. He stroked its flank. He laid his forehead upon its shoulder. In fields at the north
of the valley some cattle stood. A hawk high in the blue travelled a wide arc. Teige climbed on the horse and rode on. He
rode all that day and afternoon. He rode along the edge of woods and stopped to smell the trees and to recall that smell from
a time long ago when he and the twins waited for Tomas with a swan. He rode across the fast fading light of that winter’s
day and stopped sometimes to let the horse graze and rest and to consider the world in which he found himself. Then he went
on. He went in an arc no different from the hawk’s, as if upon a long invisible tethering, and by the coming of the darkness
he was back at the smith’s. He returned the horse. The smith worked at a fire, hammering. He told Teige he could have the
horse for little money for the work he had done. Teige said he had worked for the horses and not for payment and the man said
he understood this and this was why he offered.

Teige told the smith he was unsure if he could take the horse but would return. He went back to the city on foot and his suit
was soiled and worn looking, and about him was the smell of the land. He came in the doorway of the hotel and from what signals
he could not say knew at once that something was awry. It was as though all were canted slightly, or a glass opaque had been
placed between him and what he saw. He went past the desk, where the clerk at that moment spun to study the keys. He went
up the stairs and into the room and saw at once that she was gone. Her clothes, her bag, his eyes looked for these, though
he did not move. There was only her scent. Upon the bed he saw the note she had written him.

Dear Teige,

I am gone. Please do not try and find me.

It will only embarrass both of us. We are finished. It was my fault.

I have paid the hotel bill.

I wish you every happiness,

Elizabeth.

He stood and held the note and looked it over again. Then he crumpled it and threw it across the room. He
went to the chest of drawers where his old clothes lay and he stripped off the black suit and put them on. With the suit bundled
under his arm he left that room then and went down the stairs quickly and caught the eye of the desk clerk, who looked askance
at him in that old apparel. He crossed the marbled lobby beneath the chandeliers and out to the street. There was snow trafficking
in the air. Those moving in that thoroughfare were thickly coated in furs, and other heavy materials, and at once Teige had
a glimpse of what the winter would be like there. He went out the way he had come. The snow fell but did not seem to land.
It crossed the air and vanished when it touched the ground. Yet still more fell, spiralling in windless descent out of the
evening dark. Teige turned his face to it. The stars were gone. His breath rose briefly and then passed into nothing. He went
on. He walked out the end of the streets into the utter dark. The road was softened beneath him. The snow falling was visible
only barely when it passed his eyes. He tramped into the night and went on out to the blacksmith’s. He found that man’s low
house by the roadside and went and knocked on the door.