herself.
Almost at once it felt intrusive and somehow pointless to be looking at her like that, so I turned away. Still she did not pull up the quilt to cover herself but I turned off the light. Moments later I felt her move under the quilt again. She fidgeted a few times and finally lay still. I tried to relax too, lying back with my head on the large soft pillow. I was breathing hard but I tried to still myself, to be calm. The bolster lay between us.
It was almost impossible for me to sleep but I think Alvasund did fall asleep more or less straight away. Her breathing was steady, almost inaudible. She barely moved.
Of course what she had done had thrown me into a whirl of thoughts, desires, inhibitions, frustration. What was she up to? She appeared to like me, but somehow not enough. She let me look at her, seemed to invite it and even enjoy it, but I was not allowed near her, kept back in a kind of imaginary auditorium. I was dazzled and aroused by the brief glimpse I had had of her, the way she lay there close to me, relaxing her arms so her breasts were revealed, and parting her legs a little. She wanted me to see her, or at least would allow it.
She was not the first naked woman I had seen, nor was she the first I had been in bed with. I assumed she must know that, or could guess it. During my four years away from home, growing up rapidly, enjoying new freedoms, I had had girlfriends and lovers, and there was Enjie, one of the students, a young woman reading Economics in another department of the college. Enjie and I had shared an enthusiastic physical relationship for several months. Nor was Alvasund an object of long-held desire, because she had barely been in my thoughts since I left Goorn. Her return to my life had been completely unexpected. However, she was attractive to me, becoming more so, I was enjoying being with her, and —
There was a sheet of glass between us.
I knew about glass, but the glass I knew about was not for looking through, nor was it a barrier. On the contrary it was a medium of transient, non-fixed effect, used to control or enhance an electronic flow at some frequencies, while at others it functioned as an insulator or compressor. Her metaphor did not work for me.
I was awake for much of the night, sensing her physical closeness, knowing that were I to move just a short distance, or to throw an arm towards her across the bolster, or to allow one of my hands to slip beneath the damned thing, she would be there, close beside me, reachable, touchable.
But I did not. I listened to the constant wind, scouring across the roof just a short distance above me. I must eventually have slept because when I was next fully awake it was daylight. Alvasund was not in the bed beside me. She had already dressed and was downstairs doing something in the kitchen. I dressed quickly and went to join her. Neither of us said anything about what had happened, or not happened. I touched her hand to say hello, and she put an arm around my shoulder in a brief but affectionate hug.
I supposed that now, for the time being at least, it was my sort of glass between us, not just hers.
The wind was less bitter that morning, so we decided to walk up to the site of Yo’s tunnel. According to the leaflet Alvasund had found it was only a short distance from the town centre. It involved a steep climb along a fairly wide track with a frozen, crumbly surface, iced up in several places, loose with stones in others. A layer of snow covered much of the way.
We soon found the site of the tunnel, which had been created so that the opening could not be seen from below. As we climbed we suddenly came upon it, a short section of tunnel leading back from the rocky wall and then falling sharply downwards, curling away from the light. The tunnel was huge. A truck or other vehicle could have passed through it. Guard rails had been erected at knee and thigh height.
We stood and stared down into it. Alvasund seemed moved by the sight of it, but to be candid it left me unimpressed. It was a large hole in a mountainside.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Alvasund said eventually.
‘Yes, I do, I think.’
‘Jordenn Yo is really important to me,’ Alvasund said. ‘As an artist, as a kind of ideal, a personal role model. She stood for everything I want to be. She lived for her work, and in the end died for it. Almost every installation she completed was managed in the face of objections, bans, threats. She was thrown into prison several times. Of course, everyone prizes her work now, as if none of that happened. Any island where she worked shows it off as if it was their idea. But in reality she was always being harassed by the same sort of people then, the ones who run islands now. This is one of the tunnels she wasn’t able to finish. She later disowned it, said it had been ruined by the Hetta authorities. Can’t you see what she meant?’
‘What would it have been if she had finished it?’
‘Longer and deeper . . . it was supposed to reach the far side of the hill. What’s unique about this one is there’s a vertical spiral down there somewhere.’
We stared at the entrance for a while longer, then turned and skittered carefully down the slippery track, returning towards the town.
‘Is that it?’ I said. ‘Have we done what you came here to do?’
‘I don’t know. I’m waiting to hear about the job offer, if it still exists.’
‘Are they here in town, or do you have to make contact with them somehow?’
‘I said I don’t know.’
‘We could always come back and look at the hole again,’ I said. ‘Nothing else to do.’
The way back took us straight from the mountain track to a steep flight of stone steps, thence down to one of the town streets. We passed through the central area. I was hoping we might see a shop open or perhaps a cafe, somewhere we could buy a newspaper then sit and warm up for a while. As we approached the house a young man appeared. He was about to pass by without noticing us, but Alvasund reacted to him at once.
‘Marse!’ She let go my hand, raising her arm in a warm greeting. She walked quickly towards him.
He responded to the sound of his name, looking at her with a startled expression. He quickly averted his eyes and looked as if he were about to stride on past us, but when Alvasund said his name again he acted as if he had recognized her all along. He lifted a gloved hand in welcome. It was a brief gesture, almost a warding off.
He said, his voice muffled by a thick scarf he wore across his mouth, ‘Alvie . . . is that you?’
‘Of course it’s me, Marse. Why do you say that?’ She was still smiling with recognition, disregarding his scowling manner.
‘No one was supposed to be here until next week. Have you been to the house?’
‘You sent me the key. Or someone from the Authority did.’ She was not smiling now. ‘I arrived yesterday, a few days earlier than I expected. I managed to get someone to give me a lift.’
‘All right.’ He was backing away from us, seemingly anxious to leave. He had an evasive look — what we could see of his face was raw from the wind, and his hair straggled out from beneath his hood.
‘But what about the job?’ Alvasund said. ‘That’s what I came here for.’
‘I don’t know anything about that. I’ve quit the operational side. I just check the office here, part-time.’
‘So what do I do about the job?’
‘There’s an appointment form. Was it in the house?’
Alvasund glanced at me, querying. I shook my head.
‘No.’
‘Then someone will send it.’
‘I need to know if I can still get the job,’ Alvasund said.
‘I’ll hurry them along a bit, the people in Jethra. But — don’t get involved.’
‘Marse, it’s what we were trained to do. You know that. You kept urging me to apply. We were going to do it together.’
‘That was before.’
‘Before what?’
He took another step back. He was looking at neither of us. ‘I’ll contact the Authority,’ he said. He flashed a furtive look at me. ‘Have you applied too?’
‘No.’
The young man turned and walked quickly away, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his padded cagoule, his shoulders hunched, his chin buried in his scarf.
His last words were more or less the first acknowledgement by him that I was there. I was at Alvasund’s side, shivering in the bitter wind, a bystander, excluded. It made me realize how little I knew of Alvasund, or what her life had been like before we met again.
‘Shall we go to the house?’ she said.
