The Silent Land

‘I think I understand.’

He went to the bar, found a bottle of red wine and removed the cork. He brought the bottle and two glasses, filling one for each of them. ‘Taste it.’ He read the label. ‘It’s an Albert Bichot Gevrey-Chambertin les Corvees 2004 Burgundy, which means bugger-all to me, so I don’t know if it’s good or bad, if it costs an arm and a leg or if it’s a cheap one. You’re on your own. Tell me what you think.’

She stuck her nose in the glass first, like a connoisseur. Then she tasted, holding the wine on her tongue for a moment before letting it wash around her mouth. She thought about sugar and acidity and tannin, then about fruit and spice and earthiness. Then she swallowed it, thinking about whether she truly wanted another sip, or not.

He looked at her expectantly with his still-bloodshot eyes.

‘You want me to be honest? It doesn’t taste of anything. Neutral.’

‘Exactly. Like everything around here. But what if I remember for you how good red wine tastes. That it has the savour of, maybe, cherries, but a bit spicy. That it’s a bit woody, like oak, and that there are all kinds of savoury tensions on your tongue, sweet and acid, dry and fluid. And that the taste persists, light, but a pleasant aftertaste.’

‘I can taste all that now!’

‘And doesn’t it evoke the cardinal’s red robe and the Devil’s furnace?’

‘Now you’re talking bollocks. Although, now you come to mention it…’

‘Sin and redemption?’

‘Honey and fire?’

‘You’re going to have to pour me another glass. Does it still taste of nothing to you?’

‘No—it tastes of all the things you say, it really does. It really, really does. Don’t you think that’s odd?

‘Everything is odd here.’

‘No, I mean the way it only tastes of something after we’ve talked about it. And I had no idea you knew so much about wine.’

‘I don’t. I was making it up. At least I think I was. The point is that here, we can tell our own story. The story of what happens. We don’t have to let other people tell us the story and— Did you hear that?’

‘Hear what?’

Jake was on his feet and striding across to the window. ‘I swear I heard a dog bark.’

‘A dog?’

‘Yes, a dog. I heard it bark. Really clear, with an echo across the snow.’

She joined him at the window. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘I wasn’t imagining it.’

‘I’m not saying you did.’

‘I know you’re not saying I did. When I say I’m not imagining things, I’m talking to myself.’

‘I can’t see anything out there.’

‘There was a dog. Or at least there was a bark. I’m going out to look.’

She shrugged and let him go and she sat by the fire and waited. She took another sip of the cardinal’s red robe. The fire burned in the hearth without a crackle: clean, orange flames, like fingers reaching from under the curve of the log, cradling it, almost lovingly, as it burned. She turned from the fire, looked out, and saw Jake trudging through the snow.

After a while he came back. ‘Nothing,’ he said in a depressed voice.

‘Well.’

‘I could have sworn.’

‘Drink some more wine.’

They finished off the bottle of red wine. Now it tasted of many wonderful things.

‘It would be good,’ he said.

‘What would?’

‘If there was a dog.’

She held his hand in hers. ‘Do you think we’ll ever get over that? The sadness? The regret?’

He drained his glass and placed it on the table. ‘Let’s go and have some fun.’

They went up the drag lift onto a long easy run and skied down backwards together all the way. They took a steep red run and came down carving precision turns, she trying to keep in his tracks exactly, and then reversing the order. They found their way into the snowboarding park and rode a few jumps. Their skiing seemed to have improved disproportionately to the time they had spent on the skis. Zoe said skiers always remember themselves as performing better than they had in reality; Jake agreed but said he could never remember being this good. The skiing was by no means effortless, but their technical proficiency was a surprise to both of them.

The snowboard park had a control station with a sound system for broadcasting through speakers wired across the slopes. Jake found a Jimi Hendrix CD, cranked up the volume and they spent the rest of the afternoon tearing around the snowboard park, running the half-pipes and quarter-pipes, leaping the spines and tabletops. They’d both started out as snowboarders but had moved over to skis in favour of speed.

After a couple of hours the light started to fade. Jake wanted to leave the music running, but Zoe made him turn it off. She said she liked to hear the sound of the moon and the stars over the snow and it seemed so right at the time that he didn’t question it. They let their skis glide them back to their hotel.

As they arrived at the bottom of the slope, a dog barked, clearly in the cold. The bark seemed to hang in the icy air.

‘I heard it that time, Jake!’

‘Over there. Near the trees.’

‘There it is!’

At the foot of the ski slope was a thin clump of trees dividing two nursery runs. A medium-sized black dog sat back on its haunches, muzzle pointing up, its front paws between its hind legs. It barked again; and the bark ricocheted to them through the cold dusk air. The dog licked its lips and its red tongue flashed in the chiaroscuro of the declining light.

Jake whistled to the dog. ‘C’m here, c’m here.’

The dog rose, its tail wagging; though it seemed reluctant to approach. Jake pushed on his skis and glided nearer to the dog, whistling, calling it. The dog barked again.

Jake stopped and stepped out of his bindings. He took two steps towards the dog and then he stopped dead. ‘Oh my God,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ Zoe came up behind him. The dog was still wagging its tail, looking happy. ‘Come on, boy,’ Zoe called.

‘It isn’t a boy,’ he said. ‘It’s a bitch. It’s my dog. It’s Sadie.’

Sadie was the dog that Jake had grown up with. He’d had her from a pup and she had died when he was eighteen, some years before he’d met Zoe.

The dog, as if triggered by the name, flung herself across at Jake, yelping and wagging her tail. Almost delirious in her happiness at finding Jake, as she jumped up at him she left yellow spots of piss in the snow. Jake fell to his knees hugging the dog, letting her lick his face.

‘What’s going on?’ Zoe asked.

‘It’s my dog it’s my dog it’s my dog!’ Jake was laughing and crying simultaneously. ‘I haven’t seen her in years and years, and I missed her, and she’s back.’ With his knees deep in the snow and the dog licking the tears from his face, he looked up at Zoe, smiling. ‘She’s back.’

Zoe squatted down by the dog and her husband. ‘Jake… are you sure it’s your dog?’

‘Sadie, meet Zoe. Zoe, meet Sadie. I can’t believe this day! I can’t!’

The dog licked Zoe’s face, and then went back to Jake. Zoe wanted to share in the happiness, but she didn’t believe it. Though she was thrilled to see this new sign of life, she was not a dog lover and had no experience of canines.

‘Jake, how can you be certain it’s your dog?’

Jake laughed. ‘Can you hear that, Sadie? Can you hear that? Darling, if you have a dog, you know it when you see it again. You know it.’