He walks on. She follows. It’s his rodeo. “I won’t ask you why you’re considering suicide, because that’s none of my business. But tell me, what methods have you considered?”
“I haven’t figured out the logistics yet.”
He makes a dismissive gesture. “Logistics are trivial. What I mean is, when you consider suicide, what image comes to mind?”
“Well, for one, I’ve thought about jumping off a high place.”
“Yeah, you see, that’s suspect. Maybe your imagined fall is inspired by the capital-f Fall. You feel like a sinner.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Your theory’s too clever.”
“Clever means smart.”
“Unless it means too clever.”
“The disfigurement from a fall is horrific. And the pain might be indescribable. No one really knows how long consciousness continues after the body is wrecked. There are stories about guillotined people’s heads looking around in the basket for a number of seconds. Besides, you might land on someone and kill him. Or fall in view of a child and traumatize him.”
“Or her. Or them.”
“It’s self-punishing and antisocial. It says, ‘Look at me.’ None of these motivations are pure. Lila, come away from there!”
“My mother always said you had a thing about purity.”
“Did she also ever tell you that ad hominem remarks indicate the weakness of an argument? Lila!”
A good point, actually. She’s starting to both like and detest this man in equal measure. A funny feeling.
He stops abruptly and turns to gesture at the shore ice and the open water beyond. “Right there is the truest method of suicide there is. Hypothermia, followed by drowning. Those who’ve experienced it accidentally and survived report that they felt a comforting sleepiness, followed by a powerful euphoria. In the moment, they wanted to die. It’s how I’ll kill myself when the time comes. Just walk out my door one winter day.”
“When the time comes?”
“I have no intention of becoming decrepit.”
“Sure. If you’re otherwise content, though, the bitch is deciding when.”
“It won’t be for me.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s head back,” he says.
“Sure thing.” She really wants to add “boss,” but restrains herself.
Lila’s now far up the shore, so he does that wide-mouthed whistle with the tucked upper lip she’s always wished she could do. Lila bounds back and they turn around. There’s still a lot of light in the sky. At this high latitude it will get dark much more slowly than in New York.
“I did think about walking into the Pacific Ocean,” she says.
“Not the Atlantic?”
“I was in Seattle.”
“But you didn’t do it.”
“I decided to come see you first.”
“This visit seems like evidence of uncertainty. Which of course is an argument for holding off.”
“Maybe.”
“Look.” He sounds impatient. “The test is right in front of you. There it is.” He gestures again across the ice. “No logistics necessary, you could do it right now. The cold will relax you and your clothes will weigh you down. I won’t stop you.”
She looks across the ice.
“Having said that,” he goes on, “I’d suggest you wait until morning. The majority of suicides happen in the evening or during the night, because people unconsciously associate the end of day with the end of life, loss of light with loss of hope, and so on. It’s the same mistake that makes old people think the world around them—culture, values, common decency—is dying. It’s because they are dying. What’s it called in English? The pathetic fallacy, I think. It doesn’t help that poetry and novels and television and every other form of human narrative traffic in exactly this confusion. The radio says that tomorrow will be a beautiful day. First thing in the morning, with the sun rising into a blue sky, go down to the beach. If you keep going then, maybe you mean it.”
“Radio?”
“Hard to believe, I know, but I don’t have internet.”
“Not hard to believe at all. I was surprised you have a radio.”
He smiles. “You’re a witty one.”
They walk in silence for a minute. It’s getting to be that time in a cloudy evening when most of the light seems to be generated by the snow and the ice. Thomas veers off toward a stretch of sandy ground to pluck a stem of tall grass. He returns to her, displaying it. “Ammophila arenaria. Lila, it’s not for you. The genus name means ‘sand-lover.’ In Danish we call it marram. There’s not much of it on this island because it grows in sand dunes and the beaches here are mostly stony. Its beard looks like wheat, though of course the seeds are smaller. Look, can you see how the stalk curls around itself, almost forming a tube? That helps it retain moisture in windy conditions.”
It is true that all facts are interesting in themselves, but this one is only mildly so to Mette. Why is he telling her this?
“In North Jutland this grass helped anchor the sand dunes, which are extensive there. Farmers used to cut it for fodder and thatch, and with the loss of the root systems, the dunes started migrating. They buried whole villages, leaving only the marram-grass thatched roofs visible. Ecological disaster in the comic mode.”
This is more interesting, but still. They walk on. She can see the mill in the dusk not far ahead.
“I’ve been learning to identify every species of vegetation, insect, rodent, and bird on the island. I’ve lived here for eight years, and I figure the island is just small enough that I could accomplish it all before I die. The grasses are the hardest. Second are the beetles. This is like what Candide, after all his travels, called cultivating his garden.”
“Or what Dorothy meant after Oz, when she said, ‘There’s no place like home.’”
She is trying to poke fun at him, but he says, “Exactly.”
They leave the beach and walk
