Fiction

By K. Bachmann

PEOPLE munched on sandwiches and talked in subdued voices. They crammed the room, but I knew only a few of them.

My father, a glass in hand, stood near a bay window and talked to Grandfather’s solicitor.

Where had Mother gone? The last few days had been hard for her. Calling the doctor and the reverend, informing relatives, arranging the obituary and funeral invitations. She’d handled everything with admirable calm. The breakdown had yet to come.

Supposedly, mourning has four stages. Did staying laboriously busy count as part of it?

The crowd shifted, I glimpsed her and relaxed. Two distant cousins were feeding her with cake and well-meant advice. Seeing me, she smiled faintly. She looked more tired than sad. I raised my glass in her direction.

“A remarkable woman,” a voice said. The reverend had materialised at my side.

“Yes,” I agreed. “That was a very moving service.”

“Thank you. It’s an occasion to make you wonder where your ship points, isn’t it?”

Amazed, I looked into his eyes. Could he sense a roamer at heart? “Exactly.”

“I’d be glad to celebrate a more joyful event with this family soon. I saw you with a lovely young lady a few weeks ago. Are you planning to settle down?”

Settle down? At age 32, I felt much too settled for my liking. Otherwise, I remained single. “That lady was only a friend.”

“Ah, you looked so intimate together.”

I’d had a few affairs, of course, but women in the appropriate age range made me uncomfortable by debating marriage too soon and too often. There had to be more than a wife and a family.

“I’m still waiting for the woman I want to grow old with,” I said, smiling. Truthfully, I shied away from losing my independence. Independence…?

Understanding, the reverend left me alone with my thoughts.

Yes, I felt settled. I’d worked a decade for the same insurance company. “Three years on a stone,” as people said in Japan, meaning that it took time to grow used to something and to like it. Could a whole nation be wrong?

“My sincere condolences.”

Turning, I faced a skinny, old man. “Thank you,” I answered, shaking his hand. “Did you know my grandfather well?”

“We served together in the war.”

I nodded.

The old man chuckled, “He was experienced, and I’d hardly left school. Mind you, he wasn’t what you’d call a good soldier. Discipline wasn’t his cup of tea. He could drive the Sergeant crazy. But he had courage and street smarts, the stuff that makes heroes.”

As the man drifted away, my mind did the same. I stared out a window. An icy wind chased heavy clouds. Raindrops played a drumroll on the panes. What a terrible day! Far too cold for May!

“More like November, really,” I heard a lady say.

If it was November, I’d ski soon. I adored flying down unblemished, white slopes with the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. Nothing else made me feel so close to heaven. Two weeks per year at it hardly satisfied my hunger.

Weary of the murmurs around me, I retreated to the library where a cosy fire burned. I put down my glass and went to warm my hands. Grandfather’s photo collection filled the mantelpiece and the adjacent wall-space, but I saw just two family pictures. One showed my parents’ wedding and one had Mother holding me on the day of my baptism.

Although my grandfather had married late in life, the marriage failed completely. Grandmother came from an upper-class background. In a fit of rebellion against a patriarch, she’d married a handsome adventurer. Yet the scandal she’d perhaps hoped for didn’t happen. Although the family members never loved my grandfather, they didn’t despise him either.

At first, the young couple found happiness. Grandmother had hoped that the responsibility for a growing family would make her husband settle down. But he never became the sort to show around at parties and receptions. Grudgingly, Grandmother had accepted that her husband couldn’t be tamed.

Disillusioned, they’d gone their own ways. Grandmother plunged into charity work, and Grandfather launched expeditions again.

The photos testified to a thrilling life. They showed Grandfather on a Second World War airfield, as a musher in the Arctic and panning for gold in Alaska.

“What does a ski-instructor earn?” I wondered. “Certainly less than I did at my nine-to-five job on the brink of promotion. And what if an instructor broke a leg and missed a season? Still, think of the sun on your face, the wind in your hair, the smell of fresh snow. Could it be worth the risk?”

A framed child’s drawing also hung on the wall. My mother had made it for my grandfather’s 50th birthday. It showed a man cooking on a fire in front of a tent, the hero of a five-year-old.

Although my grandfather had alienated most of the family, Mother always adored her audacious father. Amazingly, he never forgot her birthday and consistently came home to spend Christmas with his princess.

At age 90, Grandfather had caught pneumonia. Until that day, he routinely went swimming from April to October in a lake near his home. To him, old age arrived so suddenly that he couldn’t easily accept that his health started to fail.

Mother had suggested that Grandfather move in with her and Dad so she could look after him. That’s what she did for the last eight years.

I recalled my surprise that Grandfather had accepted. Eventually, I understood that relying on his daughter represented the natural course of life. Entering a retirement home would have meant defeat.

During those eight years, Grandfather drew strength from his reminiscences. Many boys dream of adventures like those of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. My grandfather had led such a life.

What about me? When I grew old, what would remain of my life? What stories could I tell if I had to go tomorrow?

In the pictures, Grandfather showed no weakness. He rode a jeep near a hazy Mount Kilimanjaro, camped in the jungle and trekked in the Himalayas.

“Did he go skiing?” I murmured, achingly aware of how little I knew about the man. Perhaps my pain amounted to more than sorrow for my grandfather. I supposed it’d been there for a while. My life lacked something, and the only person capable of helping me come to grips with that fact had departed.

A hand landed on my shoulder, and I gave a start. “So deep in thought?” Mother asked.

“It’s a pity that I never asked him to tell me about his life.” Could he have explained this emptiness inside me? Had he found a cure for it? I’d have trusted his advice.

“He was a wonderful narrator,” Mother said, nodding.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes. Ninety-eight’s a fair age. He lived a good life.”

“He should have shared more of it with you and Grandmother.”

“That wasn’t in his nature. Staying in the same place for too long made him itchy.”

“He wasn’t even home when Grandmother died.”

“True, he wasn’t a family man. Probably they shouldn’t have married. But he made plenty of friends. Look at how many people came today to pay their respects. In his own way, he was a good man.”

“I always wondered why he kept this.” I pointed to a silver frame in a place of honor on the mantelpiece. It held a newspaper clipping about the railway system’s desolate state. A photo depicted businessmen in suits and ties waiting on a platform. One man checked a timepiece while others placed phone calls or read papers. The masterful photographer had caught annoyed expressions on their faces.

Smiling wistfully, Mother replied. “This represented his motto. He vowed never to behave like the people on that platform. Why wait for trains that might never come?”

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