James Church - Bamboo and blood

Each note was a bell hanging from its own brass hook, an infinity of them cleverly attached to the smooth and rounded edges of the sky. When streams froze, when branches on the trees were solemn and stiff, when every single thing was wrapped in the brutal hush of solitary survival, it was then her song would come to me from where she stood alone on the wooden bridge. No matter how wide I spread my arms, I could not hold the music of her voice. It echoed from the hills, and danced the icy stairways that led, at last, to the emptiness between the northern stars. Strange, what the senses do to each other-how a raw wind against the skin makes the heart uneasy, how in the crystalline black of long nights, memories become voices close beside you. The Russians love to write about it. They think they are the only ones who know the cold.

The muffled whiteness fell in thick flakes, a final quickening before winter settled into the cold, hard rut of death. Halfway up the slope, pine trees shifted under their new mantle. A few sighed. The rest braced without protest. In weather like this, tracks might last an hour; less if the wind picked up. If a man wanted to walk up the mountain and disappear, I told myself, this might be his best chance.

"Fix these lenses, will you, Inspector? They've iced up again. Where are the lens caps? Every damn time, same thing-the caps vanish."

I brushed the snow from my coat and glanced back. Chief Inspector Pak was scrambling up the path, the earflaps on his hat bowed out, chin snaps dangling loose. No matter what, the man would not fasten those snaps. They irritated him, he said; they cut into his skin. Unfastened, they also irritated him. Gloves irritated him. Scarves irritated him. Winter was not a good time to be around Pak, not outside, anyway.

The binoculars hung from his neck by a cracked leather strap already stiff with cold. Twenty years old, maybe thirty, East German made, and not very good because the Germans never sold us anything they wanted for themselves. The focus wheel stuck, even worse in cold weather, so objects jerked into view and then out again. We had bought ourselves two choices: blurred or blurred beyond recognition. Cleaning the snow from the lenses would make no difference.

"Here." As soon as he caught up, Pak thrust the binoculars at me. "Can't see a damned thing." He fiddled with the snaps on his chin strap. "I don't like snaps, did you know that? Never have. Too damned difficult to undo in the cold, especially when you're wearing these damned gloves. If you have to take off your gloves to work the snaps, what have you gained? Who invents these things? Does anybody think anymore? Does your scarf itch? Mine is driving me crazy. Do something with these lenses, would you?"

I felt around in my pockets for something to use. There was nothing but a few sandpaper scraps and two wood screws, one a little longer than the other. They both had round heads, with slots that didn't fit any screwdriver I could ever locate. Not useful, I thought to myself. So why had they been in my pockets for years, transferred from one coat to another? The coats would each be discarded over time, but the contents of the pockets were impossible to throw away. "Simply because you don't need something at the moment," my grandfather would mutter when he found whatever I'd put in the trash pile, "doesn't mean it's worthless." I could hear his voice. "Look ahead," he'd say as he carefully examined the discarded object before handing it back to me. "Don't forget-bamboo scraps and wood shavings. Even two thousand years ago some damned Chinese carpenter knew enough to save them. When the kingdom ran out of everything else, he used the bamboo scraps to make nails. Got him in good with the Emperor. Do you suppose you're smarter than he was, do you imagine the present is all you'll ever have?" I never knew what to say to that.

Maybe that was why so many things ended up in my pockets-a subconscious bid not to run afoul of my grandfather, but also a bid for an unknown future, a sort of materialistic optimism. Maybe even Marxist in a way, a pocket theory of labor. After all, somebody made those two useless screws, though they were metal, not bamboo.

"Inspector." Many animals hibernate in cold weather; I drift into philosophy. "Inspector!" Pak pointed impatiently at the binoculars I was holding. My thoughts drifted back to the lenses. With what was I supposed to clean them? There was nothing I could use in my pockets. Did I have dried grass in my boots? Was I expected to use my hair, like one of the heroines in a guerrilla band of old, scouting for signs of the Imperial Japanese Army in the icy forests of Manchuria? I stamped my feet to restore a little feeling. The real question was, what were we doing here, hours from anywhere, squinting up at a mountain of frozen rock and groaning trees, our ears burning as the temperature plummeted? Mine were burning. Pak's earflaps were loose, but at least they were down.

"Never. Mind." Pak was right beside me, yelling to be heard over the wind that suddenly swept down the slope. The first blast tore his words apart. A second blast hit just as he tried again. To keep my balance, I turned sideways, which may be why I could hear the wind and nothing else. I thought my right ear might be ripped off in the gale, but not before it froze solid. I imagined an ice cube with my ear inside skittering along the ground, bouncing against trees and rocks, until at last it came to rest at the foot of the mountain. It might be deemed a new listening post of substantial value. "Good work, Inspector," someone in the Ministry would say months hence, after all the paperwork on my commendation was complete, but I would only hear ice melting off the rocks, since my ear would not be in range of commendations.

"No, I'll do it. I'll do it," I said to Pak when the wind died down for a moment and I could feel that my ear was still attached. I brushed more snow off my coat and tried to use the sleeve to clear the lenses. "But we might as well quit. Really, being out here is not healthy." Then the wind started again, furious at something, howling, smashing any words that dared emerge. The last thing in the world we needed was to climb a mountain in this weather. We weren't dressed for it, not through lack of foresight on our part. The Ministry just didn't issue anything fit for climbing mountains in the middle of a blizzard. "The only thing we're going to find is frostbite," I said. The lenses were still frosted over, though at least now they were glistening.

Pak hunched his shoulders. "Relax, Inspector. Don't get in a sweat, or you'll get frostbite for sure." He reached for the binoculars. "You know, your ears don't look normal, especially the right one. Funny color for flesh." He cocked his head. "Are you alright? Pull down those flaps, why don't you?" He tugged down his own and pointed to his ears. "That's why they put them on these hats. Costs us extra, you know. Might as well use them, snaps or not."

To hell with earflaps, I thought and put my hands back in my pockets. To hell with standing in the cold. "This is ugly weather." I was shouting at the top of my lungs, but from the look on his face, I didn't think Pak could hear me. "We can't even see our boots in this wind!" It surprised me that I could still form words; my cheeks were numb, and the feeling had practically drained from my lips. "We'll be stuck in that miserable hut back there for days." I jerked my head in the direction of the peaks, made nearly invisible by the snow, unless the wind had become so strong it was actually blowing apart the light. "He'll freeze to death up there." I didn't point because I didn't want to take my hands from my pockets again. "We'll be lucky to find him next May." Pak gave me a blank stare. I shouted louder. "If he's down here in the next few minutes, we'll invite him to dine. I'll warm my ears in the soup." The wind shrieked and knocked me sideways a step.