Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else (6 page)

Who knows. Sasha never asks things like this. The world
around Sasha stands still. I have a Young Writers silver medal and I know full well that the world is a story, a finger pointing somewhere else: a direction.

“So let's make something up!”

“Why? I don't want to.”

“If I make something up, will you play it with me?” Sasha doesn't know. It's all the same to her. She stops tickling me and starts single-mindedly squashing ants with her fingernail.

The next day I'm in the garden at eight. Furiously I stomp outside the Zámskys' ground-floor window. Sasha is sleeping and doesn't want to get up, but I'm stomping like a real live elephant.

I have a story! Last night I couldn't fall asleep until two. A multitude of versions ran through my head. I'm as prolific as Adam in Paradise. I am amazed how easy it is to create new worlds. By the time sleep finally overtook me I had decided with solemn finality who Sasha and I really were.

From the window, Mr. Zámsky threatens me with his cane; my noise annoys him. Sasha yawns. She takes ages eating breakfast. Finally we're out behind the birch trees. Mumbling, I explain her role. I know everything, absolutely everything! I (he) am called Mount Everest. Sasha (she) is Kilimanjaro.

There are two famous mountain climbers. They bear the names of the mountains they have climbed. Never in their lives have they met, but the world considers them merciless rivals. There is but one unconquered mountain left in all the world. It is the highest of them all and it has sent hundreds of climbers to their deaths. In the language of its country — Himalayan, I suspect — it is called the
Mountain of Mountains.

Both decide to climb it. The whole world waits with baited breath to see who will be the first to raise the flag. The reporters are frantic, every transmitter is straining its ears. But shortly before they set out, a shock hits.

At the foot of the Mountain, Everest discovers the astounding truth. The whole world thinks this is a battle of man against man. Except Kilimanjaro is not a man.

Sasha: I only played this silly game for your sake. If you'd known I was a girl, you would never have competed against me.

Mount Everest (horrified): Kilimanjaro, I warn you — the Mountain of Mountains is the end of the earth! At the summit there is nothing but sheer frost.

The ascent begins. Step by step the way grows harder. The sky is like a white abyss and the world is so tense it forgets to breathe. The most frightening part of the Mountain draws near, the Wall of Death. No one, except Sasha and me, suspects the truth.

From that day on, the game takes an unexpected turn. At the end of the garden is a steep hill. The ground here is perpetually moist, covered with brushwood. It becomes the Wall of Death. We press through the bushes on our bellies; a mountain hurricane rips us asunder, thorns catch on our sweatpants. The Young Writer has turned a fin-de-siècle stroll in the park into a military exercise.

Most of all, our love is now different. There's no more kissing, thank God. Love is no longer a perpetual dance in a circle. It's a contest, it's agony. It's a finger pointing straight up — a direction! We crawl across the icy plain, exhausted. Embraces are out of the question, and anyway we are kept apart by layers of walrus skin. At these heights, a kiss without an oxygen mask spells death.

My parents are just thankful I'm playing and not lazing around the apartment looking bored. Two or three times they invite Sasha over for a snack, but in the house she turns glum again.

One evening my mother says Sasha is a dim bulb.

“She's got breasts big enough to be nursing, but every year she's got September makeup exams around her neck.”

It doesn't make any sense to me. Sasha doesn't seem at all dim. On the contrary, she's fabulous. For example, she figured out how to freeze all by herself. I have never seen anyone freeze, so I have nothing to compare it to — but she can stiffen up like an icicle. She says I have to massage her with snow. Everest diligently rubs her hands, calloused by her coat fasteners, but Kilimanjaro does not wake up.

“Kiss me!” she hisses suddenly, still unconscious, her eyelids squeezed shut.

How do I know that the fateful moment has come? Like the snake-prince, I can see in the dark. I know things I've never encountered. With a single tug I rip off my oxygen mask. Everest falls head over heels in love.

The elderberry thicket closes over us. The stillness rumbles like a cracked bell, and the distant roar of avalanches gradually falls silent. Face to face with the sheer frost of death, Everest comes to know the terror of love. Practically without touching her, in a panic, he kisses her frozen face. Sasha immediately opens her eyes, and — although she knows I don't like it — the cunning girl licks me all over.

One evening there's a commotion downstairs. Sasha and I secretly peer through the window. Miss Zámsky is chasing her brother around the kitchen; when he stops and cowers in horror against the wall, she swipes at him with a broom and, his hand shaking, he parries with his cane.

“You pig, shame on you!” she screams, swinging the broom round her head. “I'll throw you out of the house! Go back to Votice, you pig! Bet
they
don't want you either, you swine!”

She throws a brush at him. Mr. Zámsky bursts through the door and makes his getaway. Sasha's eyes are shining. “I know why my aunt's upset!” she whispers. She bites her fingers so hard she leaves red welts on them, and brushes against me, giggling with excitement.

By the end of the week Sasha starts to rebel. We're all scratched up, we've broken our nails, and under our sweats our knees are thoroughly bruised. We've already climbed a slippery path along the Wall of Death, where the brushwood straggles to the ground. Sasha grumbles that she's lost interest.

I understand. After all, we're always playing the same thing. What's more attractive in love than the starting line? Again and again I wind the hands back to zero. Sasha freezes, Everest stands over her. The circulation of his blood pauses, like a paternoster grinding to a halt. This helping of emotion is quite enough for me, but Sasha is still grousing. She wants to know when we're going to get to the top.

The worst thing is that I don't know myself. The Young Writer is stuck in a creative crisis. I dragged us out to the ends of the earth and for a week I've held us there like a customs official. Just short of the goal my imagination has run dry. What awaits love at the summit of the Mountain of Mountains?

I compress my feelings like gas in a cylinder. I cross out the kisses; we're fighting for every gasp of air. The Mountain belches frost. I camp just shy of the summit, lacking the courage for that final step.

“I'm not playing!” Sasha pouts. Spitefully she sticks a thorn through my sweats. I beg her — just one more time. We both roll down to the fence; relieved, I slip back under the starting line of
love and once again I'm crawling along on my belly like a newt.

On Sunday Sasha gets the flu. I can't see her and I'm desperate. I thrash around the apartment like a Christmas carp in a trough, I talk back, cut people off, and am so nasty that my mother ironically asks me:

“Do you love her so much you can't spend even one day apart?”