‘Do you mind if I turn the heating off ?’ he said
‘No, of course not.’
I flicked my eyes towards him and noticed that his neck and face were red. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking but no words escaped my lips.
It has been raining so much that the lake has overflowed. The tunnel of the mineshaft has started filling with water.
The rain has washed away the ants and the maggots from the hare, and the mice have run for shelter. Along its hind legs there are tufts of rain-drenched fur, but mostly the skin has been stripped away. The rain falls onto its open wounds, it falls into the open space where its eye once was, into the open space where its heart once was. A part of the ribcage is visible, like a new moon.
The rain continues to fall into the red water of the lake, it pounds down upon the yellow stone, it slides down the rusty skeleton of the gallows frame and into its deep mineshaft. There, on the surface of that dark water, is the white shimmer of material – drenched linen – wrapped around something unknown. Only a tiny bit is visible, like a small, white mountain rising out of darkness, like the tip of a glowing iceberg.
In the guest house, the man and the woman lie side by side on the double bed: she is on her side, facing the window where the rain streams down; he is reading the news on his phone. Its light illuminates his face. He is young still.
The woman reaches for the brochure on the bedside table and flicks through it.
Let’s go to the red lake tomorrow, she says.
The red lake? he asks, distracted.
Yes, I told you about it. There was a copper mine there once. There is a red lake there now, as red as Mars, and people say it is very strange and beautiful and otherworldly. We can see the gallows frame too. What do you say?
Yes, the man says. Sounds wonderful.
24
Yiannis
S
ERAPHIM PICKED ME UP IN the early hours of Friday morning, while it was still pitch-black out. The streets glistened from the past few days of rain. I had all the gear ready and was waiting for him out front, as usual.
Without a hello: ‘Did you complete the deliveries?’
‘Yes,’ I said, getting into the passenger seat and clicking in my belt, after I had put all the stuff in the back of the van.
‘When?’
‘Last one yesterday afternoon.’
‘Good.’
The road ahead was dark, lit only by the moon. There was a fine layer of frost in the fields, luminous in the night. It reminded me of the unusually cold late October morning, not so long ago, when I had seen the mouflon in the woods, when I had rushed home to tell Nisha.
Eventually we turned onto a dirt track and the road became darker, shadowed by trees. It was so dark I felt like we might be heading off a cliff and into the sea, but the sea was miles away. The van kept rumbling on until we came to an abrupt stop in a clearing beneath a huge oak tree.
Seraphim got out without saying a word and opened the doors at the back of the van. I followed him and he handed me the shoulder bags holding the lime sticks, calling devices, three covered-up cages with sleeping birds, one large mist net, and finally a rifle.
‘A rifle?’ I said.
‘It’s hunting season. I thought we could hunt some game. We’re allowed on Wednesdays and Fridays in November.’
I took the rifle from him and he turned to me and smiled with his over-stretched grin. Since when did Seraphim care about hunting regulations? I knew that November was a good time to hunt hare, chukar partridge, black francolin, wood-pigeon and woodcocks, but there is a limit on the quotas that hunters are allowed to take – something like two hare and two partridges per hunter per hunting day. But I felt like a hypocrite thinking about the quotas when on the ground by my feet lay the rolled mist net – non-selective and indiscriminate of quotas.
We carried the gear into the woods. As we unrolled the mist net and secured it on poles between two junipers, I remembered walking with my grandfather through the forest, and how he had explained that in ancient times the island was almost completely covered with impenetrable forests.
‘Imagine what it would have been like back then!’ he’d said. ‘For wildlife to be undisturbed by human hands that take so much more than what they need.’
‘Where are you?’ Seraphim called out, sharply.
‘Right here.’
He shook his head, pushing the pole deeper into the earth. ‘You’re miles away. Focus, man. Imagine you have fourteen pairs of eyes. Be alert.’
I nodded and he signalled for me to lift the covers from the cages. I did so. The birds remained true to the darkness and kept their songs to themselves for the time being.