The Man with the Baltic Stare

When the mountain rumbled, it was usually on Thursdays around noon. Living alone, you pick up patterns pretty quickly. At first I thought it might be a passing train. The tracks were a distance away, but when I hiked to the top of my mountain, a couple of hundred meters above my house, I could see the rail line that went all the way to the Amnok River. There were rarely trains on Thursday, but the rumbling went on anyway.

I wasn’t supposed to see anyone without permission, but it didn’t take long for the farmers in a nearby village to notice the smoke from my cooking fire and come up to find out what was going on. There were four of them. They watched from a distance until I waved them over.

“Welcome,” I said.

They nodded.

“May I offer you something to drink? You must be thirsty after the climb.”

They shuffled their feet and talked among themselves.

“Perhaps you could clear up something for me,” I said. “The rumbling, the way the mountain shakes-do you know what it is?”

The tallest of the four looked at a group of big pine trees that stood in front of my house. “It’s the blasting,” he said slowly. “They are building dams, supposed to stop the flooding we get in the summer, and maybe give us some electricity to run the pumps. The army boys are doing it.” He pointed vaguely to the north. “On a clear day, you might spot it from up here when trucks and whatnot aren’t raising a lot of dust. Take good care of those trees.” He leaned back in order to see all the way to the top. “If you don’t, someone will chop them down, sure as I’m standing here.”

The other three looked anxious to go.

“It was good of you to come,” I said. “But you’ll have to leave. This mountain is badly off-limits.”

One of the four laughed. He was short, red-brown from the sun, a little better dressed than the others, and quicker in his gestures. “I’m the manager of the farm at the foot of this mountain, and that means-in case you didn’t know-this mountain is technically my responsibility. I have to make sure no one is breaking regulations.” He looked at me with an expression so serious that anyone would have believed he was a serious man. “I can’t at this point say that you are; I can’t say that you aren’t.”

The others began to walk back toward the road, as if they had heard the speech before. “Also, we all know that this mountain has been here a lot longer than any of us, longer than any dynasty, longer than any king.”

I nodded. He nodded. And the four of them went away.

That first spring, before planting season, the manager returned by himself. “You made it through the winter,” he said. His face was still red-brown from the sun.

“I did.”

“The others thought you might not. I said you would.”

“You were right. That’s why you’re in charge, I guess.”

“You could be low on food about now.”

“I’m doing fine.”

“That old man in the truck won’t be able to get up the road for a few more weeks. If it gets bad enough, come down to the farm. We have a little extra this year. I hear there will be more coming from over there.” He nodded toward the south. “Next week, we’re having our spring music show. You like music?”

“What’s not to like?”

“It’s an accordion group. Six of them, very spirited. We won the county competition last year.”

“Is that so? They must be good.”

Accordion music was a Russian plot, the old men in our village used to say after a few drinks. It was something the Russians left behind to drive us crazy when it dawned on them that we weren’t going to be like Eastern Europeans and lick their boots. When I was in the army, headquarters sent down squads of accordionists. It lowered morale alarmingly, though no one would admit it. Even the Ministry had its own accordion troupe that performed overseas every other year. They told me they needed someone to stand on the stage with his hat pushed back and a big grin on his face while the troupe played. The sound of even a single accordion set my teeth on edge. I told them if I had to smile during that much noise I’d murder someone.

During my first year on the mountain, in the spring after the snow had melted and when the road was passable again for a fancy car, my brother drove up to see me. My brother was now very prominent in the party. His name was listed high in the ranks at important occasions; he sat solemnly on the podium among other old men, gave speeches on holidays to schoolchildren. Despite all this, he must have known he had failed; he was not and would never be part of the inner group. If he had done something wrong, I couldn’t figure out what it was. He seemed the perfect halberd. For someone like my brother, it was worse than nettlesome to face this knowledge every day. It ate away at him and boiled up the anger that he had carried inside ever since we were young.

When his car stopped in the clearing next to the pine trees, he said something to his driver and they both laughed. Then my brother came into the house. I could see that he was shocked.

“This is where you live? Is this a joke?”

“It’s pleasant,” I said.

“I thought they had provided you a place to live. I know dogs with better shelters than this. It doesn’t even deserve to be called a shack.”

“It is not a shack. It’s sturdy. I built it myself.”

My brother ran his hands along the walls; he reached up and touched the ceiling, which was barely two meters from the ground. “You built this?” He pulled himself together. “This is a disgrace. Why didn’t someone tell me things were so bad? Why didn’t that fool of a doctor put it in one of his chatty reports? I can help get you out of here. It will mean moving a few files and changing a few orders.” He pursed his lips. “This isn’t the best time for that, but it can be done.”

I said that things were fine as they were and I planned to stay.

“Really?” The shock in his voice gave way to sarcasm. “I forgot; you must be in ecstasy, just you and these trees.”

“I have my reasons for being here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. They were planning to send you to a camp. The only reason you’re here is because I convinced them to put you on this hill instead. They assured me you’d have a house.”

“Am I supposed to be grateful? I don’t need your help. I never did. We agreed we were not brothers anymore, or have you forgotten?”

He wasn’t listening. “The longer you stay, the more they will be convinced that you deserve what you got. Maybe they’ll be right.”

“The longer I stay, the more I realize I don’t want to go back to that madness.”

This stopped the conversation.

“Never wise with your words,” my brother said finally. “Lucky for you, no one heard it but me.”

“Are we done?” I went to the door. “Because if we are, I’m sure you have things to do, memos to write, all of those things that the Center has to have or the world will grind to a halt.”

“As always,” he said, “you are your own worst enemy. Have it your way; stay up here until you rot.” He never came back.

2

After the first load of lumber was used up, I decided to test the limits and phone for more. It wasn’t clear who was on the other end of the line.

“Seasoned lumber,” I said. “Galvanized nails, otherwise they rust. And wood screws-try to get the ones with the flat heads. That way I can countersink them. Wait, I also need sandpaper. Two sheets of fine, one medium, and one coarse.”

“That’s it? Nothing else?” The voice on the other end sounded surprised. “Screws and sandpaper?”

“Can you get them?”

“Sure I can get them. I’m a magician. I wave my magic wand and everyone gets everything they want. Last week, a man called from another place-I can’t say where-and asked for fresh fruit. He said his gums were bleeding. I’m still looking for fruit. Screws will be no problem.”

About two months later, the old man in the old truck was back with a shipment of boards, a box of nails mixed with screws of various sizes and types, and three or four torn sheets of sandpaper.

“The guards at the bottom of the hill emptied the box and looked at every damn screw. Normally, they wave me through without a second glance. There must be something going on.”

“As long as it stays at the bottom of the hill,” I said, “I could give a fine fuck.”

“Yeah,” said the old man, “that’s what I thought.”

One of the few things I had brought with me, besides my grandfather’s tools and a few pieces of furniture he’d made, was a radio. Reception was poor, but I could hear something over the static the few nights a week I got electricity. At first there was only electricity a few hours a day and some days not at all, but by the third year the outages were only on Thursdays and usually only in the afternoons. At one point, I wondered if rumbling on Thursdays had anything to do with the power outages. Maybe every time they set off a charge, they blew over a power line by mistake. When I was in the army, things like that happened more than ever made it into the reports.

A doctor visited twice a year. He said they told him it was owed me because of my family’s loyal service, but I had a suspicion my brother had sent him up to spy on me. If he was a spy, he was melancholy and soft-spoken. The second year, he brought books that he thought I should read. He brought Tolstoy and Chekhov in Russian, which I read slowly and with some difficulty. The third year, he carried in his pocket a small book that must have been read a hundred times.

“What is this?” I asked as he handed it to me.

“Kafka,” he said. “Make sure it’s a clear, sunny day and sit outside when you read it. Don’t try to read it at night, and whatever you do, don’t read it when the wind is blowing.”

“Why not?”

“If I know you, you’ll want to devour it in huge chunks. Don’t. Sip it as if it were boiling-hot soup. If you’re not careful, you can hurt yourself with Kafka. It can make you very cynical.” He smiled.

3

The house had not been so difficult to build. It was a simple structure, basically a box with two windows in the front and one in the back, a front door, and a flat roof. The ceiling was low, but I didn’t have many tall visitors. A few times every winter, I had to go up on the roof and shovel off the snow, so eventually I built a simple ladder permanently up the side. Rough carpentry was less a problem than perfecting the skills it took to make wooden toys. I didn’t have all the right tools, but I had a lot of time. I made cars and trolleys and sometimes boats. I could make a trolley a week; a boat took longer. Sometimes, what started out as a trolley turned into a boat, usually an ocean liner. For some reason, it never happened the other way around. A trolley is relatively easy-a few dowels to make the windows, an open platform on either end, two long rectangles for the ceiling and the floor, and a couple of round pieces as the headlamps. Cars were more difficult. At first, the cars looked like the ones we used in the Ministry to pick up subjects for questioning, but I didn’t want to think about that, so I started making them with only two doors, room for two people in the front seat looking out at the scenery. If the doctor noticed the change in models, he didn’t say anything. He usually took four or five-whatever I had ready-when he left.

Living on the mountain, I trained myself to stand in one place and do nothing but watch the light move and the layers of the scene in front of me unfold. It was against all of my instincts, contrary to years of experience in the Ministry, to close down those nerve endings that had been put on permanent alert. I forced myself to become oblivious to distractions; I battled down the nervous habits of the hunted, the learned behavior of always shifting one’s gaze, ears twitching at every sound, ceaselessly trying to escape danger, to twist away from the doom that moved from front to back, right to left, at every moment.

It took me almost a year, after I was finally settled, to purge myself of the urge to be completely aware of my surroundings each second. In the quiet, it was easier to do, to let the world pass without the overpowering need to recognize the shadow of the hawk, the soft beat of the owl’s wings, the talons that were just above your neck. It was only when I learned to be so still and hear things without listening that I caught the pattern within the rumble of explosions-three in a row, several seconds apart. The explanation from the farmer about the dam building had stopped making sense one crystal clear morning when I went to the top of the mountain and saw-across the valley that lay behind me-a heavy truck coming out of a building built directly against a hill. Big construction vehicles don’t come out of buildings next to mountains unless the buildings are covering tunnel adits.

The old truck driver gave me a blank look when I asked him about the explosions. “I never hear them,” he said. “I don’t know about what I don’t hear. Maybe neither should you.”

When the doctor came up in September, I asked if he had an idea what the explosions could be.

“Blasting,” he said. “Dams, mines, tunnels-could be anything. This is a funny part of the country. I’m surprised they let you stay here.”

“Yes, very gracious of them. Anything special going on?”

“Always something going on. I’ve heard people say that Thursdays are a good day to stay off the roads around this mountain. But you don’t know it for sure, and neither do I.”

In addition to the books, the doctor also brought a few pieces of wood on his visits-mostly scrap and almost always pine. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that used pine is almost never fit to be something else, and even then not without so much coaxing that it is rarely worth the effort. My grandfather wouldn’t take scrap pine, and that was at a time when it was almost the only thing he could find. He had nothing against scrap wood as a rule, but he said he would rather do without than argue with a pine board that thought it already knew what it was meant to be. Some people in our village fashioned new furniture out of old boards. The old man considered this a form of prostitution. I told this to the doctor, who laughed and shook his head.

The last time the doctor showed up, he stood at attention and opened the back door of his car with considerable fanfare. He pulled out a long board.

“I don’t know what it is,” he said, “but I think it’s a virgin.”

It was hard to do much in winter. My fingers were too cold to hold the tools, and I didn’t want to run out of wood while the road was impassable, which it usually was from late December until March. Summers were often too wet, and even when it wasn’t raining, the wood swelled in the humidity and the joints in my fingers ached. Autumn was the best time to work. I started at noon and worked through the day until the sunlight began to fade.

Most mornings in autumn I went for walks along the ridge of the mountain. There was no one to stop me from going into the valley on the far side, but I went only once and decided I would not go again. The trees were bent in odd shapes, which made the wind moan like a man dying of a grievous wound.