Thursday 12 November, 14.17
His name is Berger. Sam Berger.
That was all he knew. Except for the fact that he had to get out.
Get away.
He put his hand against the kitchen window. It was so cold it felt like his sweat was going to stick his fingertips to the glass. When he quickly pulled his hand away the print was so clear he wondered if it was mostly made up of skin.
The first thing he saw in the window was his own reflection. He raised his right hand and extended his index and middle fingers, making his hand look like a double-barrelled revolver.
And shot himself.
Outside the window everything was white. Utterly white.
The thick covering of snow lay flat. It was covering a field or perhaps a meadow, and seemed to stretch to infinity. Until he detected movement a long way off in the distance, at a point where his vision could only just reach. If he strained his eyes he could just see that the rectangular block moving along the edge of the field was a bus.
That was where he had to get to.
There was a road there. A road out. Away.
The door to his room had been left unlocked for the first time, and he had managed to slip out just at the right time, in the post-lunch lull, and had managed to make his way to the kitchen where – as far as he was aware – he had never been before.
The kitchen staff had got everything ready for afternoon coffee; there were Thermos flasks on a trolley next to a plate of cinnamon buns covered with cling film. A number of white coats were hanging up beside the trolley.
He looked out through the window again, from close up: the cold hit his face. He looked down at his body. Below what could under other circumstances be taken for jogging bottoms his feet were bare. He wriggled his toes quickly. It was as if they themselves realised he’d never reach the road without shoes.
But he had to get out. He had to get away. He had been here too long.
He had been away too long.
He went and looked in the pantry. In the far corner there was actually a pair of wellington boots, and he put them on even if they were at least three sizes too small. His toes were scrunched up, but he could walk, maybe even run in them.
When he emerged into the kitchen again he heard cries through the door leading to the main corridor. The door was closed, but it was unlikely to remain that way for long.
He grabbed all three of the white coats hanging next to the trolley and hurried over to the other door. The pain in his pinched toes kept him alert.
He pulled on the first white coat, then the second, but by the time he was about to pull the third on top of the other two the noises from beyond the kitchen door were getting far too close. He carefully pushed down the handle of the door and slipped into the side corridor. He closed the door behind him as gently as he could, as he heard the main kitchen door being thrown open. As he ran down the dark corridor he pulled on the third coat. The boots made his ordinarily fluid running style look like the dragging steps of a madman.
Ordinarily? There was no ‘ordinarily’. And certainly no running style. It was as if he had woken to a completely empty, completely white world.
A world without markers.
What appeared to be memories were no more than the phantom pains of his soul. Everything was gone, stripped away. It was as if his brain had consciously erased all traces of the past.
But he still remembered the door, he even remembered the little gap that let a billow of cold into the last dark metre of corridor.
He opened the door. The terrace was large, enormous even, like something better suited to a royal palace, but only a small square around the door had been cleared of snow. It was covered with cigarette butts.
He must have stood here smoking when he was still in the darkness. That must be it. How else would he have been able to find his way here?
But hadn’t he stopped smoking?
Beyond the cleared square the snow lay a metre thick on the terrace. It had been swept aside in layers, forming a steep flight of densely packed steps leading up to a plateau of snow. The edge of the terrace was six metres away, and he didn’t know how far it was down to the ground.
To the field that led to the road. To the road that led out of there.
Away.
He set off across the deep snow. The crust was so hard that even the disproportionately small boots didn’t break through. Not until the end, anyway, when the struggle to reach the railings turned into a struggle to move at all. He reached the railings at precisely the same moment that he heard noises behind him from the terrace door.
The drop to what he had taken to be a wide field was at least five metres. The snow looked deeper there than up on the terrace, although if it was just as hard he could easily break his legs. But there was no alternative.
Without looking back, he swung first one leg then the other over the railing. The three layers of coat flapped around him like bizarre white wings. And they flapped for a disconcertingly long time.
He hit the snow and sank into it. Yes, he sank, and the metre-thick snow absorbed the impact. He fell forward and somersaulted into the white powder. His mouth filled with it and he couldn’t breathe.
It went on slightly too long and he started to panic. An avalanche of panic. But he got to his feet, and this time his legs didn’t give way. He spat out snow, blew snow from his nose, vomited snow, but he managed to start running across the field. Towards the road. His progress was painfully slow. Like moving through quicksand.
When he had got about ten metres he glanced back over his shoulder. Two thickset men were standing by the terrace railings, staring down at him. Then they vanished.
He kept going. The powder was simultaneously compact and porous, easy to move through horizontally, hard to move through vertically. It was a battle against the elements. And, in spite of the three layers of medical coat, it was insanely cold.
It started to snow. Large flakes drifted down from the darkening sky. The sun had already set by the time he noticed another sound beyond his own ragged breathing. He stopped and turned his face to the sky, let snowflakes settle on it like a fragmented face mask, held his breath, listened.
Listened hard.
In the thin weak light that followed sunset he could make out movement in the distance. After a while he was able to make out a shape. A rectangular block was moving through the whiteness.
It was heading in his direction. He set off again, taking an overenthusiastic step and stumbling at once, before overcompensating and falling backwards instead, with his legs buried deep in the snow. He couldn’t get up, and dancing snowflakes settled on his eyes, making his eyes water.
He genuinely couldn’t get up.
He had to dig deep inside to find a burning kernel of will, a hidden reserve of energy. A core of compressed, violent force. He stood up with a roar, spraying snow around him as the coats flapped like wings. He was a fallen snow angel, resurrected.
He rushed on. The bus was getting closer, its sides completely covered by driven snow, only fragments of the windows visible. The driver put the headlights on full beam, and cones of light shot out from the rectangular shape. And the rumble of the diesel engine was getting louder and louder.
The unlikely sound of freedom.
He could see the road now, winding, almost sunken in the midst of the expanse of white. He ran, suddenly he could actually run, the snow was no longer putting up any resistance. He saw the bus weaving its way closer. There were another ten metres to the edge of the road. He fell to his knees, got up again. The bus was close now. He raised his arms and waved frantically. There was no way the driver could fail to see this winged white creature enveloped in an aura of powdery snow.
He ran on, still waving, reached the edge of the road, summoned the last of his strength to leap across the ditch. The bus was coming, for a moment he thought he caught the driver’s eye.
But it didn’t slow down.
The bus didn’t slow down.
He held his hand up to the snow-covered side of the bus, forming it into a claw, as if he might be able to stop the multi-ton vehicle by willpower alone. The bus roared past him without altering its speed at all. When it turned slightly he saw five clear but irregular lines in the snow on its side, made by his fingers and thumb.
He stared at his frozen right hand, his bleeding fingertips, but he felt nothing. Nothing at all. He slumped to his knees. He didn’t even have the strength left to shout out.
As it disappeared into the distance, the bus left an impenetrable cloud behind it; he was in the middle of a sudden snowstorm. Slowly it dissipated.
From the other side of the fog of snow a shape gradually appeared. Movement, apparently focused on him. Two beings emerged, two thickset men. One of them was still waving the bus on, as if time was out of joint.
The other man crossed the road, raised his fist and punched him right in the face. He was convinced he was already unconscious when the blow struck him.
The last thing he heard was the snow falling breathlessly through space.