The Cabin
by Raymond Cuijpers, translated by Cole Verhoeven
She sat in a window seat in the back, in just about the last row of an
otherwise empty coach that lumbered through the pre-dawn light. The road
curved and inclined slightly. She stared out at the boulders that shimmered
through the trees. She was tired. Her hand searched through her purse for
her telephone. A deer stole away into the forest. The driver fiddled with
the radio. Static. She reread the last text message from her husband who had
stayed behind with their son in the city. That trill in his voice he got
whenever they argued reverberated in the words on the tiny screen. The driver
glanced back at her. She put the telephone back into her bag and gazed out
into the forest. She wanted to sleep but could not. She hadn't slept all
night. The bus stopped. The driver got out. He put a bundle of post into a
green mailbox that stood on a path leading into the forest and then came back
to ask if she wanted to step out for a while. She nodded, left her seat and
then walked a ways into the woods. She crouched down behind a bush to pee
while swatting mosquitoes and other insects away. The driver stood next to
the bus. He lit a cigarette and blew his smoke out. The faded blue paint on
the bus framed him as he spit onto the gravel between his feet. When she again
emerged from the forest he offered her a cigarette. She shook her head no.
They stepped back into the bus. She studied the trees and ate a sandwich even
though she had no appetite.
It was getting lighter out. She thought about her husband who would be waking
up about now, roused by their son. The boy jumped on the bed and crawled onto
his father's chest. They tousled around a bit, the boy wide-awake and he still
half asleep. Her mouth was dry. It was the first time she had spent the night
away from them. Rain droplets tapped on the windows of the bus, first a calm
rhythm and then a rushing stream of water along the glass transforming the forest
into a green mist. A brown stream swirled downwards along the road. The driver
negotiated the vehicle upward on blind instinct. Then a widening in the asphalt
signaled the end of the road. He stopped the bus. The rain continued to fall.
Steadily. The driver lifted her backpack out of the luggage compartment and
remained there hunched under the hood. 'Are you sure about going up there?' he
asked. She peered into his craggy face. 'Yes' she said. He shrugged his shoulders
and climbed, still bent over, back into the bus.
She hastened from the road to the edge of the forest and took shelter under a tree
where she put her purse into the pack. The driver turned the bus around and rode
away in the pouring rain. She put on her parka, hoisted the backpack onto her
shoulders and fastened it around her hips. Then she began to walk. Via slippery
rocks she made her way up the slope. She was an experienced hiker. Before becoming
a mother she had made many treks to remote areas. But now she was feeling a light
panic. The rain had let up and some light began to shine through the clouds. The
occasional grouse shot through the underbrush. The forest absorbed her thoughts.
She wanted to think and at the same time she wanted her mind to empty. Jumping
from stone to stone she made her way over a small rushing stream. She bent down
close to the water and drank. The clear water raced through her fingers. A shower
with her husband while their toddler slept. Their bashful, awkward bodies pressed
together. The dark pine forest consumed her. Pine needles that had never been touched
by water rustled under her shoes. A strange calm came over her. The scent of resin.
Her husband’s atelier and the oil paintings there that never seemed to dry.
It stopped raining. The sunrays lit up the soil's steamy vapours. She took off her
parka and tied it to the backpack. The birds chirped and the path wound upwards
through the hillocks. Now the forest was beginning to thin out, opening up to reveal
the view of the deep sloping gorge. Low grey clouds released a thin sheet of rain. A
rainbow appeared and dissipated. The road drew a silver line through the green etching
a great cross on a faraway hilltop and in the distance the blue silhouettes of the
mountains. This was the landscape she had left behind as a child.
A man carrying a large backpack stomped aggressively down the path. He greeted her
abruptly, like a military man. She watched him as he passed. Noted how mechanically
he manoeuvred among the rocks and disappeared into the pine forest. She felt a fine
resentment at not having the mountain to herself and for not having her husband and
son with her. From a side pocket in the backpack she pulled out a granola bar and ate
it sitting atop a rock. The letter T had been painted on that rock to mark the path.
Moss camouflaged the letter. Mosquitoes swirled around her. Beetles marched through
the moist sedge. One had fallen onto his back and was struggling to right itself. She
gave the insect a tap and it was able to crawl away. At that moment she wanted so much
to feel the presence of her little boy, laughing in her ear, his little hands squeezing
her neck. She looked up into the sky. An aeroplane traced a needle-sharp white line
between the clouds. The line crumbled and dissolved in the atmosphere. She put her
backpack back on and walked further.
The mountain was less dense; tufts of birch trees and low bushes, rock formations,
stones and moss. She pulled out her survey map. A dotted line with numerous curves
leading to the top of the mountain indicated the path. Her exact location was difficult
to pinpoint on the map, hovering as she did somewhere between the contours lines. She
folded the map up and decided to trust her sense of direction. It had never failed her
in previous treks. She turned her gaze downwards. The rain cloud hung low now over the
valley some twenty or thirty kilometers away. She could see the village where she grew
up, located the church tower and could pick out a few houses sprinkled haphazardly like
Lego blocks atop the green slope. She did not know the people who lived there now. Many
had died. Her heels began to burn. Her mountaineering shoes hadn't been worn in years
and now they were stiff and chaffed her. She tried to ignore the pain. Their family
house built from raw stone nestled between fruit trees was the first house you came
upon when you entered the village. She used to lie down in the grass next to her father
under one of those apple trees munching the lightly sour fruit, staring up at the holes
in that leafy rooftop and wishing the day would not turn into night.
The sun began to set casting a long shadow of her frame. Though she had completely lost
track of the path she remained calm. In the distance, butted up against the mountain she
spotted the red roof of a hut and moved towards it. She hiked a solid hour before reaching
the cabin. It lay abandoned at the edge of a small mountain lake. Sweating she pushed open
the wooden door. A wooden bunk bed with tattered foam-rubber mattresses and a blackened
wood stove filled the hut. The early evening sun crept in through a small window. Fixed to
one of the walls was a wooden plank upon which sat an oil lamp, an old can of beans and a
book. Carved into the walls a runic of names and dates. She hurled her backpack onto the
top bunk, kicked her shoes off and stretched out on the bottom bunk. She examined the planks
under the mattress above her. Even there names were carved. She drank from her canteen and
ate an apple. Then she took the book down from the shelf. The cover was darkened and oily
from handling and the pages inside were dingy. It was a logbook of all the guests who had
used the cabin with their names and their dates of arrival and departure. The records went
all the way back to 1950. The first name must have been that of the man who had built the
place. She leafed through the book her eyes skimming over the entries. Almost all of them
were men. Some had stayed for days others just a day. The frequency of the entries slowed
down in the 1990's. There were longer intervals between the visitors; one year in particular
there had been just five or six. She saw her father's name and recognized his handwriting
immediately, so angular and precise. She shuddered. The date he had arrived was written next
to his name but no departure date. She lay the book down on the foam rubber mattress that
must have also once absorbed the sweat of her father. She walked on bare feet out of the
cabin and stared out at the lake. A golden eagle jetted just above the water's surface.
The swishing sound of the streaming brook. She walked over soft moss to the spot where the
brook met the river and stood still there for a time. The water from the brook came directly
from the snowy mountaintops not far from where she was standing. She took off her clothes
and walked into the water. Her feet chilled by icy cold hands that took hold of her ankles.
Tiny black fish nibbled at her toes. Dodging the large stones she forded through the water
up to her thighs and then let herself sink into the clear coolness.
She emerged quickly from the water, goose bumps covering her skin. The sun was red and
radiated little warmth now. She hopped back to the cabin and grabbed a towel from her backpack.
After drying off she jumped into her clothes and pulled on a thick sweater. She set up the
butane stove on a flat stone on the lee side of the cabin and boiled some water for tea and
a pre-packaged expedition meal. In the meantime she perused the logbook. Her father's name.
She flipped through to the last page. The date next to the last name was today's date. That
had to have been from the man with the oversized backpack. She wrote her own name down under
his and after that the date. The water boiled. She turned off the stove and poured some of
the water into a bowl with the powdered meal. She stirred. A teabag hung in the pan of water
that was left over. Perched on the lower bunk she ate the meal and drank the hot tea. Then
she boiled more water for more hot tea. And there she sat, the logbook next to her, on that
mattress until the sun disappeared behind the mountains and the sky grew dark. Finally warm
she walked back outside to the brook to rinse the bowl clean. Spread before her the lake a
black mirror held before the endless starry night. Bowl in hand she headed back to the cabin.
She undressed to her underwear, spread out the sleeping bag on the lower mattress and crawled
down deep inside.
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