The Lava in My Bones by Barry Webster

Author:Barry Webster [Webster, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781551524795
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press

Darkness fell and I slept on a soft bed of grass beneath a sky of precisely etched stars.

Early the next morning when I woke, the ground felt like a block of ice against my back. I got up, brushed dirt from my clothes, and started walking south. The sun was rising when I reached the small lake at the foot of the Matterhorn; its stone wall of pink wrinkled rock shot skyward. Clusters of scraggly pines clung perilously to its stone cliffs.

Lifting my head and straining my eyes, I scrutinized the dazzling summit, a snow-frosted, pyramid-tipped rock finger curling into an endless blue and haloed by frail wisps of cloud. My whole personality would soon be pulverized. Who would be the “I” about which I constructed my new self? I yearned to find out.

Down the mountain’s face, a glacier rippled in grey and white like the foam-crested waves of a raging river that had frozen there. At the mountain’s base the glacier thrust forward like an outstretched tongue whose tip touched the edge of a slate-grey lake. Twigs cracked and earth crunched beneath my feet. A stone tumbled into a rock-rimmed cavern and the pop sound struck my eardrums violently. I passed squat currant bushes with dense, impenetrable foliage and climbed onto a flat-topped boulder standing by the water’s edge. Just above the eastern mountain summit, the sun huddled like a sniper; it bathed the opposite peaks in a hallucinatory glow, yet the valley below was in complete shadow. No breeze ruffled my hair or shook tree branches. I felt I was the first man in the world’s history to come and stand at this spot. The surface of the turquoise lake was as flat and still as my washroom mirror. I held my breath for fear that my exhalation would ripple the water surface and bring to life a world suspended in an unearthly yet intoxicating slumber.

But I finally exhaled, and mountaintops didn’t tumble into the lake, trees didn’t fall against each other like bowling pins. Rock remained solid. Ice was ice. I breathed in the frigid air, imagined my lungs becoming bright pink as they expanded and shrank. Somewhere water dripped. In the forest, I heard the ascending call of the snowfinch. Below, in the lake, were swirling clouds of dirt specks. I couldn’t see the bottom; the lake was guarding its secrets. It was a perfect oval, the oval of an eye or, as you would say, Sam, the oval of the Earth’s orbit around the sun.

I felt terrified and cried out, “Erlöse mich!,” my voice echoing through the valley. Forcing myself into direct contact with nature’s potent force, I removed all my clothes—my shirt, boots, trousers, and underpants—complete exposure. I was now defenceless. Let the Matterhorn have its way with me. Oh, Mein Gott, Ich habe Angst! With your eyes blazing down, I stood naked on the boulder beside the Matterhorn lake and stared straight into the water.

Then the miracle happened.

The obscuring clouds of grey vanished and, on the flat water surface was reflected—stone-hard, stolid, and unconquerable—my own body.

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