#
I left The Shamrock and walked out along the docks. Caught between the mountains and the city, I stopped. I don’t know why I didn’t go with Christoph that evening. Part of me was scared that he would persuade me to travel alone. I stood by the lakeside, looking at the view I’d shared with Eva the summer before. The moon was full; a silver medal suspended in the sky, beyond the reach of even Pilatus and Rigi. I looked out, head spinning and eyelids fleshy, heavy, wanting to close. The streetlights cast long flames on the surface water, and the white gable houses lit up the waterside like a furnace.
The rowing boat, Julia, was still tied up to a horn cleat. It could have been there for years, untouched. Parts of the rib had cracked away, and rust had grown thick over the rowlocks. Chucking my bag in first, I made camp for the night on the bottom boards. Silhouetted against the evening glow of the city, the high-rise apartment blocks hung in the night air like rectangular planets. I laid down on my back. I could hear fish making knife-breaks in the cool water, in lullaby. If Eva had been there she would have pressed her icy fingertips into my armpit for warmth. I wasn’t cold. The sun had only been down a few hours. Beyond the bare mast of the boat, the distant silhouette of Mount Pilatus kissed the stars in the blackness.
#
I hadn’t seen Eva in ten months.
I lived near Oxford and worked at a shoe shop in the covered market. Eva lived in Lucerne, working at a recycling factory just outside of Zurich. She was responsible for picking out plastic, metal and paper, separating it all – saving the world.
“Recycling one tin can produces enough energy to listen to a whole album,” she said, out on the shore of Lake Lucerne, one evening last summer. “Think of how many tin cans one person uses a year. If everyone recycled their cans, think how much we would reduce the carbon footprint.” Eva believed the solution to all the world’s problems could be found in tin cans and compost heaps.
I wanted to spend the summer talking about how much our sex had improved, or tell her the story about my lecturer who dropped dead at the photocopier. But it never happened. It was all electric bicycles and offshore wind farms; reduce, reuse, recycle.
“I know how to significantly reduce the carbon footprint,” I said, stretching an arm around her square shoulders, leaning in until our noses touched. “Carbon tip-toe.”
She pushed me off.
“You’re an idiot, JJ.”
Despite that, Eva wanted to travel around Europe with me, see it all. Leave from Lucerne in June, and whip down through Italy and the Amalfi coast, across to Croatia and sail along the Dalmatian, to travel a loop around Europe.
But when the carriage doors opened, no Eva.
“I sent an e-mail,” she said on the phone.
“What e-mail?” I said, outside the train station in Lucerne, bagged down with my new rucksack – pots and pans jangling from the back. I looked like a one-man band.
“It’s been 10 months, Jonny. I feel like I’ve been in a relationship with my iPhone. We knew the distance would be difficult.”
A conveyor belt rumbled. I could picture her still leafing through the rubbish as she jammed the phone between her ear and shoulder.
“You could have fucking mentioned it, Eva,” I said. “Maybe before I bought a month-long train ticket.”
She didn’t say anything.
“And you’ve bought your ticket, too.”
“I didn’t buy a ticket, Jonny. It says it all in the e-mail.”
I could hear the sound of tin cans crumpling beneath the weight of an industrial crusher.
“I’m sorry,” she continued, shouting over the machinery. “Check your inbox. Maybe the e-mail was accidentally directed to your spam.”
Tin cans crushed and baled.
“Can I stay the night? Seeing as I’m here.”
She had already hung up.
