We're Flying Read Online Free Page B

about the tours with shining eyes. When the last of them had gone, Christoph packed away the projector and the box of slides and put them on a cart, along with the unsold books. In the lobby he lit a cigarette. It had gotten cold.
    Will you come for a drink with us?
    Christoph gave a start when he saw the man standing a few yards away. He was standing in front of him, feet apart, it looked as though he was challenging him to a fight.
    All right, he said out of politeness. But just one beer, I’ve got a long drive ahead of me.
    The man went up to him and they shook hands. Clemens, he said, and that’s Sabine. He pointed into the darkness, where Christoph could see the faint outline of the woman.
    THEY’D BEEN SITTING in the bar for quite a while. The conversation was faltering. Clemens talked about expeditions he’d been on, an endless list of caves, all described with the same adjectives. He had taken thousands of pictures, he said. He’d be glad to show them to Christoph sometime. Maybe he could use them in his talks. Since being introduced, Sabine hadn’t said a word. Christoph didn’t say much either, just nodded from time to time and smiled, and pretended Clemens’s stories were interesting. When, after a long description of a diving trip, there was a silence, Christoph asked Sabine if she’d ever been in a cave herself.
    That’s how we met, she said. And then—as though someone had pushed a button—she embarked on a list of caves she’d seen. She only listed their names and the years of the expeditions. Then she stopped, and Christoph wasn’t sure whether she had spoken or not.
    Why don’t we go on a tour together, the three of us, suggested Clemens.
    Christoph smiled vaguely, said, Well, one day, and OK, I’d better go, and waved the waiter over. For a moment there was silence, and then Clemens said, To Nirvana. He said it more quietly than he’d been speaking before, and at first Christoph wasn’t sure he could trust his hearing, and then Clemens said it again: To Nirvana.
    How do we get in there? he asked. There was something hungry in his look.
    The waiter came with the check. Clemens said he’d have another beer. Will you have something else as well? His voice sounded beseeching, almost fearful. Christoph ordered an apple juice. He waited till the drinks came, then he began to speak. As he spoke, he had the sensation he was making the descent all over again.
    He waded through a gallery deep in the interior of the mountain. The water was ice-cold and getting deeper, he was in it up to his belly, his chest, his chin. From the end of the grotto, where there were only a few inches between the ceiling and the water’s surface, a passage led steeply up. It was so narrow that once Christoph had crept into it, he was unable to put his hands back. He pushed himself up with the tips of his toes, inch by inch, just behind the guide. They didn’t speak, all that could be heard wasthe scraping of their boots and the occasional grunt or cough. He had long since lost all sense of time when the man in front of him stopped and said, We’ve reached the fault, it might take a while. Christoph was surprised by how close his voice sounded. Swearing, the guide pushed himself through the narrowest point. Christoph waited. The cold penetrated his neoprene suit and spread slowly through his body. He shut his eyes and pictured himself lying coffined in rock, a foreign body. We’re buried alive, he thought, we’ll never get out of here. Suddenly he became conscious that he was breathing fast. He forced himself not to think about where he was, tried to remember the words of children’s songs, added up the royalties he would get for his pictures, pictured landscapes, a wide expanse of sky, passing clouds. Then the man in front of him was gone, and Christoph looked through the fault and laughed nervously. You want me to get through there? You can do it, he heard the voice of his companion, which seemed to come from