The Downward Car

I rang the upper bell and watched Mara settle herself beside the window.

She wore her blue coat, though the day was warm. She has always felt cold at the summit. Below us, the town lay among the pines, roofs bright after rain, and the lake held a white piece of morning in its center.

The ascending car waited at the lower platform. Its passengers were holiday people, pink from breakfast, carrying baskets and folded maps. One man had a sprig of yellow flowers in his hatband.

There was no reason not to send them up.

You have asked when I first understood the incline. I cannot give you a useful answer. Understanding comes in scraps. A watch gains time. A face in the glass looks rested. Someone remarks that the journey seemed long, though the soup at the summit is still warm.

The cable had always made its own noises. It sighed beneath the floorboards and clicked in the walls like a beetle in a matchbox. I knew every sound except the soft one it made when Mara first rode down.

She had been forgetting things by then. The stove door. My sister's name. Which side of the bed was hers. The physician called it an illness of age, which seemed to me no better than calling rain an illness of clouds.

That evening, after the descent, Mara remembered the song we danced to at our wedding.

She sang it while shelling peas. Her voice was low and exact. I stood at the sink with my hands in the water and did not turn around.

The next morning I brought her up by the old quarry road and sent her down again.

It was not theft. That is the word people use because they imagine time as coins in a purse. Time is more like weight. The cars must balance. What descends lightly, ascends carrying the difference.

The holiday people complained of stiff knees. One woman found white in her hair and blamed the mountain sun. The man with the yellow flowers slept through lunch and woke with deep lines beside his mouth. He appeared peaceful enough.

Mara remembered our first house. She remembered the green cup I broke and denied breaking. She remembered the little room we had prepared for a child who never came.

After that, I kept the incline open beyond the season.

I chose passengers carefully. Those already old were unsuitable, and children have so little to spare. I preferred the hearty ones who laughed at the warning signs and carried wine uphill. They had come to spend time. I merely decided where.

Mara grew steadier. Her hair darkened at the roots. The brown spots left her hands. She began taking the quarry road without stopping, though she sometimes asked why I followed her.

Then, one wet afternoon, she stepped from the downward car and placed her wedding ring in my palm.

She said she had found it on the seat.

I explained. I showed her the matching ring on my own hand. She listened with kindness, as one listens to a stranger describing a dream.

Yesterday she lost the word husband.

This morning she called me Papa.

You may think this proves I went too far. It proves only that there is no platform at the proper place. The cable passes through youth as it passes through fog. One must judge when to pull the brake.

I have pulled it now.

Mara is asleep in the downward car, curled beneath my coat. She is small enough that her shoes no longer touch the floor. In one hand she holds the ring, turning it against the light as if it were a brass washer from some interesting machine.

The ascending car is still below. Its passengers have begun ringing their bell.

I will send them up when Mara wakes.