It was not hard to be somewhat cavalier that day. The weather outdoors was beautiful, he was there in the home he shared with Se-ri, only a little more than halfway through their two weeks. The circumstance was odd, to be sure, but if there was one thing life in NK conditioned its people for was the unannounced and unexpected. From unscheduled house inspections to power blackouts to trains abruptly stopping mid-route. Certainly, it was unusual for airports and train stations in NK to cut off access to anyone out-of-country, particularly China, but he had assumed that by the time he was required to return those circumstances would change.
It seemed an eminently reasonable expectation. Two weeks every twelve-month, after all, was their allotment, for better or worse.
In the wake of that call—the first of many, Se-ri and he added shopping for longer-term accommodations for her stranded protegees to their daily activities. Together, with the help of several real estate agents, they located an older hostel that was no longer operating as a business. It had enough rooms to be used for dormitory-like housing, and several others that he recommended to Se-ri be soundproofed and supplied with pianos for use as practice rooms. Delighted in a new project (and, she made no secret of, to share that project with him), Se-ri doubled down on engaging Swiss contractors willing to work extra-hard and extra-quickly to repair and renovate the space in record time.
When the two of them spoke about the news now pouring in from around the globe (news so potent even they, in their two-week happy news-free bubble, could not avoid it), using the newly-common words Coronavirus and Covid-19, they always did so in the context of the students' situation, never their unique own. By the time he contacted the NK embassy in Bern to reach out to his father for direction, it was exactly the technical end of his two weeks' with Se-ri, and already two days after Se-ri's hostel renovations had begun in earnest.
In his communication to his father, he made mention of the NK students stranded, asking what was to be done.
"When will you receive an answer?" Se-ri asked, almost the moment she saw him upon his return to the chalet from traveling to Bern to place the call. He felt her dread and anxiety at what was to come next like a stone in the pit of his own stomach.
"Soon, I think," he told her. He did not mention the lack of order, the unexpected administrative chaos he had encountered in making his call, as though the embassy had found itself in unfriendly seas, trying to chart a course through fog, the pole star shrouded from view.
"Until then," she said, taking his arm as though they were shortly to stroll somewhere, "let's go piano shopping." He saw her eyes attempt to spark, but felt her working to push back against what they both knew was inevitable: his imminent departure. That pushing back an effort with which he realized he would soon have to acquaint himself.
Four pianos, various items of soundproofing, countless towels and cabinets and flooring choices later, the response was received from his father, terse and uncolorful as always: "shelter in place and wait for further instructions". He may as well have been receiving orders on the frontline of battle. It mattered little, he supposed, NK points of entry remained sealed. More countries began to follow suit as case numbers rose. And yet he was lucky, fortunate, even: he was already very settled in the one place he wished to be.
In less than three weeks, Se-ri's hostel was ready to house her stranded students. In four weeks the practice rooms were completed. Five weeks saw a live-in concierge hired, and the call went out for translators—which by week seven became language instructors. As long as the NK students are here, Se-ri wisely pointed out, they have time to learn, and I can help with that.
Teasing her one lazy afternoon in the bath, he encouraged her to take her own advice. "Möchten Sie ein warmes Handtuch?"
"Showoff," she replied, scoffing, and they spent the next half-hour naming everything within sight in Swiss German, him saying the word first, her repeating it.
The weeks—their time together—stretched, but easily, smoothly like dough rising, never feeling brittle or about to snap. Se-ri began to take work calls again, the sound of her mobile phone's ring becoming familiar to his ear, her vacation from her company over. Her laptop and regular deliveries of work-related products and paperwork and other communiques showed up at the chalet, Zoom calls and Google Meet-ups occurred in the mornings, occasionally a late-night check-in was necessary.
No deliveries, no news from NK, though. The music students faltered at times, trying to come to terms with the insecurity of not knowing what was to come next in their lives, where they might find themselves in a month, like planes circling an airport waiting to land but without a current runway assigned.
What did he do? He had spent so many years without thinking of the future, without anticipating anything, he assumed it would prove no hardship for him to be caught in limbo here. And breath-to-breath, moment-to-moment it wasn't. In the right-now he was happy. Once more the wrong train-now Covid-19-had brought him to the right station, daily life at Se-ri's side.