The small town of Uhle in the Haute Savoie lies on the route of the Paris–St. Gervais express. It is neither a watering place nor a centre of industry; nevertheless no train halts there for less than several minutes. Indeed so disproportionate is the size of the station to that of the town which it serves that passengers travelling this way for the first time often spend anxious moments as they seek assurance that the train has not brought them ahead of schedule to their destination.
Nor is their uncertainty diminished by the sight of the passengers who descend at Uhle, for they are in appearance as cosmopolitan as any who may be encountered on the platforms of European termini. Voices in most European and many Asiatic languages can be heard demanding renseignements of all kinds; individual passengers attach themselves rapidly to small national groups, presenting infinite variations of physique and colour. Irate and declamatory porters, cigarette stubs adhering to their lower lips and cases strapped to their backs, thread their way through the files of passengers and the baggage-littered quais; small electric trolleys, transformed into quivering skyscrapers by their load of crates, trunks and hampers, hoot neurasthenically as they speed up and down the platforms.
For Uhle, while not a centre of industry, is nevertheless the gateway to an industry, an industry which attracts its clients from all parts of the world. It is located several thousand feet above sea level on the site of a small village which formerly was frequented only by peasants and their herds. This village, which still retains its original name of Brisset, has, during a period of some fifty years, developed so considerably that what originally was a compact settlement of chalets and stables now straggles in all directions about the place of its original foundation.
For those who live up the mountains, as well as for those who have only gone to stay there for a certain period, Uhle has a symbolic importance. It is, as it were, a kind of free city situated upon the common border of two neighbouring countries, the citizens of each of which are permitted to associate on equal terms. For cross-currents of the world converge at Uhle, and there divide into two such disparate streams that the contrast between each is more significant than that existing between members of different nationalities and races.
The territory, the borderline of Uhle, must be crossed to gain access to the mountains. Those who are engaging upon a temporary séjour at a high altitude will traverse and re-traverse its brief confines each time a fit of disenchantment drives them to make an excursion into the outer world. And those who cannot descend for some time (and who, perhaps, may descend no more) will, from their balconies on a clear and star-filled night, see the lights of Uhle flickering far below them.
Whatever the reason (and despite its commonplace main street and its insignificant shops), Uhle rarely fails to make a distinct impression upon those who pass through it for the first time. Its atmosphere, even on the sleepiest midsummer afternoon, has a tenseness which gives an extra-dimensional relief to the façades of its buildings, and sharpens the silence of its squares. But it is not in midsummer that we shall see it first.
Towards the middle of November, some time after the end of the Second World War, the small electric train which connects Uhle with the mountains had picked up its passengers from the station and was slowly returning along the streets prior to mounting the steep track which leads to Brisset.
Hailing each other cheerfully, and mostly sitting together, were the residents and merchants (usually synonymous terms) of Brisset. Then in groups of two or three were the temporary residents; after a brief excursion ‘pour changer les idées’, they were returning, resentfully or stoically, to continue their cure. Lastly there were the new arrivals, novices equipped with boxes, cases, articles de sport.
At the extreme end of the coach was a party of six young Englishmen. Former members of the armed services and until recently students at various British universities, they were now protégés of the I.S.O., or International Students’ Organisation. The committee of this organisation—which was affiliated to the majority of European universities—had recently initiated a scheme whereby treatment in the mountains would be provided for a period of several months to a limited number of students from a dozen nations. Thus a number of other parties of similar size were at the same time, but by different routes, converging upon a common destination.
The members of the British party, amongst whom an easy friendship was already forming, had met for the first time on the previous day when they had assembled at a London station. There they had been received by a courier of the I.S.O. who had been appointed to conduct the party to the mountains.
Only one of their number appeared noticeably unwell, an impression arising more from this individual’s colour and bearing than from his physique. Tall, heavily built and wearing an army officer’s greatcoat from which all insignia had been removed, he was experiencing difficulty in remaining upright in his wooden seat: his fair hair had fallen over his brow, whilst his head rested against the freezing interior of the window. A sudden jolt of the train and his head fell forward, and a student sitting beside him grasped his shoulder, and said:
“Paul, are you all right?”
And Paul Davenant, a Cambridge undergraduate and sometime captain in an infantry regiment, shook himself, raised his head, opened his eyes and smiled at his interlocutor. At that moment the I.S.O. courier, Mr. James, walked up the centre of the coach.
“We’ll be climbing soon,” he said cheerfully. “The train turns round and then goes back-ways up. It isn’t half snowing outside.”
He rubbed energetically at the inside of the window with his handkerchief, oblivious of the fact that the obstruction to the view was caused by the heavy layer of frost which had formed outside it. Then the train came to a halt, a few more passengers climbed in, the guard cried “En voiture!” and, as Mr. James had predicted, it set off in reverse. But, changing to another line, it left the region of Uhle and started to ascend the mountain. “Well, here we go, lads,” said Mr. James, and as no one replied he leant over and, slapping a young man on the shoulder, cried out: “How are you doing, Oxford?”
Mr. James, belly, bosom and buttocks in uncompromising relief under a tight, military-type uniform of his own design, was a card, a clown, a little light entertainment provided by the I.S.O. Without a word of French, and never before having travelled on the continent, he had been escorted by the party rather than the reverse. He had managed twice to mislay his hand baggage, once to lose his own ticket, once the tickets of the whole party; on no occasion had any necessary document been produced without a frenzied search accompanied by oaths, threats and accusations.
But these slight contretemps in no way reduced his spirits; it was all one long picnic to Mr. James. When not searching desperately through inside or outside pockets for an elusive and essential document, he joked, jested and bantered. Members of the party he addressed either by the name of their university or the region of the country from which they came.
Between Paul Davenant of Cambridge and the student whom Mr. James had recently addressed as ‘Oxford’, and whose name was John Cotterell, he had attempted to promote a healthy sense of rivalry, awarding or deducting marks according to some system of his own which led him from time to time to cry out: “That’s one to you, Oxford,” or “Keep it up, Cambridge—you’re only a length behind!” To other members of the party he allocated ‘blues’ or ‘half-blues’ for the performance of any act of communal value. Sometimes he would stare disdainfully at the party as a whole, and cry: “Crikey, what a bunch! One Oxford, one Cambridge, one Taffy, two Scotties and a Yorky. Fancy me having to take a load like that across Europe,” and then he would whistle low and long between his teeth.
The coach was now mounting steeply; its interior—all but her metically sealed by sliding steel doors—was warm and humid. The chatter of the passengers subsided; they sat with their bodies braced against the angle of ascent, their feet in pools of water formed by the melting of the snow brought in upon their boots. In the dim, yellow lighting they appeared to grow out of the benches, and their outlines, so indistinctly revealed, merged one into the other. All that could be distinguished from the windows was the reflection of the lights of the train upon the banks of snow heaped on each side of the track; the noise of the controls was muffled and highly soporific. The progress of this self-propelled self-sufficient, relentlessly ascending cocoon seemed remote in space and detached in time.
Paul Davenant, without consciously directing his gaze, found himself staring drowsily at a woman who was seated opposite. She started, all of a sudden, to speak to her neighbour, a plump, pink-faced gendarme who was smoking a cheroot and reading a newspaper. Although she did not specifically raise her voice, its pitch was high and penetrating. And at the same time that she spoke she looked in every direction save that of the gendarme and it was as though she were addressing her remarks to the whole coach. “Alors je lui ai dit: ‘Que voulez-vous que ça me fasse?’” she repeated tonelessly, and as her neighbour started to laugh, she added: “Ah non, dites, mais je ne rigole pas, vous savez.”
The train came to a sudden halt, and a few passengers descended. Mr. James once more rubbed frantically at the window with his handkerchief as he endeavoured to see the name of the mountain station; then he grasped the shoulder of a workman seated beside him and stammered: “Voulez dire … la station ici … je veux …” when to a shout of “En route!” from the guard the train continued on its way. Mr. James, shading his eyes with his hands, pressed his nose against the window and was rewarded with nothing more than his own ill-defined reflection.
The woman resumed her conversation with the gendarme, adjusting the volume of her voice to the buzz of the train, the two in conjunction forming a toneless and unpleasantly persistent duet. Then the female voice, capable of a greater virtuosity, broke free, soared, and became completely audible again: “Alors je lui ai dit, ‘Vous savez très bien que vous ne devez pas faire de ski avec votre pneumo, c’est pas sérieux, ça.’” She had been looking at Paul, had appeared to be addressing her remarks directly to him, when suddenly, her mouth wide open in the act of articulation, she turned back to her neighbour and met with a great bouffe of smoke which he had just puffed from between his teeth. Momentary spluttering succeeded by a series of coughs, as sharp, distinct and compelling as her voice; pats on the back and cries of “Pardon, madame,” from the gendarme and a choking “Je vous en prie, monsieur,” from the lady. A temporary accroc; the mechanism swiftly adjusted itself and the human counterpoint to the buzz of the train recommenced unimpaired.
“What does ‘pneumo’ mean?” Paul whispered to John Cotterell; it was the key word to an otherwise incomprehensible sentence.
“It’s a medical term. It means—oh, never mind. We’ll be hearing it all too frequently in the near future.” John Cotterell dug his hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat and, in an effort to restore his circulation, drummed with his feet upon the floor of the coach.
“I reckon we should get there any minute,” said Mr. James, now rubbing the glass on his watch with his handkerchief, as though to prove to himself that it had not completely lost its power to effect transparency. Then the windows of the coach became suddenly bright, and despite the frost it was possible to make out the shape of a large and brightly lit building. “We’re here, we’re here!” cried Mr. James, as the train came to a stop. “No, you are not ’ere,” shouted in English a guard who had just come through to the coach. “It is a stop. I will say when you are ’ere. It is the next stop.”
Through the open doors it was possible to catch a glimpse of great banks of snow, and the outline of square, modern buildings. The place could be no more than a halt, for nothing to imply the existence of a station was visible. Half a dozen religieuses, members of a nursing order, apple-cheeked, their veils grotesquely lined with snow, climbed up into the coach. The guard passed a number of parcels and a mailbag through an open window. Then the cry of “En route!” The steel doors slammed, and the train set off once more up the slope.
As the track became steeper the noise of the mechanism became more insistent. Then suddenly the passengers started to bestir themselves; hats were adjusted, journals were folded and stored in pockets. The corpulent gendarme got up from his seat and re-fastened the belt and lower buttons of his tunic. Mr. James, oblivious of the implications of these signs, opened a small paper packet and took out a hard-boiled egg, which he began to shell. Paul Davenant turned his head, laid his cheek against the freezing window and closed his eyes; to lose consciousness for a second was to lose it, during that second, for eternity.
“Brisset Village” suddenly shouted a guard, who, as the train came to a halt, jumped out from the coach on to the platform. There was immediately great activity. Two porters who had climbed up into the coach started to hand down baggage from the racks which ran along its whole length; a family made its way along the centre of the coach, each member holding a pair of skis horizontally above his head. The gendarme’s neighbour dropped her bag on the floor, and the gendarme, bending down to pick it up, lost his own peaked cap, which fell from his head on to a heap of melting, dirty snow. Mr. James stuffed what remained of the hard-boiled egg into his mouth and was robbed of speech. The students formed up in a line behind the other passengers who were filing slowly out of the coach.
The first impact of mountain air on a November evening. One breathes deeply and the interior of one’s chest becomes suddenly, deliciously, frozen. One breathes out and the air crackles in one’s nostrils. The condensation of the breath of the guard, as he helped passengers down the steep steps of the coach, escaped from his mouth like ectoplasm.
The small station was well lit; the snow cleared from the track had been formed into great mounds at the extremities of the platform. Uniformed concierges, the names of the sanatoria to which they were attached printed in gold upon their caps, were alert for new arrivals, whilst porters, not occupied elsewhere, started to remove the baggage, which filled the whole of a large trailer attached to the rear of the second coach. From outside the station came the sound of horses and of sleigh bells.
Mr. James marshalled his little squad, now fluttering and coaxing like a hen, now rapping out orders like a sergeant-major, now making a cautious appraisal of the unfamiliar location like the leader of a Resistance group newly parachuted into hostile territory.
A concierge with the name Les Alpes upon his cap sighted the party through the throng of passengers on the platform, and walked briskly towards it. “You are the British students?” he inquired first in French and then in English. His query meeting with affirmation, he explained that the sanatorium for which they were bound was some two hundred metres from the station, and that they should now follow him. The baggage, assuming it had been properly labelled, would be sorted out and brought up separately by sledge.
With Mr. James in the lead, the students followed the concierge out of the station. Snow fell lightly as they mounted a slight incline in the direction of a building indistinguishable in appearance from the type of large continental hotel constructed at the turn of the century.
Standing at the entrance (which was protected from the snow by an awning), stood a tall and portly man wearing a tight, double-breasted black suit; one arm was folded behind his back, the other extended stiffly before him in a gesture of welcome. He shook hands with Mr. James, and then, majestically opening the doors, invited the students to enter.
They found themselves in a lofty, oak-panelled entrance hall furnished with a number of armchairs and settees upholstered in dark brown leather. A concierge’s counter cut off one corner. The whole was illuminated, rather dimly, by a series of pendant lustres, suspended both from the ceiling and from bronze-figured brackets on the wall.
The black-suited gentleman first shook hands formally with each of the students, then conducted them to some chairs and bade them sit down. He regarded the party thoughtfully, glancing swiftly from face to face with slightly furtive eyes which bulged incongruously out of deep recesses set above the inflated contours of his cheeks. His nose was heavy but pointed, the lips were thin and the mouth impersonal and uncommitted.
A tentative assessment completed, he took a typewritten list from his pocket. “The roll-call,” he said in English, but with a strong accent; “it is for each one to answer in his turn.” When the names had all been called, he clasped his hands behind his back, and, staring at the floor, declared: “It is all correct, quite O.K. Now I introduce myself to you. I am Monsieur Halfont, the director, or, as you would say in England, the manager of this sanatorium. It is my wish that you made a good journey and you are welcome here.” He looked up suddenly and suspiciously, searching the faces before him. “No,” he said, as though someone had contradicted him, “I mean it sincerely that you are welcome.”
The preliminaries concluded, he touched briefly on certain details concerning the organisation of the sanatorium. Four of the seven floors were reserved for private patients: the remaining three would be devoted exclusively to students. The only difference between private patients and students was that the latter would be accommodated two to a room; this would constitute no hardship since the rooms were quite spacious.
M. Halfont then asked the students if they would decide immediately with whom they wished to share in order that the bedrooms might be allocated. Paul Davenant and John Cotterell agreed to share; so did the two Scotsmen, John MacAllister and Angus Gray; which left the remaining room to the Welsh student, William Davis, and David Bean who came from Yorkshire.
“Good,” said M. Halfont. “Now I will have you led to your rooms, for in half an hour your meal will be ready. After your meal you will go to bed, for you will necessarily be fatigued. Tomorrow you will see our medical director and his assistants, and they will tell you what you must do. Whenever you have difficulties or require something you will come to me and I will aid you. And now I wish you a good stay and a prompt recovery.”
A series of embarrassed ‘Thank yous’ from the students, a request from Mr. James as to where he was to pass the night, and then a chasseur was detailed to conduct the party to the appropriate rooms. Those of the students adjoined each other and, like all the rooms in the sanatorium, were connected by inter-communicating doors. They appeared comfortable, and were well furnished. Each room had a wash-basin, a built-in cupboard and a marble-topped commode. Illumination was provided by a light-fitting set into the ceiling, and uncurtained, double French windows led out on to a wide balcony.
During the intervening half-hour there was time for a wash, a settlement of the choice of beds, and a quick glance at the dispositions of rooms, corridors and landings.
The meal was served in a small annexe leading off the main dining-hall, which was in darkness; Mr. James sat at the head of the table, en père de famille, whilst the students sat in rows of three on either side of him. They were quiet and over-elaborately polite; they took pains to refill each other’s tumblers, and to pass each other bread.
During the course of the journey, which had lasted a day and a half, each student had laboured under a certain reserve. In consequence, his character was no more than adumbrated; it resembled the outline of a drawing to which many details had yet to be added before form and perspective could be separated and assessed.
John Cotterell had already exhibited a natural inclination to cheerful leadership; he had a good command of French and he had managed all the small formalities of the journey, the checking of tickets and passports, the passage of luggage and the location of the reserved second-class compartments. He had pushed Mr. James into the train when the latter, believing that he had lost his ticket, was in danger of being left on the platform at Calais; he had propelled him along corridors of moving coaches, impelled him both in and out of station buffets at various halts along the way, and finally delivered him upon the summit of a French Alp. How Mr. James would get back by himself was a matter for speculation.
William Davis, the Welsh student, had appeared good-humoured and taciturn—very content to leave the management both of the journey and of Mr. James to John Cotterell. A tall, well-built, fair-haired young man, with shrewd eyes and a healthy complexion, he looked what in fact he had been—an outstanding athlete at his university.
David Bean, who was studying medicine, and who was to share a room with William Davis, had revealed himself during the journey as the member of the party least given to compromise. His lean face was intelligent and bitter; despite the fact that he was obviously at pains to appear amiable, he had at times made little effort to conceal reactions of impatience and irritation. On several occasions when the trend of a conversation had displeased him he had taken a paper textbook from his pocket and begun pointedly to study it.
The two Scotsmen, John MacAllister and Angus Gray, were strongly contrasted types. The former was tall and very thin; he spoke with a soft Edinburgh accent and was very gentle in manner. Glasgow-born Angus Gray was stocky and dark; he had thick eyebrows, a heavy moustache and a prominent, bony nose. He was humorously cantankerous; during the journey he had busied himself with a series of calculations in respect of the exchange rates between France and England and had become rapidly competent in assessing any sum of money in the currency of the other country. Visitors to foreign countries were notoriously open to exploitation by the natives; the French would soon learn, he commented grimly, that they had met their match. Both he and John MacAllister were also medical students.
The remaining student was Paul Davenant. At twenty-seven he was the oldest member of the party, as in appearance he was the illest. During the journey his discomfort had been apparent; he had been continually embarrassed by his incapacity to do much for himself. (John Cotterell, with whom he was sharing a room, had assisted him good-naturedly throughout the journey). Frequently he had appeared unconscious of his surroundings. When his companions laughed (which they did frequently), he laughed with them, though it was apparent that he had little idea of what they were laughing at.
Now at table he appeared preoccupied and detached. Each time that he became conscious of his drooping posture, he sought to remedy it by an elaborate straightening of his back, but before the meal was over he was supporting the whole weight of the upper part of his body on his elbows.
Mr. James, safely arrived at his destination, felt liberated from any remaining inhibitions; overflowing with good-humour, he chattered ceaselessly and senselessly. The meal provided both the occasion and the audience for a series of anecdotes about his life. It soon appeared that there was no capacity in which he had not, at some time, been employed, no situation which he had failed to render ridiculous and humiliating. He was consciously a dupe, a stooge; his loud and self-indulgent laughter prefaced the dénouement of each shameful recitation.
When the meal was over, the party moved towards the door. Paul Davenant was wearing an old battledress. Mr. James, who had the insignia of a lieutenant on the epaulettes of his Salvation Army-type uniform, now ran forward, pulled the door open, at the same time pronouncing in a simpering, mincing voice: “Three pips to two: you go first, mon capitaine.” And bending from the hips and arching his back, he raised his hand in a trembling salute.
When Paul Davenant and John Cotterell entered their room they found that their trunks and cases had arrived. On the marble-topped commode were two glass containers shaped like immense wine-glasses, but supported on short, thick stems, and by their side two blue-tinted glass jars with screw-on lids. One set was labelled with the name ‘Davenant’, the other bore the name ‘Cotterell’. Two white enamel mugs with lids, each containing an inch of strong disinfectant, completed this initial issue of equipment.
“I am a beginner,” confessed Paul. “What precisely are all these things for?”
“You have never been in a sanatorium before?” asked John Cotterell.
“No. You have, I believe.”
“Yes. I spent six months in a sanatorium before coming here.”
Paul looked with surprise at his companion. He thought: ‘He looks well, but he must have been very ill to start with.’
“Are you negative or positive?” John Cotterell asked suddenly.
“I’ve no idea. What should I be?”
“It’s better, far better, to be negative.”
“And these containers. What are they for?”
“The jars are for a specimen of sputum, the glasses are for urine. The mug you had better keep by the side of your bed.”
“I see. Thank you.”
In silence they unpacked certain necessities from their cases, and whilst Paul was undressing he was seized by a fit of coughing. He hesitated for a moment, then guiltily, surreptitiously, grasped the white enamel mug, removed the lid, and released the sputum which had been raised by the cough. Through the corner of his eyes he watched John Cotterell, who appeared not to have noticed. ‘Perhaps, having been in a sanatorium, he is used to that sort of thing,’ he thought to himself. He replaced the mug on top of the commode, and then, remembering John Cotterell’s advice, took it up again and placed it on the table de nuit by the side of his bed.
He wanted to lie down. As he looked at his cases and at the accumulation of hairbrushes, tablets of soap, bottles of hair-lotion and shaving tackle spread out on his bed and on the floor, he felt that he would never manage to impose upon them any semblance of order: all his efforts seemed to conduce to no more than the transposition of one heap of articles from a chair to a table, and then back again. But although he was exhausted, something in his nature sought that he should delay the moment when, by entering his bed for the first time in a sanatorium, he would commit himself to it.
An impulse was translated suddenly into action; he stopped what he was doing and, throwing his greatcoat about his shoulders, unfastened the double windows and went out on to the balcony. It had stopped snowing and there was no wind. But the floor of the balcony was deep in snow which had drifted high into the corners, obliterating all but the headrests of two wooden chaises longues. Even the rail of the balcony and the ornamental metal-work beneath were lined with narrow fringes of snow several centimetres deep.
Under a full and yellow moon, the mountains stood in brilliant relief, their rugged surfaces smoothed to a glazed consistency by the crevice-filling snow. Below the mountains lay the vast Plaine du Vallée, spread out as though for immolation, its chaste, wedding cake surface broken only by the black, winding channel of the River Arve. At the extremities of the valley flickered an infinity of lights, which in their tiny groups appeared like tributary stars fallen in clusters from the golden stream of nebulæ that, at seemingly no greater lateral distance, filled great areas of the sky.
A well-executed back-drop which, in the lives of so many of the dwellers on that narrow ridge set high above the Arve valley, had assumed the proportions and status of a permanent set. Its essence was implicit in the prickly, frozen and odourless air which, with each breath that Paul took, flooded the antennæ-like structure of his bronchi and whipped into the deepest recesses of his damaged lungs.
He could not move from where he was standing, nor avert his gaze. Deep and primitive principles of association and recognition were forming a complex series of reactions in his subconscious mind; he felt as much a part of what lay before him as the whole mountain range of its foundations, and the river of the course which it had marked out for itself along the snow-covered expanses of the valley of the Arve.