Ablizzard tore across the white-lipped, wrinkled earth. It seized the snow off the mountains and flung it upwards to meet the falling snow. The wind came in long shrieking gusts with sudden stealthy pauses. ‘There are your ski boots warmed and ready for you,’ Lisa said without turning her head from the milk-soup on the stove that was warming for Mark and Andreas. Had she forgotten the night? Was it really true that she had held him warm and soft against her heart – carrying him up to the gate of life – lulling one by one his bitter fears so that he felt once more – if for the last time – that he was part of an infinite and friendly universe, above and beyond all the petty cruelties of man?
Mark sat down uncertainly with his back to her, and began to draw on his boots.
Andreas came in, looking at neither of them, carrying their oiled skis carefully across his shoulder. ‘The storm is rising,’ he said. ‘We must make haste, Herr! One good thing – we have everything else to fight – but not the Nazis. A spring storm on the Wetterstein keeps even a Nazi quiet.’
Lisa turned and gave them their bowls of milk potato soup. As she put the bowl down on the table in front of 86Mark, she looked down at him. It was a curious look, as if for a moment she drove – with all the force of her being – the secret of their short love – all its kindness – its completeness – into the quick of his heart. ‘This,’ her summoning eyes told him, ‘belongs to us – now and for ever – nothing else does!’
They drank their soup in silence, and in the same silence Lisa went with them to the door. The snow blew a thick veil between them. Mark knew that Lisa still stood there because the door stood open; but after a few uncertain steps, the farm itself was gone.
The snow blinded them, blowing against their eyes and into their ears, and down their throats. The false Harsch slithered, and broke, under their flying skis. Andreas led and Mark followed in what looked like a series of careless swoops and plunges, but these broken, twisted flights against the strength and fury of the elements, were the sum of all the mountain lore either of them had ever learned. Andreas knew his own mountain best; he was the more effortless because the more constant skier, but Mark was the quicker thinker. His well-used brain, and trained muscles, responded with instant skill to the unpredictable. The persistent clamour of the air confused their hearing, as the flying snow confused their sight. Both men knew they must be off the mountain before the storm grew beyond the puny efforts of even the most skilled skier to drive against it.
Time hung, against space, in the windy balance of the elements.
As they drew closer to the valley the wind seemed to concentrate as through a funnel, with a blind driving will to hurl them off the mountainside into a bottomless pit. They could see nothing beneath them. Trees rushed up at them out of the darkness, with barely time for each to measure 87his skilled way past them to left or right. Again and again they had to leap into incredible voids, and take jumps that would have seemed madness in broad daylight – which jarred every bone in their bodies. Every now and then the snow shifted or heaved beneath them with dangerous cracks and uneasy movements, as if it were alive and preparing to shake off their undesired weight. The muffled roar of a distant avalanche rose even above the howling of the wind. They were out of its path; but the long thunder of its descent gave them a feeling of infinite helplessness.
The end came so suddenly and easily that Mark could hardly believe the bared flat space he drew breath on was really the valley floor. There was light enough to see the round Turkish cupola of the nearest village church.
Andreas held out his hard gnarled hand. ‘That is your way, mein Herr,’ he told Mark. ‘I go the other, to my cousin’s village. He has an ox I might think of buying. One cannot move now to right or left without a lie for a reason. Trust no one. That is why I spit out my soul at the Nazis! They take away faith even in a man’s brother! Only we who live on the mountains and know each other like our own thumbs – well, we feel no great difference in ourselves! But here in the Thal no man is safe. Even his courage may betray another!’
Mark nodded. He had always felt in Andreas – apart from the reliance he placed equally in both brothers – a greater quality of heart and mind. He was glad it was Andreas now and not Peter who had set him on his way. But it was nearly as hard to part from him as if he had been Lisa.
‘Thank you,’ Mark said a little unsteadily and then suddenly words pushed past him, as if to reach Andreas without his knowledge or consent.
‘Look here, Andreas – if there are enough of us – enough 88of men like you, I mean – well, then, I think it’s going to be all right in the end!’
Andreas shook a puzzled head. ‘Men like me,’ he said incredulously, ‘we don’t go very far, mein Herr, but it is true we know where we are going.’ He turned and Mark 78watched him pushing himself forward through the heavy snow.
The world felt strangely hard and empty when Andreas’s figure had passed out of his sight. No one was about in the white and silent village. Mark pushed his slow way to the station and for a time that, too, seemed empty. At last a sleepy official crawled like a torpid fly into the ticket office and sold Mark a ticket to Innsbruck.
As soon as the train arrived Mark slipped inconspicuously into the nearest carriage, stood his skis in a corner, and gave the cheerless formula ‘Heil Hitler!’ to its crowded inhabitants. His greeting was returned but not at all briskly.
Every face, as Mark glanced at them in turn, wore the same expression of unreceptive blankness. These men and women were sunk in a blind misery far deeper than anger. No one was anxious to know what anyone else was like. They took for granted that if Mark were one of themselves he must feel exactly as they did; and if he were not he was already a danger, and the less they knew about him or he about them, the better. Two years of tyranny had knocked all their eager smiling humanity out of them.
The train jogged on through the long valley of the Inn from Landeck to Innsbruck, passing one by one, with familiar jerks and stops, the little valley stations Mark knew and loved of old. Each village now wore the same strange and empty look.
At last they reached Innsbruck. Here there was a difference. Italians mingled with Germans, and took the place 89of Austrians. The station was important and in the hands of war lords. There was an almost savage briskness about it.
Mark knew he could pass muster as one of the peasants, but he felt disagreeably conscious, all the same, of keen eyes looking through him as he gave up his ticket, before he found himself allowed to pass out of the station.
There was still life in the beautiful old town, though the streets at dusk were emptier than Mark had ever seen them. But the life there was struck Mark as false and unpleasant. The real inhabitants had no rights, and the swaggering military, holding undisputed sway over them, had no roots.
The wind still blew harsh and bitter from the mountains, but the snow had stopped falling. It lay thick and soft over the unswept pavements so that no footsteps made a sound.
Mark turned down the old street towards the river, and looked for the inn where he was to meet Pirschl.
He passed and repassed the Two Bitter Cherries several times before a man lurched out of the doorway and followed Mark down to the river’s edge. When they had both reached the swiftly flowing black water, he said in a good-humoured grumbling tone, ‘Ah – it is you, Anton! Late as usual. I had nearly given you up. But come in to the Bitter Cherries, and have something to cheer you up before our drive. You might say this is only the beginning of our journey!’
No one was in earshot of them; but it was as if Pirschl were afraid even of the listening air. ‘Be a little troublesome,’ he said in an undertone, ‘when we are in the café. Attract enough notice for them to see you are a little out of the way! But not enough, you understand, to make any sort of scene. No one makes scenes here – mad or sane – nowadays – except the Nazis themselves. You understand! I have already told the innkeeper and the waiter that I expect 90my brother who is not all there – but quite controllable. Yes! Yes! as controllable as everyone in this blessed land has learned to be. Why, even I – an artist – am controllable. I must paint my pictures up to the scratch of those featureless nineteenth-century humbugs, since they are all the rage in the highest quarters. Or else I am quickly reminded how perishable an artist is!’
Pirschl too had changed. He spoke with his old ironic drawl, but there was something nervous and urgent behind his laughing tones. When they sat together in the dim and humble little inn, Mark could see that the change had become a definite part of him. Pirschl was thinner and looked more like a scarecrow than ever. His heavy mop of red hair was streaked with grey; his eyes absorbed his face under their thick brows; they stared out, as if all the life of his body was centred in them.
Mark sank heavily on the chair opposite him. He had taught himself to let his face sag, and his supple body sink into an inert lump.
When the meal Pirschl had ordered for him came, although by now he was so famishing that he could have cleared the plate of unappetizing stew in two mouthfuls, Mark pushed it away and asked in a loud petulant voice for Nierenbraten. ‘This stuff! this stuff!’ he shouted, ‘isn’t good enough for men. Bring me Nierenbraten or I won’t eat anything!’ ‘Come, come,’ Pirschl told him, ‘you’re asking for the moon! No one has Nierenbraten nowadays – except generals! It’s a goulasch day and you’d better eat it up – before the others come! For they won’t want to wait about once they’ve had a good look at you. We’ve a journey ahead of us you must remember!’
‘I don’t want to go!’ Mark shouted. ‘I don’t want to go away! I want to go home!’ 91
There was real panic in his voice now. He felt a storm of loneliness and anger welling up inside him, as if he were indeed a man hunted and forlorn – forced by strangers to give up his will – that will which alone ensures a man his self-respect and is the proof of his sanity.
Appreciation shone in Pirschl’s eyes but his lips formed the words, ‘That’s enough.’ Everyone of the café’s small clientèle of tired workmen on their way home, was now staring at Mark. They had even stopped eating to take in the unaccustomed drama. The old and shabby waiter approached Pirschl’s table significantly. Pirschl shook his head, and leaning over patted Mark’s shoulder gently. ‘Come, eat it up! There’s a good fellow!’ he said soothingly, ‘and you shall have some beer with it! Here, waiter, give my brother some beer – poor chap – he won’t get any of our good Innsbrucker where he’s going!’
Mark hesitated, then began eating wolfishly; while he shovelled down his food with one hand, he tried to cover his face with the other. ‘He doesn’t like being looked at!’ Pirschl explained to the room at large. ‘That’s right, waiter – a mug of beer for each of us!’
‘I want more! I want more!’ Mark snapped, pushing his plate away from him.
‘And now he wants more of what he doesn’t like!’ Pirschl murmured with a good-natured laugh. ‘But never mind – give him more, waiter! I’ll stump up for once. But it wouldn’t do to feed you in a café every day, my brother. No! That it wouldn’t. Ah! Here’s our comrades.’
The storm door swung open, and what for a moment appeared to be two young men came up to their table, but at a second glance Mark saw that the second of the two was Ida, dressed in long ski trousers and a black pullover. ‘Ah!’ she exclaimed, ‘so this is your brother, Herr Pirschl – and 92here is my friend and colleague, Herr Carl Lauterbach.’ Her eyes laughed at Mark still, but was there a hint of respect in them as well as laughter? The jaws of the wolf had closed over him; but he had chosen to walk into them; and she knew that he had chosen.
Mark stared up stupidly and defiantly at each in turn. Dr. Lauterbach gave him a quick professional glance, and took the seat opposite him; Ida sat between Mark and the door. They had him securely now, these two doctors, and the artist who pretended to be his brother.
What if Father Martin had after all been deceived in them? Or had been, himself, a deceiver? What if the Nazis had planned this very trap to catch Mark with his specialized knowledge of British planes and weapons – so that they could question and torture him at will?
Mark felt the sweat break out cold on his forehead, the very roots of his spine had a frozen feeling. His eyes turned to the door. He must get out, something within him cried urgently. He must get out! He made a short, uneasy movement, but before he had had time to rise from his chair Ida’s hand shot out and pushed him back firmly but gently into his seat. ‘You’ll do very well where you are, my boy,’ she told him in her light incisive voice. ‘There’s no hurry at all. We’ll be off presently, but we’re all going to get better acquainted first!’
Mark felt his panic slowly subsiding. He still felt suspicious of them, all three, but the second wind of his common sense and courage came back to him. Whatever the truth was he must act as if he believed in them. Nothing had yet happened to prove them false; and if they were false still the best thing he could do was to appear to believe them true. Everyone, including himself, had so far acted according to plan. Once more he cowered back into his corner, his elbow resting on the table, his face covered by his hand. 93
He would not look at Ida – that hard, sarcastic, brilliant face still perturbed and antagonized him.
The conversation that followed seemed to take place in a nightmare.
On the surface it was just an ordinary conversation between four not very intimate companions. Actually it was a duel between two doctors trying to prove that a sane man was mad; and the sane man himself who was helping them. He must help them. It wasn’t his business to be sane. But only one of the doctors was aware of this, and both appeared not to be. Sometimes their eyes met each other significantly and looked away again, as if to hide the dangerous sense of their private and expert knowledge.
Pirschl took no direct part in the conversation. Here and there he dropped a friendly observation or supplied a decisive connecting link. Nobody spoke of sanity or insanity. They asked Mark simple questions, about his tastes, his habits, his work. What he liked to read best and why he thought he liked it. They listened carefully to his answers, answers that became at first purposely and after a while unintentionally, verbose and incoherent. Mark could hear his voice growing edgy and nervy, fatigue and danger tossed over and over together in his mind. Was he really off the mountain or not? Was this the real Nazi world or one of his anxious dreams of what it might be like? Was there anyone called Lisa? Suddenly in the middle of a conversation that had nothing at all to do with anything that Mark had ever known – he heard himself asking for Lisa in a loud voice. It was a most unpleasant, screaming voice. ‘I want Lisa!’ the voice proclaimed savagely. ‘I want Lisa!’ One of the peasants by the door laughed. Fortunately Mark was still thinking in German so that it didn’t matter what he said. Still it frightened him. Voices shouldn’t proclaim strange 94desires – not known to the minds they spoke from – even in the right language. Mark became acutely aware of his need for self-control, it slid over him again, like a familiar garment.
Ida’s face cut itself out distinctly from the fog of smoke and fatigue which seemed to fill the room.
‘Are you satisfied, Herr Colleague?’ she demanded.
‘Oh, perfectly,’ Dr. Lauterbach said, getting up. ‘I’ll sign whenever you like, but better get him home first I suppose, hadn’t we?’
Ida nodded. She did not look at Mark, as he stumbled wearily to his feet. She just walked to the door and stood waiting for the bill to be paid.
Outside a sleigh waited harnessed to two rough and powerful carthorses. It had begun to snow again.
‘I’ll drive,’ Ida said over her shoulder to the two men. Mark found himself gently and firmly pushed into the sleigh. He was left quite free except that the man who had been holding the horses and Dr. Lauterbach were on either side of him. Pirschl did not come with them. He stood on the side walk waving and shouting affectionate farewells. The sleigh bells tinkled merrily through the muffled air and in a moment the sleigh shot off into the dark valley, away from the twinkling lights of the town.
It was not cold. A warm fur rug had been tucked all round Mark’s knees. The wind had fallen with the return of the snow, and the snowflakes that blew against his eyes had none of the cutting quality they had possessed in the storm. The jolting darkness seemed full of unendurable risks and strains. Mark felt almost paralysingly powerless. There was nothing he could see or do. He could not even move. He was being driven in an unknown direction by strange people against his will. He was even strange to 95himself. He – and no one else – had given that incredible cry for Lisa.
That he had shouted out loud for a peasant girl in the middle of a café was perhaps the most disconcerting thing that had ever happened to Mark. He was not able to explain it to himself. He might, after all, be mad, he told himself suddenly. But he had none of the satisfaction of a madman. Madmen were not conscious of themselves as mad. What he had said was appalling to him just because he was so conscious of himself. Did Ida know that his control had snapped – for that one moment – or did she think as Pirschl certainly had thought – that Mark was a considerably better actor than he had ever imagined? There had been nothing in Ida’s face to show Mark what she felt – neither recognition, criticism nor curiosity. She had taken him as if he and his behaviour were a matter of course – just like any other madman’s. The interminable shaken darkness was unlit by a single star, but the horses seemed to know their way by instinct. They dashed on and on into the deepening night without pause or hesitation. At last they slowed down and began a long steady pull upwards. The darkness deepened all round them as if a cloak had been drawn suddenly close against their very eyes. ‘Pine trees,’ Mark thought to himself, ‘on each side of us; ahead and behind us – nothing but pines.’
The light bells rang on with the cruelty of a satire. Suddenly the horses swerved and stopped. There were no lights – no sounds – yet they had arrived.