To be alone on a mountainside, in touch with the nature he understood and reverenced, was to Mark as easing as the ‘Mass’ is to a Catholic after long abstinence. Yet for a time Mark was unable to enter fully into his old ecstasy. Something strange and painful checked him. Was it that he had come to enjoy – and was now missing – the mocking, astringent presence of Ida? Or was it the dread of seeing Lisa again and finding himself forced back upon his primary emotions? If only, he thought, he could have been like most men he knew, able to enjoy his sex instinct without any inner contact with a woman as a human being, he would not have felt so crestfallen and ashamed, and, above all, so unwilling for this fresh encounter.
When he had stood before the bared teeth of the unknown, and knew no way to escape from the terror in front of him but the way into Death itself, Lisa’s protecting love had been a living shelter. But now that the edge of his fear was dulled, so was the edge of his need. Lisa was no longer an elemental force releasing him into safety, she was merely a peasant girl whom he did not want to hurt, and to whom he still less wanted to be tied. Nor was he any longer afraid of the Nazis. They were not less dangerous, 209but he had by now grown accustomed to their dangerousness. They were even less dangerous to him than the perils of his own mind.
The ribboned stretch of the Pass glittered far beneath him, as he climbed, like a picture of his old, secure, well-trodden life. Yet he no longer wanted to slip back into its unperplexing sunlight. He preferred the precipitate paths over which he had to find his way, beneath the serried ranks of the peaks; dipping and climbing, crouching and clambering, over and under the dark wet rocks, never able to forget the enemy he might suddenly confront or the task that he must somehow or other accomplish. He felt a thrill that he had never felt before. He was being used – every atom of him was being used in a direction along which he was now satisfied that a man must go – or else lose all that makes life worth living. He knew – as he had never yet known – the full consent of his own will.
Just beneath him on an awkward footing of crag he saw again the white death flower. In the vivid light of the retreating sun the little group of Edelweiss, clinging to the edge, no longer looked silvery; they shone a burning, blazing white. Mark could quite plainly distinguish each slender stem, with its pale crown, the soft white felt protecting each fragile stalk and small leaf from the hot mountain sun. An overpowering impulse seized him. He slipped a loop of rope over the nearest rock, and let himself down to the crag’s edge. ‘If I can’t take her anything else,’ he thought to himself remorsefully, ‘I can at least take her a moment’s danger.’
He knew how Ida would have laughed at him with her indifferent scorn for this sudden sentimental risk. He knew that his life, until his mission was accomplished, was not his own. Yet the breathless moment in which he swung out between the world of sky and blue air beneath him, feeling 210his hands close over the delicate softness of the Edelweiss, freed him from remorse, and gave him back his mountain ecstasy. He clambered back swiftly on to the crag above him with the flowers safe in his hands.
The air grew fresher and colder as the light began to fail. Mark was so near the Planer farm that from moment to moment he expected to see the smoke rising from its chimney. Suddenly he heard the swift patter of approaching footsteps. Someone was clambering with careless speed over the rocks beneath him. Was it a guard or a fugitive? Leaning over the edge of the rock on which he stood, Mark saw just below him a woman bent double. She ran stumblingly while the loose stones rattled and slid under her feet, her breath sobbing as she ran. ‘Lisa!’ Mark called down to her softly. ‘Lisa!’ She stopped dead, threw back her head and gazed up at him, as if the heavens had opened. Mark scrambled quickly down to her side. ‘What is it?’ he urged, taking her ice-cold hands in his. She trembled and shook so that she could not speak. ‘Is someone running after you?’ Mark entreated. Lisa shook her head. ‘What has happened?’ Mark insisted. ‘Try to tell me what has happened, Lisa.’ Big tears like a child’s ran down her cheeks. ‘It is his life!’ she sobbed. ‘We took it! Father and I. He is dead – Herr – one of Them! Dead – like a chicken! I ought not to have cried out when he caught hold of me! But he knew how to – he was a worse one than most. My arms were not free – struggling was no good – so I cried out! Father came – with a spade. He had been digging the new potatoes; and he – this one – I saw Father – and I knew – but he didn’t! He believed, like all of them – that Father was weak and old. Father struck – I pushed him towards Father – and the spade – it went right down into his head – and his body went soft suddenly in my arms. Blood ran out like water on the ground. We 211could do nothing. He lay and twitched and then he stopped twitching. Should I fetch a priest? He might betray us. Even priests fear Nazis! Should I get Peter? But I do not want to get Peter – he’s married and he is so young! Andreas they have already taken from us. So – I ran – God sent me up this path or else He sent you down to me!’
Lisa stopped crying; her eyes became as calm as a child’s that has been hurt, but is suddenly satisfied by the presence of someone older than himself – who becomes at once responsible for his pain. All Mark’s reluctance left him. He suddenly loved Lisa with ease and without confusion as a man loves a child.
‘It cannot matter that this Nazi is dead,’ he told her gently. ‘For such a reason it was right to kill him. You are quite innocent of his death and so is your father – so you don’t need the priest. It is only necessary to hide the body – so that none of you can be made responsible. That is all we have to think of, Lisa!’
‘Still he was alive,’ Lisa said wonderingly, ‘and now he is dead. That is a big thing to happen to a man’s life, Herr – even if he is a Nazi!’
‘They take without thinking the rights and lives of others,’ Mark said fiercely. ‘They break up everything that is human and beautiful. We have to destroy them, Lisa!’
‘Perhaps,’ Lisa said doubtfully, ‘perhaps, but up here – well, I have never seen a man dead before! Once I saw a sheep and its lamb both dead and I cried.’
The last light lay like a long golden finger on the small white farm beneath them. The column of smoke rising in the clear air was as blue as a forget-me-not and as solid as stone. There was no snow left. The gold of kingcups ran with the streams down the steep meadows. The pale cups of pink transparent crocuses trembled and shook in the waning 212light. On the kitchen floor, near the crucifix, where they had dragged him, lay the limp body of the Nazi guard.
Father Planer stood looking down on it, perplexed but not wholly displeased with his handiwork. Mother Planer had closed the dead man’s eyes, and washed the blood from his head and neck. Now she prayed. She did not know what else to do, and when she looked up from where she knelt at the sound of unfamiliar footsteps, she accepted Mark’s sudden presence as the direct answer to her prayers. The Planers were confused and distressed, not for fear of the certain death that awaited them if their deed was discovered; but because human life was really sacred to them, and yet they had been forced to take it.
Only Father Planer felt that the deed was inevitable, and therefore in spite of its consequences he was satisfied to have done it. Still even Father Planer had felt it necessary to wash the spade and put it away in a shed, where he could no longer see it; and Mark’s unexpected approach was an obvious relief to him. ‘He pushed it upon himself!’ he explained as he grasped Mark’s outstretched hand with his gnarled, horny one.
‘Many times over,’ Mark told him with decision. ‘We have only to get rid of him so that when they come up to look for him, there may be no proof against you. How long will it be before they send to find out?’
‘It might be to-morrow evening,’ Father Planer said, scratching his head, ‘or earlier. They are a suspicious lot these fierce ones – like a vicious dog – their tails go down between their legs before they bite!’
‘How far away is the nearest precipice?’ Mark asked looking down at the battered head. ‘If we tossed him over it would look as if his broken head was natural!’
‘There is a good deep drop,’ Father Planer said with 213increasing reassurance, ‘a cow went over last summer and I fenced it, beyond the edge of our last slope – the ground breaks up for a few yards and then there’s a hundred-foot drop – plenty of rocks too on the way down to bump off – his head would be well accounted for!’
‘We must take a shutter to carry him on,’ Mark said, considering, ‘and we had better carry the body off now before the light fails. Lisa must go ahead of us, just in case anyone should happen to come up.’
Mother Planer, who was still on her knees before the crucifix, screwed her head round to look at Mark. ‘Those flowers,’ she observed dispassionately, ‘you are carrying in your hand, give them to the Dead – in such a way that when they find him they may see he had a purpose. Men often risk their lives for such little, silly things.’
Mark nodded. It was not what he had meant to do with Lisa’s flowers. Her eyes met his, and the ghost of a smile touched her lips and vanished. She, too, knew what Mark had meant to do with the flowers.
They carried their burden in silence through the cold dusk – a little wind blew sharply against their faces, it seemed to come from the bright coldness of the first stars. The moon rose larger and heavier than the night before. It was no longer honey-coloured, but a dead world that looked as if it were made of white and sparkling glass. It gave them light enough to see their way when they reached the rocks. Lisa flung her apron over her head and turned with her back to the path. They put the stretcher on the ground while Father Planer stepped forward cautiously to choose the best place from which to drop the body; and then Mark looked for the first time at the dead German’s face. Even in death he looked as if his will still tried to force itself upon an unwilling victim. 214
Father Planer stepped back. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘we can send him over best!’
Once more they lifted the stretcher, and this time it seemed to Mark as if it were heavier than before.
They moved carefully and slowly over the uneven ground, to the sheer edge. Then Mark counted softly, ‘One, two, three – over!’ It was like some dreadful game – or the start of a long-ago innocent, sporting event. Mark felt the shutter tip and lighten suddenly – and then the muffled blows of the body striking against rocks came up to them intermittently through the still air. ‘Na! Na!’ Father Planer muttered uneasily, ‘he earned it, that one!’
Lisa gave a little shriek, like a frightened bird’s, after each sound.
It was almost dark when they got back to the farm. Mother Planer was cooking their evening meal. The room was in its usual order, nothing had altered or looked strange. Only when the meal was ready they sat down and ate with Mark, as if he were no longer a guest but a son of the house.
They asked him what they could do to help him about his plans, and entered with their usual practical tranquillity into this new emergency. He must get a Grenzschein, they told him, or rather Peter must get one for him – he must use Peter’s name but he must go from over Galtur before he dropped towards Meran where Peter had never been. This would simplify everything and he must return the same way then there would be no suspicion. Peter must remain on his farm where no one was likely to come, and therefore no one would know that he had not used his own Schein. This could be arranged by Lisa to-morrow. To-night they would all sleep in peace in their beds; and to-morrow morning early, it would be advisable for Mark to take to the loft again above Franz Joseph. 215
It was hardly necessary for Mark to urge upon them, as he did, that they should all act to-morrow in exactly the way they usually acted, because it had not occurred to any of them to act in any other way. ‘Try to believe that nothing has happened,’ Mark begged, ‘this will not only help to blind the Germans but it will be of use to you yourselves, because then you will get over it all easier; and look as you always look.’
‘I have not changed much,’ Mother Planer observed thoughtfully, ‘now that I have finished praying, and the water has dried on the floor there is nothing that is not the same. Only that one – wherever he is now – he had also a mother! Perhaps, since he was good in no other way – and we are all children of God – he may have been a good son. For her therefore I am sorry. It was for her I prayed.’
Father Planer put out his hand to the hook on which his long crooked pipe hung. He said nothing at all; but he looked as if he were finding more comfort in his pipe than usual. Lisa glanced across the table at Mark, and smiled; but she did not come near him. She put a stone hot water bottle between his glass-cold sheets; and when he went to bed, he found, in a mug on his dressing table, one of the Edelweiss. Perhaps the flower had fallen on the path, out of the dead man’s buttonhole, or perhaps Lisa had secreted it while she so firmly fixed the others in – so that there might be no mistake what the dead German had sought for, before he fell.