And now Rudy was eight years old. His uncle in the Rhône Valley, on the far side of the mountains, wanted to take the boy into his own home. He could be educated better there, and get a good start in life. His grandfather realised this, and so let him go.
Rudy was about to leave. There were several, other than his grandfather, he had to say goodbye to. First there was Ajola, the old dog.
‘Your father was a mail-coach man, and I was a mail-coach dog!’ Ajola said, ‘we travelled up and down the country, so I know the dogs and the people over on the other side of the mountains. It’s never been my custom to talk a lot, but now when we haven’t long to talk to each other, I’ll talk more than I usually do. I’ll tell you a story that I’ve long gone and chewed over. I can’t understand it, and possibly you won’t either. But that doesn’t matter, because I’ve got something out of it – that things aren’t so fairly distributed in this world either for dogs or for humans. Not all dogs are made to sit on knees or lap up milk. It wasn’t my lot to do such things. But I have seen a puppy ride in a carriage, in a seat meant for a human being. The woman who was his owner – or who was owned by him – carried with her a flask full of milk which she gave him to drink from. She’d also got some sugared bread for him, but he never bothered about eating it, just sniffed at it, and so she ate it up herself. But me, I was running through the mire by the side of the wagon as hungry as any dog can get. I’ve chewed all this over in my thoughts, that it wasn’t as it should be, but such a lot isn’t – everywhere. I hope, Rudy, you’ll be able to sit on someone’s knee or ride in a carriage, but you can’t make that happen by yourself; I haven’t managed it, either by barking or by yowling.’
That was Ajola’s speech, and Rudy hugged his neck and kissed him on his wet nose, and then he took the cat in his arms, but the cat wriggled free. ‘You’ve become too strong for me, and I certainly don’t want to use my claws on you. Just you go and climb over the mountains. I have taught you how to climb. Never believe you’re going to fall, and keep a good grip on yourself.’ And then the cat ran off, because he didn’t want to let Rudy see the grief shining in his eyes.
The two hens were running round on the floor; one of them had lost her tail. A tourist who fancied himself a hunter had shot her tail off because he’d taken the hen for some bird of prey.
‘Rudy’s going over the mountains!’ said one hen.
‘He’s always in a hurry!’ said the other, ‘and I don’t like saying goodbye.’ And the two of them scuttled off.
He also said goodbye to the goats, and they called out: ‘May you… may we… may… maaa!’ and it was all so sad.
Two experienced guides from the local community were about to cross the mountains. They would be going down the other side by the Gemmi Pass. So Rudy went with them – and on foot. It was a tough trek for so little a lad, but Rudy had strength and courage which didn’t ever wane.
The swallows flew part of the way with them. ‘We and you! You and us!’ they sang. The guides’ route took them over the fast-flowing Lütschine River which tumbles out in many little streams from the black ravine of the Grindelwald glacier. Loose tree-trunks and bits of rock served as bridge here. Now they were over by the alder thicket and beginning to go up the mountain close to where the glacier had worked loose from the mountainside. And next they went actually out onto the glacier, over blocks of ice, and out round them too. Rudy had to crawl for a little, then walk for a little. His eyes shone with pure pleasure, and in this spirit he stepped with his iron-clasped mountain-boots so firmly as though to put down markers for his movements. The black churned-up earth which the mountain stream had emptied over the glacier gave it a calcified appearance, but blue-green, glassy ice shone through nonetheless. They had to go round small pools rimmed by pressed ice-blocks, and in doing so approached a huge boulder that was swaying on the brink of a fissure in the ice. The boulder toppled over, fell, rolled down and released the echo that rang from the glacier’s deep hollow passageways.
On up! Always they went upwards. The glacier stretched above them like a river of wildly piled-up ice masses squeezed between precipitous rocks. For a split second Rudy thought about what he’d been told, how he had lain with his mother inside one of these cold-exhaling ravines, but such thoughts quickly went away. For him it was just another story out of all the many he had heard. Every now and again, when the men thought climbing was a bit too difficult for the little chap, they extended their hands to him, but he did not become too exhausted, and on the smooth ice he stood as steadily as a chamois. Presently they came out onto rocky ground, now between moss-free stones, now in amongst low spruce trees, and then out again into green pasture, ever changing, ever new. All round rose the great snow-covered mountains, Jungfrau (the Virgin), Mönch (the Monk) and Eiger (the Ogre). Rudy had never been as high as this before, never trodden the sea of snow now opening up before him. It lay with motionless waves of snow which the wind had blown into shape out of single flakes, just as it blows the foam from the waters of the sea. Glacier after glacier hold each other by the hand, if one might say that. Each one is a glass palace for the Ice Virgin whose power and intention it is to capture and entomb.
The sun blazed intensely down. The snow was truly dazzling and as though studded with blue-white, sparkling splinters of diamond. Innumerable insects, particularly butterflies and bees, lay dead in heaps on the snow. They had ventured too high up, or else the wind had borne them to the point where they expired in this cold. About the Wetterhorn a threatening cloud hung like a fine-woven black tuft of wool. It descended, swelling with what lurked within, a Föhn, violent in its strength were it to break loose. The impression of the whole journey, the night-camp up here, and the path going onwards, the deep mountain chasms where the water for a staggeringly long period of time had sawn through the blocks of stone, fixed itself indelibly on Rudy’s memory.
A derelict stone building on the far side of the sea of snow provided overnight shelter. Here they found charcoal and branches of spruce, the fire they lit got going quickly, and they made up bedding for the night as comfortably as possible. The men seated themselves round the fire, smoking their tobacco and drinking the warm spicy drink they had prepared for themselves. Rudy was given his share, and then talk got underway about the mysterious creatures of the alpine country: about the strange colossal snakes in the deep lakes, about the folk who come out at night, the ghostly army which carries sleeping people through the air to the marvellous floating city of Venice, about the wild shepherd who drove his black sheep across the pasture; nobody had seen these animals, but they had heard the sound of their bells and the herd’s eerie baaing. Rudy listened with curiosity but without fear, something he simply did not know, and as he listened, he thought he caught the spectral hollow baaing. Yes, it became more and more distinct, the men heard it as well, stopped in the midst of their conversation, hearkened, and told Rudy that he must not fall asleep.
It was a Föhn blowing up, the violent storm-wind which hurls itself from the mountains down into the valley and in its viciousness breaks trees as if they were reeds, and shifts chalets from one bank of the river to the other just as we move a chess piece.
An hour had gone by before they said to Rudy that it had passed over. He could go to sleep now, and exhausted by the trek, he slept as if on command.
Early in the morning they set off again. That day the sun illuminated for Rudy new mountains, new glaciers and snowfields. They were entering Canton Valais, and were on the far side of the mountain ridge you saw from Grindelwald, though still a long way from the new home. Other mountain ravines, other pastures, woods and pathways presented themselves, other houses, other people were on view. But what people were these he was seeing? They were freaks of nature: weird, fat, jaundiced faces, the neck a heavy, hideous chunk of flesh with pouches hanging out. They were creitins,* they dragged themselves wretchedly about, and looked with blank eyes at any outsiders who arrived. The women looked the most frightful of all. Were these the people of his new home?