Top of the hill, p.21
Top of the Hill, page 21
They put in twenty-eight gates. Michael and Cully would mark off the finish line, about fifty yards above a path for pedestrians that a snowcat had made across the slope.
“All right, Rita,” Cully said, “now you climb up, it’ll warm up your legs, and when I give you the signal, like this”—he raised his arm and then suddenly brought it down—“you start. Got it?”
“Got it,” Rita said, in a whisper, her voice trembling just a little bit. She started to climb, herringboning up the slope alongside the course.
“It’s good of you, Dave,” Michael said, “to take time to watch the kid.”
“I’m not doing you any favors,” Cully said. “Anything to get out of that damned office.” He was watching Rita climb. “Pretty strong for a skinny kid like that. How much you guess she weighs?”
“One five, one seven,” Michael said. “Around there.”
Cully nodded. “Lucky there’s no wind. Blow her right away. I weighed one seventy when I raced. Over two hundred now. Christ!” He stared up at Rita, who was nearing the top of the slope. “My kids’re fat already,” he said. “And Norma’s built more like her. There’s no telling about Nature.” He gestured toward the figure in red above them. “It’s a funny thing,” he said reflectively. “I guess I must have seen that girl ski again and again through the years and it never occurred to me that she ought to be racing with the other kids. I guess it takes an outsider, like you, to see things that you just take for granted if you stay in one place. And I’ve always liked her and her whole family, too.” He stared sternly at Michael. “One tip. Don’t fool around with her. On or off the hill. Her father’ll have your ass.” “Dave,” Michael said, protesting, “she’s only sixteen years old.” “That never stopped you before.”
“I’m a different man these days.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Cully said.
The sun had hit the slope by now and Michael turned to face it, grateful for the warmth. Down below, on the path, he saw Mr. Heggener approaching. He recognized him by the old-fashioned black shiny cloth coat with the mink collar and by the soft green Tyrolean hat. For a man who professed to dislike Austria as much as he, he certainly liked to dress Austrian. Michael waved to him and Mr. Heggener waved back, then stopped walking and leaned on his cane and looked up at where Rita was now nearing the top of the course.
Michael turned back to watch her as she poised herself even with a tree that Cully had designated as the beginning of the run. Cully raised his arm and Rita crouched, ready. Then Cully dropped his arm sharply and the girl took off, skating, into the first gate. She came down fast, snaking expertly through the gates, hitting most of the poles with her shoulder to cut the turns shorter, knocking some of them out of the snow in her passage.
“Not bad, eh?” Michael said, watching the flying red figure.
“Not bad at all,” Cully said. He made a little grimace, which showed that he was surprised and impressed.
Rita swept through the last gate and got into the egg position and pumped, her poles tucked straight out behind her, under her armpits, as she crossed between the two men and skidded to a stop.
From below, there came a faint sound of clapping. Mr. Heggener had taken off his gloves and was applauding.
“How did it look from the valley, gentlemen?” Rita asked as she climbed back toward them. She was panting, but not too hard.
“Okay,” Cully said. “How did it feel?”
“Like first place in the Kandahar,” Rita said, laughing and gasping a little at the same time.
“Well,” Cully said, “you have one important thing. Self-confidence. Why’d you say you never’ve raced before?”
“I haven’t. But when they have the poles up I practice. When I have the time.”
Cully looked at her severely, his eyebrows lowered, as though she had deliberately deceived him. “There’s a race in ten days. There’re some good college kids who come for them every weekend. This’ll be the first of the season, you may have a little jump on them, being up here all the time and all. I’ll put you in it if you want.”
Rita looked inquiringly at Michael. “Mr. Storrs, do you think I should . . . ?”
“What’ve you got to lose?” Michael said.
“My job, for one thing. Mrs. Heggener doesn’t like skiing waitresses. Last year two of them broke their legs in the middle of the season and we were shorthanded in the dining room till the end of the year.”
“I’ll talk to Mrs. Heggener,” Cully said. “If you’re as good as I think you may be, with some coaching, it might be a nice bit of publicity for the hotel.”
“Just promise you won’t break your leg,” Michael said.
“I promise,” Rita said. “Put me in, please, Mr. Cully.”
“I’ll ask Swanson to take you out a couple of times to show you a few things that might cut your time a second or so. He’s the best coach in town.”
“I don’t want to be a bother,” Rita said. “Mr. Storrs has been awfully helpful.”
“Leave Mike to the older ladies,” Cully said. “The only thing he could teach you’d be how to crash. Everyone going back to town? We can pile into the pickup.”
“I’ll walk, thanks,” Michael said. He had seen that Mr. Heggener hadn’t moved and seemed to be waiting for company on the footpath.
“I think I’ll give the hill one more workout,” Rita said, “while the poles’re still up.”
“Don’t worry about them when you’re through,” Cully said. “I’ll have the patrol pick them up when they come down in the afternoon.” He set off down the hill, skiing easily, without poles, as did Michael, since they had both carried the slalom markers up.
“Mr. Storrs,” Rita said, “I don’t know how to thank you and Mr. Cully . . .”
“Rita,” Michael said, “you can do me a favor. You can call Mr. Cully Mr. Cully until you’re fifty, but I wish you’d call me Michael. You make me feel ninety years old.”
“Okay,” Rita said shyly. “Mr. . . . Michael.” Embarrassed, she turned and started climbing quickly up the hill toward the top of the slalom course.
Michael watched her for a moment, then skied down to the footpath, where Mr. Heggener was standing.
“Good morning, sir,” Michael said, as he came to a stop just above the path.
“It is a good morning,” Mr. Heggener said. “Best time of the day.” '
“You’re up awfully early.”
Heggener shrugged. “Sleeping is not my strong point these days. Oh ... I have a message for you. Two, to be exact. Eva can’t ski today. Too busy, she says. I’m not quite sure at just what. I was to tell you if I happened to run into you. And two—your friends arrived.”
“So early?”
“They said they drove all night. A very handsome lady.” Heggener looked up to where Rita, now a red dot on the white glare of the snow, was nearing the top of the slope. “Quite a sight on a beautiful morning like this—that pretty little girl drifting like a feather down that hill.”
“She was doing some pretty fast drifting.”
“I noticed. By the way, how’re you getting back to the hotel?”
“On foot, I’m afraid,” Michael said. “I came out in Cully’s truck.” “Good,” Mr. Heggener said. “Then we can walk back together. If you don’t mind.”
“My pleasure,” Michael said politely and got out of his skis and put them over his shoulder. They started walking back toward town, Mr. Heggener moving with surprising briskness, taking deep, satisfying breaths of the cold, thin air. “Ah, the mountains,” Mr. Heggener said, sighing. “I’m devoted to everything about them. The crispness of the air, the color of the shadows, the sound the snow makes under your boots. It was the purest luck that I fell in love with a woman who shared my . . . ah . . . dedication ... to the heights. The happiest days of my life. . . .” He sighed again. “A morning like this makes me nostalgic for my own skiing days. Tell me, Mr. Storrs, have you ever made the run from Zermatt, under the Matterhorn in Switzerland down to Cervinia, in Italy?”
“Twice,” Michael said.
“It was my last run,” Mr. Heggener said. “The last run of my life. It was a day like this. Blue sky, cloudless, perfect snow, no wind. Just about two years ago. Maybe to the day. I have it jotted down in a diary someplace. I was feeling up to anything, like a young boy. I always made a point of being in good shape to start the season. I respect the mountains, one must not take them lightly. Before the season started, I climbed, did an hour of calisthenics a day, ran. . . . For a man my age—I don’t like to boast—but I was considered a formidable skier.” But there was no self-pity in his voice. It was a modest statement of fact. “Oh, I had a little cough. Nothing. Maybe a little cold coming on. I had a favorite guide. A small, solid Swiss who’d been bom in Zermatt, who read the snow the way you would read a book. A slightly different color, a wind ripple, and he’d know where an avalanche could come down, where a snow bridge might not hold your weight. You could follow him safely anywhere. I was not a daredevil. I loved the mountains, but as I said, I respected them. I never believed that any ran was worth a death.” He looked keenly over at Michael, as though what he had said had a special message for him. “We went up to the Theodul Pass, the whole world beneath us, except for the great slab of the Matterhorn, with little white wisps of cloud around its crest. As you must remember, the ran down is one of the longest in Europe. Great open slopes above the timber-line, it seemed that you could ski and ski forever, sailing over the planet, unattached to it, its problems not your problems. Nourishing illusions for a few glorious hours. You’ve heard of Cousteau, the French underwater explorer . . . ?”
“Yes. I do a little scuba diving myself . . .”
“Then you know his phrase—‘the euphoria of the depths.’ ”
“Yes.”
“Trust a Frenchman to come up with a phrase like that.” Mr. Heggener smiled. “That day, under the Matterhorn, I felt the euphoria of the heights.”
“I know what it’s like,” Michael said, thoughtfully, engaged with his own memories now, diving through the air, going down to the limit of his oxygen to where sunken ships lay on the bottom of the sea, with multicolored shoals of fish swimming in and out of the broken wrecks. “Hang-gliding, free-falling.”
“Euphoria,” Mr. Heggener said. “Even the word, the word alone, sends a tingle up your spine. It is a wilderness word—you wouldn’t ever think of using it to describe anything that might happen to you in a modern city. Joy, perhaps, ecstasy, but euphoria never. Euphoria is a word that needs silence.” As if speaking the word had hushed him, he walked on silently another twenty paces, the only sound the crunch of their boots on the snowy path.
“Cousteau caught something there,” Heggener said finally. “The relationship between exaltation and danger. The prerequisite, you might say. The danger of drowning in the depths, the danger of uncontrolled speed, daring the mountain, outrunning avalanches.” He laughed lightly. “I’m older now, I no longer can ski, I can speak wisely about a run not being worth a death, but I have ridden avalanches down precipices in my time. I had a friend when I was a young man, a friend my own age, a magnificent skier, and he died that way—going into an avalanche slope. It took twenty-four hours to find the body. Still, when we did find him, I swore there was a smile on his lips. It had been a powder avalanche and he must have died almost instantly, suffocated, almost before he could have realized he was in peril. Well, young men die with less reason. . . .” He had spoken softly, elegiacally. Now his tone shifted abruptly. “As I was saying,” he said matter-of-factly, “on that day I had a slight cough. When I got back late in the afternoon, coming down to Zermatt after a marvelous Italian lunch, the cough became more annoying. My wife insisted upon my seeing a doctor. The doctor insisted upon x-raying me. They are neurotic about lungs in the Alps. He diagnosed tuberculosis. Not an advanced case, the doctor assured me, I’d be skiing again the next year. It happened he was wrong. Not the first doctor to make a wrong prognosis.” Mr. Heggener shrugged, made a little, uncharacteristic dandyish wave with his cane. “So here I am on foot, plodding along.”
Michael stopped walking. “How far is it from the hotel to here?” Mr. Heggener stopped, too, and looked at him, puzzled. “A mile and a half, maybe a little more. Why?”
“And you walked all the way?”
“It was such a fine morning. I walk slowly, as you see.”
“Not as slowly as all that,” Michael said. “If you can walk more than a mile, what’s to prevent you from skiing? Slowly, of course.” Mr. Heggener laughed. “My doctor would refuse to see me again.” “He’s not doing you any good as it is, is he?” Cruelty was to be preferred to manners today.
Mr. Heggener made a balancing, ambiguous movement with his gloved hand. “No,” he said.
“Then what have you got to lose? That’s what I asked Rita just now when Cully offered to put her in a race.”
“Is she going to be in it?”
“Yes,” Michael said.
“Good girl,” Mr. Heggener said. He stared reflectively down at the beaten snow of the path before him. “It’s possible,” he said, “that I could do a little mild skiing. As long as there was someone to pick me up when I fell. I’m not strong enough to struggle up by myself.” “Look,” Michael said. Although the man had for all intents and purposes just about threatened to shoot him the first night they had met, he could not help but admire the candor and courage and grace with which he was facing his fate. And the stoical finality with which Heggener had described his last run down the mountain touched him. Somewhere in the future there was going to be a last run for him, too, and he knew he would seek for consolation then, just as the man beside him, without asking for it, was seeking consolation now. “Look—I’m being paid for a whole day’s work by the ski school,” Michael said. “Your wife usually skis only in the afternoon and not every afternoon, at that. I’d be delighted to take you out. You know how skiing is—it takes your mind off everything else.”
Heggener nodded. “Yes, it does. Sitting around day after day with a blanket over your shoulders and making sure there are no drafts in a room smelling like a hospital doesn’t take your mind off anything but the grave. As you said, What have I got to lose?” He spoke almost gaily. “If it’s a nice day tomorrow, I’ll take you up on your offer. I still have some skis and a pair of boots somewhere in the basement. I didn’t know what I was saving them for, but maybe I was saving them for this.” He sighed. “A man my age in my condition is apt to be pessimistic, but one must always remember that unexpected things can happen, unexpected people come into your life— that not all hopes are inevitably dashed.” He looked up at the sky. “Sun,” he said, “shine tomorrow.” He laughed, sounding young and full-bodied. “Eva will be in despair.”
“Why?”
“If it were up to her she would put me in a hothouse and keep me there. She is desperate about preserving me as long as possible. I am not quite as desperate.”
They were in the town now, walking through it to get to the road that led to the hotel. With his cane Heggener saluted the shopkeepers standing out in front of their establishments and tipped his hat to two ladies who were wheeling baby carriages. Everyone seemed to know him and smiled warmly at him and told him they were glad to see him back. “In America,” Heggener said, “small towns are the last bastion of civil behavior. The feuds run deep and from generation to generation, but everybody knows he must live with everybody else and people conduct themselves accordingly. They are not strong on art or culture, perhaps, but they are careful about form and manners. One could argue that the village volunteer fire brigade, with its trucks manned by men whose families have not spoken to each other since 1890, is one of the finest institutions of American democracy.” He chuckled at his conceit.
They passed the last few houses of the town proper and walked through a tangled forest of second-growth birch and scrub pine. In the sun, the snow was melting off the branches of the trees, falling with soft irregular plops onto the snow beneath.
“Contrary to most people my age,” Heggener said, brushing some snow off his mink collar, “I do not applaud the approach of spring. Winter is my season. Luckily, we are far from spring. Which brings up another point, Michael.” He used his companion’s Christian name naturally, as though the conversation they had had on their walk could only be between friends. “Do you really intend to stay the entire season?”
“As of now, yes.”
Heggener nodded. “Eva told me that you had not yet said yes or no about the offer of the little cottage on our property. I sincerely hope you will accept it. I gather that you can afford to stay at the Al-pina as long as you like, but living in a hotel, for three months at a time, even one as spectacularly comfortable as mine”—he smiled, dep-recatingly—“can finally be dreary. I must admit that Eva and I are not being completely unselfish. I have to go out of town on business, or to Boston to the clinic, sometimes for weeks at a time. I worry about leaving Eva alone, just with our seventy-year-old maid, who is so deaf she would not awaken from sleep if they shot off a cannon outside her window. To add to her virtues, she does not speak anything but German. During the season, as you may have heard, the town is visited by some extremely undesirable young people—ski bums who live by stealing when they can’t make money any other way, and sometimes even if they can—and recently, whole groups of young people, and some not so young, who smoke marijuana, shoot up on heroin and indulge in other modem amusements of a similar kind. There have been some nasty evenings in the last few years and jail sentences and one case of arson. Has Eva happened to tell you why we had to have the house redone completely?”
“No.” ’
“Last spring,” Heggener said, “we were in New York for a few days and only the old lady was in the house. A gang of young men and girls, too, according to the police, broke into the house. The dog must have been barking, so they shot him. Shot him. Bruno is a replacement. Then the gang tore up the house, ripped every cushion, broke all the china, smashed the doors to the cupboards, sliced the clothes hanging in the closets, everything. Then, as a final touch, they shat on the floor. The old lady slept through it all. Incidentally, they were never apprehended. You can understand that I was reluctant to move back into the ruins. The house needed remodeling anyway, it was dark and a little old-fashioned. But now I keep a pistol in a drawer, a useful Smith and Wesson thirty-eight. Having you nearby would tend to discourage any further depredations. If you do move into the cottage I will show you where I keep the pistol. Have you ever used one?”
